Wednesday, October 30, 2013

Fwd: Human Spaceflight News - October 30, 2013 and JSC Today



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From: "Moon, Larry J. (JSC-EA411)" <larry.j.moon@nasa.gov>
Date: October 30, 2013 7:38:33 AM CDT
To: "Moon, Larry J. (JSC-EA411)" <larry.j.moon@nasa.gov>
Subject: FW: Human Spaceflight News - October 30, 2013 and JSC Today

 

 

 

 

 

Wednesday, October 30, 2013

 

 

 

   Headlines

  1. JSC Safety & Health Day Rescheduled to Nov. 14

JSC's Safety and Health Day 2.0.13 has been moved to Nov. 14.

It's New. Bold. Innovative.

Our program kicks off in the Teague Auditorium at 9 a.m. with our guest speaker, Christine Yager of the Texas A&M Transportation Institute.

Get your flu shot in the lobby of Building 30 from 8:30 a.m. to 12:30 p.m.

Visit the informative exhibits located around the JSC mall area from 10 a.m. until 12:30 p.m.

Close the day out with the Health Run/Walk at 4 p.m. at the Gilruth Center.

Volunteers are still needed to help make this event a success. Please contact Jasmine Gaspar.  

For more information, click here.

Mark your calendar for Thursday, Nov. 14!

Event Date: Thursday, November 14, 2013   Event Start Time:8:30 AM   Event End Time:12:30 PM
Event Location: Teague, Mall area, B-30

Add to Calendar

Angel Plaza/Suprecia Franklin x37305/x37817

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  1. Free Flu Shots Today

The Occupational Health Branch "Flu Fighters" are providing FREE Flu shots to JSC civil servants and contractors who are housed on-site TODAY, Oct. 30, in the Building 30 lobby from 8:30 a.m. to noon.

To expedite the process, PLEASE visit the website below, read the Influenza Vaccine Information Statement and complete the consent form prior to arrival. Please wear clothing that allows easy to access your upper arm (short sleeves or sleeveless).

If you can't make it today, future outreach sessions are posted to the Web page below.

Event Date: Wednesday, October 30, 2013   Event Start Time:8:30 AM   Event End Time:12:00 PM
Event Location: Building 30 Lobby

Add to Calendar

Bob Martel x38581 http://sd.jsc.nasa.gov/omoh/scripts/OccupationalMedicine/Fluprogram.aspx

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  1. Tree-Planting Ceremony Honors Alan G. Poindexter

JSC team members are invited to attend the tree-planting ceremony in honor of Captain Alan G. Poindexter, USN, on Tuesday, Nov. 5, in the Memorial Tree Grove at 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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  1. Latest International Space Station Research

Do air bubbles in your fluid lines give you grief? Recently, astronaut Mike Hopkins conducted operation of the Interior Corner Flow 7 (ICF7) vessel for the Capillary Flow Experiment-2 (CFE-2). Several bubble coalescence and passive bubble separation tests were completed. The angle of a vane in the fluid cylinder was adjusted, producing passive flow that herded the bubbles, forced them to coalesce and then forced the merged bubble(s) upstream and away from the liquid exit port. In so doing, the container itself performed the function of a passive bubble separator. Pretty cool, huh? Read more here.

Liz Warren x35548

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  1. October Tech Briefs Include Six JSC Technologies

JSC has six new technologies featured in the October 2013 NASA Tech Briefs magazine. Each month, new innovations stemming from advanced research and technology programs conducted by NASA and its industry partners/contractors are introduced in the NASA Tech Briefs publication.

The new advanced research and technology innovations from JSC in this month's publication include: Commercial Non-Dispersive Infrared Spectroscopy Sensors for Sub-Ambient Carbon Dioxide Detection; Adaptive Distributed Environment for Procedure Training (ADEPT); LEGEND, a LEO-to-GEO Environment Debris Model; Impedance Discontinuity Reduction Between High-Speed Differential Connectors and PCB Interfaces; Propellant-Flow-Actuated Rocket Engine Igniter; and Development of the Code RITRACKS.

For the details on these exciting technologies and their inventors, visit the Strategic Opportunities & Partnership Development (SOPD) website. Also, you can review all of the NASA Tech Briefs here.

Holly Kurth x32951

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  1. Orchestrating Through the Unknown Case Study

Orchestrating Through the Unknown: How Cufflinks saved the Space Station. Some call it their Apollo 13 moment, and others say it was just plain fun. For a few, they consider it the experience of a lifetime. How did the experts figure out that something as simple as a high-tech cufflink could be the solution for a torn solar array on the International Space Station? Find out yourself by checking out the P6 Solar Array Cufflink Repair Case Study. Consider what lessons can we take away from this effort and apply to our own tasks. While you are there, please take the time to give us your feedback. Also, we would like your suggestions for potential topics. Share your ideas here.

Brent J. Fontenot x36456 https://knowledge.jsc.nasa.gov/?event=casestudies

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   Organizations/Social

  1. Don't Be Spooked, BUT - You Need to RSVP Now

You're invited to a November (rescheduled from October) JSC National Management Association (NMA) luncheon featuring JSC Employee Assistance Program Director Jackie Reese, MALPC, who will speak on "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. tomorrow, Oct. 31 (HALLOWEEN!), with your menu selection. We don't want to spook you, but there will not be a plate for you if you don't. See you there!

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 list 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 https://starport.jsc.nasa.gov/

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  1. Starport Boot Camp - Discount Ends Nov. 1

 

Starport's phenomenal boot camp is back, and registration is open and filling fast. Don't miss a chance to be part of Starport's incredibly popular program.

The class will fill up, so register now!

Early registration (ends Nov. 1)

o $90 per person (just $5 per class)

Regular registration (Nov. 2 to 12):

o $110 per person

The workout begins on Wednesday, Nov. 13.

Are you ready for 18 hours of intense workouts with an amazing personal trainer to get you to your fitness goal?

Don't wait!

Sign up today and take advantage of this extreme discount before it's too late.

Register now at the Gilruth Center information desk, or call 281-483-0304 for more information.

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

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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:

    • $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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  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:

    • $40 per person (ends Oct. 18)

Regular registration:

    • $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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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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Human Spaceflight News

Wednesday – October 30, 2013

 

HEADLINES AND LEADS

 

Chief quits commercial crew office at KSC

 

James Dean - Florida Today

 

The Kennedy Space Center manager in charge of NASA's Commercial Crew Program left that position last week, NASA disclosed Tuesday. Responding to media inquiries, NASA said Ed Mango had stepped down "to tend to personal matters," effective Oct. 21. Leadership of the important human spaceflight program is now under the control of Mango's deputy, Kathryn Lueders, who is based at Johnson Space Center in Houston and is serving as the acting program manager. A NASA spokesman said the agency would locate a permanent replacement at KSC but provided no timeframe.

 

Mango Steps Down as Commercial Crew Manager

 

Dan Leone - Space News

 

Edward Mango, manager of NASA's Commercial Crew Program at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida has stepped down from his position and will be replaced on an acting basis by his deputy Kathryn Lueders, a NASA spokesman confirmed Oct. 29. Mango is "stepping down from his position to tend to personal matters, effective as of Oct. 21," NASA spokesman Trent Perrotto wrote in an email.

 

Sierra Nevada downplays landing mishap, calls test flight 'very successful'

 

William Harwood - CBS News

 

A landing gear malfunction that caused a small commercial spacecraft to skid off the runway after its first unmanned flight Saturday caused relatively minor damage and an official with builder Sierra Nevada said Tuesday the test confirmed the flight worthiness of the winged "lifting body" design. "Ninety-nine percent of the flight that we really wanted to get, which was does this vehicle fly, is it able to be controlled, does the software work, can it autonomously fly the vehicle in, can we acquire the runway and land, all of that was 100 percent successful," said Mark Sirangelo, corporate vice president of Sierra Nevada. "In fact, we probably performed better than the original test standards were meant to do."

 

Mini space shuttle skids off runway in test flight

 

Marcia Dunn - Associated Press

 

A new, smaller version of NASA's space shuttle is recuperating from a rough first landing. The Dream Chaser space plane is being designed by Sierra Nevada Corp. It's vying to carry astronauts to and from the International Space Station in four or five more years. The Nevada-based company tested a full-scale model at Edwards Air Force Base in California on Saturday. A helicopter dropped the unmanned craft from 12,500 feet in a first free flight reminiscent of NASA's drop tests of the shuttle prototype Enterprise in the 1970s. Everything worked well for the automated Dream Chaser model until the end, when the left landing gear deployed too late and the test vehicle skidded off the runway.

 

U.S. Dream Chaser space taxi soars on test flight, skids after landing

 

Irene Klotz - Reuters

 

A privately owned prototype space plane aced its debut test flight in California but was damaged after landing when a wheel did not drop down, developer Sierra Nevada Corp said on Tuesday. The Dream Chaser is one of three space taxis under development in partnership with NASA to fly astronauts to the International Space Station following the retirement of the space shuttles in 2011. While competitors Space Exploration Technologies - a privately owned firm also known as SpaceX - and Boeing are working on seven-person capsules that return to Earth via parachutes, Sierra Nevada's Dream Chaser resembles a miniature space shuttle with wings to glide down for a runway landing.

 

Dream Chaser has rough landing in test flight, but firm hails 'successful day' for space plane

 

Joel Achenbach - Washington Post

 

For the would-be spaceship named the Dream Chaser, everything on the first flight of a prototype went perfectly — until the craft touched down, toppled on its side, skidded off the runway and wound up in the sand of the Mojave Desert. The unmanned test flight, conducted in hushed conditions Saturday at Edwards Air Force Base in Southern California, came to an inelegant end after the left landing gear failed to deploy properly. But the creator of the space plane, Sierra Nevada Corp., which is hoping to win a NASA contract to carry astronauts to the international space station, found much to celebrate despite the rough landing. The vehicle, dropped by a helicopter at 12,500 feet, flew autonomously in a steep dive, pulled up perfectly and glided to the center line of the runway, the whole flight precisely by the book until the very end, Mark Sirangelo, head of Sierra Nevada's space unit, said in a teleconference Tuesday.

