Fwd: NASA and Human Spaceflight News - Friday - September 26, 2014

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From: "Moon, Larry J. (JSC-EA411)" <larry.j.moon@nasa.gov>
Date: September 26, 2014 10:28:02 AM CDT
To: "Moon, Larry J. (JSC-EA411)" <larry.j.moon@nasa.gov>
Subject: FW: NASA and Human Spaceflight News - Friday - September 26, 2014

Happy flex Friday everyone.   Have a safe and great weekend.    Mark your calendars to join us at Hibachi Grill next Thursday for our monthly NASA retirees Luncheon at 11:30.

 

NASA and Human Spaceflight News

Friday – September 26, 2014

 

INTERNATIONAL SPACE STATION: What happened this week on the space station? Watch on Space to Ground.

 

If you missed the Expedition 41 launch or hatch opening yesterday, check it out on the ReelNASA YouTube channel.

 

HEADLINES AND LEADS

 

US-Russian Crew Docks With Space Station

 

Associated Press

 

A U.S.-Russian crew docked early Friday with the International Space Station, about six hours after launching from Russia's manned space facility in Kazakhstan. The Russian Soyuz-TMA14M spacecraft joined up with the space laboratory as it orbited 226 miles (364 kilometers) above the earth. It was carrying space veterans Alexander Samokutayev of Russia and American Barry Wilmore along with Elena Servova of Russia, making her first journey.

 

Despite solar array glitch, Soyuz crew arrives at station

 

Bill Harwood – Spaceflight Now

 

Looking like a wounded bird with only one of its two solar wings deployed, a Russian Soyuz spacecraft glided to an otherwise picture-perfect docking with the International Space Station late Thursday, boosting the lab's crew back to six with the addition of a veteran cosmonaut, a NASA shuttle flier and the first female cosmonaut to win a station berth.

 

One of Soyuz TMA-14M's Solar Panels Fails to Unfold After Rocket Blasts Off for ISS

 

RIA Novosti

 

MOSCOW, September 26 (RIA Novosti) - One of the two solar panels aboard Russia's manned Soyuz TMA-14M spacecraft has so far been unable to unfold, a source in the mission control center of the Russian Federal Space Agency told RIA Novosti early Friday. "According to our data, one of the solar panels is still unable to unfold for reasons unknown. But preliminary data suggest that it will not impede [the spacecraft] from docking to the ISS. They have carried out a maneuver just now which involved all of the spacecraft's engines, all systems are running smoothly, the crew is OK," the source in the agency said.

 

Russian Soyuz Overcomes Solar Array Problem to Deliver Three to ISS

 

Mark Carreau – Aviation Week

 

Russia's Soyuz TMA-14M spacecraft carried out a successful automated docking with the International Space Station late Thursday, delivering three new U.S. and Russian crew members, including the first female cosmonaut assigned to live and work aboard the orbiting science laboratory.

 

First Russian woman lifts off to International Space Station

 

Dmitry Solovyov – Reuters

 

(Reuters) - A Russian rocket blasted off from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan to the International Space Station (ISS) on Friday, taking to orbit a U.S.-Russian trio including the first Russian woman to serve on the $100 billion space outpost.

 

Russia's First Female ISS Crew Member Launches Into Space

 

Matthew Bodner – The Moscow Times

 

Russia's first female cosmonaut to travel to the International Space Station, Yelena Serova, launched early Friday morning, making her the fourth Russian woman in history to go to space. Serova is part of the latest international crew of astronauts and cosmonauts to fly to the International Space Station, where they will spend six months. She is joined by Russian cosmonaut Alexander Samokutyaev and U.S. astronaut Barry Wilmore.

 

U.S.-Russian ISS crew includes ex-Tenn. Athlete

 

Mike Organ – USA Today

 

BAIKONUR, Kazakhstan — A U.S.-Russian crew that includes a former Tennessee college athlete flying his third NASA mission has blasted off successfully for the International Space Station. Barry "Butch" Wilmore, 51, who grew up in the Una neighborhood southeast of Nashville, joined Russians Alexander Samokutyaev and Elena Serova in the Russian Soyuz-TMA14M spacecraft that lifted off as scheduled at 4:25 p.m. ET from the Russian-leased Baikonur launch facility in Kazakhstan.

 

Sierra Nevada To Continue Dream Chaser; May Protest Contract Award

 

Frank Morring Jr. – Aviation Week

 

Sierra Nevada Corp. plans to develop its Dream Chaser commercial crew vehicle despite its loss to Boeing and SpaceX in the three-way NASA competition for contracts to take the development to flight test and operations.

 

Sierra Nevada Lays Off Dream Chaser Staff

 

Jeff Foust – Space News

 

After losing a NASA commercial crew competition earlier this month, Sierra Nevada Corp. (SNC) has laid off about 100 employees who had been working on its Dream Chaser vehicle, the company confirmed Sept. 24. "As a result of not being selected by NASA, SNC needed to conduct a limited staff reduction of our Dream Chaser team of the personnel that have come on board in anticipation of the growth a win would have provided," company spokeswoman Krystal Scordo said in a Sept. 24 email.

 

Sierra Nevada cuts staff, still aims to fly Dream Chaser

 

James Dean - Florida Today

 

A week after losing out in NASA's Commercial Crew competition, Sierra Nevada Corp. Space Systems has cut about 100 people from the team working on its Dream Chaser mini-shuttle. However, the Louisville, Colo.-based company plans to continue developing the Dream Chaser through a first spaceflight, and will pitch the space plane to NASA as a new cargo hauler to the International Space Station.

 

Sierra Nevada Space Systems' Dream Chaser employees laid off

 

Laura Keeney - Denver Post

 

Sierra Nevada Corp.'s Louisville-based Space Systems division Wednesday laid off about 90 employees from its Dream Chaser program after having lost a high-profile NASA contract bid. Space Systems last week lost out on a NASA contract for the Dream Chaser, which would have shuttled astronauts to the international space station. The $6.8 billion total contract instead was split between Chicago-based Boeing Co, which received $4.2 billion, and Elon Musk's SpaceX, which received $2.6 billion.

 

Space taxis (Editorial)

 

Houston Chronicle

 

NASA's announcement last week that it had contracted with two private companies, Boeing and SpaceX, to re-energize its struggling space program is good news on the space-exploration front. The agreement, worth up to $6.8 billion, calls for developing and operating the rocketry and crew capsules to transport U.S. astronauts to and from the International Space Station by 2017 ("NASA picks space allies," Page A1, Sept. 17).

 

Maven and MOM Orbiters Send First Pictures From Mars

 

Alan Boyle – NBC News

 

Just days after their arrival, India's Mars Orbiter Mission and NASA's Maven orbiter have both sent back their first pictures of the Red Planet. The first view from Maven, acquired just eight hours after the bus-sized spacecraft entered orbit on Sunday night, is actually a triple look at Mars' atmosphere in three ultraviolet wavelengths from a height of 22,680 miles (36,500 kilometers).

 

Mars Curiosity rover snaps traffic light-shaped rock on the red planet

 

Yahoo! News

 

Space enthusiasts watching the Mars rover roam the surface of the red planet were stopped in their tracks after the explorer spotted - a traffic light.

 

New Asian Space Race Takes A Lap Around Mars

 

Forbes

 

Traffic around Mars is getting busier. This week saw the arrival in orbit of two new probes, one from America's Nasa, the other from a relatively new player, the Indian Space Research Organisation. They bring the total number of successful Mars missions to 21.

