Friday, October 18, 2013

Fwd: Human Spaceflight News - October 18, 2013 and JSC Today



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Begin forwarded message:

From: "Moon, Larry J. (JSC-EA411)" <larry.j.moon@nasa.gov>
Date: October 18, 2013 6:55:16 AM CDT
To: "Moon, Larry J. (JSC-EA411)" <larry.j.moon@nasa.gov>
Subject: FW: Human Spaceflight News - October 18, 2013 and JSC Today

 

 

Happy Friday everyone.  Have a great and safe weekend.

 

 

 

 

 

   Headlines

  1. And We're Back!

JSC is back in business after 15 days of government shutdown. Keep in mind that civil servants will be getting further communication regarding items like pay and benefits as it becomes available, and we'll also post the information on our JSC internal Human Resources website. Contractors will need to communicate with their contract's management.

Employee Assistance Program personnel remain available to meet with you; their office number is 281-483-6130, and their website here.

JSC External Relations, Office of Communications and Public Affairs x35111

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  1. Center-Level IR&D Call - Updated Details Soon

The center Chief Technologist's Office and JSC Technology Working Group are reviewing schedule adjustments for the center-Level IR&D solicitation call that opened on Sept. 30, before the furlough. More information, including a revised due date for the solicitations, will be provided next week. Please watch JSC Today for additional details next week.

Holly Kurth x32951

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   Organizations/Social

  1. Space Explorers Toastmasters is Go!

Communicating is not optional in today's society. It's required and it's FUN! Challenge yourself and make an investment in your personal growth. The Space Explorers Toastmasters club meets on Fridays in Building 30A, Room 1010, at 11:45 a.m. for 60 minutes of practice and laughter.

Event Date: Friday, October 18, 2013   Event Start Time:11:45 AM   Event End Time:12:45 PM
Event Location: B. 30A/Rm. 1010

Add to Calendar

Carolyn Jarrett x37594

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  1. Project Schedules Got You Down?

Then tie into the JSC Planning and Scheduling Community of Practice (CoP)! The CoP presents an introduction to and demonstration of a free Microsoft Project add-on tool called STAT (Schedule Test and Assessment Tool) that can easily help you assess the health of your schedule. Come in person or virtually to find out what STAT is, how it works, who uses it and what it can do to lift your spirits and improve your program/project schedules. And hey ... it's free!

Event Date: Friday, November 1, 2013   Event Start Time:2:00 PM   Event End Time:3:30 PM
Event Location: 1/620

Add to Calendar

Nancy Fleming x47205 https://pmi.jsc.nasa.gov/schedules/SitePages/Home.aspx

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  1. Furlough Your Stress - New Client Massage Special

Trying to get caught up? Take some time for yourself and relax with a massage.

New client special! Schedule a one-hour massage through the end of October for only $50. Appointments must be for a Monday, Tuesday or Wednesday, and is only valid for new clients.

Don't let this opportunity to receive the benefits of massage pass you by. Go online to book your massage today!

Joseph Callahan x42769 https://starport.jsc.nasa.gov/en/programs/massage-therapy

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  1. Salsa/Latin Dance - Oct. 18 for Discount

Salsa/Latin Dance

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 that 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. Beginners Ballroom Dance: Nov. 12 and 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:

    • $90 per couple (ends Nov. 1)

Regular registration:

    • $110 per couple (Nov. 2 to 14)

Two class sessions available:

    • Tuesdays from 7:30 to 8:30 p.m. - starting Nov. 12
    • Thursdays from 8:30 to 9:30 p.m. - 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. Blood Drive Oct. 23 and 24

There is no substitute for blood. It has to come from one person in order to give it to another. Will there be blood available when you or your family needs it? A regular number of voluntary donations are needed every day to meet the needs for blood. Make the "Commitment to Life" by taking one hour of your time to donate blood. Your blood donation can help up to three patients.

You can donate at one of the following locations (note start time change):

    • Teague Auditorium lobby - 9 a.m. to 4 p.m.
    • Building 11 Starport Café donor coach - 9 a.m. to 4 p.m.
    • Gilruth Center donor coach - Noon to 4 p.m. (Thursday only)

T-shirts, snacks and drinks  are available for all donors.

Teresa Gomez x39588 http://jscpeople.jsc.nasa.gov/blooddrv/blooddrv.htm

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

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

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NASA TV: www.nasa.gov/ntv

·         9 am Central (10 EDT) – Exp 37 with KSTP-TV, Minneapolis and the Big Ten Network

·         2 pm Central (3 EDT) – Video File of Exp 38/39 Qual Training Sim Runs at Star City

 

Human Spaceflight News

Friday – October 18, 2013

 

HEADLINES AND LEADS

 

NASA Shutdown Unleashes Beautiful Astronaut Photos on Twitter

 

Andrew Fazekas - National Geographic

 

Despite the two-week old government shutdown and NASA's official online presence going completely dark, astronauts aboard the International Space Station (ISS) have still been tweeting away and sharing some pretty spectacular snapshots. During the shutdown, NASA has kept Mission Control lights on at the Johnson Space Center in Houston, making sure that all communication lines are kept open with the international orbiting laboratory and that its six crew members are kept safe.  U.S. ISS astronauts Karen Nyberg  (@AstroKarenN) and Mike Hopkins (@AstroIllini) have kept mum on the government shenanigans, but it obviously hasn't stopped them from sharing some breath-taking views from orbit.  Here's just a select few cosmic portraits that caught our eye. (NO FURTHER TEXT)

 

NASA Back Online After Government Shutdown Ends

 

Miriam Kramer - Space.com

 

NASA is open for business again. With the government shutdown officially over, space agency employees are trickling back in to the many NASA centers sprinkled throughout the country. Since the shutdown began on Oct. 1, fewer than 600 of NASA's 18,000 employees were allowed to work. Most of NASA's many facilities were closed for the duration of the shutdown, and the agency's social media accounts — including profiles dedicated to mission updates and spacecraft — went dark. NASA.gov and other NASA-affiliated websites were turned off, but today (Oct. 17) officials are working to get operations back up and running again.

 

3,000 NASA workers back on the job

 

Johnny Hanson - Houston Chronicle

 

Security guards greeted returning Johnson Space Center workers with handshakes and wide smiles Thursday as federal operations resumed after the 16-day shutdown. More than 3,000 space center employees and an undetermined number of contractors had not worked since the shutdown began Oct. 1. They returned to work after Congress agreed on a plan to fund the government and raise the debt limit. "This is a calling. It's not just a job," said NASA engineer Dennis Lawler, who flashed his white encrypted security badge to a guard. "A vast majority of people just wanted to get back to work."

 

NASA employees head back to work

 

Alex Macon - Galveston County Daily News

 

Thousands of NASA employees and contractors returned to work Thursday at Johnson Space Center. The 16-day government shutdown that furloughed the vast majority of the center's more-than 3,000 employees ended, but the effects of the political impasse in Washington, D.C., will continue to be felt as the space center gets back to business.

 

Furloughed workers 'glad to be back'

As shutdown ends, those impacted in Brevard on the job

 

James Dean - Florida Today

 

Traffic streamed through Kennedy Space Center's gates again Thursday morning as nearly 8,000 civil servants and contractors reported back to work after the federal government's 16-day partial shutdown ended overnight. "Welcome back KSC employees," electronic marquees read. Among the first tasks for many: removing garbage bags placed over computer monitors to protect them from potential damage during their absence. Space center employees joined others around Brevard, including at the Merritt Island National Wildlife Refuge and Canaveral National Seashore, booting up computers and checking e-mail for the first time in more than two weeks.

 

Marshall Space Flight Center back to work on two NASA priority missions

 

Lee Roop - Huntsville Times

 

NASA's government and contractor workforce reported back to Marshall Space Flight Center Thursday afternoon to pick up work on two of the space agency's top priorities: the Space Launch System and the James Webb Space Telescope. The furlough that began Oct. 1 idled about 2,500 civil service workers and a still-unclear number of the agency's 2,500 contractor employees in Huntsville. Sending them home punched a hole of uncertain size in the schedules for developing the new launch system and testing a critical part of the new telescope.

 

Commercial spaceflight industries look to increase access to space

 

Lindsey Anderson - Las Cruces Sun-News

 

The future of suborbital spaceflight is more than space tourism and more than government contracts, Virgin Galactic President Steve Isakowitz and aerospace company executives said Thursday. Commercial spaceflight industries are looking to increase access to space, from tourists to scientists, the leaders said at the annual International Symposium on Personal and Commercial Spaceflight at the New Mexico Farm & Ranch Heritage Museum.