 

Dream Chaser's Saturday flight test called a success despite crash landing

 

Lee Roop - Huntsville Times

 

The landing gear failure that send Sierra Nevada Corp's mini-space shuttle Dream Chaser skidding off a California runway after its first flight test Saturday was "lamentable," but doesn't detract from the flight's success, a company official said Tuesday. "This is not in any way, shape or form the gear we're moving forward with," company space systems Vice President Mark Sirangelo told a press conference today. He called the test "a successful day with an unfortunate anomaly at the end." Dream Chaser skidded off the runway during the Saturday test after its left landing gear failed to lower. Sierra Nevada released a video of the test flight (below) but did not show the landing or skid pending more investigation.

 

Dream Chaser mini-shuttle to be fixed after first free flight

 

Alan Boyle - NBC News

 

Sierra Nevada Corp. says its Dream Chaser prototype space plane will fly again after Saturday's first-ever glide test — a largely successful outing that was marred by a landing-gear failure. The failure caused the 23-foot-wide (7-meter-wide) unmanned mini-shuttle to tip over, veer off its landing strip at Edwards Air Force Base in California and sustain some damage. "It wound up on its landing gear," Mark Sirangelo, corporate vice president for SNC Space Systems, told NBC News. The company released a video on Tuesday that showed the unmanned Dream Chaser's release from its carrier helicopter, its autonomously controlled descent to the strip, and the failure of the left landing gear to deploy. The video stopped short of showing the landing itself, however. Sirangelo said that part of the video was being held back for a post-accident investigation.

 

Private Dream Chaser space plane skids off runway after milestone test flight

 

Leonard David - Space.com

 

The first free flight of a new private space plane successfully tested the spacecraft's automated approach and landing system, despite a malfunction that sent the spacecraft skidding off the runway at the end of the flight, its builder tells SPACE.com. The Dream Chaser space plane, constructed by Sierra Nevada Corporation, was hoisted by helicopter high above Edwards Air Force Base in California on Saturday, then let loose to glide down to a tarmac touchdown. The unmanned flight test, a major step for the project, was performed in conjunction with NASA's Dryden Flight Research Center at the Edwards Air Force Base. Sierra Nevada officials released a video of the Dream Chaser drop test which shows the landing gear malfunction, but the video ends before the craft touches down on its runway. "We had a successful approach to the runway. The vehicle flared on cue and the speeds were perfect," said Mark Sirangelo, corporate vice president and head of Sierra Nevada Corporation's (SNC) Space Systems based in Louisville, Colo. "We hit the centerline exactly where we needed to be. On approach and landing, the left main gear did not deploy satisfactorily," Sirangelo told SPACE.com. "Something hung up on the gear and it didn't deploy."

 

Dream Chaser performs first free-flight, but sustains damages

 

Kristen Leigh Painter - Denver Post

 

The Dream Chaser prototype space vehicle performed its first free-flight approach-and-landing test Saturday morning but was damaged when the left landing gear did not fully deploy. The free flight lasted about a minute — including a 50-degree nose dive, a pull-up maneuver to steady the vehicle for landing and a successful glide landing that was all guided only by the spacecraft's computer systems. The anomaly occurred within the final 15 to 20 seconds when the landing gear on one side, which was refurbished for the test flight from a heritage F-5 fighter jet, malfunctioned.

 

Dream Chaser encounters rough landing

 

Joshua Lindenstein - Boulder County Business Report

 

Mark Sirangelo, head of Sierra Nevada Corp.'s Space Systems division in Louisville, said Tuesday that he doesn't believe a landing gear malfunction and resulting skid off the runway during a test flight on Saturday will in any way delay development of the Dream Chaser spacecraft. Sirangelo said the results of the test flight could accelerate development of the seven-passenger orbital vehicle. "We were fortunate to get almost all the data we needed on the very first flight," Sirangelo said in a media conference call.

 

Sierra Nevada space plane flies for 1st time, has rough landing

 

Greg Avery - Denver Business Journal

 

Sierra Nevada Space Systems flew and landed its Dream Chaser space plane for the first time Saturday in California, gliding it down for a landing despite trouble with the landing gear on touchdown. The Dream Chaser was carried aloft by a helicopter for Saturday's test. Accounts from the test flight indicated problems with the left landing gear caused damage when the unmanned craft landed, but how significant the issue was isn't clear. Nevertheless, the Louisville-based division of Sierra Nevada Corp. counted the Dream Chasers computer-controlled, autonomous test flight as a success.

 

Mini space shuttle crash-lands after free-flight test

 

Jacob Aron & Lisa Grossman - New Scientist

 

When it comes to commercial spaceflight, we are still chasing the dream. A petite version of NASA's people-carrying space shuttle crashed during an uncrewed test in which it flew freely for the first time. The Dream Chaser, made by Sierra Nevada Corporation of Sparks, Nevada, is one of three NASA-funded vehicles contending to replace the shuttle. None of these private companies has yet managed to send a person into space. Sierra Nevada had previously flown the Dream Chaser suspended from a helicopter. During a similar, uncrewed test on Saturday, it released the craft from an altitude of 3.8 kilometres and allowed it to glide and land on autopilot. For the most part the flight went smoothly. "The test we were doing was to find out, does this vehicle actually fly? Is it airworthy?" Sierra Nevada's Mark Sirangelo said during a press conference on 29 October. "It flew as if it had been flying for many years."

 

Dream Chaser space plane soars through first drop test, skids off runway

 

Robert Pearlman - collectSPACE.com

 

A prototype for a commercial space plane designed to taxi astronauts to Earth orbit and back performed its first drop test Saturday, gliding to a successful touchdown, but immediately suffering damage due to a landing gear problem that caused the unmanned mini-space shuttle to skid off the runway, its builder said on Tuesday.  The Dream Chaser winged shuttlecraft, built by Colorado-based Sierra Nevada Corp. (SNC), carried out its first-ever autonomous approach and landing test over the weekend at Edwards Air Force Base in southern California. As the engineering test article touched down on the same runway once used by the space shuttle, the vehicle encountered an issue deploying its left-side landing gear.

 

Dream Chaser's First Flight A Historic Success Despite Landing Gear Issue

 

Mike Killian - AmericaSpace.com

 

On Saturday, Sierra Nevada Corporation put their Dream Chaser engineering test article through its first free flight Approach and Landing test, or ALT-1, at NASA's Dryden Flight Research Center in southern California. The important flight test, a first since the late 1970's with NASA's space shuttle test article Enterprise, performed flawlessly up until the command was given to deploy the landing gear.  An anomaly was encountered causing the left landing gear to snag, and although Dream Chaser touched down on the runway 22L centerline at Edwards Air Force Base the vehicle did sustain some minor structural damage.  That incident, however, may actually speed up Dream Chaser's development, rather than delay it.

 

Damaged Dream Chaser can be fixed and program to move forward with flight tests

 

Ken Kremer - Universe Today

 

The privately built Dream Chaser 'space taxi' that was damaged after landing during its otherwise successful first ever free-flight glide test on Saturday, is repairable and the program will live on to see another day, says the developer Sierra Nevada Corp., (SNC). The Dream Chaser engineering test vehicle skidded off the runway and landed sideways when its left landing gear failed to deploy at the last second during touchdown on runway 22L at Edwards Air Force Base, Calif., said Mark Sirangelo, corporate vice president for SNC Space Systems, at a media teleconference.

 

ATV-4 De-orbiting To Be Scrutinized By Station Crew

 

Mark Carreau - Aviation Week

 

After departing the International Space Station (ISS) early Oct. 28, the European Space Agency's ATV-4 has embarked on five days of solo flight to set up an atmospheric re-entry that will be documented by station astronauts. The European space freighter, christened Albert Einstein, undocked from the station's Russian segment Zvezda module at 4:55 a.m. EDT, ending a 4 1/2-month stay. The capsule, filled with 4,761 lb. of station trash before it undocked, will be maneuvered to a position 75 mi. (120 km) below the 260-mi.-high ISS by the ATV Control Center in Toulouse so the crew of the orbiting science lab can directly observe and document the planned Nov. 2 atmospheric re-entry and disintegration over the Pacific Ocean. The ATV-4 observations will be used to calibrate future spacecraft re-entries, according to an ESA statement.

 

Alum speaks to UI students from space station

 

Julie Wurth - News-Gazette (East Central Illinois)

 

Training on simulators is one thing. Orbiting the earth on a 925,000-pound space laboratory the size of a football field is something else altogether. Two and a half years of training did not fully prepare astronaut Mike Hopkins for the thrill of his life aboard the International Space Station. "The station is even more amazing than I ever thought it was going to be," Hopkins said Tuesday from space, addressing a spellbound audience at the University of Illinois National Center for Supercomputing Applications via live NASA hookup.

 

An unlikely beginning for Johnson Space Center

 

U.S. Senator John Cornyn - Pasadena Citizen

 

(Cornyn is on the Finance & Judiciary Committees. He serves on the Judiciary Committee's Immigration, Refugees & Border Security subcommittee. He served previously as Texas Attorney General, Texas Supreme Court Justice, & Bexar County District Judge.)

 

You can't judge a book by its cover. And if in 1961 you happened to be standing in the wind-battered cow pasture on the shores of Clear Lake, just southeast of downtown Houston, you could be forgiven for not believing that in a few short years, this would be the future home of an elite cadre of scientists and airmen, destined to leave this planet and set foot on another world. This year marks the 50th anniversary since NASA's Johnson Space Center – originally named the Manned Spacecraft Center – opened its doors. As recently told to the Houston Chronicle, the effort to land the nation's premiere space center in Houston was not your typical application process. But thanks to the foresight of a group of Houston businessmen and the deft political maneuvering of one powerful Texas politician, Space City was born.

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COMPLETE STORIES

 

Chief quits commercial crew office at KSC

 

James Dean - Florida Today

 

The Kennedy Space Center manager in charge of NASA's Commercial Crew Program left that position last week, NASA disclosed Tuesday.

 

Responding to media inquiries, NASA said Ed Mango had stepped down "to tend to personal matters," effective Oct. 21.

 

Leadership of the important human spaceflight program is now under the control of Mango's deputy, Kathryn Lueders, who is based at Johnson Space Center in Houston and is serving as the acting program manager.

