To the JSC Community:
JSC 2.0 is about advancing human space exploration by being lean, agile, and adaptive to change. We have taken many steps toward that goal, including some center-wide efforts and many activities within organizations. I am initiating the next major step, Transforming JSC, which updates our organization and governance to be more lean, agile, and adaptive to change.
Over the past several months, Center Deputy Director Kirk Shireman led a small team of senior leaders in gathering information and making recommendations in this area; from that, I developed a plan which we discussed at a Senior staff meeting and with a number of stakeholders. Last week I asked our leadership team to share our plans with their respective teams. You can find new proposed org charts and the rationale behind this transformation at our JSC 2.0 site: http://strategicplan.jsc.nasa.gov/ I believe the proposed new structure enhances collaboration, engages leadership on a more strategic level and allows us to better coordinate exploration resources and activities and respond effectively to Agency priorities. It creates a leaner senior staff and provides a straight-forward organizational structure that readily enables change. The proposed organization also places a greater emphasis on preparing for the future through exploration integration and science.
I know how difficult and challenging change can be; my intent is to strengthen JSC as an organization so that we will continue to lead a global enterprise in human exploration, and successfully carry out future exploration missions, including a human mission to Mars. I appreciate your continuing support in helping to advance JSC 2.0.
Communication is critical over the coming weeks and months, so look for regular updates through briefings from your leaders, emails and the 2.0 website. I am planning an all-hands meeting in early August, where I'll further discuss the specific changes.
Ellen
| | JSC TODAY CATEGORIES - Headlines
- Got Room on Your Desk for Some New Awards?
- NASA IT Labs - Paperless Contracting Initiative
- Weekly Senior Staff Safety Message
- NASA@work Workshop: Liberate Your Captive Problem!
- Shuttle Knowledge Console (SKC) v8.0 Release - Organizations/Social
- Ellington Starport
- Emerge Monthly Meeting on Leadership
- Lunch & Learn with High School Aerospace Scholars
- Parenting Series - Purposeful Parenting
- All Things Apollo on Sale at Starport
- Miss the Distribution of Apollo 45th T-Shirts?
- Starport Summer Camp: Session 7 Still Available
- Starport Youth Karate Classes Start July 19 - Jobs and Training
- ISS EDMS User Forum - Community
- School May Be Out, But Hunger isn't
- 17th Annual International Mars Society Convention |  |
| Headlines - Got Room on Your Desk for Some New Awards?
Two new NASA awards that celebrate the spirit of innovative behavior and will be voted on by the NASA workforce were announced last week in an email from the Office of Human Capital Management. The two categories are Lean Forward; Fail Smart Award and Champion of Innovation, with the competition closing Aug. 1.
Nominators will need to provide a written narrative and a short (less than two minutes) video clip that details the innovative idea, project or behavior. The videos can be made with your smart phone, computer, cameras or other recording devices. NASA is not looking for a professional quality video. Here's a link to some helpful hints from our External Relations Office.
The Lean Forward; Fail Smart Award is for innovative performance and is open to NASA employees, teams and support contractors. The Champion of Innovation Award is designed to show the role supervisors and managers play in fostering innovation and must be submitted by a group of subordinates. For more information on both awards and the submission process, click here.
As part of Innovation 2014, JSC submissions will be posted to the JSC 2.0 website to allow the JSC workforce to vote for their top choice for Lean Forward and Champion of Innovation. - NASA IT Labs - Paperless Contracting Initiative
NASA IT Labs presents "IT Heroes Showcase: Paperless Contracting Initiative." This live presentation by the Jet Propulsion Laboratory Acquisition Division will focus on the new Interactive Acquisition Network system that uses Microsoft One Note to create contracts and Microsoft SharePoint to route documents for internal reviews and approvals through the local NASA Management Office. This eliminates all paper from the previous paper-intensive process. The recent selection of Silanis to support electronic vendor signatures will also be discussed. This 20-minute event will be conducted live via Google+ Hangouts on air and recorded to the NASA IT Labs YouTube channel for future viewing. Direct your browser to NASA IT Labs YouTube tomorrow, July 17, at noon CDT. Click the live streaming link to join the Hangout on air. To ask questions during the event, log in with a personal Google account. Send comments and/or questions to IT Labs. - Weekly Senior Staff Safety Message
This week's topic covers aviation safety and situational awareness. Situational awareness involves being aware of what is happening around you in order to understand how information, events and one's own actions impact the goals and objectives of both yourself and the organization, immediately and in the near future. View the message and find out about some indicators of low situational awareness and ways to improve it in your organization. - NASA@work Workshop: Liberate Your Captive Problem!