 

A 'commercial Cape Canaveral' in Texas?

 

Laylan Copelin - Austin American-Statesman

 

BOCA CHICA, Texas - Little has changed at this remote South Texas beach over the past six decades since it was a finalist to become what Cape Canaveral, Fla., became: the launch site for the U.S. space program. Unlike neighboring South Padre Island, 5 miles away over the water, Boca Chica has no high-rises, no marinas and no condos. Texas 4 is a two-lane blacktop that runs east from Brownsville and dead-ends where the sun rises over the sand dunes and wetlands. The beach is surrounded by a patchwork of private lots, a state park and a federal wildlife refuge. It is here that California billionaire Elon Musk is considering building a site to launch rockets carrying payloads to space. "A commercial Cape Canaveral" is how Musk described it to state lawmakers this spring when he identified Texas as "probably" the leading candidate for the launch site. It would be the first commercial orbital launch site in the world.

 

Who's the ace among aces?

New tool helps identify astronauts with better spatial skills

 

Jennifer Chu - MIT News

 

On Oct. 30, 2007, astronauts aboard the Space Shuttle Discovery set out on a routine mission: installing two solar panels on the truss, or backbone, of the International Space Station. While the first panel deployed successfully, astronauts noticed a two-foot-wide tear in the second panel. To repair the tear, crewmembers devised a risky plan, sending an astronaut on a spacewalk while tethered to the shuttle's inspection arm. The mission marked the first time an astronaut had used the robotic arm in such a way — a potentially dangerous undertaking, as a wrong move could have electrocuted the spacewalker. Today, all incoming astronauts complete extensive training to learn to operate a similar robotic arm on the space station. But the operation isn't intuitive, and there's a steep learning curve for some. MIT researchers in the Man Vehicle Laboratory (MVL) are looking for ways to streamline this lengthy training process. They administered standard cognitive spatial tests to 50 astronauts, and compared these initial results with the astronauts' performance in NASA's 30-hour Generic Robotics Training (GRT) course. The researchers found that the initial spatial tests were able to predict the top performers in the more extensive course.

 

SpaceX Hit Huge Reusable Rocket Milestone with Falcon 9 Test Flight

 

Mike Wall - Space.com

 

The private spaceflight firm SpaceX took some steps toward developing a fully reusable rocket during the maiden flight of its new and improved Falcon 9 launch vehicle late last month, company officials say. SpaceX managed to re-light the next-generation Falcon 9's nine-engine first stage twice during the Sept. 29 test flight from Vandenberg Air Force Base in California, easing the stage's return to Earth over the Pacific Ocean.

 

Most Spectacular Grasshopper 'Hop' Yet

 

Guy Norris - Aviation Week

 

SpaceX has released spectacular video of the latest test of its vertical take-off and vertical landing (VTVL) Grasshopper which reached 2,440 feet (744 m) altitude – the highest flight yet – on Oct 7. Like some of the latest 'hops' the Grasshopper was filmed from a single camera hexacopter which appears to have been hovering at around 2,000 feet. The video shows the Merlin 1D-powered Falcon 9 first stage tank passing by the hexacopter before getting much closer to the camera during the descent.

 

SpaceX Retires Grasshopper, New Test Rig To Fly in December

 

Irene Klotz - Space News

 

Space Exploration Technologies Corp. (SpaceX) has retired its Grasshopper prototype, a 10-story, first-stage Falcon 9 rocket the Hawthorne, Calif., company used to develop and test vertical landing technologies. In its place, SpaceX plans a December debut of a new test rig, known as Falcon 9R, and a new test site at Spaceport America in New Mexico, said company president and chief operating officer Gwynne Shotwell.

 

SpaceX rocket could see first Spaceport America launch in December

 

Diana Alba Soular - Las Cruces Sun-News

 

A SpaceX rocket could have its first test flight from Spaceport America by the end of the year, the CEO of the company said Wednesday during a yearly space conference in Las Cruces. The launch could happen around late December, said Gwynne Shotwell, president and CEO of SpaceX, one of the biggest names in the emerging commercial space industry. Until now, the vehicle -- dubbed Grasshopper -- has been in development at a facility in McGregor, Texas. But the company is limited in what it can do there. At Spaceport America, the reusable rocket will fly to a much higher altitude, traveling at higher speeds, Shotwell said. "You just can't do that at that particular location in Texas," she said.

 

Former astronaut trying to lead humans to distant stars

 

Eric Berger - Houston Chronicle (Oct. 14)

 

Most people truly can't fathom the vast distances between the sun and even its very closest neighbors. Consider the Voyager 1 spacecraft, which earlier this year made international headlines after becoming the first man-made object to depart the solar system after nearly 40 years of zipping away from Earth. Were the sun in Houston and the nearest star system in Los Angeles, Voyager would have traveled less than 1 mile of an interstellar journey. The interstellar chasm is so great it's audacious -- some might say preposterous -- to consider sending humans to visit worlds around other stars. But Mae Jemison, a former astronaut, is having the time of her life dreaming just that dream. "All my life I've liked challenges," said Jemison, the first black woman to fly in space.

 

Year-Long Mars Mission Analog Seeks Volunteers

 

Mark Carreau - Aerospace Daily

 

The Mars Society is seeking a half-dozen national volunteers, four grounded in field science and two in engineering, for a year-long Mars mission analog at the Flashline Mars Arctic Research Station in northern Canada. The Mars Arctic 365 Mission, on Devon Island, 900 mi. from the North Pole, is scheduled to begin in August 2014.

 

Is the US Yielding Spaceflight Leadership to China?

 

Leroy Chiao - Space.com (Opinion)

 

(Chiao is a former astronaut and now is is the special adviser for human spaceflight to the Space Foundation. He also holds appointments at Baylor College of Medicine and Rice University.)

 

Slow and steady wins the race, the old adage goes, and China's human spaceflight program is on exactly that track. Ten years ago today (Oct. 15), China became only the third nation to launch astronauts into space. Since then, China has launched only five crewed space missions, but each one accomplished specific objectives to further the nation's capabilities. Infrastructure and new vehicle developments have helped China make steady progress. A new launch facility on Hainan Island will be ready for operations by the end of next year, in time for the first launches of the new Long March 5 family of rockets.

__________

 

COMPLETE STORIES

 

NASA Back Online After Government Shutdown Ends

 

Miriam Kramer - Space.com

 

NASA is open for business again.

 

With the government shutdown officially over, space agency employees are trickling back in to the many NASA centers sprinkled throughout the country. Since the shutdown began on Oct. 1, fewer than 600 of NASA's 18,000 employees were allowed to work.

 

Most of NASA's many facilities were closed for the duration of the shutdown, and the agency's social media accounts — including profiles dedicated to mission updates and spacecraft — went dark. NASA.gov and other NASA-affiliated websites were turned off, but today (Oct. 17) officials are working to get operations back up and running again.

 

"We're back!" officials from NASA's Johnson Space Center in Houston wrote in a post on Twitter today. "We now return you to your space-related posts! Getting websites and #NASA TV back on may take some time but we're on it!"

 

NASA TV is currently playing archival footage from the early days of the manned space program, and NASA.gov is now accessible.

 

Although most NASA employees were not able to work during the 16-day shutdown, some missions were still collecting data and performing key maneuvers. Today, some NASA-run Twitter accounts are trying to catch their followers up about what the missions have accomplished since the shutdown began.

 

"Allow me to reintroduce myself," officials with NASA's Mars rover Curiosity (@MarsCuriosity) wrote on Twitter today. "I'm back on Twitter & even closer to Mars' Mount Sharp."

 

"The government may have been shut down, but I continued to orbit the moon and gather great data!" officials working with NASA's Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (@LRO_NASA) wrote on Twitter.

 

@AsteroidWatch, NASA's Twitter account for its near-Earth objects office run through the agency's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif., took a lighthearted approach to the end of the shutdown.

 

"[Tap tap] Is this thing on?" Asteroid Watch officials wrote on Twitter. "Hey, it's great to be back! We're looking forward to sharing the news on near-Earth asteroids & comets."

 

While Asteroid Watch wasn't able to send out tweets, the hunt for possibly Earth-threatening asteroids still continued throughout the shutdown. Most major asteroid-detecting United States projects receive money from NASA, but they were generally unaffected by the shutdown because they tend to operate on funds granted months ago.