 

A NASA spokesman said the agency would locate a permanent replacement at KSC but provided no timeframe.

 

"Keeping momentum in the program is critically important for NASA and for Florida, and (Mango's) loss will be felt," said Frank DiBello, CEO of Space Florida, which is working with NASA and its partners to repurpose former shuttle facilities for commercial use. "I am pleased to see that they have put a capable replacement in place."

 

The Commercial Crew Program office represents KSC's only leadership role in a major human spaceflight program, an assignment first announced in 2010 as the shuttle program was winding down.

 

Previously Johnson, home of the astronaut corps and Mission Control, had led NASA's human spaceflight endeavors.

 

The Commercial Crew Program is working with three companies to develop private spacecraft that could resume flights of astronauts from U.S. soil — launched from the Space Coast — by 2017, ending reliance on Russia for access to the International Space Station.

 

The public-private partnership is generally seen as a success, making steady progress with significantly less funding than the system NASA is developing for deep space exploration missions, which hopes to fly a crew by 2021.

 

Mango, who joined KSC in 1986, oversaw about 200 program employees, about half of them at KSC, according to his official NASA biography.

 

He now is assigned to the deputy center director's office at KSC, reporting to Janet Petro.

 

Lueders became Mango's deputy in February, replacing former astronaut Brent Jett when he left the agency.

 

Before that she was a senior International Space Station program manager whose responsibilities included evaluating the safety of new commercial cargo vehicles approaching the station.

 

Mango Steps Down as Commercial Crew Manager

 

Dan Leone - Space News

 

Edward Mango, manager of NASA's Commercial Crew Program at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida has stepped down from his position and will be replaced on an acting basis by his deputy Kathryn Lueders, a NASA spokesman confirmed Oct. 29.

 

Mango is "stepping down from his position to tend to personal matters, effective as of Oct. 21," NASA spokesman Trent Perrotto wrote in an email.

 

Mango, a 27-year NASA veteran, has been reassigned to the office of Kennedy's deputy center director, Perrotto said.

 

The Commercial Crew Program Office at Kennedy has experienced some churn this year, with Lueders coming onboard in February after former astronaut Brent Jett, her predecessor as deputy program manager, retired from NASA.

 

Mango's departure was first reported by the news and rumors site nasawatch.com.

 

Sierra Nevada downplays landing mishap, calls test flight 'very successful'

 

William Harwood - CBS News

 

A landing gear malfunction that caused a small commercial spacecraft to skid off the runway after its first unmanned flight Saturday caused relatively minor damage and an official with builder Sierra Nevada said Tuesday the test confirmed the flight worthiness of the winged "lifting body" design.

 

"Ninety-nine percent of the flight that we really wanted to get, which was does this vehicle fly, is it able to be controlled, does the software work, can it autonomously fly the vehicle in, can we acquire the runway and land, all of that was 100 percent successful," said Mark Sirangelo, corporate vice president of Sierra Nevada.

 

"In fact, we probably performed better than the original test standards were meant to do."

 

At this point, engineers are still assessing the damage endured by the "Dream Chaser" test vehicle as well as flight data characterizing the spacecraft's aerodynamic performance. Depending on the result, the company may opt to repair the test craft for additional unmanned test flights or to press ahead with plans for manned landing tests next year.

 

"We don't think it's actually going to set us back," Sirangelo told reporters in a teleconference. "In some interesting way, it might actually accelerate it. Because if we've got all the data we needed to get, and it's still early, but if we were able to get all the flight data we were expecting to get, we might actually have been able o bring the vehicle back earlier and get it ready for its next flight.

 

"We're going through that now, but we don't think there is going to be any significant delay to the program as a result of this. This was meant to be a test vehicle with a limited number of flights."

 

Sierra Nevada's Dream Chaser is one of three spacecraft under development as commercial candidates to ferry astronauts to and from the International Space Station, ending NASA's reliance on Russian Soyuz rockets. The other competitors holding NASA development contracts are Boeing and Space Exploration Technologies.

 

Boeing and SpaceX are developing capsules that would return to Earth under parachutes for landings at sea or on the ground while Sierra Nevada is focused on a winged lifting body modeled after a NASA design that was tested but never built. Unlike its competitors, the Dream Chaser is designed to glide to a runway landing at the end of each mission.

 

During its initial unmanned free flight Saturday, an engineering test model of the Dream Chaser was hauled up to an altitude of around 12,500 feet above Edwards Air Force Base, Calif., by an Erickson Air-Crane helicopter. It then was released for an autonomous one-minute glide to landing.

 

Moments after release, the spacecraft executed a steep, 50-degree dive before lining up on the designated runway, flaring and slowing to its planned touchdown velocity of around 160 knots.

 

"The summary of the flight was a perfect release, perfect dive, pull-out of the dive, commands (were executed) at exactly where the flight software and predictive models wanted it to be, the approach to Edwards was uneventful," Sirangelo said.

 

After lining up on the runway, the spacecraft's nose landing skid and right main landing gear deployed normally about 200 feet off the ground. But the left main gear hung up for some reason. Sirangelo said the software issued the proper commands, leading engineers to suspect a mechanical problem of some sort.

 

The landing gear in the test vehicle were taken from an F-5 training jet and will not be used on operational versions of the Dream Chaser.

 

In any case, the Dream Chaser's flight software responded to the unbalanced load at touchdown, keeping the spacecraft's left wing off the ground as long as possible. But it eventually came down and the craft skidded off the runway in a cloud of dust.

 

Sierra Nevada released a video of the landing test, but it stops just short of touchdown and the runway skid is not seen. Sirangelo said dust obscured the view, but the spacecraft was found right side up and engineers do not believe it flipped over.

 

"The vehicle was damaged on its skid and roll off of the runway, but we believe it to be repairable and flyable again," Sirangelo said.

 

A post-landing inspection revealed the crew compartment was undamaged and Sirangelo said had the flight been manned, no one would have been injured.

 

Going into the test, Sierra Nevada tentatively planned one more unmanned approach-and-landing test, a manned ALT next year, an unmanned orbital demonstration flight in 2016 and a manned orbital test flight in mid to late 2017.

 

But that schedule assumes Sierra Nevada wins downstream contracts to continue the Dream Chaser's development.

 

Before the space shuttle's retirement in 2011, NASA began awarding contracts intended to spur development of commercial manned spacecraft to ferry astronauts to and from the International Space Station. The goal was to end the agency's reliance on Russia's Soyuz spacecraft, at more than $60 million a seat, and to encourage development of a private sector manned space industry.

 

On Aug. 3, 2012, NASA selected Boeing, SpaceX and Sierra Nevada for funding to continue development in a third round of Commercial Crew Program contracts.

 

Unlike the earlier design studies, the Commercial Crew Integrated Capability Initiative -- CCiCap -- contracts require each company to develop an integrated solution that includes ground infrastructure, launch vehicles and spacecraft.

 

SpaceX was awarded a $440 million contract to continue development of a manned version of the company's Dragon cargo ship, which is currently flying unmanned cargo flights to the space station.

 

The SpaceX manned capsule will seat up to seven astronauts and rely on an upgraded version of the company's Falcon 9 rocket to reach orbit. Initial test flights could come as early as 2015, depending on funding and engineering progress.

 

Boeing won a contract valued at $460 million to develop its CST-100 capsule, The spacecraft will seat up to seven astronauts and fly atop a United Launch Alliance Atlas 5 rocket. The CST-100 would make a parachute descent to a ground landing. Barring technical problems or budget issues, the first manned test flight is expected in 2016.

 

Sierra Nevada was awarded a $212.5 million control to continue developing the Dream Chaser. The spacecraft is designed to seat seven and launch stop an Atlas 5 rocket.

 

The CCiCAP contracts are expected to run through May 31, 2014. After that, NASA presumably will select one, or possibly two, companies to continue development of actual spacecraft.

 

While manned test flights could begin as early as 2015, agency officials say operational NASA flights to and from the space station will not begin until at least 2017 because of previous budget shortfalls.

 

Mini space shuttle skids off runway in test flight

 

Marcia Dunn - Associated Press

 

A new, smaller version of NASA's space shuttle is recuperating from a rough first landing.

 

The Dream Chaser space plane is being designed by Sierra Nevada Corp. It's vying to carry astronauts to and from the International Space Station in four or five more years.

 

The Nevada-based company tested a full-scale model at Edwards Air Force Base in California on Saturday. A helicopter dropped the unmanned craft from 12,500 feet in a first free flight reminiscent of NASA's drop tests of the shuttle prototype Enterprise in the 1970s.

 

Everything worked well for the automated Dream Chaser model until the end, when the left landing gear deployed too late and the test vehicle skidded off the runway.

 

Company space systems chief Mark Sirangelo said Tuesday that damage was minor. The left gear was still attached and the tire wasn't even shredded, he said. The crew cabin area was unscathed — astronauts would have been uninjured, he said. The flight computers never stopped working, and nothing critical was damaged.

 

Sirangelo stressed that the minute-long test flight was a success despite the ending.

 

He said the mishap is likely due to mechanical failure; an investigation is underway. He said it shouldn't hold up plans for a piloted landing test next year. The landing gear is derived from F-5 fighter planes and not the same type that will be used in space.

 

The test vehicle will be repaired and may fly again, Sirangelo told reporters during a teleconference.

 

Sierra Nevada — one of several U.S. companies hoping to carry NASA astronauts into orbit — plans the first orbital flight demo of Dream Chaser in 2016 and the first crewed orbital mission in 2017.

 

NASA already is relying on private industry to ship cargo to the space station, a vacancy created by the retirement of the space shuttles in 2011. Until American companies provide a safe spaceship for crews, NASA will continue to fly its astronauts on Russian Soyuz capsules — for hefty prices.

 

U.S. Dream Chaser space taxi soars on test flight, skids after landing

 

Irene Klotz - Reuters

 

A privately owned prototype space plane aced its debut test flight in California but was damaged after landing when a wheel did not drop down, developer Sierra Nevada Corp said on Tuesday.

 

The Dream Chaser is one of three space taxis under development in partnership with NASA to fly astronauts to the International Space Station following the retirement of the space shuttles in 2011.