Do you have some ideas or topics that you want to post on NASA@work but are not sure exactly how to formulate them into a challenge write-up? Do you want to learn more about the challenge-development process? If so, then plan to join us for our next NASA@work Workshop: Liberate Your Captive Problem! on Wednesday, July 23, from 9 to 10 a.m. CDT. In conjunction with JSC Innovation 2014 efforts, the NASA@work support team will be hosting this interactive NASA@work training workshop, focusing on helping solvers create NASA@work challenges from problems and issues they face on their job every day. Sign up for this interactive and hands-on NASA@work session now! - Shuttle Knowledge Console (SKC) v8.0 Release
The JSC Chief Knowledge Officer is pleased to announce the eighth release of Shuttle Knowledge Console. For this release, we are introducing shuttle-related Mission Operations Directorate training videos and associated documentation. We are also releasing the MER shuttle archive, covering all of the items evaluated for each of the STS missions. We have added an export function to the WebPCASS reports, which will allow users to do advanced analysis of the data on their own machines. We've updated the style and structure of the site and introduced some additional interface for the file archives to make pictures, documents and videos easier to use. There is a search hints page that will help users to get exactly what they want, and quickly. To date, 2.62 TB of information with 5.83 million documents of Space Shuttle Program knowledge has been captured. Click the "Submit Feedback" button located on the top of the site navigation to give us your comments and thoughts. Organizations/Social - Ellington Starport
The JSC National Management Association (NMA) invites you to a luncheon featuring Arturo Machuca, manager of Business Development Houston Airport Systems, who will speak on the "Ellington Spaceport at JSC" on July 30 at 11:30 a.m. in the Gilruth Alamo Ballroom. Cost for members: FREE Cost for non-members: $20 There are three great menu options to choose from: - Lemon herb chicken breast
- Cajun shrimp and red quinoa salad
- Vegetable pave, Sicilian sauce, whole green beans
Desserts: Butterfinger and chocolate mousse parfait RSVP closing date: Wednesday, July 23, at 3 p.m. RSVP NOW! - Emerge Monthly Meeting on Leadership
Join Emerge and hear from executive sponsors Jeff Davis and Vanessa Wyche! Davis and Wyche will discuss leadership, including their own personal experiences and advice for advancing in your career. Bring your appetite and a friend to Fuddruckers, across the street from JSC, from noon to 1:30 p.m. - Lunch & Learn with High School Aerospace Scholars
Join us for lunch with NASA's future workforce and share: - YOUR NASA story
- YOUR college advice
- YOUR career suggestions
This summer, JSC will host nearly 270 students during the 15th anniversary of High School Aerospace Scholars. These informal lunch-chats are a valuable opportunity to connect our workforce with the next generation of NASA employees. On your lunch break, simply stop by to say hello and inspire our students. Every Wednesday in July in the Building 3 café - July 16 (11 a.m. to noon) * please note the time change
- July 23 (Noon to 1 p.m.)
- July 30 (Noon to 1 p.m.)
- Parenting Series - Purposeful Parenting
July is National Purposeful Parenting Month. Purposeful parenting is being an active, engaged parent. Purposeful parenting also involves developing meaningful relationships between parents and children. So what are the essential factors in developing these meaningful relationships? What does it mean to be an active and engaged parent? Identify how to shift parenting behaviors from reaction to action. Discover the answer to these questions and develop the skills needed to improve communication with your children and teens. Join Anika Isaac, MS, LPC, LMFT, LCDC, CEAP, NCC, as she presents "Purposeful Parenting." - All Things Apollo on Sale at Starport
Starport is celebrating the 45th anniversary of Apollo 11 all week long. All Apollo merchandise is on sale thru July 31. Flown metal Apollo 11 through 17 medallions are now just $10. And, all Apollo models and collectibles are 10 percent off while supplies last. Stop by Buildings 3 or 11 to see the First Day Apollo 11 and Apollo 8 stamps, the First Day Cache, as well as collectible lapel pin sets: Celebrate Apollo Program framed, Celebrate Apollo 11 framed set and the Skylab lapel pin set. Happy Anniversary to the Apollo 11 crew and NASA team that made history on July 20, 1969—with one small step! - Miss the Distribution of Apollo 45th T-Shirts?