 

Astronauts on the International Space Station were still supported from the ground with a skeleton crew in Mission Control at Johnson Space Center through the course of the shutdown. NASA astronauts and space station crewmembers Karen Nyberg and Mike Hopkins were still able to beam down amazing pictures and their thoughts from space via their personal Twitter accounts (@AstroKarenN and @AstroIllini), but neither Hopkins nor Nyberg shared views on the government closure.

 

3,000 NASA workers back on the job

 

Johnny Hanson - Houston Chronicle

 

Security guards greeted returning Johnson Space Center workers with handshakes and wide smiles Thursday as federal operations resumed after the 16-day shutdown.

 

More than 3,000 space center employees and an undetermined number of contractors had not worked since the shutdown began Oct. 1. They returned to work after Congress agreed on a plan to fund the government and raise the debt limit.

 

"This is a calling. It's not just a job," said NASA engineer Dennis Lawler, who flashed his white encrypted security badge to a guard. "A vast majority of people just wanted to get back to work."

 

Lawler, whose wife is a NASA contract employee, said the couple had cut back on expenses in recent weeks.

 

"We are going to be very cautious all the way through January," he said. "We have pulled back. We haven't gone out to eat as much. We made sure we had enough money for bills and didn't make any major purchases."

 

NASA employee Beth LeBlanc said she and her family were glued to the TV Wednesday night, awaiting the House vote and President Barack Obama's signature on a bill ending the shutdown.

 

"At our house it was sort of like winning the Super Bowl," LeBlanc said. "There was a lot of cheering, a lot of jumping around."

 

The news was a relief to LeBlanc and other families who had struggled the past few weeks.

 

"It's been really stressful and really frustrating," said LeBlanc. "Never knowing if we were going to get back. Not knowing when the next paycheck would come. Figuring out how to pay the mortgage and how to pay the bills."

 

Like Lawler, LeBlanc plans to be frugal over the next few months.

 

"It will be a very lean Christmas for all of us," she said.

 

Bridget Broussard-Guidry, president of the American Federation of Government Employees Local 2284, said employees are expected to get paid next Friday and will receive back pay.

 

Broussard-Guidry said she had taken financial precautions in case the shutdown lingered.

 

"I went to the bank yesterday to move some money around because I didn't know if we would get our paychecks on the 25th," she said.

 

Lawler said government officials acted irresponsibly.

 

"I think this is just like a bunch of spoiled kids," he said of lawmakers.

 

But Thursday was a day to put feelings aside and get back to work, Lawler said.

 

"We have to get our time cards back together, we have to get our computers back online, we have to make sure our software is up and running," he said. "There is a lot to do this morning."

 

NASA employees head back to work

 

Alex Macon - Galveston County Daily News

 

Thousands of NASA employees and contractors returned to work Thursday at Johnson Space Center.

 

The 16-day government shutdown that furloughed the vast majority of the center's more-than 3,000 employees ended, but the effects of the political impasse in Washington, D.C., will continue to be felt as the space center gets back to business.

 

Johnson Space Center spokesman Kelly Humphries said employees were settling back in to work this week. The shutdown essentially closed the space center and halted work on several projects, so it will take some time to get things up and running, Humphries said.

 

"We're just taking the time to get our wheels back under us," he said.

 

NASA's dormant website and social media accounts were back online Thursday.

 

In a statement, NASA Administrator Charles Bolden called the shutdown "a challenging time of sacrifice for the entire NASA family." He said the space agency would work to get employees up to speed and safely restart various projects and initiatives.

 

"We've been away for some time now, so please don't expect that we can return to normalcy in a day or two or even a week," Bolden said.

 

Many of the more-than 10,000 contractors with Johnson Space Center also will get back to work this week.

 

Federal employees will receive back pay for furloughed days and are expected to be paid Oct. 25.

 

Contractors with the space center will not have that luxury, however, said Bob Mitchell, president of the Bay Area Houston Economic Partnership.

 

Private businesses and employees who have gone more than two weeks without a paycheck have been badly hurt by the shutdown, Mitchell said.

 

Mike Glover, a private contractor who works on a maintenance crew at Johnson Space Center, said the shutdown had thrown his family's finances into disarray.

 

Glover said his wife and several of his friends recently lost their jobs. The shutdown also made it more difficult for Glover to run Dog Dynasty, a nonprofit animal rescue group he helps operate.

 

He said he was frustrated with the political gridlock in Washington.

 

"They're like little sixth-grade kids fighting," Glover said.

 

Isaac Mensah, a private contractor who trains astronauts in the use of robotic equipment, said he was able to find work during the shutdown, but he was forced to use some vacation time. He also said he was frustrated with the lack of compromise in the nation's capital.

 

As federal budget discussions continue, it's critical for individuals to encourage elected officials to negotiate, Mitchell said.

 

"We all need to be concerned that it's possible it's going to happen again," Mitchell said. "We've seen what happens."

 

Mitchell said the shutdown had a ripple effect that damaged private business in the area, as well as the morale of families and workers connected to Johnson Space Center.

 

"Everyone in this community was affected one way or the other, whether it was financial, personal or emotional," he said.

 

Furloughed workers 'glad to be back'

As shutdown ends, those impacted in Brevard on the job

 

James Dean - Florida Today

 

Traffic streamed through Kennedy Space Center's gates again Thursday morning as nearly 8,000 civil servants and contractors reported back to work after the federal government's 16-day partial shutdown ended overnight.

 

"Welcome back KSC employees," electronic marquees read.

 

Among the first tasks for many: removing garbage bags placed over computer monitors to protect them from potential damage during their absence.

 

Space center employees joined others around Brevard, including at the Merritt Island National Wildlife Refuge and Canaveral National Seashore, booting up computers and checking e-mail for the first time in more than two weeks.

 

"Glad to be back," said Tracy Young, a NASA public affairs officer.

 

At Patrick Air Force Base, the Air Force Reserve 920th Rescue Wing can now return to some of the things it had put off doing, at least for now.

 

"We're back to a new normal," said Col. Jeffrey Macrander, commander of the 920th Rescue Wing, headquartered at Patrick Air Force Base.

 

Some of the wing's civilian employees were furloughed for the first four days of October before being ordered back, training flights were reduced and the unit's October drill was rescheduled for December. In addition, temporary duty and other travel were restricted.

 

"It was kind of an interesting ride," he said.

 

At KSC, NASA said it would take a day or so to assess how the shutdown had impacted various programs across the center.

 

One critical, time-sensitive mission preparing an orbiter for launch to Mars next month was exempted on the shutdown's third day and continued to make progress.

 

The center's roughly 2,000 civil servants were furloughed starting Oct. 1, but will receive back pay. Contractors generally had to use up vacation days or take unpaid leave.

 

Among the returning contractors were about 70 people with disabilities and wounded veterans employed by Brevard Achievement Center, about half the number furloughed earlier in the week from either Kennedy or Patrick Air Force Base.

 

"Hopefully they will all be back to work soon," said Rosalind Weiss, marketing and development administrator for Brevard Achievement Center. "It's been hard on them and their families."

 

A KSC hotline recorded before midnight Wednesday instructed employees when to return to work, and told them to be patient as food and IT services would take time to get back up and running.

 

"As KSC starts up again after the shutdown, please expect some delays," the message said.

 

Kennedy Space Center Visitor Complex bus tours inside the center, to stops including the Apollo Saturn V Center and Vehicle Assembly Building, were scheduled to resume today. The shutdown had furloughed more than 100 Visitor Complex employees.

 

The wildlife refuge also wasn't quite back to normal yet Thursday, with its visitor center closed.

 

But it turned out that was due to repairs begun before the shutdown. The repairs now may not be finished until the end of the month — just before the refuge celebrates its 50th anniversary in early November.

 

"We don't know when we'll be able to get the contractors back, so that will remain closed until further notice," said Layne Hamilton, refuge manager.

 

Refuge trails, boat ramps and water all reopened, and about about 25 staff members could resume daily work from sea turtle nest surveys to anniversary preparations.

 

"We're still working to figure out what we can and cannot pull off at this point," said Hamilton. "(There are) a variety of other issues that we're just trying to get assessed where we're at on them and get back going again. We're happy to be here."

 

Staff at refuge headquarters could be heard fielding numerous calls about the refuge's status, and responding with its operating hours and the visitor center's status.

 

Some tourists who found the visitor center's gate shut assumed it was related to the shutdown.