 

While competitors Space Exploration Technologies - a privately owned firm also known as SpaceX - and Boeing are working on seven-person capsules that return to Earth via parachutes, Sierra Nevada's Dream Chaser resembles a miniature space shuttle with wings to glide down for a runway landing.

 

The company took a significant step toward proving Dream Chaser can fly with its first unmanned glide test at Edwards Air Force Base in Mojave, California, on Saturday, Sierra Nevada Vice President Mark Sirangelo told reporters on a conference call.

 

A full-size Dream Chaser model was carried to an altitude of about 12,500 feet by a heavy-lift helicopter and released for a minute-long glide back to the runway.

 

"The first thing we needed to do was find out 'Does this shape, does this type of vehicle actually fly? Is it air-worthy?' Although all the computer modeling and the simulations told us it was, there had not been a lifting body of this type flown since the 1970s," Sirangelo said, referring to the test flight of NASA's prototype space shuttle Enterprise.

 

After being released, the autonomously controlled Dream Chaser successfully positioned itself for flight, flared its nose to slow for touchdown and settled on the runway, Sirangelo said.

 

However, one of the vehicle's three landing gears did not deploy, causing the plane to skid off the landing strip and end up in the sand, he said.

 

Engineers are still assessing how much damage was sustained. Sirangelo said the crew cabin and onboard computers were not damaged.

 

The landing gear used during the test flight is not the same equipment planned for the orbital vehicles, he added.

 

Ironically, the accident may speed up Sierra Nevada's planned piloted test flight next year. The vehicle had been scheduled for a second autonomous flight in California before being returned to its Colorado manufacturing facility to be outfitted for a piloted flight.

 

"We were fortunate enough to get almost all the data we needed on the very first flight. If that's the case, we may just move on to the next phase of the program," Sirangelo said.

 

NASA hopes to buy rides commercially to carry its astronauts to the space station by 2017.

 

Dream Chaser has rough landing in test flight, but firm hails 'successful day' for space plane

 

Joel Achenbach - Washington Post

 

For the would-be spaceship named the Dream Chaser, everything on the first flight of a prototype went perfectly — until the craft touched down, toppled on its side, skidded off the runway and wound up in the sand of the Mojave Desert.

 

The unmanned test flight, conducted in hushed conditions Saturday at Edwards Air Force Base in Southern California, came to an inelegant end after the left landing gear failed to deploy properly.

 

But the creator of the space plane, Sierra Nevada Corp., which is hoping to win a NASA contract to carry astronauts to the international space station, found much to celebrate despite the rough landing. The vehicle, dropped by a helicopter at 12,500 feet, flew autonomously in a steep dive, pulled up perfectly and glided to the center line of the runway, the whole flight precisely by the book until the very end, Mark Sirangelo, head of Sierra Nevada's space unit, said in a teleconference Tuesday.

 

"We had a very successful day with an unfortunate anomaly at the end of the day on one of the landing gears," Sirangelo said. Putting an even more positive spin on the floppy landing, he said, "Even the final ending, which did not roll out perfectly, provided some very valuable data for us as well."

 

Sierra Nevada has put out a video showing the flight, but the video cuts off just as the Dream Chaser is landing. Sirangelo said the company is unlikely to produce additional footage while the "anomaly" is being investigated.

 

Sierra Nevada is perhaps the underdog in the competition to win the NASA contract to haul astronauts to the international space station. The company spent the good part of a decade developing the Dream Chaser, which looks like a miniature space shuttle. It would be launched atop an Atlas 5 rocket. Like the shuttle, it is designed to glide back to Earth and land on a runway. It has not yet flown in space; the first such mission, unmanned, will probably take place in 2016, Sirangelo said.

 

NASA's "commercial crew" program has offered subsidies to Sierra Nevada along the way. According to NASA, Sierra Nevada had received $229.1 million in payments from NASA through the end of September under a series of agreements and contracts.

 

Among the companies that have also received commercial crew subsidies are SpaceX and Boeing. SpaceX, founded by tycoon Elon Musk, is taking cargo to the space station and hopes to add astronauts to its manifest in the near future, and Musk is vocal about his desire to send people to Mars. Boeing is an aerospace giant for which human spaceflight is essentially a side business.

 

Sierra Nevada, however, is more narrowly focused.

 

"We're not trying to land on the moon or Mars," Sirangelo said earlier this year. "That's not our mission. Our mission is to take over low Earth orbit so that NASA can go on and do something else."

 

Next year, NASA is expected to do a "down-select" in its commercial crew program and will presumably pick two companies to move forward. Officials have said they do not want to rely on a single provider. Congress in recent years has not funded the commercial crew program at the level requested by the administration. The goal is to have commercial rides to space by 2017, although NASA officials have said that could slip without full funding of the program.

 

The space shuttle was retired in 2011 after three decades of flight. Currently, the only way U.S. astronauts can reach the space station, or return to Earth, is via Russian rockets.

 

SpaceX and Boeing are developing crew capsules that would reenter the atmosphere the way Apollo capsules did nearly half a century ago, with the final descent slowed by parachutes. SpaceX would launch its capsule atop the company's own rocket, the Falcon 9, while Boeing's capsule would, like the Dream Chaser, ride atop an Atlas 5, the rocket owned by United Launch Alliance, a 50-50 joint venture of Boeing and Lockheed Martin.

 

Sierra Nevada believes that the relatively gentle flight profile of a winged vehicle will be appealing to NASA and other space agencies seeking to bring experiments and cargo back to Earth.

 

Dream Chaser's Saturday flight test called a success despite crash landing

 

Lee Roop - Huntsville Times

 

The landing gear failure that send Sierra Nevada Corp's mini-space shuttle Dream Chaser skidding off a California runway after its first flight test Saturday was "lamentable," but doesn't detract from the flight's success, a company official said Tuesday.

 

"This is not in any way, shape or form the gear we're moving forward with," company space systems Vice President Mark Sirangelo told a press conference today. He called the test "a successful day with an unfortunate anomaly at the end."

 

Dream Chaser skidded off the runway during the Saturday test after its left landing gear failed to lower. Sierra Nevada released a video of the test flight (below) but did not show the landing or skid pending more investigation.

 

The Dream Chaser, a shuttle-looking vehicle, is an example of a "lifting body" design in which the body itself provides lift to keep the vehicle flying. Saturday's flight test at Edwards Air Force Base was the first flight of a lifting body since the 1970s, Sirangelo said. He compared it to NASA's Enterprise shuttle built to fly several times for testing but never in space.

 

The unscrewed, minute-long flight began at 11:05 a.m. Pacific time with a drop from a Sikorsky sky crane helicopter at 12,500 feet, followed by a series of commands to see if the Dream Chaser would pull out of its dive, fly, approach the runway and land.

 

Everything worked, Sirangelo said, and Dream Chaser came in on the center line of the runway at the precise speed planned. The front skid came down on command, the right landing gear came down, but the left did not. Dream Chaser "skidded off into the dirt on the left side" of the runway, he said.

 

The gear was designed and built for Northrop's F-5 fighter jet and had performed as commanded on captive-carry flight tests, Sirangelo said. The software and electronics worked, as evidenced by the right gear's lowering, and that suggests a mechanical failure somewhere, he said.

 

The test vehicle flown Saturday wasn't heavily damaged and is reparable and flyable, Sirangelo said, but it was designed for only a few test flights at most. The Dream Chaser that will go into orbit is under construction at the Michoud Assembly Facility at New Orleans for an unscrewed test flight in space in 2016. The company is building Dream Chaser in part with funds from NASA's commercial crew development program.

 

Dream Chaser mini-shuttle to be fixed after first free flight

 

Alan Boyle - NBC News

 

Sierra Nevada Corp. says its Dream Chaser prototype space plane will fly again after Saturday's first-ever glide test — a largely successful outing that was marred by a landing-gear failure.

 

The failure caused the 23-foot-wide (7-meter-wide) unmanned mini-shuttle to tip over, veer off its landing strip at Edwards Air Force Base in California and sustain some damage. "It wound up on its landing gear," Mark Sirangelo, corporate vice president for SNC Space Systems, told NBC News.

 

The company released a video on Tuesday that showed the unmanned Dream Chaser's release from its carrier helicopter, its autonomously controlled descent to the strip, and the failure of the left landing gear to deploy. The video stopped short of showing the landing itself, however. Sirangelo said that part of the video was being held back for a post-accident investigation.

 

During a teleconference on Tuesday, Sirangelo said the vehicle was "repairable and [would be] flyable again." There was no damage to the test vehicle's internal shell or electronics, and the damage to the external carbon-composite shell can be fixed, he said. The only question is whether the Dream Chaser would be repaired for another autonomous flight, or retooled for its first piloted flight. Either way, the vehicle would fly again later this year or next year, Sirangelo said.

 

"Our timeline isn't going to be affected by this," Sirangelo said. The flight yielded so much good data about Dream Chaser's aerodynamics that "in a strange way [it] might actually accelerate the program," he said.

 

Sirangelo stressed that the landing gear used during Saturday's test was adapted from the equipment for an F-5 fighter jet, and would not be used on future configurations of the test vehicle.

 

NASA is due to pay Sierra Nevada $227.5 million during the current phase of development for the Dream Chaser, as part of a development program aimed at having U.S.-built spaceships ready to carry U.S. astronauts to the International Space Station by as early as 2017. NASA is supporting parallel development programs at the Boeing Co. and SpaceX, to the tune of more than $1 billion in total.

 

The Dream Chaser is the only one of the three proposed spacecraft that would be a winged vehicle. It's designed for launch atop an Atlas 5 rocket with up to seven passengers aboard, and landing at NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida. Sirangelo said Sierra Nevada is aiming to conduct an autonomous orbital flight test in 2016, with a piloted test expected during the latter half of 2017.

 

NASA's agreement calls for Sierra Nevada to receive an $8 million payment for collecting data relating to the Dream Chaser's flightworthiness. "NASA gets 30 days after we submit the data for a milestone to make the determination as to whether or not we've met that. ... We believe we've met all the criteria, but at this time I can't make a definitive statement. That's for NASA to do," Sirangelo told NBC News.

 

NASA has not yet commented on that point. On Saturday, the space agency said representatives from Sierra Nevada, NASA's Dryden Flight Research Center and the Air Force were "looking into the anomaly" that occurred during landing, and that Sierra Nevada would release information as it became available.