If you missed the distribution of Apollo 45th anniversary T-shirts last week, stop by the Building 11 Starport Gift Shop at your earliest convenience to pick up your shirts. Hours of operation are Monday through Friday from 8 a.m. to 4 p.m. Remember, you will receive 10 percent off most merchandise in the Starport Gift Shops while wearing your shirt every Friday through Oct. 31. - Starport Summer Camp: Session 7 Still Available
Starport is offering summer camp for youth at the Gilruth Center all summer long. We have tons of fun planned, and we expect each session to fill up, so get your registrations in early! Weekly themes are listed on our website, as well as information regarding registration. Ages: 6 to 12 Times: 7:30 a.m. to 5:30 p.m. Session 7 Dates: July 21 to 25 Fee per session: $140 per child | $125 per sibling Register online or at the Gilruth Center information desk. - Starport Youth Karate Classes Start July 19
Let Starport introduce your child to the exciting art of Youth Karate. Youth Karate will teach your child the skills of self-defense, self-discipline and self-confidence. The class will also focus on leadership, healthy competition and sportsmanship. Five-week session: July 19 to Aug. 16 Saturdays: 10:15 to 11 a.m. Ages: 6 to 12 Cost: $75 | $20 drop-in rate Register online or at the Gilruth Center. Jobs and Training - ISS EDMS User Forum
The International Space Station (ISS) Electronic Document Management System (EDMS) team will hold the monthly General User Training Forum Thursday, July 17, at 9:30 a.m. in Building 4S, Room 5315. Lync meeting and telecom provided. If you use EDMS to locate station documents, join us to learn about basic navigation and searching. Bring your questions, concerns and suggestions, and meet the EDMS Customer Service team. Community - School May Be Out, But Hunger isn't
Help the JSC team reach our goal of collecting 60,000 pounds of food to benefit the Clear Lake Food Pantry and Galveston County Food Bank. The Clear Lake Food Pantry serves four zip codes in the local area, providing food to our neighbors in need. The Galveston Food Bank serves 12 cities, one village, three designated areas and six unincorporated areas, four of which are located on Bolivar Peninsula. Roughly 51,940 Galveston County residents are in need of emergency food assistance in a single year—that is one in five of our neighbors in Galveston County. This week we continue to collect "portable meals" such as hamburger/tuna helper, ravioli, canned soups, stews and more. Various donation boxes have been placed across site. For added convenience, vouchers and pre-packed food bags can be purchased in the Buildings 3 and 11 Starport Gift Shops. Help JSC knock out hunger! - 17th Annual International Mars Society Convention
The International Mars Society Convention presents a unique opportunity from Aug. 7 to 10 at the South Shore Harbour Resort in League City for those interested in exploring Mars and planning a humans-to-Mars mission. Come together and discuss the science, technology, social implications, philosophy, politics, public policy, economics and a multitude of other aspects of Mars exploration. Highlights will include updates about Curiosity, Opportunity, Mars Express, Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter and MAVEN missions, as well as the latest surface simulations at the Mars Desert Research Station in Utah and plans for future missions at the Flashline Mars Arctic Research Station in the Canadian arctic. Additional activities are planned, including an evening banquet with a keynote speaker and plenty of entertainment. For more details, including online registration instructions, click here. Rooms at the South Shore Harbour Resort are available at the specially discounted rate of $100/night (the special group code is MARS2014). | |
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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. |
NASA and Human Spaceflight News
Wednesday – July 16, 2014
HEADLINES AND LEADS
Buzz Aldrin: It's Time to Put a Man on Mars
Buzz Aldrin – TIME
On the 45th anniversary of the moon landing, the U.S. should decide on the necessary steps to explore Mars with the eventual goal of establishing a manned settlement there.
Forty-Five Years Ago, We First Landed On The Moon: Meet The Man In Charge In Mission Control
Véronique LaCapra - St. Louis Public Radio
Forty-five years ago this Sunday, Apollo 11 became the first space flight to land men on the moon.