 

It was just the latest closure experienced by Jean-Pierre and Brigitta Marill of Spain, who found parks — and their restrooms — closed up and down the East Coast over the past two weeks.

 

Jean-Pierre, 69, had hoped to visit the Wright Brothers National Memorial in North Carolina. As the retired couple worked their way down to Key West for the final leg of their U.S. vacation, he was happy the shutdown was over.

 

"Not only for all the parks and so on, but for the country and for the whole world, because it's been disturbing for everybody in the world," he said.

 

Marshall Space Flight Center back to work on two NASA priority missions

 

Lee Roop - Huntsville Times

 

NASA's government and contractor workforce reported back to Marshall Space Flight Center Thursday afternoon to pick up work on two of the space agency's top priorities: the Space Launch System and the James Webb Space Telescope.

 

The furlough that began Oct. 1 idled about 2,500 civil service workers and a still-unclear number of the agency's 2,500 contractor employees in Huntsville. Sending them home punched a hole of uncertain size in the schedules for developing the new launch system and testing a critical part of the new telescope.

 

A Marshall spokeswoman issued a low-key statement Thursday afternoon, saying only that, "The center reopened at noon today and the NASA Marshall workforce is eagerly resuming the critical activities we perform in support of NASA's missions, programs and projects."

 

Marshall Engineers & Scientists Association President George Hamilton was more direct Wednesday, saying the workforce would "slowly begin to pick up the pieces and undo the damage that's been done."

 

Testing of the telescope, which carried on even through the tornado of April 27, 2011, stopped when the center shut down Oct. 1. Technicians were subjecting the telescope's backplane, which will support its 18 mirrors and instruments, to super-cold temperatures to make sure it can stand firm in space.

 

Marshall has the world's largest helium-cooled cryogenic tank, and it had lowered the backplane to minus 415 degrees Fahrenheit when the shutdown began and the part had to be warmed back up. In an interview Oct. 4, Hamilton said the process going either way takes time.

 

"The pieces are being slowly warmed up, resulting in a costly delay in time and money," he said. "When the furlough is over, the testing will resume, but only after the parts have been slowly and carefully cooled back to cryogenic temperatures."

 

A statement from the test center late Thursday confirmed Hamilton's comment. It said the backplane "is at (room) temperature" and "testing will resume as soon as contractor support personnel are able to travel to Huntsville in support of test operations. "

 

The Webb telescope isn't scheduled to launch until 2018, so the delay's impact isn't clear.

Marshall is also working against a deadline to get the massive and complex new launch booster developed and ready to fly by 2017. And it is involved in numerous other programs that will have to pick up and restart. Marshall manages the science activities and operations for the Chandra X-ray telescope, one of America's Great Observatories; operates the SERVIR program that generates satellite images to provide environmental and disaster information to developing countries; and generates NASA satellite data to help weather forecasters in the United States, among numerous other programs.

 

Commercial spaceflight industries look to increase access to space

 

Lindsey Anderson - Las Cruces Sun-News

 

The future of suborbital spaceflight is more than space tourism and more than government contracts, Virgin Galactic President Steve Isakowitz and aerospace company executives said Thursday.

 

Commercial spaceflight industries are looking to increase access to space, from tourists to scientists, the leaders said at the annual International Symposium on Personal and Commercial Spaceflight at the New Mexico Farm & Ranch Heritage Museum.

 

"I think ultimately our success as an industry will be defined not by the big government contracts we win but by opening up the frontiers for those who have nothing to do with the government and are willing to pay their own dollars," Isakowitz said.

 

The emerging industry is taking traditional aerospace technologies and using them in different ways to enable regular access to the suborbital environment, said Brett Alexander, director of business development and strategy at Jeff Bezos' fledgling aerospace company Blue Origin.

 

"I think all of us are managing these operations as a business enterprise," he said. "We want more customers outside the government."

 

Diverse funds, uses

 

Students, from elementary students to Ph.D candidates, can soon send research projects into suborbital space, said Khaki Rodway, director of payload sales and operations for XCOR Aerospace, a suborbital spacecraft and rocket engines company.

 

She mentioned scientists looking to use suborbital spaceflight to study noctilucent clouds, the highest clouds in the Earth's atmosphere that fall within the suborbital range. The clouds are studied from the International Space Station above and the ground below, but soon scientists can study them from the atmosphere itself, she said.

 

Funding isn't limited to federal pocketbooks either, Rodway said, mentioning a Ph.D. student's Internet fundraising campaign to send his dissertation experiment into suborbital space. An elementary school teacher is asking businesses, from General Electric to local companies, to donate money to help send students' experiments on suborbital flights.

 

"There are all kinds of interesting ways to get this funding," Rodway said. "... You can't rely on the government any more. ... There is more interest. There is more excitement. There are innovative ways to get this funding." Five years outIsakowitz postulated that more commercial fliers will enter space than government fliers within the next five years.

 

About 650 space tourists have tickets for suborbital Virgin Galactic flights from Spaceport America north of Las Cruces, but Isakowitz said he expects many more people to participate once the flights are up and running.

 

"The first generation of people that are flying with us are adventurers; they want to be the first," he said. "There's a bigger crowd standing behind them that are sort of waiting to see what will happen then go out and live their life dreams."

 

Rodway expects to see more people and more vehicles regularly entering space. States across the country are building commercial spaceports, from Oklahoma to Virginia to New Mexico, she said.

 

"It seems like there's one being talked about every week," she said. "... Not only are we all building companies, we're building an industry. That's what you have to look out for. It's blossoming."

 

The industry's relationships with the states developing spaceports have been strong, Alexander said.

 

"States are really investing in the infrastructure to bring businesses to places, like New Mexico," he said.

 

Yet every state is regulating differently, Isakowitz said, noting the industry's push to "don't legislate us out of business."

 

New Mexico recently passed a law exempting spacecraft part suppliers from lawsuits by passengers after such regulation concerns.

 

Spaceport America

 

Isakowitz said Virgin Galactic recently completed a second powered test flight at higher supersonic speeds, moving the company closer to sending paying customers into space.

 

The company initially planned for a launch around Christmas of this year, but has since pushed back the date until 2014.

 

"We're hopefully moving quickly to getting our operating licenses," Isakowitz said. "Being the first in anything as we are in this area has its challenges."

 

The company has hired three pilots to fly the WhiteKnight spaceship and will be "taking over these vehicles very soon," he said.

 

"We have a lot of stuff that's going to be showing up at the spaceport in the coming weeks," he said.

 

Customers have been patient while the company has developed technologies and delayed launch dates, he said.

 

"They've been a heck of a lot more patient than the media or the industry," he said. "They really want us to get it right."

 

Space station

 

Commercial spaceflight will also help increase access to the International Space Station, John Elbon, vice president and general manager of Boeing's space exploration, said during a speech Thursday.

 

The multi-nation, habitable satellite in low Earth orbit is a research laboratory for everything from medical discoveries to the effects of long-term space trips.

 

The station is home to research on bone density, muscular dystrophy and cancer, Elbon said, noting many medical discoveries onboard have been key steps to curing diseases.

 

The station is also a research outpost to test and build large structures in space, he said. It also serves as a testing ground for how to live in space, information for future long-term missions to Mars or asteroids, he said.

 

Commercial cargo and crew will lower the cost of supplying the station and increase access to scientists looking to conduct experiments in space, he said. More space stations, such as the proposed Chinese station and Bigelow Commercial Space Station, are also needed, he said.

 

"If we're going to continue the station, we have to make access routine and more affordable," he said.

 

A 'commercial Cape Canaveral' in Texas?

 

Laylan Copelin - Austin American-Statesman

 

BOCA CHICA, Texas - Little has changed at this remote South Texas beach over the past six decades since it was a finalist to become what Cape Canaveral, Fla., became: the launch site for the U.S. space program.

 

Unlike neighboring South Padre Island, 5 miles away over the water, Boca Chica has no high-rises, no marinas and no condos. Texas 4 is a two-lane blacktop that runs east from Brownsville and dead-ends where the sun rises over the sand dunes and wetlands. The beach is surrounded by a patchwork of private lots, a state park and a federal wildlife refuge.

 

It is here that California billionaire Elon Musk is considering building a site to launch rockets carrying payloads to space. "A commercial Cape Canaveral" is how Musk described it to state lawmakers this spring when he identified Texas as "probably" the leading candidate for the launch site.

 

It would be the first commercial orbital launch site in the world.