 

Private Dream Chaser space plane skids off runway after milestone test flight

 

Leonard David - Space.com

 

The first free flight of a new private space plane successfully tested the spacecraft's automated approach and landing system, despite a malfunction that sent the spacecraft skidding off the runway at the end of the flight, its builder tells SPACE.com.

 

The Dream Chaser space plane, constructed by Sierra Nevada Corporation, was hoisted by helicopter high above Edwards Air Force Base in California on Saturday, then let loose to glide down to a tarmac touchdown. The unmanned flight test, a major step for the project, was performed in conjunction with NASA's Dryden Flight Research Center at the Edwards Air Force Base. Sierra Nevada officials released a video of the Dream Chaser drop test which shows the landing gear malfunction, but the video ends before the craft touches down on its runway.

 

"We had a successful approach to the runway. The vehicle flared on cue and the speeds were perfect," said Mark Sirangelo, corporate vice president and head of Sierra Nevada Corporation's (SNC) Space Systems based in Louisville, Colo.

 

"We hit the centerline exactly where we needed to be. On approach and landing, the left main gear did not deploy satisfactorily," Sirangelo told SPACE.com. "Something hung up on the gear and it didn't deploy."

 

A walk-away landing incident

 

The Dream Chaser space plane resembles a miniature space shuttle, and is being developed to carry astronauts to and from the International Space Station, and other destinations in low-Earth orbit. The seven-passenger vehicle is about 29.5 feet (9 m) long and has a wingspan of 22.9 feet (7 m).

 

The landing gear malfunction during the Saturday drop test sent the Dream Chaser prototype skidding off the runway, Sirangelo said.

 

"It exited off the runway fairly quickly a few seconds after the one landing gear failed to come down," Sirangelo said.

 

As for damage, Sirangelo said that the space plane's pressure vessel — which would house the crew cabin — was not damaged, with onboard computers still working even after the skid to a full stop.

 

"The crew compartment was completely intact," and pilots would have walked away from the landing incident, Sirangelo said. "We found out how tough the vehicle really was. Everything inside the vehicle is completely the way it was," in pre-drop condition, he added.

 

A mishap investigation team is being formed to look into the problem, Sirangelo said.

 

"Unofficially, it looks like the gear door didn't open properly … so the gear couldn't come down all the way."

 

The Dream Chaser "got beat up a bit," Sirangelo said, but came to rest on its normal horizontal position on its main landing skids. "It's not in pieces. It's going to be flyable again."

 

Dream Chaser's first drop test

 

Previously, SNC engineers had put the Dream Chaser prototype through a series of ground and captive-carry tests to set the stage for the unpiloted approach-and-landing test flight.

 

Sirangelo said he was in a mission control room for the Dream Chaser free-flight and all systems were green, with the weather perfect. The space plane followed an identical flight profile as it would carry out on return from Earth orbit, he said.

 

The Dream Chaser was dropped by a helicopter from a height of 12,500 feet entered into its pre-planned dive to pick up speed, working its flight control surfaces while en route to the runway.

 

After helicopter release, the space plane pointed down to the ground to gain velocity before pulling up, admittedly a heart-pounding moment, Sirangelo said.

 

"It autonomously pulled out on cue and began to fly itself down," Sirangelo said, with the flight control software operating in top-notch form and flew the craft to the center line of the runway.

 

"We met all the test parameters. We got even better data than we expected … and more of it," Sirangelo said. "We were mostly worried about the flight conditions. How it would fly …  worried about would the software and the flight controls all work. And then we worried about would the craft approach and land properly. And all those things worked perfectly."

 

Orbital flight vehicle work under way

 

The Dream Chaser design is derived from NASA's HL-20 lifting body that had years of development, analysis, and wind tunnel testing at the space agency's Langley Research Center in Virginia.

 

Sirangelo said that simulating flight of the Dream Chaser on the ground is one thing. "But Mother Nature does wacky things. Until you actually fly you just never know."

 

For the present, what's ahead is to make sure all the data needed has been collected. Also to be appraised is what it's going to take to get the vehicle flying again, Sirangelo said.

 

"We only expected to have two flights on this vehicle anyway, before we brought it back to Colorado," Sirangelo said. "We collected enough data that we might not need a second flight. We'll see when we get all the data sorted out."

 

Sirangelo said that construction of an orbital flight vehicle, in partnership with Lockheed Martin, is already underway.

 

Sierra Nevada is one of three space firms, along with SpaceX and Boeing, to receive funding from NASA's commercial crew program, which aims to foster the development of new spacecraft to replace the agency's space shuttles, which were retired in 2011.

 

SpaceX and Boeing are both designing capsules, and Dream Chaser is the only reusable winged spacecraft being developed under NASA's commercial crew program. NASA hopes at least one of the new vehicles will fly by 2017.

 

Dream Chaser performs first free-flight, but sustains damages

 

Kristen Leigh Painter - Denver Post

 

The Dream Chaser prototype space vehicle performed its first free-flight approach-and-landing test Saturday morning but was damaged when the left landing gear did not fully deploy.

 

The free flight lasted about a minute — including a 50-degree nose dive, a pull-up maneuver to steady the vehicle for landing and a successful glide landing that was all guided only by the spacecraft's computer systems.

 

The anomaly occurred within the final 15 to 20 seconds when the landing gear on one side, which was refurbished for the test flight from a heritage F-5 fighter jet, malfunctioned.

 

Mark Sirangelo, CEO of Sierra Nevada Corp. Space Systems, said the vehicle skidded off the runway but landed upright. None of the interior or critical systems were damaged, and Sirangelo said the damage to the body could be repaired.

 

Louisville-based SNC Space Systems designed and built the prototype as a part of NASA's Commercial Crew Integrated Capability Program — known as CCiCap — which works with the U.S. private sector to create the next generation of spacecraft for ferrying astronauts to the International Space Station.

 

Dream Chaser looks like a smaller version of the space shuttle, while its two remaining competitors are designing more traditional crew capsules.

 

Surprisingly, Sirangelo said, the free-flight test may have expedited the timeline. The test may have offered enough data that a second free-flight test won't be necessary.

 

"The purpose (of this test) was to make sure that it could actually fly," Sirangelo said. "If we got all the flight data we needed, we may be able to bring the vehicle back to headquarters (in Colorado) earlier to prepare it for the next step."

 

The F-5 landing gear is not what SNC plans to use on the orbital vehicle, which is in production. SNC expects to do its first piloted test in early 2014 and its first orbital mission in 2016. The company hopes to have Dream Chaser ready for its first crewed mission in 2017.

 

"It is certainly lamentable, the 99 percent of this test — where we wanted to see if it could fly — was successful," Sirangelo said."It was a very good day marred by a very small glitch at the end of the day."

 

SNC has received at least $337 million in awards from NASA to continue developing the spacecraft. The company receives payment after the completion of each milestone. It is unclear whether NASA will consider this the completion of its most recent milestone, which was about the collection of flight data.

 

Dream Chaser encounters rough landing

 

Joshua Lindenstein - Boulder County Business Report

 

Mark Sirangelo, head of Sierra Nevada Corp.'s Space Systems division in Louisville, said Tuesday that he doesn't believe a landing gear malfunction and resulting skid off the runway during a test flight on Saturday will in any way delay development of the Dream Chaser spacecraft.

 

Sirangelo said the results of the test flight could accelerate development of the seven-passenger orbital vehicle.

 

"We were fortunate to get almost all the data we needed on the very first flight," Sirangelo said in a media conference call.

 

The Dream Chaser, built in Louisville before being shipped to California in May for testing, is designed to be flown by a pilot as well as autonomously, and is slated for its first space mission for NASA by 2016.

 

The vehicle performed "almost a perfectly stable flight," Sirangelo said of Saturday morning's test at Edwards Air Force Base. The flight marked the first free-flight approach-and-landing test for Dream Chaser. The vehicle was released from a carrier helicopter at an altitude of 12,500 feet and flew for about a minute before touching down at Edwards.

 

The spacecraft, flown autonomously for the test, sustained some damage to its outer protective coating and shell during the post-landing skid, but nothing that can't be fixed for future test flights, Sirangelo said. There were no injuries to anyone on the ground.

 

Sirangelo said Dream Chaser followed modeled trajectories and issued commands according to plan. It entered a 50-degree dive to mimic the return of an orbital vehicle and pulled out of the dive as it was supposed to.

 

The test's main objective, Sirangelo said, was to determine how the spacecraft and the shape of its design would fly in real life beyond the modeling simulations conducted.

 

"We really wanted to make sure that this design was going to fly, and in the first 10 seconds we knew very quickly that it was going to fly and fly very well," Sirangelo said.

 

The snag came upon landing. Although the vehicle properly issued commands for the landing gear to deploy and hit its target on the runway, the left landing gear did not deploy in time, causing the vehicle to skid off of the left side of the runway.

 

The company is investigating what went wrong, though Sirangelo said it appears that computer systems operated correctly and that there was some sort of mechanical hang-up with the gear itself. The gear had been tested more than 50 times leading up to the program and had no issues. Sirangelo said that the gear is not the same one that will be used on the operational orbital vehicle, which is being built by SNC strategic partner Lockheed Martin in Louisiana.

 

The faulty landing gear did eventually deploy during the skid.

 

"Fortunately for us everything we need to make the investigation (about what went wrong) is still attached to the vehicle," Sirangelo said.

 

Sirangelo said the seven-passenger crew cabin was undamaged, and all systems remain fully operational, providing some valuable data as to the durability of the spacecraft.

 

Sirangelo said that had Dream Chaser been piloted during such a problem with the landing gear, there would have been additional steps the pilot could have made to try to get the gear to deploy before landing.

 

Dream Chaser is slated for a second autonomous test flight. But even with the accident, Sirangelo said that flight could be scrapped given the quality of data gathered from Saturday's flight. The vehicle is scheduled for piloted approach and landing tests in 2014.

 

"On the list of things that could have gone wrong for us, it's one that's fairly minor for us in the future of the vehicle," Sirangelo said.