 

EDITORIAL: For NASA, a new kind of star trek

 

Northwest Florida Daily News

 

Believe it or not, for-profit space ventures have been around a while. In pulp magazine stories of the 1930s and '40s and later in sci-fi movies of the 1950s, rockets to the moon and Mars were often built by private corporations and eccentric billionaires. When moviegoers visited the huge space station in "2001: A Space Odyssey" (released in 1968), what did they see? A Howard Johnson's and a Hilton hotel.

Real life is catching up with science fiction.

 

CubeSat craze could create space debris catastrophe

 

Paul Marks – New Scientist

 

SWARMS go up and they don't come down. Tiny, cheap CubeSats are becoming an increasing danger in space. The mini-satellites could cause catastrophic collisions with larger craft, threatening to produce orbiting blizzards of space debris like those in the movie Gravity.

 

Old-School NASA Photos Are Like Family Snapshots in Space

 

Zachary Slobig – Wired

 

Space photography is largely taken for granted these days. Stunning images from the Hubble space telescope, amazing martian panoramas (and charming selfies) taken by Curiosity, and snapshots from the International Space Station are just photos in our daily feeds, too often swiped aside with little thought or appreciation.

 

NASA's modest program reflects risk-averse society, astronaut says

 

EFE – Fox News Latino

 

Former Apollo astronaut Walter Cunningham said that NASA's current modest program is a reflection of a risk-averse society which, in his opinion, is suffering from a lack of motivation.

 

 

COMPLETE STORIES

US-Russian Crew Docks With Space Station

 

Associated Press

 

A U.S.-Russian crew docked early Friday with the International Space Station, about six hours after launching from Russia's manned space facility in Kazakhstan.

 

The Russian Soyuz-TMA14M spacecraft joined up with the space laboratory as it orbited 226 miles (364 kilometers) above the earth. It was carrying space veterans Alexander Samokutayev of Russia and American Barry Wilmore along with Elena Servova of Russia, making her first journey.

 

The capsule launched at 2:25 a.m. Friday (2025 GMT Thursday, 4:25 p.m. EDT) from the Russian-leased Baikonur launch facility in Kazakhstan.

 

The new crew is beginning a planned six-month deployment on the ISS, joining three others already on board.

 

Serova is the first Russian woman to fly to space since 1997, and the fourth woman in the history of the Soviet and Russian space programs. Valentina Tereshkova became the first woman in space in 1963.

 

Since the retirement of the U.S. space shuttle fleet in 2011, Russian Soyuz spacecraft have served as the only means to ferry crew to and from the space outpost, the latest price tag being $71 million per seat.

 

Earlier this month, NASA made a major step toward ending the period of expensive dependence on Russian spacecraft, picking Boeing and SpaceX to transport astronauts to the station in the next few years. The California-based SpaceX, led by billionaire Elon Musk, has indicated its seats will cost $20 million apiece.

 

NASA has set a goal of 2017 for the first launch from Cape Canaveral.

 

SpaceX is already using its unmanned Dragon capsule to deliver supplies to the space station, and is developing its manned version.

 

 

Despite solar array glitch, Soyuz crew arrives at station

 

Bill Harwood – Spaceflight Now

 

Looking like a wounded bird with only one of its two solar wings deployed, a Russian Soyuz spacecraft glided to an otherwise picture-perfect docking with the International Space Station late Thursday, boosting the lab's crew back to six with the addition of a veteran cosmonaut, a NASA shuttle flier and the first female cosmonaut to win a station berth.

 

With commander Alexander Samokutyaev at the controls, flanked on the left by board engineer Elena Serova and on the right by Barry "Butch" Wilmore, the Soyuz TMA-14M spacecraft engaged the docking mechanism on the station's upper Poisk module at 10:11 p.m. EDT (GMT-4) as the two spacecraft sailed 260 miles above the Pacific Ocean approaching the coast of Ecuador.

 

"Contact and capture confirmed," someone said over a translated Russian audio loop. "Congratulations."

 

The linkup came six hours -- four orbits -- after a sky-lighting launch from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan. The eight-minute 45-second climb to space went smoothly, but only one of the Soyuz's two solar panels unfolded after the ship reached orbit.

 

A little more than a half hour after docking, perhaps helped along by the slight jarring of impact, the stuck left-side solar array suddenly popped free, easing any concerns about the ship's return to Earth next March.

 

"It's fully deployed, and it's as beautiful as they come," Samokutyaev reported in a translated call to Russian flight controllers.

 

"Now your vehicle is fully awake, finally," a Russian flight controller replied.

 

"Yeah, I guess, finally."

 

After extensive leak checks to verify a tight seal, hatches were expected to be opened shortly before midnight. Standing by to welcome their new crewmates aboard were Expedition 41 commander Maxim Suraev, European Space Agency astronaut Alexander Gerst and NASA flight engineer Reid Wiseman.

 

The trio has had the station to themselves since Sept. 10 when outgoing commander Steven Swanson, Soyuz commander Alexander Skvortsov and Oleg Artemyev returned to Earth aboard the TMA-12M ferry craft.

 

Samokutyaev is a veteran of a previous station flight, logging 164 days in space in 2011. Wilmore has a shuttle flight to his credit, serving as pilot of the Atlantis for an 11-day station visit in 2009. Serova, the fourth female cosmonaut and the first to visit the space station, is making her first flight.

 

"There were a number of women on the ISS before me, but I will be the first Russian woman cosmonaut," she said in a NASA interview. "I never thought about it too much because space is what I do for work, and that’s what I think about it: it’s my work. But obviously for Russian women it might be a breakthrough in this area."

 

Cosmonaut Valentina Tereshkova was the first Russian woman in space, launched in June 1963. Svetlana Savitskaya was the second, flying in 1982 and again in 1984. Elena Kondakova was the most recent, flying in 1994 on a Soyuz spacecraft and again in 1997 aboard the space shuttle. Forty-five U.S. women have flown in space, along with nine from other nations.

 

Married to an aerospace engineer and the mother of an 11-year-old child, Serova is firmly focused on the job at hand, dismissing questions about the greater significance of her mission.

 

"There have been quite a few female astronauts before me and I don't see my flying as such an outstanding event," said said in a later interview. "Each of us is first and foremost governed by his or her primary tasks aboard the station. So, I would say this is a regular and nominal occurrence. Nothing special."

 

But like anyone preparing for a space flight, she later admitted "I'm excited and I'm anxious."

 

"We've been studying for a long time, studying the vehicle, reading the manuals, and now we'll be on our own," she said through a translator. "I think our crew is ready."

 

Samokutyaev, married and a father of one, said he was pleased with Serova's progress, calling her "my pupil" and adding that "she achieved more than I could hope for."

 

In an interview with CBS News, he said he welcomed the presence of women in orbit, adding a somewhat less-than-liberated take on roles and responsibilities.

 

"When I entered (the space) station for the first time I was met by a woman, (NASA astronaut) Catherine Coleman, and for all of us who were new to spaceflight, she was like a mother to us," he said. "We are happy that a Russian woman is going to be flying on ISS, only the fourth woman cosmonaut and the first Russian woman on ISS.

 

"Of course, we are trying to distribute our duties on board and Elena promised that the cuisine will be delicious! Also, she promised the Russian segment would be very comfortable and cozy, like home."

 

But Serova is nothing but serious about her role. At a pre-flight news conference, a reporter asked her to talk "more about your, maybe, everyday life on the station, how you see it? For example, your hair, how are you planning to do your hair?"

 

"I have a question for you," Serova replied. "Why don't you ask the question about Alexander's hair? I'm sorry, this is my answer."

 

The Soyuz TMA-14M flight comes during a time of increased tension between Russia and the United States in the wake of Russia's annexation of Crimea and the ongoing crisis in Ukraine. Despite U.S. sanctions and an escalating war of words at the diplomatic level, Wilmore said there was no stress among space workers.