 

First, Boca Chica must beat out competitors in Georgia, Puerto Rico and, once again, Cape Canaveral, where government cutbacks in the space program could open more launch space for Musk's company, SpaceX the first private firm to ferry cargo to and from the International Space Station.

 

Musk, 42, is a serial entrepreneur who co-founded PayPal, Tesla Motors and, in 2002, SpaceX. His inventiveness has made him wealthy he's ranked 61st on Forbes' list of the 400 richest Americans.

 

When he isn't designing rockets and electric cars, Musk is imagining a hyperloop tube system that would whisk passengers from Los Angeles to San Francisco in 35 minutes. He has been likened to everyone from Thomas Edison to Tony Stark, the fictional billionaire in the "Iron Man" movies.

 

Musk came calling on Texas lawmakers in March.

 

The Legislature responded by approving $15 million in incentives and passing legislation allowing the beach to be closed once a month for rocket launches and limiting the company's legal liability for making noise.

 

"We are in a competition to revitalize our space industry," said state Rep. Rene Oliveira, D-Brownsville, a co-author of the legislation. "The job creation, the economic development, the spinoff is absolutely incredible."

 

The Federal Aviation Administration has given preliminary approval for a permit after its initial review of the environmental impact, but hasn't delivered its final verdict. Meanwhile, local officials in South Texas are in negotiations with SpaceX officials for more incentives. And Gov. Rick Perry and state leaders could try to close the deal by tapping the Texas Enterprise Fund.

 

Musk said he expects to make a final decision on the launch site before the year ends.

 

Texas has been a traditional leader in space because of NASA's Johnson Space Center in Houston, but budget cuts cost 3,500 high-paying technical and engineering jobs and left NASA looking for help in its reduced role.

 

The private sector is filling important gaps and is being touted as being a cheaper and faster alternative to government space programs. The nascent commercial space industry in Texas already includes a SpaceX rocket engine testing site near Waco and early efforts in Houston, Midland and Van Horn to build suborbital spaceports.

 

Landing SpaceX, the most successful commercial space endeavor, would be a coup for Texas.

 

"To be a true space state, we have to be more aggressive to show these people they are welcome and we have the brainpower to support them," said state Rep. John Davis, a Republican whose district includes the Johnson Space Center. "If we can actually launch at Boca Chica, think of the synergy between the Rio Grande Valley and Houston."

 

The Boca Chica plan caught both supporters and opponents off-guard.

 

Gilberto Salinas, executive vice president of the Brownsville Economic Development Council, remembers getting the first call about SpaceX's interest in Boca Chica almost three years ago.

 

"Rockets here? Really?" said Salinas, who grew up going to Boca Chica beach and still fishes there. "But here we are."

 

Two weeks after that first phone call, Salinas said, local officials met with Musk at his California headquarters. "It showed us how serious he was," he said.

 

Salinas says SpaceX officials first spotted Boca Chica from the air as they scoured 14 different South Texas sites. On the ground it didn't look promising at first because government maps showed that it owned all the land.

 

Salinas said a SpaceX employee discovered the maps were wrong. SpaceX took an option on 56.5 contiguous acres of dunes and wetlands that were privately owned. The launch site would be built on 20 of those acres. The launch pad would be 500 feet from the beach and the control center a couple of miles away. There would be a hangar, a warehouse and tanks for storing rocket propellant.

 

State and local officials have overwhelmingly endorsed locating SpaceX at Boca Chica. At a community hearing last year, a crowd of more than 500 echoed the officials' dreams of jobs and economic development.

 

Opponents, if they were there, didn't make it to the microphone.

 

The issue has environmentalists on both sides, but the opposition largely invisible at first seems to be growing or, at least, speaking out more as a decision nears.

 

Joe and Elida Mosqueda live in Del Valle, Texas, but she grew up in Brownsville. They are retiring to a house near Boca Chica that they have owned since 1997. They are not happy about the prospect of rockets being launched within 3 miles of their house.

 

They wouldn't be displaced. Their tiny subdivision is on the edge of the zone that would be closed on launch days, but they fear the environmental impact as well as losing the peace and quiet of Boca Chica.

 

"It kind of pisses me off someone wants to build their dream on top of my dream," Joe Mosqueda said.

 

Musk's dream, as the billionaire explained in March, is to advance the technology to send people to Mars.

 

He bemoaned cutbacks in the U.S. space program and the grounding of the space shuttle fleet.

 

"It's sad that we sent people to the moon in '69, then we lost that ability," Musk said. "I don't think we want to tell our kids that 1969 was the high-water mark. I think that's a terrible thing."

 

SpaceX, which has about 3,000 employees, builds rockets at its headquarters in Hawthorne, Calif., and has launch sites at Vandenberg, Calif., and Cape Canaveral. It tests rocket engines at McGregor, Texas, a small town outside Waco.

 

Musk said the company has $4 billion in revenue under contract, including agreements with NASA to ferry cargo and possibly astronauts in two or three years to the International Space Station.

 

In 2010, SpaceX's Dragon capsule became the first commercial spacecraft in history to be launched into orbit and brought safely back to Earth. Last year, SpaceX scored another first when its vehicle docked with the International Space Station, carrying scientific experiments and supplies.

 

American astronauts won't be launched from Boca Chica. SpaceX will continue its NASA-funded launches at Cape Canaveral. But Musk said Boca Chica would be focused on business from companies and foreign governments as well as, eventually, space tourism.

 

Under the new state law, SpaceX could launch rockets up to 12 times a year, mostly between 7 a.m. and 7 p.m., but not on weekends or holidays unless the company can show local and state authorities that scrubbing a launch would cause significant business consequences. At least one nighttime launch would be allowed per year.

 

The beach would be closed for 15 hours on a launch day, up to a maximum of 180 hours per year.

 

SpaceX would use its Falcon 9 and Falcon Heavy rockets. Musk testified that the rocket thrust would be the equivalent of four 747's taking off simultaneously.

 

Musk designed his rockets to be the maximum size that could be transported from California over roads, but Texas officials are banking on manufacturing rockets here someday.

 

"Eventually larger rockets must be built," Musk said. "The logical thing is to build near the launch site."

 

Bob Mitchell with the Bay Area Houston Economic Partnership has witnessed what the Johnson Space Center in Houston can mean for an economy.

 

"Once you get someone like SpaceX here, it brings the cottage industries that support it," he said.

 

Addressing the issue of economic impact, Musk told state legislators that SpaceX will be spending $300 million to $500 million in the next decade at Cape Canaveral.

 

In Texas, the Brownsville Economic Development Council estimates that SpaceX would be an $80 million capital investment, bring 600 direct jobs and $50 million in annual salaries as well as 10,000 to 15,000 visitors per launch. Salinas said the numbers were compiled from SpaceX and the council's independent economic analysis.

 

Opponents dismiss those numbers.

 

Cheryl Stevens, an Austin, Texas, activist who grew up in Brownsville and has a house near Boca Chica, said she is organizing opposition to SpaceX.

 

She questions the number of jobs that will actually be created and whether local residents will get the high-paying ones.

 

"The only jobs I can see it will create is construction jobs," she said.

 

Stevens speculated that the engineers might commute to the Rio Grande Valley from Houston or beyond.

 

"They are only talking about a few launches a year," she said. Then again, she worries what would happen if the launch site is successful: "Once they are here, they can do what they want."

 

Stevens said South Texas officials have "steamrolled" the project, adding that Boca Chica "has always been the poor people's beach."

 

The most repeated objection is about what SpaceX might do to the environment.

 

The Lower Rio Grande Valley National Wildlife Refuge is 10,000-plus acres of rare coastal habitat, including mangrove marshes, salt flats, shallow bays, beaches and dunes. It serves as a wildlife corridor between Mexico and South Texas that is home to endangered species from the ocelot and jaguarundi, both small wild cats, to piping plovers, a shore bird.

 

Kemp's ridley sea turtles nest at Boca Chica beach in the spring and summer.

 

Pat Burchfield is director of the Gladys Porter Zoo in Brownsville and director of the U.S.-Mexico Sea Turtle Association.

 

"My No. 1 concern is the wildlife and its long-term survival," he said. "If I thought it was going to be a problem, I'd be standing up and opposing it."

 

He said SpaceX officials were well prepared when he met with them to discuss how to mitigate the impact on the wildlife.

 

"They had done their homework," he said.