 

Dream Chaser is being designed as a replacement to the retired space shuttles. Sirangelo said it's designed to be an all-purpose space SUV of sorts that can take crew and cargo to the international space station but could also be used for other missions like construction of a new space station or for short- or long-duration science missions.

 

Sierra Nevada space plane flies for 1st time, has rough landing

 

Greg Avery - Denver Business Journal

 

Sierra Nevada Space Systems flew and landed its Dream Chaser space plane for the first time Saturday in California, gliding it down for a landing despite trouble with the landing gear on touchdown.

 

The Dream Chaser was carried aloft by a helicopter for Saturday's test. Accounts from the test flight indicated problems with the left landing gear caused damage when the unmanned craft landed, but how significant the issue was isn't clear.

 

Nevertheless, the Louisville-based division of Sierra Nevada Corp. counted the Dream Chasers computer-controlled, autonomous test flight as a success.

 

"The vehicle adhered to the design flight trajectory throughout the flight profile. Less than a minute later, Dream Chaser smoothly flared and touched down on Edwards Air Force Base's Runway 22L right on centerline," the company said in a statement Monday.

 

Sierra Nevada Space Systems plans to discuss the test flight in a media conference call Tuesday morning.

 

The company has been designing the Dream Chaser for nine years as a re-usable space taxi capable of taking as many as seven astronauts to the International Space Station.

 

Dream Chaser would ride atop a United Launch Alliance Atlas V rocket for space missions and be piloted back to Earth for a runway landing, much like the now-retired space shuttle that NASA used for years.

 

Sierra Nevada Space Systems has won NASA grants worth as much as $337.5 million toward Dream Chaser development. The craft is one of three NASA has funded in competition to develop space vehicles that can replace the Space Shuttle fleet.

 

Sierra Nevada Corp., based in Sparks, Nev., has owned the space division since a 2008 merger in which it bought SpaceDev, in Louisville and Poway, Calif., and blended it with other aerospace manufacturing businesses it had purchased.

 

Mini space shuttle crash-lands after free-flight test

 

Jacob Aron & Lisa Grossman - New Scientist

 

When it comes to commercial spaceflight, we are still chasing the dream. A petite version of NASA's people-carrying space shuttle crashed during an uncrewed test in which it flew freely for the first time.

 

The Dream Chaser, made by Sierra Nevada Corporation of Sparks, Nevada, is one of three NASA-funded vehicles contending to replace the shuttle. None of these private companies has yet managed to send a person into space.

 

Sierra Nevada had previously flown the Dream Chaser suspended from a helicopter. During a similar, uncrewed test on Saturday, it released the craft from an altitude of 3.8 kilometres and allowed it to glide and land on autopilot. For the most part the flight went smoothly.

 

"The test we were doing was to find out, does this vehicle actually fly? Is it airworthy?" Sierra Nevada's Mark Sirangelo said during a press conference on 29 October. "It flew as if it had been flying for many years."

 

But trouble arose when the craft's left-hand landing gear failed to deploy. The glider touched down on its right wheel, then tilted to the left and skidded off the runway. Sierra Nevada released a video of the flight, but it ends right before the landing.

 

Positive spin

 

The team is still investigating why the left wheel failed to deploy. The computers received the commands to deploy the landing gear, so the problem was probably mechanical, says Sirangelo. According to preliminary flight data, the Dream Chaser's autonomous landing software even tried to compensate for its uneven arrival and kept the craft balanced on one wheel for longer than expected.

 

The vehicle did not flip over, as some watchers initially feared, and it sustained minimal damage. No critical components snapped off, and all the computers inside were unharmed and kept recording data throughout the crash. The same vehicle should be able to fly again, perhaps as soon as next year, says Sirangelo.

 

"In many ways we're really pleased with the way it acted," he says. "One of the things you never really know with a vehicle is how it's going to act when things go bad. It was not a good landing, but it helped the vehicle sustain the least amount of damage. That's pretty special."

 

Dream Chaser space plane soars through first drop test, skids off runway

 

Robert Pearlman - collectSPACE.com

 

A prototype for a commercial space plane designed to taxi astronauts to Earth orbit and back performed its first drop test Saturday, gliding to a successful touchdown, but immediately suffering damage due to a landing gear problem that caused the unmanned mini-space shuttle to skid off the runway, its builder said on Tuesday.

 

The Dream Chaser winged shuttlecraft, built by Colorado-based Sierra Nevada Corp. (SNC), carried out its first-ever autonomous approach and landing test over the weekend at Edwards Air Force Base in southern California. As the engineering test article touched down on the same runway once used by the space shuttle, the vehicle encountered an issue deploying its left-side landing gear.

 

"Unfortunately, we encountered an anomaly with the gear that we're still investigating, which caused the gear to not deploy properly on the left side," SNC vice president Mark Sirangelo, head of the company's space systems division, explained to reporters Tuesday (Oct. 29). "After a period of time, the vehicle was unable to continue its roll down the runway and landed down on its left side and skidded off the runway into sandy dirt."

 

The prototype space plane, which took several months to build, was damaged from the skid, but was otherwise left intact after the crash.

 

"The core structure, all of the flight controls, the rudders, the ailerons, all of those are all still attached, still working and are still part of the vehicle," Sirangelo said. "What we did lose was some of the protective coating shell off of the vehicle and some minor damage to the composites and wheel structure."

 

Sirangelo said he did not yet know if the spacecraft would be repaired for another unmanned free flight, or if the data collected from this drop test would be enough for them to press ahead with preparing the craft for a piloted approach and landing test next year.

 

"The summary of the flight was a perfect release, perfect dive [and] pull out of the dive," Sirangelo stated. "Issued commands happened exactly as the flight software in the predicted models wanted it, the approach to Edwards was uneventful and no major changes or attitude pitches were needed. The vehicle acquired the runway as expected, it came down on approach, flared, and did everything that was necessarily."

 

The landing "anomaly," as Sirangelo categorized it, was a singular blemish on an otherwise successful test flight, a critical milestone along SNC's development effort and bid to launch astronauts to the International Space Station by 2017. The Dream Chaser is the only winged vehicle NASA is considering as part of its commercial crew program.

 

The agency's two other options, Boeing's CST-100 and the Dragon by SpaceX (Space Exploration Technologies), are both capsules.

 

The seven-passenger Dream Chaser is 29.5 feet long (9m) and has a 22.9 feet (7m) wingspan. Its design is based on the HL-20, an early 1980's NASA concept for a lifting body re-entry vehicle.

 

"There has not been a lifting body flown of this type since the 1970s, some 40 years ago," Sirangelo said. "We really wanted to make sure that this design would fly and in the first five to 10 seconds [of Saturday's drop test] we knew very quickly that it was flying quite well."

 

SNC intends the Dream Chaser to lift off vertically riding a United Launch Alliance (ULA) Atlas V rocket and return to Earth as a glider to a piloted landing on a runway.

 

Saturday's flight began like previous "captive-carry" tests, with the full-scale Dream Chaser prototype being lofted to altitude under an Erickson Air-Crane helicopter flying from NASA's Dryden Flight Research Center at Edwards. This time however, the test article was released to fly alone.

 

"Following release, the [Dream Chaser's] automated flight control system gently steered the vehicle to its intended glide slope," SNC said Saturday in a release. "The vehicle adhered to the design flight trajectory throughout the flight profile."

 

"Less than a minute later, Dream Chaser smoothly flared and touched down on Edwards Air Force Base's Runway 22L, right on centerline," the company stated.

 

The Dream Chaser test article was equipped for the flight with main landing gear modified from the U.S. Air Force's F-5E Tiger fighter jet. A different type of landing system is planned for use on spaceflights.

 

"While there was an anomaly with the [craft's] left landing gear deployment, the high-quality flight and telemetry data throughout all phases of the approach-and-landing test will allow SNC teams to continue to refine their spacecraft design," the company said.

 

According to NASA, no one was injured during the test but emergency personnel did respond as a precaution. Dryden support staff prepared the vehicle for transport to a hangar after the incident.

 

"As with any spaceflight test program," SNC stated, "there will be anomalies that we can learn from, allowing us to improve our vehicle and accelerate our rate of progress."

 

SNC was conducting Saturday's drop test under a $227.5 million development agreement with NASA, which calls for up to five similar flights to characterize the aerodynamics of the Dream Chaser during its atmospheric approach and landing.

 

Dream Chaser's First Flight A Historic Success Despite Landing Gear Issue

 

Mike Killian - AmericaSpace.com

 

On Saturday, Sierra Nevada Corporation put their Dream Chaser engineering test article through its first free flight Approach and Landing test, or ALT-1, at NASA's Dryden Flight Research Center in southern California. The important flight test, a first since the late 1970's with NASA's space shuttle test article Enterprise, performed flawlessly up until the command was given to deploy the landing gear.  An anomaly was encountered causing the left landing gear to snag, and although Dream Chaser touched down on the runway 22L centerline at Edwards Air Force Base the vehicle did sustain some minor structural damage.  That incident, however, may actually speed up Dream Chaser's development, rather than delay it.

 

"We believe we had a very successful first day.  The issue that we had is certainly one that I would like not to have had, but at the end of the day – on the list of things that could have gone wrong for us – it was one that is very minor in the future of the vehicle," said Mark Sirangelo, Vice President of Sierra Nevada Corporation's Space Systems at a teleconference held late this morning.  "We don't think its actually going to set us back, in some interesting way it may actually accelerate our progress.  If we got all the flight data we needed to get we may actually be able to get the vehicle back to Colorado earlier to get it ready for its next flight, which may actually accelerate the program."

 

The Dream Chaser was carried aloft in the skies over Edwards Air Force Base and dropped from an altitude of 12,500 feet by an Erickson Air-Crane helicopter at 11:10 a.m. PDT.  The release was accomplished perfectly, sending the vehicle into a steep 50-degree nose dive to exactly replicate the orbital re-entry flight path and prove Dream Chaser's design is truly air-worthy.

 

"About 10 seconds into the dive the commands were given by the vehicle, as predicted, to begin the pullout of the dive and enter into its glide into Edwards," said Sirangelo.  "All commands given during the flight were successful, and after a period of 30-35 seconds the vehicle began finding the runway, associating itself, getting itself ready for landing, and conducting what was almost a perfectly stable flight.  In the final 20 seconds of the flight the vehicle acquired the runway and lowered its rate of descent to 1.58 feet per second, exactly as predicted, and landed at 160 knots, almost precisely on the runway where we wanted to land."