 

He praised his Russian trainers and said everyone had gone out of their way to make him feel welcome.

 

"From day one, if I didn't watch the news or listen to the news, I would have no idea that there were any political tensions at all with respect to what I've done here," he said in an interview from Moscow. "It's been no different at all. Our instructors here in Russia are very passionate about what they do and ensuring that we are well trained and prepared for our mission, and there's been no change in any of that. They have been wonderful.

 

"My crewmates, it has not been an issue," he said. "As far as the hierarchy at NASA, Roscosmos and Energia, there's been nothing that I'm aware of that trickled down to my level at all. Like I said, if I didn't know there were some political tensions I would have no idea. It's been wonderful, it's been great."

 

It's also been a challenge. A veteran Navy fighter pilot with more than 6,800 hours flying time, 663 carrier landings and a shuttle mission to his credit, Wilmore said learning Russian was the most difficult aspect of flying on a Soyuz.

 

"When I was in high school and college, I never had to learn a foreign language," he said. "But when I got assigned to this mission, understanding at least some portion of Russian was a requirement. So the hardest thing that I've done is learning Russian, by far. There are certain challenges involved with learning a new vehicle, but learning the language is difficult, and it's tough. I'm still learning."

 

The Expedition 41 crew faces a particularly busy few weeks in orbit, staging three spacewalks in October, unloading and repacking a SpaceX Dragon cargo ship and taking delivery of an Orbital Sciences cargo craft and a Russian Progress supply ship.

 

Two NASA spacewalks are planned to move a failed ammonia pump module to a long-term storage location on the station's solar power truss and to replace a device called a sequential shunt unit that will restore one of the station's eight power channels to normal operation. 

 

The pump storage spacewalk, by Wiseman and Gerst, is planned for Oct. 7 while the SSU swap out, by Wiseman and Wilmore, is targeted for Oct. 15. Suraev and Samokutyaev plan to venture outside on Oct. 22 to replace materials science experiments and to carry out routine maintenance.

 

The SpaceX Dragon cargo ship, launched early Sunday morning, is the fourth operational flight under a $1.6 billion contract with NASA that calls for 12 missions to deliver some 44,000 pounds of cargo. The latest Dragon reached the space station Tuesday, approaching from directly below and then holding position while Gerst, operating the station's robot arm, locked onto a grapple fixture so the capsule could be pulled in for berthing at the Earth-facing port of the forward Harmony module.

 

The spacecraft was loaded with some 2.5 tons of equipment and supplies, including an experimental 3D printer, 20 research mice, an instrument to measure ocean wind speeds and a wide variety of other items, including a month's supply of food, fresh clothing and spare parts.

 

After unloading the supply ship, the station crew will repack it with some 3,400 pounds of cargo, experiment samples and other components for return to Earth. Unberthing and splashdown in the Pacific Ocean is planned for Oct. 18. Two days later, the Orbital Sciences Cygnus cargo ship, the company's third mission under a $1.9 billion resupply contract, is scheduled for launch from Wallops Island, Va., carrying another load of supplies and equipment.

 

The Progress M-25M supply ship -- the 57th launched to the station -- is scheduled for takeoff from Baikonur Oct. 29. After that, the combined crew will enjoy several weeks of uninterrupted scientific research and maintenance before Suraev, Gerst and Wiseman depart aboard the Soyuz TMA-13M spacecraft on Nov. 10, closing out a 165-day mission.

 

Their replacements -- Soyuz TMA-15M commander Alexander Shkaplerov, NASA astronaut Terry Virts and ESA flier Samantha Cristoforetti -- are scheduled for launch Nov. 23. Wilmore, Samokutyaev and Serova are expected to spend 167 days in orbit, returning to Earth March 12 next year.

 

Asked how his family would cope with the long absence, Wilmore said his wife, Deanna, and his two daughters, 7 and 10, were well prepared. NASA has even loaned an iPad to the family for weekly video conferences from orbit.

 

"My wife, Deanna, is a wonderful mother, a wonderful wife and she teaches our daughters, we home school our daughters and she spends a great deal of time with them and she's helped me prepare them for this entire two-and-a-half year training flow," he said. "It hasn't been that painful. There's a lot of people around our nation, around the globe, that the father's job takes them away from their families. And this one's no different.

 

"The opportunity to do these things, to have the opportunity to work on the International Space Station is something that's very intriguing for me and I'm trying to give the girls a little bit of that as well, to help them understand the importance of it all. And I think they do."

 

 

One of Soyuz TMA-14M's Solar Panels Fails to Unfold After Rocket Blasts Off for ISS

 

RIA Novosti

 

MOSCOW, September 26 (RIA Novosti) - One of the two solar panels aboard Russia's manned Soyuz TMA-14M spacecraft has so far been unable to unfold, a source in the mission control center of the Russian Federal Space Agency told RIA Novosti early Friday.

 

"According to our data, one of the solar panels is still unable to unfold for reasons unknown. But preliminary data suggest that it will not impede [the spacecraft] from docking to the ISS. They have carried out a maneuver just now which involved all of the spacecraft's engines, all systems are running smoothly, the crew is OK," the source in the agency said.

 

The Soyuz-FG orbital carrier rocket blasted off earlier in the day from a launching pad at the Gagarin Start launch site at the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan.

 

It is carrying an international crew that consists of Yelena Serova, Russia's first female cosmonaut in 17 years, as well as her fellow cosmonaut Alexander Samokutyayev and NASA astronaut Barry Wilmore.

 

Yelena Serova is the fourth female cosmonaut from Russia to ever fly in space, the first being USSR's Valentina Tereshkova who made history in 1963 as the first woman ever to go into space on a sole flight. Serova's flight has effectively ended spaceflight's 17-year male "hegemony."

 

Soyuz TMA-14M's mission to the International Space Station will be the 123rd since 1967. It was reported earlier that the Soyuz spacecraft had successfully separated from the carrier rocket's third stage.

 

It is due to reach the ISS about six hours after the launch. The docking will automatically begin at 6:15 a.m. local time (02:15 GMT).

 

 

Russian Soyuz Overcomes Solar Array Problem to Deliver Three to ISS

 

Mark Carreau – Aviation Week

 

Russia's Soyuz TMA-14M spacecraft carried out a successful automated docking with the International Space Station late Thursday, delivering three new U.S. and Russian crew members, including the first female cosmonaut assigned to live and work aboard the orbiting science laboratory.

 

The six hour, four orbit launch to docking transit unfolded despite the failure of the port solar array on the capsule to deploy properly after the lift off. However, 38 minutes after the linkup, the port array deployed normally, and NASA reported it seemed to be functioning properly.

 

"This anamoly will soon be forgotten," predicted Bill Gerstenmaier, NASA's associate administrator for human exploration and operations. Gerstenmaier was among the agency dignitaries at the Soyuz launch complex. A preliminary analysis indicated that capsule could have carried out a single solar array re-entry with the three astronauts, if necessary, he said.

 

The crew transport carrying NASA astronaut Barry "Butch" Wilmore, Alexander Samokutyaev and Elena Serova docked with the Russian segment Poisk module at 10:11 p.m., EDT, several minutes ahead of schedule.

 

"Capture confirmed," radioed the Soyuz crew, "We're latched."

 

Soyuz TMA-14M commander Alexander Samokytyaev, left, and co-pilot Elena Serova await lift off with NASA's Barry "Butch" Wilmore , not visible in this view, from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakystan.  NASA TV

 

The newcomers were greeted by ISS Expedition 41 commander Max Suraev (of Russia), NASA's Reid Wiseman and Alexander Gerst (of the European Space Agency). The linkup restored the ISS to six crew operations for the first time since Sept. 10, when three U.S. and Russian fliers returned to Earth after more than five months in orbit.