 

He noted that Merritt Island National Wildlife Refuge co-exists with the Kennedy Space Center at Cape Canaveral in Florida, but opponents counter that the Florida wildlife site is 14 times the size of the South Texas refuge.

 

Boca Chica has remained undeveloped largely because of the expense of extending water and electricity to the beach. For example, Boca Chica Village, the small subdivision about 3 miles from the beach, has one electricity line and the residents must truck in water.

 

Over the years, Burchfield said, developers' grander plans for Boca Chica never materialized, but development remains a threat.

 

"This would be the least intrusive thing that could happen out there," Burchfield said of SpaceX.

 

The Sierra Club has raised issues about the impact on wildlife and the environment, but it has taken no position on SpaceX locating at Boca Chica until the FAA completes its final review. But Environment Texas opposes it and challenges the notion that a SpaceX facility would protect the area.

 

"This is a false choice," said Rachel Stone, a lawyer with Environment Texas. "We think it's entirely inappropriate to build a rocket launch pad right in the middle of a national wildlife refuge and state park."

 

Who's the ace among aces?

New tool helps identify astronauts with better spatial skills

 

Jennifer Chu - MIT News

 

On Oct. 30, 2007, astronauts aboard the Space Shuttle Discovery set out on a routine mission: installing two solar panels on the truss, or backbone, of the International Space Station. While the first panel deployed successfully, astronauts noticed a two-foot-wide tear in the second panel.

 

To repair the tear, crewmembers devised a risky plan, sending an astronaut on a spacewalk while tethered to the shuttle's inspection arm. The mission marked the first time an astronaut had used the robotic arm in such a way — a potentially dangerous undertaking, as a wrong move could have electrocuted the spacewalker. In the end, the mission was a success, due partly to the robotic arm's operators, who were trained to maneuver the multijointed arm with high precision.

 

Today, all incoming astronauts complete extensive training to learn to operate a similar robotic arm on the space station. But the operation isn't intuitive, and there's a steep learning curve for some.

 

MIT researchers in the Man Vehicle Laboratory (MVL) are looking for ways to streamline this lengthy training process. They administered standard cognitive spatial tests to 50 astronauts, and compared these initial results with the astronauts' performance in NASA's 30-hour Generic Robotics Training (GRT) course. The researchers found that the initial spatial tests were able to predict the top performers in the more extensive course. 

 

The results, says MVL director Charles Oman, suggest that the initial spatial tests may be used as a screening tool to place low-scorers on an in-depth training track, while accelerating high-scorers through a shortened course.

 

"Astronaut training time is a precious resource, and we want to use it as efficiently as we can," says Oman, who is a senior research engineer in the Department of Aeronautics and Astronautics. "We want to see if there is an objective way of picking people who may be stars, or identifying people who maybe shouldn't be doing robotics."

 

Oman and his colleagues have published their results in the journal Acta Astronautica. The paper's co-authors are research scientists Andrew Liu and Alan Natapoff, and graduate research assistant Raquel Galvan.

 

Turning the world over

 

Operating robots in space requires a degree of mental dexterity, as there are few landmarks with which to orient an object. A zero-gravity environment can also add to spatial confusion.

 

"On Earth, we don't have to remember what things look like upside down," Oman says. "We don't have to be able to turn the world over in our mind to remember which way to turn when we're trying to follow a route."

 

But mental rotation is an essential spatial skill for maneuvering objects in space, particularly with the space station's robotic arm. Controlling the arm is a fairly unintuitive process, unlike some other robots whose arms can be moved by a person who makes the same motion.

 

Instead, astronauts must manipulate the space station's arm via two joysticks — one that moves the arm up, down, and sideways, and another that controls the arm's attitude, or tilt. Complicating matters is the system of cameras aboard the station, which view the arm from different angles.

 

"You're looking at the task and the arm from each camera, and each time, you have to reorient your mind to figure out what you're looking at," Oman says. "If you move the controller to the right, the arm might move another way because the camera is tilted. So that's one of the things that makes it challenging."

 

Predicting the top of the class

 

The researchers determined that the spatial skills involved in such robotic operation generally break down into two categories: object rotation, or the ability to imagine how an object looks when rotated, and perspective taking, the ability to imagine how an object or scene looks from different viewpoints. While the two tasks seem similar, Oman says they appear to operate via different pathways in the brain.

 

He and his team chose three pen-and-paper cognitive spatial tests and one computer-based test to gauge astronauts' skills in object rotation and spatial visualization. Each test involved a number of timed exercises in which an astronaut chose a correct object orientation, given a set of instructions. All four tests were completed in one hour or less.

 

"Even within the astronaut community, there was a distribution of how good their spatial abilities are, according to the tests we gave them," says Liu, who administered the tests at NASA's Astronaut Training Office in Houston. 

 

Liu worked the test data into a model to predict astronaut performance in NASA's GRT course. The model was able to predict the top performers in the class, as measured by the astronaut's final GRT exam scores.

 

Daniel Burbank, chief of the extravehicular activity and robotics branch of NASA's Astronaut Office, says that the amount of training astronauts receive has increased significantly since the days of space shuttle missions, given the complexity of robotic maneuvers on the International Space Station. Astronauts today are also expected to assume multiple roles, from operating robotics to performing spacewalks.

 

"It's very helpful and crucial for the crews to be able to build in their head a 3-D model of where all the obstructions are," says Burbank, who has flown as a mission specialist on two shuttle missions, and as a commander on the ISS. "Before expending a lot of resources on training, you'd like some predictive tools to guarantee they would be successful in robotics."

 

While the researchers caution that such a screening tool is not meant to determine an astronaut's career direction, the spatial tests and model may be used to help customize training. For example, if an astronaut scores low on initial tests, he may be assigned to a more comprehensive course, with extra practice. If he aces the tests, he may be considered for a more abbreviated version of the course.

 

"An astronaut's schedule is really packed with traveling and other training," Liu says. "So being able to know who's going to require more time is a real boon for planning their schedule."

 

SpaceX Hit Huge Reusable Rocket Milestone with Falcon 9 Test Flight

 

Mike Wall - Space.com

 

The private spaceflight firm SpaceX took some steps toward developing a fully reusable rocket during the maiden flight of its new and improved Falcon 9 launch vehicle late last month, company officials say.

 

SpaceX managed to re-light the next-generation Falcon 9's nine-engine first stage twice during the Sept. 29 test flight from Vandenberg Air Force Base in California, easing the stage's return to Earth over the Pacific Ocean.

 

"For the first restart burn, we lit three engines to do a supersonic retro propulsion, which we believe may be the first attempt by any rocket stage," SpaceX officials wrote in an update Monday (Oct. 14). "The first restart burn was completed well and enabled the stage to survive re-entering the atmosphere in a controlled fashion."[

 

Engineers ignited a single engine during the second re-light. This operation also went well, officials said, though the first stage began rolling too much to make a soft splashdown in the Pacific.

 

"This particular stage was not equipped with landing gear which could have helped stabilize the stage like fins would on an aircraft," SpaceX officials wrote. "The stage ended up spinning to a degree that was greater than we could control with the gas thrusters on board, and ultimately we hit the water relatively hard."

 

The rocket, known as the Falcon 9 v1.1, carried Canada's CASSIOPE space-weather satellite and three smaller spacecraft to orbit during the Sept. 29 flight. The reusability test was always viewed as a secondary objective, and one that stood little chance of succeeding completely, officials said.

 

"It is important to note that this is not a priority for this flight, and SpaceX does not expect success with this first test," SpaceX spokeswoman Hannah Post told SPACE.com before the launch.

 

SpaceX was founded in 2002 by billionaire entrepreneur Elon Musk, who has said that a chief goal of the company is developing a fully reusable launch system. Doing so could reduce the cost of spaceflight by a factor of 100, Musk has said.

 

Toward this end, the company has been testing a reusable rocket prototype called Grasshopper, which has been making higher and more complex test flights over the past year.

 

Combining information from the Falcon 9 v1.1's maiden flight and the ongoing Grasshopper tests should help bring a rapidly reusable rocket closer to reality, SpaceX officials said.

 

"SpaceX recovered portions of the [Falcon 9 v1.1's first] stage and now, along with the Grasshopper tests, we believe we have all the pieces to achieve a full recovery of the boost stage," they wrote in the Oct. 14 update.

 

Most Spectacular Grasshopper 'Hop' Yet

 

Guy Norris - Aviation Week

 

SpaceX has released spectacular video of the latest test of its vertical take-off and vertical landing (VTVL) Grasshopper which reached 2,440 feet (744 m) altitude – the highest flight yet – on Oct 7.