 

The 60-second flight itself was fairly uneventful, as the vehicle's automated flight control system did its job of steering the test article to its intended glide slope automatically based on data collected by the vehicle's sensors and flight computer.  However, when the vehicle's Ground Radar Altimeter initiated the sequence to open the landing gear an anomaly occurred – the left landing gear was snagged.

 

"As the vehicle began its roll down the runway the automatic software noticed that the vehicle was having some difficulty and commanded the controls to compensate for that, which was something that we had predicted but we had not known was going to happen," said Sirangelo.  "Unfortunately the anomaly with the gear, which we are still investigating, caused the vehicle to eventually land down on its left side and skid off the left side of the runway.  There was no damage to the runway and there were no personnel injuries of any type.  The vehicle was damaged as it skidded off the runway but we believe it to be repairable and flyable again.  We are assessing the vehicle and determining what repairs we need to make."

 

"The 99% of the flight that we really wanted to get  - which was does this vehicle fly, is it able to be controlled, does the software work, can we autonomously fly the vehicle in to approach and land on a runway – all that was 100% successful," added Sirangelo.  "In fact, we probably performed better than the original test standards were meant to be.  We deem this to be a significant success, airplane history has shown that this is not the first time a landing gear has had issues on an airplane that went on to be very successful."

 

Although the flight did not end as everyone had hoped, the incident provided a wealth of valuable data showing how strong the vehicle really is.

 

"The entire interior of the vehicle, the pressure vessel as we call it, or crew compartment, was completely untouched by the incident," said Sirangelo.  "All systems were fully operational, there was no damage whatsoever to any of the components of the vehicle.  All the flight computers continued to work, and they are still working, and there was no damage to any of the sensitive parts of the vehicle –  which tells us that the composite structure and the airframe is actually quite stable and quite strong for what we needed to accomplish."

 

The test article used to conduct ALT-1 this past Saturday was only to meant to conduct two autonomous flights before being sent back to SNC's headquarters to be reworked for piloted flight testing.  If Saturday's flight test produced all of the data SNC needs, and the company believes it did, then they can skip a second autonomous flight test all together.  The landing gear itself was never intended as a permanent fixture, as it is a modified version of the gear used on the USAF F-5E Tiger fighter aircraft.  Future Dream Chasers will use landing gear with electric actuators.

 

"As we stand right now we believe we have the data, we looked at all the data and its almost exactly as was predicted by our computing models," added Sirangelo.  "We were so successful that we actually received all of the data we think we needed for testing.  We are determining what we want to do and whether or not we want to continue on with that second flight, or send the vehicle back and outfit it for its next set of test flights – which would be conducted early next year.  That determination will be made in the next few weeks as we get all the data necessary."

 

The root cause of Saturday's landing gear problem is not yet known, as the investigation is ongoing, but the data points to a mechanical failure, possibly with the door or latch – as none of the primary systems that gave the commands that control the flight failed or had any problems.  Both landing gear systems – main gear and nose gear – are connected, they are mirror images of each other, and the right landing gear deployed as expected and was fully functional.  Had the spacecraft design or software caused the problem it would have affected both the right and left main landing gear.

 

"The vehicle has all of its components, nothing was lost – the tail, the rudders, the entire structure of the vehicle is with us and sound," added Sirangelo.  "The one landing gear in question is still attached to the vehicle, it did eventually deploy, obviously not properly but its still there, we didn't lose it.  The vehicle is surrounded by a very strong composite structure shell, which is where all the important materials (computers, crew compartment, etc) would be, and then it is surrounded by over six inches of protective layer – which in this case was a simulated thermal protection system (TPS).  That actually effectively cushioned the vehicle as it went through its flight off the runway, and while that was damaged its a fairly insignificant part of it."

 

"The core structure, all the flight controls, the rudders, the airlons, all those are still attached and working," added Sirangelo.  "We did lose some of the protective coating and shell of the vehicle and sustained some minor damage to some of the composites and the structure underneath.  The very strong front nose skid actually continued to hold the vehicle up and do exactly what it was designed to do, and it is fully functional and working right now."

 

The Dream Chaser, described by many simply as a "mini space shuttle," is a lifting body human spacecraft designed to carry as many as seven astronauts, and it is the only spacecraft under the Commercial Crew Development Round 2 (CCDev2) agreement with NASA's Commercial Crew Program (CCP) that is winged and designed to land on any conventional runway capable of handling commercial traffic.

 

The company hopes to launch the first autonomous spaceflight in 2016 atop a United Launch Alliance Atlas-V 402 rocket, with the first crewed mission to launch in the third quarter of 2017.  A fleet of Dream Chasers is planned to be based out of Florida's historic launch sites at Kennedy Space Center and Cape Canaveral Air Force Station.  No abort blackout zones and a 3.5 day free flight capability—with the added benefit of deorbiting at any time (since Dream Chaser can land on any conventional runway) – are a couple of the vehicle's main selling points.  The spacecraft will also be able to stay at the ISS for up to seven months at a time, if needed, before having to return to Earth, and an expected 1.5 G nominal reentry will provide ideal conditions for returning fragile cargo and science experiments, in addition to making the return to gravity easier on the crew (SNC expects immediate access to crew and cargo upon landing).  A quick turnaround and an almost entirely reusable vehicle put Dream Chaser in a class all its own.

 

"We had over 30 conditions that we were testing for the flight, and the vehicle either met or exceeded – in a positive way – all 30 of those conditions," said Sirangelo.  "The flight was extraordinary."

 

Damaged Dream Chaser can be fixed and program to move forward with flight tests

 

Ken Kremer - Universe Today

 

The privately built Dream Chaser 'space taxi' that was damaged after landing during its otherwise successful first ever free-flight glide test on Saturday, is repairable and the program will live on to see another day, says the developer Sierra Nevada Corp., (SNC).

 

The Dream Chaser engineering test vehicle skidded off the runway and landed sideways when its left landing gear failed to deploy at the last second during touchdown on runway 22L at Edwards Air Force Base, Calif., said Mark Sirangelo, corporate vice president for SNC Space Systems, at a media teleconference.

 

The primary goal of the Oct. 26 drop test was to see whether the Dream Chaser mini-shuttle would successfully fly free after being released by an Erickson Air-Crane from an altitude of over 12,000 feet and glide autonomously for about a minute to a touchdown on the Mojave desert landing strip.

 

"We had a very successful day with an unfortunate anomaly at the end of the day on one of the landing gears," said Sirangelo.

 

Dream Chaser is one of three private sector manned spaceships being developed with funding from NASA's commercial crew program known as Commercial Crew Integrated Capability (CCiCap) initiative to develop a next-generation crew transportation vehicle to ferry astronauts to and from the International Space Station – totally lost following the space shuttle retirement.

 

The unmanned approach and landing test (ALT) accomplished 99% of its objectives and was only marred by the mechanical failure of the left tire to drop down and deploy for a safe and smooth rollout.

 

SNC released a short 1 minute video of the test flight – see below – showing the helicopter drop, dive, glide and flare to touchdown. The failure of the landing gear to drop is clearly seen. But the video cuts away just prior to touchdown and does not show the aftermath of the skid or damage to the vehicle.

 

"The Dream Chaser spacecraft automated flight control system gently steered the vehicle to its intended glide slope. The vehicle adhered to the design flight trajectory throughout the flight profile. Less than a minute later, Dream Chaser smoothly flared and touched down on Edwards Air Force Base's Runway 22L right on centerline," said SNC in a statement with the video.

 

The vehicle is "repairable and flyable again," Sirangelo noted.

 

More good news is that the ships interior was not damaged and the exterior can be fixed.

 

Dream Chaser measures about 29 feet long with a 23 foot wide wing span and is about one third the size of NASA's space shuttle orbiters.

 

Since there was no pilot in the cockpit no one was injured. That also meant that no evasive action could be taken to drop the gear.

 

"We don't think it's actually going to set us back," Sirangelo noted. "In some interesting way, it might actually accelerate it.

 

NASA's commercial crew initiative aims at restoring America's manned spaceflight access to low Earth orbit and the International Space Station (ISS) – perhaps by 2017 – following the forced shutdown of the Space Shuttle program in 2011.

 

Until an American commercial space taxi is ready for liftoff, NASA is completely dependent on the Russian Soyuz capsule for astronaut rides to the ISS at a cost of roughly $70 million per seat.

 

Because Congress continues to significantly cut NASA's budget further delays can be expected – inevitably meaning more payments to Russia and no savings for the American tax payer.

 

SNC was awarded $227.5 million in the current round of NASA funding and must successfully complete specified milestones, including up to five ALT drop tests to check the aerodynamic handling in order to receive payment.

 

This particular vehicle had been intended to fly two test flights. Further drop tests were planned with a new test vehicle to be constructed.

 

The way forward is being evaluated.

 

"We don't think there is going to be any significant delay to the program as a result of this. This was meant to be a test vehicle with a limited number of flights," Sirangelo said.

 

SNC and NASA have assembled a team to investigate the cause of the anomaly.

 

"SNC cannot release any further video at this time," said SNC.

 

Dream Chaser is a reusable mini shuttle that launches from the Florida Space Coast atop a United Launch Alliance Atlas V rocket and lands on the shuttle landing facility (SLF) runway at the Kennedy Space Center, like the space shuttle.

 

ATV-4 De-orbiting To Be Scrutinized By Station Crew

 

Mark Carreau - Aviation Week

 

After departing the International Space Station (ISS) early Oct. 28, the European Space Agency's ATV-4 has embarked on five days of solo flight to set up an atmospheric re-entry that will be documented by station astronauts.

 

The European space freighter, christened Albert Einstein, undocked from the station's Russian segment Zvezda module at 4:55 a.m. EDT, ending a 4 1/2-month stay.

 

The capsule, filled with 4,761 lb. of station trash before it undocked, will be maneuvered to a position 75 mi. (120 km) below the 260-mi.-high ISS by the ATV Control Center in Toulouse so the crew of the orbiting science lab can directly observe and document the planned Nov. 2 atmospheric re-entry and disintegration over the Pacific Ocean. The ATV-4 observations will be used to calibrate future spacecraft re-entries, according to an ESA statement.