Commentary: Forty-Five Years After Apollo 11—An Inspiration For the Future, or Just Another Anniversary? (Part 1)
Leonidas Papadopoulos – AmericaSpace
"We are not made wise by the recollections of the past,
but by our responsibility for the future."
— George Bernard Shaw
The date is 16 July 2014 and the preparations for the celebration of the upcoming Apollo 11 anniversary are in full swing on NASA's Moon base Artemis, as well as on the various complexes that have been built on the lunar surface by private space companies in recent years.
ORB-2 Cygnus completes ISS rendezvous and berthing
Chris Bergin – NASA Space Flight
Orbital's ORB-2 Cygnus spacecraft has successfully rendezvoused and berthed with the International Space Station (ISS) on Wednesday morning. The American spacecraft, partly built in Italy, guided in by Canadian sensors and grabbed by an American astronaut using another Canadian asset – Space Station Remote Manipulator System (SSRMS) – completed her arrival at 6:36 Eastern.
Russian Resupply Spacecraft to Deliver Snails to ISS for Experiments
RIA Novosti
Russia's Progress M-24M resupply spacecraft, due to be launched on July 24, is to deliver 45 snails to the International Space Station (ISS) for scientific experiments, Russian space agency Roscosmos reported Tuesday.
Would-Be Rescuers of Wayward Spacecraft Previously Solved a NASA Mystery
Kenneth Chang - New York Times
Before reviving a zombie spacecraft, Dennis Wingo and Keith Cowing traveled to the past to rescue a trove of early moon photographs that otherwise would have been destined for oblivion.
NASA: That meteor that broke up over North Texas was actually an 'Earth-grazing fireball'
Robert Wilonsky – Dallas Morning News
Mike Prendergast's video of the one meteor that became two over North Texas Saturday night has been viewed some 50,000 times - impressive for an 11-second clip. But here's the deal: It was more than just a meteor.
NASA To Fund Studies of Science Instruments for Europa Probe
Dan Leone – Space News
NASA plans to parcel out $25 million to study scientific instruments for a proposed probe to Jupiter's moon Europa, the agency said July 15.
Huge Space Telescope Needed to Seek Life on Alien Planets
Humanity will probably have to wait a few decades to find out if life is common beyond our own solar system.
New Venus NASA Missions Could Lift Planet's Hellish Veil
Bruce Dorminey - Forbes
If Mars is mysterious, Venus is truly scary. Long called Earth's twin, it's only four months away via unmanned probe and lies more than 70 percent of Earth's distance from the Sun.
Three Teams To Develop Spaceplane Concepts for DARPA
Mike Gruss | Space News
The U.S. Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency has awarded contracts to three companies to develop concepts for an experimental spaceplane capable of flying 10 times in 10 days, according to a July 15 DARPA press release.
COMPLETE STORIES
Buzz Aldrin: It's Time to Put a Man on Mars
Buzz Aldrin – TIME
On the 45th anniversary of the moon landing, the U.S. should decide on the necessary steps to explore Mars with the eventual goal of establishing a manned settlement there.
It's hard to believe that on July 20, 2014, we'll be celebrating the 45th anniversary of Apollo 11, man's first landing on the moon. It's also hard to believe that no one can really say where the U.S. manned space exploration program is heading and how we're going to get there. People come up to me and say, "It's too bad the space program got canceled." This is not the case, and yet that is what most of the public thinks has happened. Yes, we hear from NASA that the destination is Mars — and yet there is no detailed plan on how to get there. No one can seem to agree on a clear path. The nation is understandably focused on many other pressing challenges at the moment. However, if we don't make some important decisions about the future of our space program very soon, I'm afraid the program will be lost to the ages.
There are eight U.S. astronauts left out of the 12 who walked on the moon. All of us are in the eighth decade of our lives. Each of us can attest to the importance of continuing human exploration of space and the tremendous impact it has had on so many facets of our society. The technical innovations, scientific achievements, medical breakthroughs, environmental enhancements, national defense improvements and educational impacts have been immeasurable. Our nation simply cannot afford to lose a program that has contributed so much for so long. Our leaders have some important decisions to make and they need to make them now. The moon must not be the last stop in America's quest for knowledge of other planets and of other places.