 

Like some of the latest 'hops' the Grasshopper was filmed from a single camera hexacopter which appears to have been hovering at around 2,000 feet. The video shows the Merlin 1D-powered Falcon 9 first stage tank passing by the hexacopter before getting much closer to the camera during the descent.

 

The final phases of the flight also show significant amounts of flame burning alongside the vehicle and through the legs attached to the support structure, in addition to the normal exhaust plume from the vehicle's single rocket engine.

 

As with previous tests the latest flight was conducted in McGregor, Texas. Up until now the demonstrator had flown to a height of 820 feet and included a lateral transfer of some 330 feet. In coming months SpaceX is expected to move onto tests of a larger version of the Grasshopper also dubbed by SpaceX founder Elon Musk as Falcon 9R (re-usable).

 

Instead of a single Merlin 1D, the v1.1 successor will have nine -1Ds. Testing will be conducted at a specially constructed site at Spaceport America in New Mexico. The VTVL is designed to test the technologies needed to return a rocket back to Earth intact instead of burning up on atmospheric re-entry.

 

The recent Falcon 9 v1.1 flight from Vandenberg AFB, Calif, also included a first attempt at slowing the first stage.

 

SpaceX Retires Grasshopper, New Test Rig To Fly in December

 

Irene Klotz - Space News

 

Space Exploration Technologies Corp. (SpaceX) has retired its Grasshopper prototype, a 10-story, first-stage Falcon 9 rocket the Hawthorne, Calif., company used to develop and test vertical landing technologies.

 

In its place, SpaceX plans a December debut of a new test rig, known as Falcon 9R, and a new test site at Spaceport America in New Mexico, said company president and chief operating officer Gwynne Shotwell.

 

On its final flight on Oct. 7, Grasshopper reached 744 meters  -- its highest altitude yet – before landing back on its launch pad in McGregor, Texas.

 

The upgraded prototype will have nine Merlin 1D engines compared to Grasshopper's single motor, bringing the company closer to its long-term goal of developing reusable rockets.

 

As part of that effort, the first launch of SpaceX's upgraded Falcon 9 rocket on Sept. 29 included a restart of the spent  first stage to slow its descent before splashdown.

 

The first of two planned burns was successful, but during the second restart the rocket was spinning, choking off the flow of fuel. A photograph released Oct. 16 showed the Falcon booster was intact about 3 meters above the ocean.

 

"It didn't remain intact after it hit the ocean, but it was intact. I don't think anyone has ever done that," Shotwell said at the International Symposium for Personal and Commercial Spaceflight here.

 

"Between the flights we've been doing with Grasshopper and this demonstration that we brought that stage back, we're really close to full and rapid reuse of stages," Shotwell said.

 

SpaceX rocket could see first Spaceport America launch in December

 

Diana Alba Soular - Las Cruces Sun-News

 

A SpaceX rocket could have its first test flight from Spaceport America by the end of the year, the CEO of the company said Wednesday during a yearly space conference in Las Cruces.

 

The launch could happen around late December, said Gwynne Shotwell, president and CEO of SpaceX, one of the biggest names in the emerging commercial space industry.

 

Until now, the vehicle -- dubbed Grasshopper -- has been in development at a facility in McGregor, Texas. But the company is limited in what it can do there.

 

At Spaceport America, the reusable rocket will fly to a much higher altitude, traveling at higher speeds, Shotwell said.

 

"You just can't do that at that particular location in Texas," she said.

 

In May, New Mexico officials announced a three-year agreement to lease land and facilities at Spaceport America to SpaceX for the project.

 

The Grasshopper rocket had its final Texas test flight earlier this month. Shotwell showed a video clip of that launch during a presentation to attendees at the International Symposium for Personal and Commercial Spaceflight. The footage drew a round of applause from the audience.

 

Typically, a launching rocket burns up in the atmosphere, but SpaceX's 10-story rocket is being designed to launch, fly and then land near its launch pad.

 

Shotwell said the company selected New Mexico's spaceport for launches partly "because the business environment was very good for us to come here."

 

"They did a lot of work and were really accommodating to bring us here," she said.

 

Also, Shotwell said, the "way the land is laid out and the population"

 

give "the ability to do all sorts of really extraordinary testing that you can't really do in many other locations."

 

Shotwell said about 25 of SpaceX's more than 3,000 employees will be based at New Mexico, temporarily, for the start of the project's work at the spaceport.

 

Asked by a reporter whether the launch would be open to the media, Shotwell she didn't immediately know. But she said it would be noticeable, either way.

 

"You'll see it," she said emphatically.

 

The conference got underway in earnest Wednesday after a kick-off community luncheon a day earlier. Investors, executives from spaceflight companies, some technical experts and space enthusiasts all roamed the meeting rooms and halls of the New Mexico Farm & Ranch Heritage Museum in southeast Las Cruces.

 

Clayton Mowry, president of Arianespace Inc., described the event as "hand-crafted." He said it's a "different kind of conference in a lot of ways."

 

"There's lots of things I can learn here," said Mowry, whose company has been in the launch business for about 30 years.

 

Mowry said Arianespace launches mainly communications satellites.

 

The federal shutdown kept at least two scheduled speakers from the lineup Tuesday. Bill Gertsenmaier, NASA associate administrator for human explorations and operations, didn't present, as previously was planned. Organizers had to adjust the schedule.

 

Symposium Chair Patricia Hynes said about 230 people attended Tuesday. In a news release, Hynes said "attendance numbers this year have not been significantly affected by the shutdown," evidence that the commercial space industry is becoming more robust and not relying only on the government for support.

 

Alan Hale of Cloudcroft, co-discoverer of Hale-Bopp Comet, was among attendees. He said he was involved in a group including the late aerospace advocate Len Sugerman of Las Cruces that first proposed the idea of a spaceport for southern New Mexico. ISPCS attracts space businesses to visit New Mexico, which is beneficial, he said.

 

"We're at the center of a new industry," he said.

 

Former astronaut trying to lead humans to distant stars

 

Eric Berger - Houston Chronicle (Oct. 14)

 

Oct. 14--Most people truly can't fathom the vast distances between the sun and even its very closest neighbors.

 

Consider the Voyager 1 spacecraft, which earlier this year made international headlines after becoming the first man-made object to depart the solar system after nearly 40 years of zipping away from Earth. Were the sun in Houston and the nearest star system in Los Angeles, Voyager would have traveled less than 1 mile of an interstellar journey.

 

The interstellar chasm is so great it's audacious -- some might say preposterous -- to consider sending humans to visit worlds around other stars.

 

But Mae Jemison, a former astronaut, is having the time of her life dreaming just that dream.

 

"All my life I've liked challenges," said Jemison, the first black woman to fly in space.

 

This seemingly crazy notion of flying to distant worlds has begun to shake off some of the "giggle" factor in recent years, however.

 

Based in Houston

 

Foremost, in 2011, U.S. Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency and NASA's Ames Center offered $500,000 to an organization willing to begin thinking about and planning a mission to a nearby star.

 

"The 100 Year Starship study is about more than building a spacecraft or any one specific technology," said Paul Eremenko, Defense Agency coordinator for the study, at the time. "We endeavor to excite several generations to commit to the research and development of breakthrough technologies ... to advance the goal of long-distance space travel but also to benefit mankind."

 

A group organized by Jemison won the grant and created the 100 Year Starship program, based in Houston.

 

The idea of interstellar human travel has gained further credence during the last decade because, for the first time in human history, scientists have begun to find Earth-size planets around other stars.

 

Lee Billings, who wrote "Five Billion Years of Solitude," a book about the astronomers who pioneered the discovery of exoplanets, said the scientists are well aware that their work is akin to the first primitive efforts 500 years ago to map the Western Hemisphere.

 

"That's something that keenly, achingly informs their work and their thoughts," Billings said. "These researchers realize they are part of what may be a much greater, grander story that begins but does not end upon the Earth and perhaps even extends out beyond the solar system into the vast frontier of interstellar space."

 

It is one thing, of course, to glimpse shadows of these planets on their stars. It is quite another to fly humans to them. Of this, Jemison is aware.

 

During an interview, she cited a 1901 novel written by H.G. Wells about a fanciful trip by a businessman and scientist to the moon, titled "The First Men in the Moon." There they found a civilization of insectlike extraterrestrials.