 

The Soyuz TMA-14M lifted off from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan at 4:25 p.m., EDT, or Friday at 2:25 a.m., local time. The three stage Soyuz launch vehicle and capsule climbed through misty overcast skies to reach orbit. The starboard power generating solar panel and communications antennas deployed as scheduled.

 

The port solar array failure proved a non-issue because of the capsule's battery power and the short trip. Four scheduled rendezvous maneuvers required to carry out the expedited launch to docking transit that would otherwise take two days were conducted as planned.

 

"We are monitoring the batteries and they seem to be fine," Russia's Mission Control told Samokutyaev, the Soyuz commander, during post-launch troubleshooting.

 

The new crew has trained to live and work aboard the ISS for five to six months.

 

Wilmore, 51, a U. S. Navy captain, is in line to succeed Suraev as ISS commander in November. He piloted an 11-day NASA shuttle space ISS assembly and re-supply mission in 2009.

 

Samokutyaev, 44, a retired Russian air force colonel, logged 164 days aboard the ISS in 2011 as a flight engineer.

 

Serova, a 38-year-old flight test engineer, is the first Russian woman to reach orbit since cosmonaut Elena Kondakova, who flew aboard a nine-day NASA shuttle mission in May 1997.

 

Serova, who served as Samokutyaev's backup pilot aboard the Soyuz, has striven to keep the focus of the mission on her responsibilities as a flight engineer rather than her gender.

 

The six member crew will participate in or supervise more than 150 experiments and technology demonstrations.

 

In October, NASA plans to supervise a pair of maintenance spacewalks, the first choreographed by the agency since cooling system water leaked into the helmet of the U.S. space suit worn by European Space Agency astronaut Luca Parmitano in July 2013.

 

All but emergency U.S. spacewalks were placed on hold after the incident while NASA traced the source of the leak to a blocked cooling system fan pump separator within the protective garment and engineered repairs. Plans to resume the excursions in August were delayed again when a new issue arose with the fuses in the spacesuit batteries.

 

Two sets of new batteries are now aboard the station, one pair carried by the new Soyuz transport and the other delivered by the commercial SpaceX Dragon resupply mission that berthed to the U. S. segment early Tuesday.

 

 

First Russian woman lifts off to International Space Station

 

Dmitry Solovyov – Reuters

 

(Reuters) - A Russian rocket blasted off from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan to the International Space Station (ISS) on Friday, taking to orbit a U.S.-Russian trio including the first Russian woman to serve on the $100 billion space outpost.

 

The Soyuz rocket lifted off from a vast steppe into a black sky at 0225 a.m. (10:25 p.m. ET on Thursday) to take Russian Alexander Samokutyaev, his compatriot Elena Serova and U.S. astronaut Barry Wilmore into orbit.

 

"Everything in order on board, we feel well," a live television broadcast by U.S. space agency NASA showed Samokutyaev reporting to Russia's Mission Control during the lift-off.

 

A toy rabbit with an attached tiny Russian tricolor flag dangling above the crew's heads in the cabin started floating in weightlessness after about nine minutes into the flight.

 

"The capsule is now safely in orbit," a NASA presenter said.

 

The incoming crew, set to reach the ISS about six hours later, will join the team of Russian Commander Maxim Suraev, U.S. Flight Engineer Reid Wiseman and Flight Engineer Alexander Gerst, a German astronaut of the European Space Agency.

 

Suraev's crew, which has manned the space station since May, is set to return to Earth in November. The incoming crew will serve 170 days until landing in March.

 

The 15-nation laboratory, which flies at an altitude of about 260 miles (420 km), is overseen by Russia and the United States.

 

But this year the two nations' relations hit their lowest point since the Cold War following Russia's annexation of Ukraine's Crimean peninsula and economic sanctions imposed by the United States as punishment for the takeover and for what Washington sees as Moscow's support for pro-Russian separatists in Ukraine.

 

In May, a senior Russian government official cast doubt on the long-term future of the ISS, saying Moscow would reject a U.S. request to prolong the orbiting station's use beyond 2020.

 

FIRST RUSSIAN WOMAN ABOARD THE ISS

 

Serova, a 38-year-old trained as space industry engineer, was only the fourth Russian woman in history to fly into space. She will also be the first Russian woman to work aboard the ISS, whose first component was launched in 1998.

 

Her predecessor, Elena Kondakova, made her second - and last - flight to the Russian space station Mir in 1997 as part of a NASA space shuttle crew. Mir, launched by the Soviet Union in 1986, operated until 2001.

 

Serova, after seven years of hard training as a cosmonaut, said in an interview that she had long dreamed about proving that Russian women are able to return to space flights.

 

The first woman on Earth to fly into space was Russian Valentina Tereshkova in 1963, who is still remembered by her flight call-sign "Chaika" ("Seagull").

 

Serova said that if she were to choose, she would have taken "Phoenix" as her personal call-sign for this mission.

 

 

Russia's First Female ISS Crew Member Launches Into Space

 

Matthew Bodner – The Moscow Times

 

Russia's first female cosmonaut to travel to the International Space Station, Yelena Serova, launched early Friday morning, making her the fourth Russian woman in history to go to space.

 

Serova is part of the latest international crew of astronauts and cosmonauts to fly to the International Space Station, where they will spend six months. She is joined by Russian cosmonaut Alexander Samokutyaev and U.S. astronaut Barry Wilmore.

 

A native of a country far more patriarchal than Western Europe or North America, Serova has been largely stoic regarding gender issues leading up to the flight, but during a pre-launch press conference at the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan on Wednesday, she responded to one reporter's question about taking care of her hair with a question of her own.

 

"Aren't you interested in my colleagues' hair?" she said at a news conference that was televised on Russian state television.

 

"I will be the first Russian woman to fly to ISS. I feel a huge responsibility toward the people who trained us and I want to assure them: We won't let you down!"

 

Serova's struggle with Russia's gender divide isn't new. Russia's space program, geriatric and conservative, has historically been under a glass ceiling. The numbers speak for themselves. In 1963, only two years after Yury Gagarin made his historic "first flight," Soviet citizen Valentina Tereshkova became the first woman in space. Since then, only two other Russian women have made the trip to space.

 

In contrast, NASA has flown more than 40 women of various nationalities into orbit aboard U.S. space shuttles, and several have commanded the International Space Station, such as NASA astronaut Suni Williams.

 

Williams recently completed a tour as NASA's head of training at the Gagarin Cosmonaut Training Center in Star City, just outside Moscow.

 

In November the European Space Agency will send Italian Samantha Cristoforetti, meaning that for several months, ISS will have two women aboard.

 

Tereshkova's flight was conceived by the Soviet leadership as a publicity stunt and was prompted in part by rumors that NASA was considering recruiting a woman into its fledgling astronaut corps.

 

When Tereshkova's Vostok 6 spacecraft experienced technical difficulties during the flight, Soviet space officials deflected criticism by blaming the female pilot, and plans to recruit additional women were dropped.

 

At a celebration for the 50th anniversary of Tereshkova's flight last year, former cosmonaut candidate Yelena Dobrokvashina was quoted by news agency RIA Novosti as saying the disparity between Russian and American women in space was, "of course, linked with the peculiarities of our mentality."

 

"Although they always said that everyone was equal — men and women — it's no secret that we live in a man's world," Dobrokvashina explained. "There was an opinion that men were scared that if women went into space … the aura of heroism would be lost."