Here's what we as a nation must decide:
- Does the United States wish to continue leading human exploration of space or leave it to Russia, China, India or some other nation to take over? To me, the answer is obvious.
-
- Does it not make good sense for the U.S. to take the high ground by establishing cooperative U.S.-China relations in space? We did it with the Soviet Union through the Apollo-Soyuz program back in July 1975, and I believe it is even more important to do it with the PRC in 2014. Cooperation, not confrontation, should be the hallmark of our dealings with the Chinese beyond Earth.
-
- Does it make sense for the U.S. to expend hundreds of billions of dollars to mount a new Apollo-style program to return to the moon? Or have we blazed that trail? Shouldn't we help other nations achieve this goal with their own resources but with our help? Rather than doing again something we did 45 years ago, shouldn't the U.S. be developing a path toward Mars?
-
- And shouldn't the U.S. develop the technological capabilities needed to land humans on Mars by first traveling to a nearby asteroid for research and development purposes? A hybrid human-robot mission to investigate an asteroid affords a realistic opportunity to demonstrate new technological capabilities for future deep-space travel and to test spacecraft for long-duration spaceflight. This is imperative, as we've never done manned missions beyond the moon.
-
- And speaking of Mars, are we prepared as a nation to take the necessary steps to explore Mars with the eventual goal of establishing a manned settlement on that planet? To me, the answer should be a resounding "yes."
It's unlikely that the remaining Apollo astronauts, including yours truly, will be around to witness the conclusion of the next exciting chapter in our nation's space program. However, we would like to be here when our President and Congress make these critical decisions. If our leaders make the right decisions — and they must — we're confident the new manned space program will meet or exceed the tremendous success of the Apollo program so many years ago. But let's make these decisions now.
Dr. Buzz Aldrin served as lunar module pilot for Apollo 11, the first manned lunar landing mission. He is the author of eight books, including his New York Times best-selling autobiography Magnificent Desolation. His newest book, Mission to Mars: My Vision for Space Exploration, was published in 2013. As one of the leading space exploration advocates, Buzz continues to chart a course for future space travel.
Forty-Five Years Ago, We First Landed On The Moon: Meet The Man In Charge In Mission Control
Véronique LaCapra - St. Louis Public Radio
Forty-five years ago this Sunday, Apollo 11 became the first space flight to land men on the moon.
At Mission Control in Houston, Gene Kranz was the man in charge.
Kranz spent more than three decades working for the U.S. National Aeronautics and Space Administration, serving as flight director for both the Gemini and Apollo space programs.
He is probably best known for his role leading the Mission Control team that brought the crew of the ill-fated Apollo 13 lunar mission safely back to earth. That mission was later depicted in the movie "Apollo 13," in which Ed Harris played the role of Kranz.
Now 80 years old, the real Gene Kranz was in town recently to speak at his former alma mater, Saint Louis University's Parks College of Engineering, Aviation and Technology. He also talked to middle school students at the Saint Louis Science Center.
During Kranz's return to St. Louis, Véronique LaCapra sat down with him to ask about his early life, his long career with NASA, and his role in that historic first lunar landing.
VL: Outside of science fiction, there was no space program when you were a child. Did you ever imagine that one day you might be involved in sending rockets with humans on board to the moon?
GK: No, actually space was not in my game plan, it didn't exist at that time. I was a pilot. That's all I wanted to do. And I was real happy in the job.
I was flying on the station in Formosa for a while, and I landed an aircraft in October '57. My crew chief ran up and said, 'You know, Russians have launched a Sputnik.' And I said, 'Well what's a Sputnik?' He said, 'Well, they have a little satellite going around the Earth.' I said, 'Oh, that's pretty neat.' And then I went back to worrying about flying.
VL: Now you're not quite telling me the truth, because I happen to know you wrote a thesis in high school that had something to do with going to the moon.
GK: I was a reader of pulp fiction. I read virtually all of the early accounts of life outside the Earth's atmosphere, and I looked for a senior thesis that was somewhat different, and something I felt reasonably comfortable with and familiar with. And I thought, 'Gee, that would be neat.'
My thesis title was, 'Design and Possibilities of an Interplanetary Rocket to the Moon.' The only problem I had, I got him to the moon, but I couldn't figure out a way to get him back. So I left him there!