 

"We knew very little about anything in terms of space technology and rocketry when that book was written, and yet 70 years later we were on the moon," Jemison said. "Our technological arc is much steeper now. We're at a point where our knowledge and our ability to research and find out things is much greater than it was in 1901. So while it may be a really, really hard problem, I don't think it's beyond human capabilities."

 

The project has captured the imagination of some notable public officials, including former President Bill Clinton, who served as the honorary chair of the first annual meeting in 2012.

 

"This important effort helps advance the knowledge and technologies required to explore space, all while generating the necessary tools that enhance our quality of life on Earth," Clinton said at the time.

 

'An inspiring idea'

 

Last month, the organization held its second annual meeting in Houston. It included technical discussions of propulsion systems to cover light-years of distance as well as softer sciences such as what these intrepid explorers would wear. It was a mix of science and science fiction, of physical and social sciences, of professional scientists and amateur observers.

 

"Some of the hard-core technical people are disappointed," said Planetary Society Emeritus Executive Director Lou Friedman, in a podcast for his organization, after attending.

 

That's because Jemison is seeking to create an inclusive organization, to bring together people from around the world and different backgrounds and get them to buy in on the idea. "Personally," Friedman said, "I think it is an inspiring idea."

 

Jemison said her experiences in the space program and since leaving NASA in 1993 have taught her that it's not just rocket scientists that are fascinated by space, but people from all walks of life. Every child, she says, looks up at the nighttime sky and wonders what might be out there.

 

Developing a mission to send a group of humans into space for, at a minimum, decades will require more than rockets. It will require a lot of social science and almost certainly would need to be a global effort. Among the questions to explore is whether a human society could exist for multiple generations on a confined spacecraft traveling through space or whether cryogenics would need to be perfected before a long-term journey.

 

Educating the public

 

Of course it will take a lot of whiz-bang rocket technology, too, to realize this dream.

 

Jemison said an important goal of the organization -- which is now financially dependent upon private donors as the federal grant has run its course -- is educating the public about the benefits of such an ambitious quest. "We believe pursuing an extraordinary tomorrow will create a better world today," says the organization's motto.

 

"We know, for example, that we're not going to get there with fossil fuels or any kind of chemical rocket fuels," Jemison said. "So we're going to have to do something different, something bigger. If we can just go a small step of the way toward that kind of technology, then we could start to transform energy production on Earth."

 

Best place to be

 

Jemison, who grew up in Chicago, has lived in Houston since moving here to become an astronaut in 1987.

 

Sure, she likes the warmer weather, but she also said Houston is a great city to live in and conduct business. And for the purposes of the 100 Year Starship, it's the best place to be.

 

"Houston has every right to be at the forefront of future human exploration of space," she said. "But sometimes I think Houston takes its space program for granted. And that's one of the things that worries me, and it's why I'm committed to holding the annual symposium here."

 

"Houston has a tremendous wealth of science and technology. We shouldn't see it as a right. We have every reason to be there, but it's not just something that's going to come to us because Johnson Space Center was put here 50 years ago."

 

Year-Long Mars Mission Analog Seeks Volunteers

 

Mark Carreau - Aerospace Daily

 

The Mars Society is seeking a half-dozen national volunteers, four grounded in field science and two in engineering, for a year-long Mars mission analog at the Flashline Mars Arctic Research Station in northern Canada.

 

The Mars Arctic 365 Mission, on Devon Island, 900 mi. from the North Pole, is scheduled to begin in August 2014.

 

Sponsors are seeking nonsmoking applicants, 22 to 60 years old, in good health and holding a bachelor's degree in a science or engineering discipline, or the equivalent. There are no restrictions on nationality.

 

"If you want to get humans to Mars and have the skills and temperament to help make this mission a success, please step forward. This is your chance to make history!" according to the Mars Society's call for volunteers. "The approach of our investigations is to have real science goals in Mars analog environments and to conduct field work under simulated mission constraints. Scientific, engineering, practical mechanical, arctic, wilderness, first aid, medical, and literary skills are all considered a plus."

 

The application deadline is Nov. 30.

 

The analog mission's science and engineering team must be qualified to support day-to-day research activities in the fields of geology, geochemistry, microbiology, biochemistry and paleontology. Participants will be expected to don spacesuit simulators each time they leave their habitat, conduct pre-selected field investigations and laboratory follow up, equipment repairs and daily maintenance.

 

The analog will investigate field techniques that would be relevant to the scientific exploration of Mars. The mission-long scientific focus of MA365 will include coupled physical and biological studies of the arctic active layer over the transition from hard winter freeze to summer thaw and other natural science investigations of interest, as well as extended crew psychological, food science, engineering and human factors research.

 

Is the US Yielding Spaceflight Leadership to China?

 

Leroy Chiao - Space.com (Opinion)

 

(Chiao is a former astronaut and now is is the special adviser for human spaceflight to the Space Foundation. He also holds appointments at Baylor College of Medicine and Rice University.)

 

Slow and steady wins the race, the old adage goes, and China's human spaceflight program is on exactly that track. Ten years ago today (Oct. 15), China became only the third nation to launch astronauts into space. Since then, China has launched only five crewed space missions, but each one accomplished specific objectives to further the nation's capabilities.

 

Infrastructure and new vehicle developments have helped China make steady progress. A new launch facility on Hainan Island will be ready for operations by the end of next year, in time for the first launches of the new Long March 5 family of rockets.

 

China has plans for a second crew-tended space laboratory in 2015, and will launch the core module of a Mir-class space station in 2018, with orbital construction of the station slated to be completed by 2020. China is also developing a cargo version of the Shenzhou spacecraft to support the space station. In short, China is steadily expanding its space program.

 

Just a few years ago, a small delegation from the Astronaut Center of China (ACC) toured the NASA Johnson Space Center. The specialists, including the ACC director, were astonished by what they saw. In the Mission Control Center (MCC), they watched a space shuttle crew performing spacewalk repair work on the Hubble Space Telescope, as it was happening. Minutes later, they were in another control room, watching real-time operations aboard the International Space Station (ISS). NASA was at its best, making it all look easy.

 

Today, things are different. The space shuttle fleet was retired more than two years ago, leaving NASA and other space agencies to rely solely on Russian assets for transportation of astronauts to and from the ISS. Today, the reality is that there is insufficient budget to accomplish even a modest exploration program beyond the ISS. Scores of key specialists are no longer at the agency or its contractors. The ISS is scheduled for operations through 2020, but there is much uncertainty on whether or not its life will be extended beyond that year.

 

Don't get me wrong, American ingenuity and can-do spirit still exists in the space program. Commercial efforts are racking up some impressive gains. Over the last year, two commercial space companies have successfully developed and flown new rockets and cargo spacecraft to the ISS. There are also continuing efforts to build commercial spacecraft to carry astronauts to and from ISS. But, if there will be no ISS in the future, what will we do with these vehicles? [The Top 10 Private Spaceships]

 

Last month, I was in Beijing attending the 64th International Astronautical Congress. The Chinese are continuing their rise. They were more open

 

than ever before about their plans and their nearly complete launch facility on Hainan Island, with the first Long March 5 rockets anticipated to launch in early 2015. The Chinese space station first-element launch is planned for 2018, with assembly complete in 2020.

 

China is inviting international partners to work with them on their space station. They want international research, and they want to fly international astronauts. Many of the United States' ISS partners (at least eight space agencies have talked to the Chinese about partnering and cooperation) are finding a more attractive alternative with China, or at least hedging their bets. Who can blame them? Working with China would be much less expensive than continuing with ISS.

 

This sets up the perfect baton pass. America, already on the decline after the retirement of the space shuttle (now only Russia and China can launch astronauts into space), will on the way down hand over the leadership position of human spaceflight to the Chinese.

 

What can Americans do to stop this? Invite China to the table. America can, and should, lead the international coalition to explore space, both in low-Earth orbit and beyond. China publicly asked to join the ISS program in 2003, only to be rebuffed by the United States. Over the years, they have made repeated calls for joining NASA and the International partners. The Russians, Europeans and even the Canadians have called for bringing China into the partnership. There are political and technical reasons that having China as a partner could be a win-win-win for all. However, certain members of the U.S. Congress are dedicated to keeping China out, dooming the United States to continue its decline in human spaceflight.

 

The problem is, it may already be too late. China has a clear path and is moving forward. They have the perfect setup to take over the lead, enabled and propelled by the actions of the Congress. Why would they want to work with the U.S. now?

 

END

 

 

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