 

The Albert Einstein, launched June 5 from the European spaceport in Kourou, French Guiana, docked at Zvezda on June 15, delivering more than 7 tons of fuel, food, water, research equipment and other supplies, as well as providing a propulsion source to periodically raise the station's altitude.

 

With the Oct. 28 departure, ESA is obligated to provide a fifth and final ATV resupply mission, currently scheduled for 2015. Initiated in 2008, the five cargo missions are fulfilling ESA's share of annual ISS operating costs.

 

The ATV-4 departure also opens an ISS docking port for a round of Soyuz crew transport activities that will temporarily increase the number of crewmembers aboard the station from six to nine in early November to accommodate the arrival and departure of a Russian-furnished symbolic Olympic torch.

 

On Nov. 1, ISS commander Fyodor Yurchikhin will be joined by NASA and ESA astronauts Karen Nyberg and Luca Parmitano as they transfer their Soyuz TMA-09M capsule from the Rassvet module docking port to the just vacated Zvezda parking spot.

 

The relocation, expected to take less than 30 min., will free Rassvet for the Nov. 6-7 launch and docking of the Soyuz TMA-11M with astronauts Richard Mastracchio from the U.S. and Koichi Wakata of Japan, and cosmonaut Mikhail Tyurin of Russia. The unlit Olympic torch that accompanies the newcomers will briefly join ISS cosmonauts Oleg Kotov and Sergey Ryazanskiy outside the station during a Nov. 9 spacewalk focused primarily on the external outfitting of the station for the future arrival of Russia's Multi-Purpose Laboratory Module.

 

Late Nov. 10, the Soyuz TMA-09M is scheduled to depart with Yurchikhin, Nyberg and Parmitano as well as the symbolic torch for a landing under parachute in Kazakhstan, ending a 5 1/2-month expedition for the trio.

 

The torch will make its way to the Winter Games in Sochi, Russia, set to open on Feb. 7.

 

Alum speaks to UI students from space station

 

Julie Wurth - News-Gazette (East Central Illinois)

 

Training on simulators is one thing. Orbiting the earth on a 925,000-pound space laboratory the size of a football field is something else altogether.

 

Two and a half years of training did not fully prepare astronaut Mike Hopkins for the thrill of his life aboard the International Space Station.

 

"The station is even more amazing than I ever thought it was going to be," Hopkins said Tuesday from space, addressing a spellbound audience at the University of Illinois National Center for Supercomputing Applications via live NASA hookup.

 

"In some sense I feel like it's alive. There's just this constant noise," Hopkins said. "Even with all the simulators we have on the ground that look exactly like this, until you're up here and you feel that and you hear it and you sense it, that's probably something that you'll never get unless you're here."

 

Hopkins, a 1991 UI engineering graduate and former co-captain of the Illini football team, just completed the first of six months aboard the space station. The UI College of Engineering and Department of Aerospace Engineering worked with NASA to arrange Tuesday's face-to-face chat, which included a glimpse of Mission Control in Houston.

 

Hopkins had exactly 10 minutes to talk with UI aerospace engineering students, who submitted questions beforehand to be reviewed by NASA so he could be prepared, UI officials said. They read their questions before a giant image of Hopkins standing in front of a giant "Block I" orange flag inside the space station.

 

"University of Illinois, Fighting Illini, I hear you loud and clear, and I'm ready to answer some questions," Hopkins said to loud applause from Urbana.

 

Students asked about his work aboard the space station, the effects of living in the dark of space, and the future of space travel.

 

"I thought it was really insightful. He went pretty in-depth for the little amount of time that they had," said sophomore Nick Fulton, who would love to be an astronaut someday. "It was interesting to see his viewpoint and to talk to him while he was in space."

 

Graduate student Mustafa Mukadam asked whether it was difficult for the astronauts to keep track of time seeing multiple sunrises and sunsets each day as they orbit the Earth. Hopkins said they're kept on a tight schedule by NASA with a constant reminder of the time.

 

"Our schedule up here is down to 5-minute increments, so you never kind of lose that sense of time," he said.

 

Senior Jenny Roderick wondered which scientific and engineering principles Hopkins put to use on the space station.

 

"The thing about life up here is you need it all," Hopkins replied.

 

Earlier Tuesday, he had replaced a piece of air-flow equipment and repaired a carbon-dioxide removal assembly. But the astronauts also need their science background to monitor the 200-plus experiments they'll be conducting on the space station — like the one studying the relationship between protein and potassium and how that may affect bone loss in astronauts.

 

"You have to be a jack of all trades," he said.

 

Another student asked what problems need to be solved for future human space travel. Hopkins said current space missions receive "fantastic" ground support, but future missions to the moon, asteroids or even Mars will require more autonomy.

 

"If we're looking at going further out into the universe, then we need to be able to do that somewhat independently," Hopkins said.

 

What's his favorite thing to do in space? Float, of course.

 

"It doesn't get old, even just in the middle of the work day as you go floating around from one module to another. It's just fun," Hopkins said, following with an obligatory flip that drew applause.

 

"I really liked when he did the back flip," said UI sophomore Michael Miller, whose question prompted Hopkins' comment about the station feeling "alive."

 

Retired astronaut Steve Nagel talked with students before and after the NASA linkup and praised Hopkins for making it through the UI's engineering program with good grades while playing a varsity sport and completing the ROTC program.

 

"He's an incredible guy," said Nagel, a 1968 UI graduate.

 

Nagel, who had a long career in the Air Force and at NASA, flew four space shuttle missions from 1985 to 1993 as a mission specialist, pilot and commander. A former test pilot, Nagel said he didn't expect to be accepted into the space program but couldn't live with never trying. He said astronauts need to have perseverance and be "team players," and advised students who aspire to space travel to aim high, work hard and "have a plan B if it doesn't work out."

 

He met his wife through the space program and they even went on a mission together — though he emphasized that they didn't date until four years later.

 

Asked about his favorite moment in space, Nagel talked about a night he sat in the window of the shuttle, eating dinner as it made a night passage across the United States. As he watched city after city pass below him, then looked back across the Atlantic, a shooting star passed beneath the shuttle.

 

"It's like being in a glass-bottomed boat," Nagel said. He didn't have a camera but vowed to "make myself a memory and never forget it."

 

As to the future of commercial space travel, Nagel said there's no reason companies like Space X and others can't succeed. The question is whether there will be a long-term market to sustain it, he said.

 

Commercial companies are doing unmanned missions right now but hope to do manned missions to the space station or other destinations in the future, he said.

 

"That is definitely a big change in how we're doing things. I welcome it," he said.

 

NASA is worried about safety, Nagel said, but imposing all of the rigid safety constraints that NASA faces could make it too costly to operate a viable business.

 

"There's a balance in there somewhere, where it's safe but yet it's a little more streamlined than what we did with NASA. That's a difficult one they're wading through right now," he said.

 

Hopkins said training for astronauts headed to the space station won't change much even with commercial space travel. He spent more than two years training for space station work in Houston, Japan, Europe and Russia.

 

What will change is the training for the vehicles that will take them into space, he said. Most commercial space travel is centered in the U.S., so astronauts may be able to do more closer to home, he said.

 

Tuesday's chat took months of planning and coordination with NASA but would have been canceled had the government shutdown not been resolved, said Mike Koon, marketing and communications coordinator for the college, who supervised the event. Hopkins also recorded several promotional shots for the UI Division of Intercollegiate Athletics, and the Big Ten Network was on hand filming for an upcoming program.

 

An unlikely beginning for Johnson Space Center

 

U.S. Senator John Cornyn - Pasadena Citizen (Opinion)

 

(Cornyn is on the Finance & Judiciary Committees. He serves on the Judiciary Committee's Immigration, Refugees & Border Security subcommittee. He served previously as Texas Attorney General, Texas Supreme Court Justice, & Bexar County District Judge.)

 

You can't judge a book by its cover. And if in 1961 you happened to be standing in the wind-battered cow pasture on the shores of Clear Lake, just southeast of downtown Houston, you could be forgiven for not believing that in a few short years, this would be the future home of an elite cadre of scientists and airmen, destined to leave this planet and set foot on another world.

 

This year marks the 50th anniversary since NASA's Johnson Space Center – originally named the Manned Spacecraft Center – opened its doors. As recently told to the Houston Chronicle, the effort to land the nation's premiere space center in Houston was not your typical application process. But thanks to the foresight of a group of Houston businessmen and the deft political maneuvering of one powerful Texas politician, Space City was born.

 

Interestingly, it wasn't the politician whose name the Center now bears. Rather, it was longtime Houston Congressman Albert Thomas. As NASA's site selection committee contemplated Baton Rouge, Jacksonville, Tampa, and even San Francisco, Thomas used his influence on the House Appropriations Committee to bring NASA to Houston.

 

In the intervening years, Houston has become synonymous with humankind's exploration of space. As the home of Mission Control and the training facility for the Astronaut Corps, humanity's progress into the vast unknown has, quite literally, been led by Texans. From the days of Project Gemini, when San Antonio native Lt. Col. Ed White became the first American to perform a spacewalk, to the Apollo era, which brought mankind to a new world, and on through the Space Shuttle program and it's enduring legacy, the International Space Station, Texans have pioneered the celestial frontier.

 

As anyone living in Clear Lake and the surrounding area knows, these remarkable men and women are not only explorers, scientists, and engineers at the tops of their fields: they are friends and neighbors, fellow congregants at churches, and parents cheering on the local little league team. Over the last five decades, Houstonians have shared in the triumphs and tragedies that have befallen the NASA community. The city rejoices with each safe return to Earth of its fellow Texans, and it grieves deeply when they are taken away by the ever-present dangers of spaceflight.

 

Americans of all ages look to NASA for inspiration. We see in our astronauts the manifestation of the highest ideals of the American spirit: forging ahead into a new and dangerous frontier in the courageous pursuit of knowledge. The achievements of the last 50 years have been breathtaking. Now, as we move beyond the Space Shuttle program and into a new era of exploration, the world will once again look to Texas for its bold leadership into space.

 

END

 

 

 

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