 

In the early 1980s, Tereshkova's story repeated itself when word got out that NASA was planning to send Sally Ride, its first female astronaut, aboard the space shuttle Challenger in 1983. Therefore, Svetlana Savitskaya was sent aboard a Soyuz spacecraft in 1982 to become the first woman to conduct a spacewalk.

 

Only after the collapse of the Soviet Union did another Russian woman fly into space, Yelena Kondakova in 1994 and again on the space shuttle Atlantis in 1997 — making her the only Russian woman to fly on two different vehicles.

 

After another 20-year interlude, Yelena Serova was tapped to become Russia's first woman to visit the International Space Station — a massive $100 billion project that has been the focal point of both the American and Russian manned space programs for almost 14 years.

 

Serova, 38, is a space program insider. After working as an engineer for RSC Energia — the company that builds Russia's manned spacecraft and space stations — and doing a stint in Russia's Mission Control Center, Serova was selected to become a cosmonaut candidate in 2006.

 

In the days before her flight, Russian media, reacting to popular stereotypes about the role of women in Russian society, ran stories focusing on Serova's ability to communicate with her family while away from home, and the clothes that she would bring with her.

 

"Russian female cosmonaut promised to call her husband from orbit," one RIA headline read, as if Serova were the first human to leave their family behind to travel into space. Not to mention the fact that she is married to another cosmonaut, Mark Serov.

 

"My daughter is almost 17 years old," Serova soberly explained, adding that "ISS is now outfitted with completely modern communications systems, it has IP telephones and e-mail. I'll call home."

 

Another story, carried by Interfax on Thursday, reported that an entirely new line of cosmonaut clothing was designed for Serova.

 

"Yelena ordered a great deal of clothing," Alexander Yarov, head of Centaur Science, the company that has made clothing for cosmonauts for 40 years, was quoted as saying by Interfax.

 

"Her socks had to be custom-made," Yarov said," because she has little feet."

 

 

U.S.-Russian ISS crew includes ex-Tenn. Athlete

 

Mike Organ – USA Today

 

BAIKONUR, Kazakhstan — A U.S.-Russian crew that includes a former Tennessee college athlete flying his third NASA mission has blasted off successfully for the International Space Station.

 

Barry "Butch" Wilmore, 51, who grew up in the Una neighborhood southeast of Nashville, joined Russians Alexander Samokutyaev and Elena Serova in the Russian Soyuz-TMA14M spacecraft that lifted off as scheduled at 4:25 p.m. ET from the Russian-leased Baikonur launch facility in Kazakhstan.

 

The Soyuz entered a designated orbit in about 10 minutes after the launch. About six hours later it docked with the orbiting outpost, joining an international crew of three already at the station.

 

Samokutyaev has already flown to space, but Serova is on her first mission. She is the first Russian woman to fly to space since 1997, and the fourth woman in the history of the Soviet and Russian space programs. Valentina Tereshkova became the first woman in space in 1963.

 

In November Wilmore will assume command of the six-month mission, which will end in March 2015.

 

Of mice and spacemen: SpaceX Dragon delivers cargo

 

Wilmore was an outstanding high school linebacker and recruited by a handful of small schools. He ended up attending Tennessee Tech because of the school's engineering program. He walked on with the football team and quickly became a starter.

 

As a senior, Wilmore recorded 143 total tackles, which ranks third on the school's all-time single-season tackles list. In 2003 Wilmore was inducted into the Tennessee Tech Sports Hall of Fame.

 

Wilmore is a Navy pilot who has logged 259 hours in space. After joining NASA in 2000 he flew aboard the space shuttle Atlantis and in 2009 piloted his first space shuttle flight.

 

He expects a much different trip this time.

 

Boeing, SpaceX win NASA contracts to fly crews

 

"During the shuttle mission, roughly two weeks in length, there was a lot to do in a short period of time," Wilmore said. "They pack the schedule full to get everything done that you need to get done. It leaves very little self time to just look out the window; I think the most time I had to sit and look out was maybe 20 minutes. So I look forward to sticking my nose in the window for at least two revolutions around the earth, for about three hours, and watching the beauty of the earth go by."

 

Since the retirement of the U.S. space shuttle fleet in 2011, Russian Soyuz spacecraft have served as the only means to ferry crew to and from the space outpost, the latest price tag being $71 million per seat.

 

Earlier this month, NASA made a major step toward ending the period of expensive dependence on Russian spacecraft, picking Boeing and SpaceX to transport astronauts to the station in the next few years. The California-based SpaceX, led by billionaire Elon Musk, has indicated its seats will cost $20 million apiece.

 

NASA has set a goal of 2017 for the first launch from Cape Canaveral.

 

SpaceX is already using its unmanned Dragon capsule to deliver supplies to the space station, and is developing its manned version.

 

 

Sierra Nevada To Continue Dream Chaser; May Protest Contract Award

 

Frank Morring Jr. – Aviation Week

 

Sierra Nevada Corp. plans to develop its Dream Chaser commercial crew vehicle despite its loss to Boeing and SpaceX in the three-way NASA competition for contracts to take the development to flight test and operations.

 

The company has built an international network of partners and potential customers, including the European Space Agency (ESA), German Aerospace Center (DLR) and the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA). Mark Sirangelo, who heads the company's Space Systems unit in Louisville, Colorado, said Sept. 25 that Sierra Nevada will bid on the second-round NASA Commercial Resupply Services (CRS-2) contract to deliver cargo to the International Space Station.

 

He also said the company may file a formal protest of NASA's decision to reject its commercial crew bid with the U.S. Government Accountability Office. The deadline for a bid protest, which could lead to a reconsideration of the contract awards, is Sept. 26, and Sirangelo suggested Sierra Nevada may have financial and technical grounds for the action. A final corporate decision, in consultation with the company's lawyers, was planned following a meeting Sept. 25.

 

Despite the plans to move ahead with development of the Dream Chaser, a lifting-body reusable spaceplane based on NASA's canceled HL-20 testbed, the company laid off about 90 employees Sept. 24 in response to the NASA decision, which was announced Sept. 17. Sirangelo said those laid off were hired in anticipation of winning the contract, and the slots could be filled again as the development moves forward.

 

"All the companies submitted an acceptable contract with their proposal, which meant you could start very quickly," Sirangelo said. "Because of that we had to say 'We can't wait until contract announcement to start hiring people; we have to go out and start gearing up ahead of time.' So we did that, and we hired about 120, 130 people who came on board knowing that their jobs were contingent on the win. Those people we did lay off yesterday, but that still leaves a very significant core team."

 

The layoffs hit about 9% of the company's Colorado workforce, he said. Over the past five years that workforce has grown from about 200 to more than 1,100, according to company figures.

 

The company still has NASA funding under earlier phases of the agency's commercial crew development effort, and that work will continue as planned. Overall, Sirangelo says, Sierra Nevada is in good shape financially to continue Dream Chaser development in association with its partners. In addition to ESA, DLR and JAXA, industrial partners on the project include Lockheed Martin, which has built a flight-hardware composite structure for the first orbital Dream Chaser; United Launch Alliance, which would launch Dream Chaser on an Atlas V; Aerojet Rocketdyne, MacDonald Dettwiler, Jacobs, Moog, Siemens PLM Software, and Southwest Research Institute, according to the company website.

 

 

Sierra Nevada Lays Off Dream Chaser Staff

 

Jeff Foust – Space News

 

After losing a NASA commercial crew competition earlier this month, Sierra Nevada Corp. (SNC) has laid off about 100 employees who had been working on its Dream Chaser vehicle, the company confirmed Sept. 24.