VL: Tell me a little bit about your childhood. What was it like? I know your father died when you were seven. How did that change you, and maybe contribute to the leader that you later became?
GK: It was really a challenge because I knew very little about my father. We lived in the south end of Toledo, Ohio. But as soon as he died, my mother wanted to get us away from the wrong side of the tracks. She wanted us to go out to West Toledo. And somewhere or another she found the money to obtain a house out there, make a down payment on a house.
And she immediately set about to turning it into a boarding house. And we moved most of the family, most of the time, into one bedroom. I had two other sisters, myself and my mother. And the other two rooms were filled with GIs because we lived very close to the USO. So, we'd have the soldiers, sailors and airmen throughout World War II living in our house.
And these were the inspiration.
I started building models, models of anything I could see and do. I could turn poker chips into wheels for a tank. And a lot of the Navy people that would stay at the house would send me boxes of balsa wood. And balsa wood was a strategic material. So, all of a sudden I had not only the materials and skill, but it was to the point where I could build things that would really fly.
VL: You have a personal connection to St Louis, I think, early on in your career?
GK: I got into Saint Louis University and Parks College in sort of a roundabout fashion.
I originally had won appointment to the Naval Academy. I wanted to be a naval aviator. But I was working at A&P warehouses and my diet was brownie and chocolate milk for the best part of a year. So, when it became time to take the physical, I busted the physical twice in a row.
So, I was now looking for an alternate path, and one of my teachers in Central Catholic basically kept me pumped up. And she found an Ohio Elks Association scholarship that would provide $500 for a loan, and it was that which allowed me to come to Parks. I carried that loan all the way through my schooling, and that covered the majority of the expenses. It's amazing. You could go to college for 500 bucks, and cover most of the expenses in those days.
VL: You were flight director for Apollo 11, the first space flight to put men on the moon, 45 years ago. Can you describe a little bit that experience?
GK: There are some events in your life that you'll never forget. I had a team of young men — they were all men at that time — whose average age was 26. We had trained very well. I had full confidence in this team. We had some difficulties in our training process of working out the landing decision process, because there's some point in the landing phase, where if you let the crew descend too fast, you fall into what's called the Dead Man's Box and you've lost a crew.
The real mission came along, and I have to make the 'Go/no-go' [decision]: Are we going to go down to the Moon this time or not? I have no reason to terminate the mission at this time, so basically I give the crew the 'go' for powered descent.
By this time we recognized, we're going to be landing long. We're not going to be landing in the place where we expected to land. We're now starting to see, we're moving down to what they call the toe of the footprint. And we know there are boulders down there, there's craters down there and the crew's going to have to take over manual attitude control and find a proper landing site.
But in the process of doing this, I'm watching the clock. And the clock indicates that very shortly we should have what we call a low-level alarm.
Now, I don't know if you've ever driven in your car with the gas tank being empty, but that's exactly the position we're in right now because we've come to a point in our ability to measure the fuel in the tank where basically, we can't measure it anymore. But we know by experience we have two minutes of fuel remaining at a 30 percent throttle setting.
Totally silent in Mission Control right now with the exception of one voice, and that's my propulsion guy telling me the seconds of fuel remaining. And you go through '90 seconds.' And then there's a pause and we're listening to the crew. They're giving me altitude, descent rate. Then it's '60 seconds.' And then it's '45 seconds.' '30 seconds.' And then about the time it's 'fif-' ― all of a sudden we recognize, we've landed on the surface and the crew is going through shutdown.
And then it sunk in, when the people were cheering and applauding and everything else. And the crew had roughly about 10 seconds to celebrate, and then back to work.
VL: You said earlier you were a pilot, a military pilot. Did you ever want to be an astronaut yourself?
GK: I did in the very early days. In fact, it was probably in the first six to nine months. Because I really admired these guys.
But I really realized that I'm going to 'fly' more missions in my lifetime than any of these crews will ever fly. And I basically got the best job in the entire space program.
VL: Because you basically got to participate in it from the very beginning right through.
GK: Yeah, I flew over 33 missions as flight director. And in my career I was responsible for over about 120.
VL: In December 1972, NASA launched Apollo 17, the sixth and last mission to send astronauts to the Moon. How did you feel when that phase of the space program ended?