 

"As a result of not being selected by NASA, SNC needed to conduct a limited staff reduction of our Dream Chaser team of the personnel that have come on board in anticipation of the growth a win would have provided," company spokeswoman Krystal Scordo said in a Sept. 24 email.

 

The layoffs, which took place Sept. 24, accounted for approximately nine percent of the Colorado-based workforce for SNC's Space Systems business unit, which had grown from 200 people in 2009 to more than 1,100 prior to the layoffs. Scordo said the layoffs affected only those working on Dream Chaser.

 

"We spent considerable time exploring every avenue and doing all that we could think of to keep the impact of as minimal as possible," Scordo said. "We have retained as many people as we were able."

 

SNC was one of three major contenders for contracts in NASA's Commercial Crew Transportation Capability (CCtCap) program, the next phase of the space agency's efforts to support development of vehicles capable of transporting astronauts to and from the international space station. However, NASA awarded CCtCap contracts on Sept. 16 to two other companies, Boeing and Space Exploration Technologies Corp.

 

In the months leading up to the CCtCap announcement, SNC executives said they were exploring alternative uses of Dream Chaser in addition to, or in place of, ISS crew transportation. The company announced a number of partnerships with other space agencies and organizations, and will continue those efforts. "We are aggressively pursuing commercial and international paths for our program," Scordo said. "SNC has made the decision to continue the development of the Dream Chaser to flight."

 

SNC will continue to work with NASA on the company's remaining milestones for its existing Commercial Crew Integrated Capability award it received from the agency in August 2012. The company is working on the final two milestones in that agreement, including a glide flight of a Dream Chaser test vehicle.

 

Scordo said SNC plans to pursue additional NASA business with Dream Chaser, such as a recompete of the Commercial Resupply Services (CRS) contracts for ISS cargo transportation. According to NASA procurement documents, the request for proposals for the second CRS contract is scheduled for release at the end of September, with proposals due in mid-November.

 

 

Sierra Nevada cuts staff, still aims to fly Dream Chaser

 

James Dean - Florida Today

 

A week after losing out in NASA's Commercial Crew competition, Sierra Nevada Corp. Space Systems has cut about 100 people from the team working on its Dream Chaser mini-shuttle.

 

However, the Louisville, Colo.-based company plans to continue developing the Dream Chaser through a first spaceflight, and will pitch the space plane to NASA as a new cargo hauler to the International Space Station.

 

"We are aggressively pursuing commercial and international paths for our program," said spokeswoman Krystal Scordo.

 

Sierra Nevada said it cut 9 percent of a Colorado staff that had grown over the past five years from 200 to 1,110.

 

Scordo said the layoffs affected Dream Chaser program employees who had been hired in anticipation of Sierra Nevada winning a contract from NASA's Commercial Crew Program, which did not happen.

 

NASA on Sept. 16 awarded contracts to Boeing and SpaceX, worth up to $4.2 billion and $2.6 billion respectively.

 

Sierra Nevada still has milestones to complete under an earlier agreement with NASA that would continue approach and landing tests of a Dream Chaser test article at a California runway.

 

Manufacturing of the first Dream Chaser orbital flight vehicle is under way, and the company booked a United Launch Alliance Atlas V rocket for an uncrewed test flight that was targeted for late 2016.

 

Sierra Nevada has also signed several agreements with international space agencies that might be interested in the spacecraft.

 

"SNC has a significant ongoing Dream Chaser team sufficient to execute the program," said Scordo.

 

If the company had won a crew contract, it planned to base Dream Chaser flight operations at Kennedy Space Center, sharing processing space with NASA's Orion program in the Armstrong Operations and Checkout Building and landing missions on the former shuttle runway.

 

Its "Dream Team" of suppliers included Cape Canaveral-based Craig Technologies, which was to provide ground support equipment to transport the Dream Chaser.

 

NASA plans to release a request for proposals soon for the next round of contracts to fly cargo to the space station, missions now performed by SpaceX and Orbital Sciences Corp., with SpaceX's Dragon the only craft that returns to Earth. Contracts may be awarded next spring.

 

Compared to capsules like the Dragon or Boeing's CST-100, Sierra Nevada believes the Dream Chaser's lower G-forces during re-entry, runway landings and non-toxic fuels are better suited for returning sensitive science experiments (or people) from space and providing quick access to them on the ground.

 

NASA has said it hopes to continue its partnership with Sierra Nevada even though it did not win a crew contract.

 

 

Sierra Nevada Space Systems' Dream Chaser employees laid off

 

Laura Keeney - Denver Post

 

Sierra Nevada Corp.'s Louisville-based Space Systems division Wednesday laid off about 90 employees from its Dream Chaser program after having lost a high-profile NASA contract bid.

 

Space Systems last week lost out on a NASA contract for the Dream Chaser, which would have shuttled astronauts to the international space station. The $6.8 billion total contract instead was split between Chicago-based Boeing Co, which received $4.2 billion, and Elon Musk's SpaceX, which received $2.6 billion.

 

Space Systems chief Mark Sirangelo said many of those let go had been hired in anticipation of the NASA contract.

 

"We did do a workforce reduction, but it was a relatively minor one compared to what it might have been," he said.

 

The layoffs represent a 9.4 percent reduction in Space Systems' Colorado workforce, he said. Sirangelo said the laid-off workers will receive severance, but he would not disclose details of the package.

 

Space Systems announced in January a November 2016 launch date for its first Dream Chaser orbital mission, as well as an expansion along Florida's space coast, sharing NASA facilities at Kennedy Space Center with Jefferson County-based Lockheed Martin Space Systems.

 

Sirangelo said he could not comment on how these layoffs would affect the launch plans. He did say the Dream Chaser program will continue, and Space Systems intends to bid on upcoming NASA contracts.

 

 

Space taxis (Editorial)

 

Houston Chronicle

 

NASA's announcement last week that it had contracted with two private companies, Boeing and SpaceX, to re-energize its struggling space program is good news on the space-exploration front. The agreement, worth up to $6.8 billion, calls for developing and operating the rocketry and crew capsules to transport U.S. astronauts to and from the International Space Station by 2017 ("NASA picks space allies," Page A1, Sept. 17).

 

The pact comes not a moment too soon. By 2008, observers fretted that the U.S. domination of space was fading, while other nations were rapidly expanding their capabilities. NASA's budget shrank, and in 2011, with the final flight of the shuttle Atlantis, the entire U.S. shuttle fleet was retired. Since then, U.S. astronauts have had to rely on Russia's Soyuz capsules to ferry them to and from the space station, at a cost of $70 million per seat - an increasingly problematic arrangement, given the current strains between the two powers.

 

Under the contracts' terms, Boeing, the aeronautics giant that has been part of NASA's manned spacecraft efforts for four decades and was the major contractor on the space station, will receive $4.2 billion. Relative newcomer SpaceX, whose Dragon was the first commercial spacecraft to deliver cargo to the space station in 2012, will receive $2.6 billion.

 

Boeing says it will build three of its CST-100 crafts, which each can carry up to seven passengers, and SpaceX's proposed four-person capsule will incorporate many features of its cargo vessel. Once cleared for flight, each company will undertake between two and six missions.

 

This collaboration makes excellent sense and should result in more innovation and reduced costs, although the White House and Congress have concerns that it could result in competition between the private sector and NASA for scarce tax dollars.

 

It doesn't have to, if Congress would address those concerns without partisanship, as it has done in previous years, and if President Barack Obama would voice his strong commitment to manned space travel (which he has yet to do).