GK: I saw that phase coming. The teams in Mission Control saw that phase coming. And I was the flight director that launched Gene Cernan and his crew from Earth, and I also launched them off the surface of the Moon. So basically I saw the launch phase from both ends of it.
One of the responsibilities of the flight director, as you leave the surface of the Moon, the White House always has a message ready to relay to the crew once they're safely in orbit. President Nixon's words really drove this thing home, because he said this may be the last time in the century. And it just ― this is a hell of a way. And it really got us.
But that's the job. We got the crew up in orbit and checked the spacecraft out, and had them on their way back home.
VL: Americans today seem to have more or less lost interest in the space program. There are probably people who don't know that the Space Shuttle flights have ended or that we still have a space program. Why should we care? Why should Americans care about a space program?
GK: I believe there are many reasons.
I think the first reason is our nation is an exceptional nation. I believe that it's important for us to maintain this belief because we are representative of the best characteristics of a democracy. Basically the people of the world look to us, recognizing that we are powerful. Not because of our economic might, but because of our beliefs.
I think it's important that as a nation, we carry that forward. And to do this, we have to demonstrate we are capable of doing very difficult and challenging things. Space is difficult and challenging. I think it can and did unite the nation at that period of time. It united the world.
Space then creates the technology ― a very difficult technology ― that we need to keep the economic engine of our country going. We need to get that engine started so we can actually provide for the people of our nation. We need to get a healthy set of industries that basically are made in America right now, where we build and create these things that cannot be replicated in any other part of the world.
We need to challenge the colleges and universities for the curriculum they need to continue to expand human knowledge. And we need some direction for our young people to look forward to, so they will be motivated to do the hard things.
VL: How do you envision the future of space exploration? What should be our next goal? What should be our next Apollo 11?
GK: There are a lot of perspectives on space. [The NASA one] is currently to go rendezvous with an asteroid, etc.
I believe that's too limited a mission. I think you need a broader mission. I think we need to really look at establishing human presence in space beyond the near-Earth environment like we have in the International Space Station. I think going back to the moon and [establishing] a long-term base in the moon would make a heck of a lot of sense.
Recently, I saw one of the former NASA administrators talk about a Mars fly-by in 2021, which is only seven years from now. Well, we have the knowledge. The books have been written. We have all of these things. All we got to do is the will to get it. And we have a spacecraft called the Orion that basically is capable of transporting people there.
So, I think Griffin's proposal to do the Mars fly-by in seven years is absolutely within our ballpark. All we need to do is to have the dream and the will to do it.
Commentary: Forty-Five Years After Apollo 11—An Inspiration For the Future, or Just Another Anniversary? (Part 1)
Leonidas Papadopoulos – AmericaSpace
"We are not made wise by the recollections of the past,
but by our responsibility for the future."
— George Bernard Shaw
The date is 16 July 2014 and the preparations for the celebration of the upcoming Apollo 11 anniversary are in full swing on NASA's Moon base Artemis, as well as on the various complexes that have been built on the lunar surface by private space companies in recent years. Thirty-three thousand miles above them, on the Earth-Moon L2 Lagrange point, the Expedition 50 crew of the International Lunar Gateway Station is in the middle of its own preparations for the arrival of the next-generation Nautilus-X hardware and Bigelow crew habitats that will be part of the massive Prometheus spacecraft currently being assembled there, which will propel the first humans ever beyond the asteroid belt, for NASA's long-awaited manned flyby of Jupiter. There are high hopes that the mission will be able to launch on time, so as to commemorate the 50th anniversary of the Apollo 11 mission and the 20th anniversary of the first manned landing on Mars. Meanwhile, on the Martian base Ares, a team of engineers from NASA and the private space industry are giving the final touches on the local in-situ resource utilisation hardware that will be responsible for filling up the orbital fuel depots with the necessary propellant that will return Prometheus home, following its long journey toward the outer Solar System.
The paragraph above may read like science fiction today, but for anyone growing up during the 1960s this was the vision of a future that seemed imminent. And how could it not be? By the time Apollo 11 had launched the first humans to ever walk on the Moon, 45 years ago this week, NASA was already considering the U.S.'s next steps in space which included a manned landing on Mars that was scheduled for no later than the mid-1980s. And just a year before Neil Armstrong's "small step" on the lunar surface, the seminal 2001: A Space Odyssey dazzled audiences everywhere, by presenting what was widely perceived at the time as the shape of things to come.