 

And the risks are not nearly equal to the rewards: Since its inception in 1958, NASA has not only opened up the cosmos for us, it has enriched and improved our everyday lives with a cornucopia of "spinoffs," as it calls them - not necessarily inventions, but valuable enhancements or advances in almost 1,800 documented technologies, such as cell-phone cameras, MRIs and CAT scans, baby formula, artificial limbs, freeze-dried foods and cordless tools.

 

Texas, and particularly Houston, home to NASA and the Johnson Space Center, has in the past been a prime beneficiary. A NASA/Southwest Business Research analysis estimated that by 2009, JSC had a workforce of more than 18,000, with gross salaries of about $1.7 billion, and that JSC spending had generated about $3 billion in business volume in Texas.

 

And even though the launch site for this next phase is expected to be Florida's Cape Canaveral, Boeing has contracted with JSC to use its mission control for CST-100 flights, a welcome development for that currently under-utilized facility. And SpaceX broke ground last Monday on a commercial spaceport near Boca Chica Beach in South Texas, a move expected to create 300 jobs and pump $85 million in capital investment into the local economy.

 

Former U.S. Rep. Nick Lampson, a Democrat whose congressional district included NASA and the Johnson Space Center, told the Chronicle, "I see a lot more emphasis this past year on the possibilities and excitement of space travel. The benefits we get from it are immense, and that's not even accounting for all the children who are inspired by it to learn math and science and pursue their dreams."

 

That investment in our future could be the most valuable spinoff of all.

 

 

Maven and MOM Orbiters Send First Pictures From Mars

 

Alan Boyle – NBC News

 

Just days after their arrival, India's Mars Orbiter Mission and NASA's Maven orbiter have both sent back their first pictures of the Red Planet.

 

The first view from Maven, acquired just eight hours after the bus-sized spacecraft entered orbit on Sunday night, is actually a triple look at Mars' atmosphere in three ultraviolet wavelengths from a height of 22,680 miles (36,500 kilometers).

 

Blue shows ultraviolet light reflected by atomic hydrogen, extending out for thousands of miles. False-color green shows the reflection from atomic oxygen, and red shows the ultraviolet light reflected by the planet's surface. There's also a composite view that puts together all three wavelengths.

 

Image: Maven views of Mars LASP / Univ. of Colorado / NASA

Maven's Imaging Ultraviolet Spectrograph provides three views of Mars in ultraviolet wavelengths. The different wavelengths reveal the distribution of atomic hydrogen and oxygen, as well as light reflected by the surface. The bright spot at lower right is light reflected either by polar ice or clouds.

 

The pictures reveal what's happening to the molecules of water and carbon dioxide that are breaking down in Mars' atmosphere. Lighter hydrogen rises, while Mars' gravity keeps the heavier oxygen atoms closer to the surface. Maven derives from an acronym for "Mars Atmosphere and Volatile Evolution," and these pictures serve as a prelude to a yearlong mission that's devoted to unraveling Mars' airy secrets.

 

Meanwhile, the Mars Orbiter Mission — also known as MOM or Mangalyaan (Hindi for "Mars-Craft") — got right to work after Tuesday night's orbital insertion. One color picture shows Mars and a thin layer of its dust-laden atmosphere, as seen from an altitude of 5,250 miles (8,449 kilometers). Another photo captures a view of Mars' cratered surface from a height of 4,500 miles (7,300 kilometers).

 

The color camera aboard India's Mars Orbiter Mission spacecraft shows the thin layer of Mars' dust-laden atmosphere on the edge of the planet's disk, as seen from an altitude of 8,449 kilometers.

 

MOM's months-long study of Martian atmosphere, weather and mineralogy will complement Maven's observations. MOM's instruments are better-suited for detecting whiffs of methane, which have sparked a big question for astrobiologists: Is that methane strictly geological in origin, or could it hint at biological activity?

 

The findings from MOM and Maven will help flesh out our understanding of the Red Planet, adding to the scientific riches already being provided by the European Space Agency's Mars Express orbiter and NASA's Curiosity and Opportunity rovers, as well as Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter and Mars Odyssey.

 

 

Mars Curiosity rover snaps traffic light-shaped rock on the red planet

 

Yahoo! News

 

Space enthusiasts watching the Mars rover roam the surface of the red planet were stopped in their tracks after the explorer spotted - a traffic light.

 

Nasa has been beaming photos from the surface of Mars since its mobile robot Curiosity landed on the 'red' planet in August 2012 which is excellent news for armchair explorers like Joe Smith who noticed a bizarre traffic light-shaped rock formation on the footage.

 

Bristol-based Smith from YouTube channel ArtAlien.TV said: "I have been following the images from Nasa since the start and I flick through them on the Nasa website every day.

 

"I saw this one and I thought 'hang on, that looks a bit strange'.  I think it looks like a traffic light.

 

"It is hard to tell how big it would be without any point of reference, but I would estimate it was about 12 inches.

 

"I posted it on the internet and people said they thought it looked like a set of traffic lights too - although some people did say it looked like a totem pole."

 

According to Smith, the image was shot from the six-foot-high left hand side mast cam on the Curiosity Rover on Thursday 18 September.

 

ArtAlien.TV's website claims that: "There is comprehensive evidence for life on Mars if you know where and how to look for it."

 

Nasa, which ArtAlien.TV describes as a "military organization",  has yet to comment on the website's latest find.

 

 

New Asian Space Race Takes A Lap Around Mars

 

Forbes

 

Traffic around Mars is getting busier. This week saw the arrival in orbit of two new probes, one from America's Nasa, the other from a relatively new player, the Indian Space Research Organisation.

 

They bring the total number of successful Mars missions to 21.

 

Nasa's Maven — Mars Atmosphere and volatile evolution — arrived first, firing its engines to push it into an elliptical orbit from which it will gather data which, scientists hope, will help explain how the planet lost its atmosphere and water.

 

India's Mangalyaan ("Mars-craft" in Sanskrit) is the country's first interplanetary mission and cost just 11 per cent of Nasa's $410m budget. In fact, the mission cost $13m less than the Oscar-winning film Gravity.

 

It is also the first time a country has succeeded in getting to the Red Planet on its initial attempt.

 

But perhaps its most important accomplishment, at least from the point of view of New Delhi, is that it arrived before the Chinese could get there, because just as in the 1960s, the solar system is again the scene of an international technology contest — call it the Asian Space Race.

 

By some measures, the Chinese are clearly ahead. Although their first manned-spaceflight programme collapsed during the Cultural Revolution when several of its scientists were denounced, the country has since 2003 launched a dozen 'taikonauts' into orbit in its own Shenzhou spacecraft, which are similar to, but bigger than, Russia's Soyuz spacecraft.

 

India, by contrast, has only just designed its first prototype manned space capsule, though it has sent astronauts to be launched by Nasa and the Russian Federal Space Agency.

 

Among the political and economic bragging points the Indians can now deploy is the fact that the craft was built entirely with Indian designed and manufactured parts.

 

The significance of that becomes clearer if you consider that the spacecraft arrived two days before India's Prime Minister, Narendra Modi, is due to take a business delegation to the US to drum up investment.

 

Ironically, one reason the Indian mission was self-sufficient is the international isolation imposed on the country after its 1998 nuclear weapons tests.

 

"We had a history of technological apartheid, which actually allowed us to grow and work on developing technologies on very low scosts, Ajay Lele, a research fellow at the Institute for Defence Studies and Analyses, told The Telegraph.

 

 

EDITORIAL: For NASA, a new kind of star trek

 

Northwest Florida Daily News

 

Believe it or not, for-profit space ventures have been around a while. In pulp magazine stories of the 1930s and '40s and later in sci-fi movies of the 1950s, rockets to the moon and Mars were often built by private corporations and eccentric billionaires. When moviegoers visited the huge space station in "2001: A Space Odyssey" (released in 1968), what did they see? A Howard Johnson's and a Hilton hotel.

Real life is catching up with science fiction.

 

NASA, whose astronauts have been hitching rides on Russian rockets to reach the International Space Station since the last American shuttle was mothballed in 2011, announced Sept. 16 its new plan for getting the U.S. back into space on U.S. hardware. It's hiring private companies to do the job.

 

Specifically, veteran flier Boeing and newcomer SpaceX will get the contracts. Boeing will be paid $4.2 billion and SpaceX $2.6 billion. The space agency hopes to launch the program in 2017.

 

SpaceX, the California-based baby of billionaire Elon Musk — the company's full name is Space Exploration Technologies Corp. — is already delivering supplies to the space station. But the company "was not founded to bring T-shirts and food and water up to space; it was founded to bring people into space," its program manager said last month.

That's the spirit.

 

It's a spirit, by the way, seldom seen at NASA. The agency that took Americans to the moon in 1969 is today hobbled by bureaucracy. A recent report faulted even its program of counting asteroids and comets. The project required that NASA coordinate the efforts of various observatories to find and track space rocks that could pass near Earth, and the space agency fumbled the task.

 

Let's hope it won't fumble the next one. NASA hopes that once Boeing and SpaceX start ferrying astronauts to the space station, the government's lumbering, decades-old space program can concentrate on boldly going where no one has gone before — to the asteroids and Mars.

 

Assuming, of course, that private companies don't get there first.

 

 

CubeSat craze could create space debris catastrophe

 

Paul Marks – New Scientist

 

SWARMS go up and they don't come down. Tiny, cheap CubeSats are becoming an increasing danger in space. The mini-satellites could cause catastrophic collisions with larger craft, threatening to produce orbiting blizzards of space debris like those in the movie Gravity.

 

CubeSats measure just 10 centimetres on a side and weigh a maximum of 1.3 kilograms. The satellites can easily launch on multiple types of rockets or from the International Space Station (ISS). This gives students and hobbyists the opportunity to do real space science.

 

But the more hardware there is in space, the greater the chance of collisions. To mitigate these risks, CubeSats are supposed to come down within 25 years. However, there is no enforcement of this rule.

 

"Some CubeSat operators are knowingly putting their craft into orbits that will last much longer than 25 years, with some as long as a hundred years," says Hugh Lewis at the University of Southampton in the UK, who will spell out the burgeoning risks at the International Astronautical Congress in Toronto, Canada, on 29 September.

 

CubeSat popularity looks likely to increase. Around 100 of the craft were launched between 2003 and 2012, then another 100 were launched in 2013 alone. Lewis and his colleagues extrapolated those numbers to model what would happen if between 205 and 700 CubeSats were launched every year for the next 30 years.

 

At the 205-per-year launch rate, CubeSats will come within a dangerously close 17 kilometres of other spacecraft 16 million times over the three decades. At the highest rate, that rises to 165 million times.

 

Worryingly, the simulation has already proved accurate in one instance. It predicted CubeSat collisions should have started in the 2013 to 2014 period and, sure enough, the first one happened in May 2013. It resulted in the loss of Ecuador's first CubeSat, NEE-01 Pegaso.

 

Still, other researchers say Lewis's findings may overestimate the problem. "There is always a choice of model inputs and the spin put on interpretation," says Sara Seager at MIT.

 

Jer Chyi Liou, chief scientist at NASA's orbital debris programme in Houston, Texas, agrees, though he says the CubeSat risk needs careful study. The US Strategic Command's Joint Space Operations Center, which decides when the ISS should be moved to avoid debris, uses more stringent criteria than Lewis, he says.

 

Jonathan McDowell at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics foresees a wider problem in the move to ever-smaller satellites, like Sprites. These are the size of a circuit board and may be too small to be picked up by ground-based radar. "If these ever become popular then we have a big tracking problem," he says.

 

Whatever the actual risk, the report should be a wake-up call to the CubeSat industry to make sure the satellites have built-in ways to de-orbit, Seager says.

 

"The proliferation of CubeSats is phenomenal," she says. "Pandora's Box has been opened and it won't be closing."

 

 

Old-School NASA Photos Are Like Family Snapshots in Space

 

Zachary Slobig – Wired

 

Space photography is largely taken for granted these days. Stunning images from the Hubble space telescope, amazing martian panoramas (and charming selfies) taken by Curiosity, and snapshots from the International Space Station are just photos in our daily feeds, too often swiped aside with little thought or appreciation.

 

But there was a time not so long ago when images from space had the power to truly amaze, a time when a photo of, say, Ed White floating in the void boggled the mind and inspired the imagination. Photos from the earliest days of manned space exploration were stunning statements and, yes, powerful propaganda, yet many of them possessed the intimacy and casualness of vacation pictures.

 

Encountering the Astronomical Sublime: Vintage NASA Photographs 1961 – 1980, running through Oct. 25 at London's Breese Little gallery reminds us of this with a selection of vintage NASA photos. They document a key moment in history and reveal NASA's remarkable skill in harnessing the power of photography to, as gallery co-director Henry Little says, "enchant the taxpayers." These photos have the immediacy of snapshots from a roadtrip.

 

"A lot of the stuff on the moon are really quite close to holiday snaps," he says. "In one of the captions, the astronaut talks about wanting to get the flag, the man, and the moon all in one shot. It's like you're going on holiday, and there's a nice sunset and you want to get your mates in the foreground and the beach in the background."

 

It's all very practical in that way. These men were documenting one of history's greatest achievements, but they also were, in their way, tourists enjoying the most amazing vacation anyone's ever taken. That gives the photos a charm that was lost as space exploration became almost routine and lost some of its power to amaze. "The mystery of the moon sort of drained away when we got there and realized that really it was just a rock," Little says. "People assumed it might be a whole new era, but not that much changed. It was the world of tomorrow that never really arrived."

 

Still, it's hard not to look at photos taken by the Curiosity rover and not feel the same wonder our parents and grandparents felt seeing photos from the moon. And we are once again being tantalized by dreams of space travel from the likes of Virgin Galactic and Space X. The show dovetails nicely with this resurgence of a collective interest in exploring worlds beyond our own.

 

"We're presenting these images as the beginning of a process that is now entering a new phase," says Little. Space is, once again, "unabashedly cool."

 

 

NASA's modest program reflects risk-averse society, astronaut says

 

EFE – Fox News Latino

 

Former Apollo astronaut Walter Cunningham said that NASA's current modest program is a reflection of a risk-averse society which, in his opinion, is suffering from a lack of motivation.

 

During the Starmus science festival being held in Tenerife in Spain's Canary Islands, Cunningham said that the Apollo moon missions were worthwhile and dynamic and those who participated in them were afraid of the unknown, a situation that - he said - works very well.

 

He said he wasn't speaking about space, but about the psychological aspects and motivating factors that inspired the space race which, in his opinion, were the engine that led to success.

 

Cunningham, who was the lunar module pilot on the Apollo VII mission, said that those missions explored a new frontier, and he compared those trips into orbit and to the moon with the 16th century voyages from Europe to explore the world.

 

The attitude of refusing to consider the possibility of failure enabled those participating in the program to overcome all obstacles and achieve something that is a point of pride for all people, he added.

 

For the astronaut and physicist, during the Apollo epoch, society felt good about itself and the space program was an adventure that sent the world a message that mankind would not accept limits.

 

Exploration is not about eliminating risks but rather about managing them, he said.

 

Cunningham criticized the fact that, these days, decisions are placed in the hands of politicians who - he said - are just trying to stay in power and are not willing to take on risks.

 

 

 

END

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