Forty-five years after those heady days in July 1969, we live in a very different, much more introspective and Earth-bound world. NASA's ambitious plans that called for the creation of a human base on the Moon and trips to Mars were cancelled and put on hold indefinitely, while the (frustratingly slow) exploration of the Solar System was left solely to robots. Today, Mars seems more distant and difficult to reach than what it was in 1969 during the peak of the Apollo program, while on a more basic level NASA currently lacks the capability to even launch anyone in low-Earth orbit, let alone the Moon or Mars.
Despite this disheartening state of affairs, there has been much optimism lately within the space community that a golden age of space exploration still lies ahead. Private companies have been making great strides in recent years by recovering the capability to launch cargo (and eventually crew within the next couple of years) to the International Space Station, a capability that carries with it the promise of a greater, more permanent, and sustainable human presence in low-Earth orbit, through the commercialization of human access to space. In the meantime, NASA hopes to restart manned deep-space exploration after more than four decades of low-Earth orbit activities by developing its next-generation heavy-lift launch vehicle called the Space Launch System and the Orion spacecraft. Could this resurgence of space activities finally lead to a new golden era of space exploration?
Political leadership: An imperative, or just a prerogative for U.S. space achievement?
One man who thinks that could be the case is Dr. Buzz Aldrin, legendary lunar module pilot of the Apollo 11 mission and the second man to walk on the Moon on 20 July 1969. A true icon of human accomplishment, Aldrin has long been an advocate of a robust U.S. human space exploration program and of Mars colonisation in particular. In order to commemorate the upcoming 45th anniversary of the Apollo 11 mission, Aldrin launched a social media campaign on July 8, called #Apollo45, inviting people all over the world to send their own videos via Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, and Google+, describing where they were during the first manned landing on the Moon, or how this monumental event inspired them and affected their lives."I consider myself a global statesman for space, so I spend most of my time travelling the country and the world, to remind people what NASA and our space program has accomplished and what is still in our future at Mars," explains Aldrin in the introductory video of his social media campaign on Youtube. "I feel we need to remind the world about the Apollo missions and that we can still do impossible things." As part of his space advocacy efforts, Aldrin called for the next U.S. president who will succeed President Obama in 2016 to announce a new space exploration initiative that will commit the U.S. to sending people on Mars within the next two decades. "These anniversaries mean a lot to me, especially with the 50th anniversary coming up with a new president," said Aldrin during a recent interview with NBC News. "That individual, that president, has a potential of going down in history more than almost anyone who has lived on the planet Earth, by committing human beings to an international, American-led permanence on the planet Mars."
Aldrin's call has a definite feeling of déjà vu. On July 20, 1989, during the 20th anniversary of Apollo 11, he had stood alongside his Apollo 11 crewmates Mike Collins and the late Neil Armstrong, when the then-U.S. President George H. W. Bush announced his Space Exploration Initiative, or SEI, atop the steps of the National Air and Space Museum in Washington, D.C., directing NASA to return humans to the Moon and continue on to Mars, by the year 2019. Unfortunately, SEI's fate was sealed right from the start, with Congress balking at the initiative's $500 billion-dollar price tag. A similar announcement by President George W. Bush in 2004, better known as the Vision for Space Exploration, or VSE, didn't fare much better and was eventually cancelled by the succeeding Obama administration in 2009, on the grounds of its pressing financial and technical problems.
Could a new presidential initiative as envisioned by Aldrin result in a meaningful path forward for the U.S. human space program allowing for a manned mission to Mars, in the same way that President Kennedy's commitment for the Moon in 1961 resulted in the Apollo 11 Moon landing just eight years later? That would depend on the reasons for which such an initiative would be announced in the first place, within the context of the geopolitical and economic climate of its time. "There may be no way to send humans to Mars in the comparatively near future—despite the fact that it is entirely within our technological capability," wrote American astronomer Carl Sagan in his book Pale Blue Dot: A Vision of the Human Future in Space. "Governments do not spend these vast sums just for science, or merely to explore. They need another purpose, and it must make real political sense." Seen in this light, Kennedy's 1961 mandate to NASA to send people to the Moon before the end of the decade served a real geopolitical purpose of trying to secure the U.S.'s dominance over the Soviet Union in the Cold War arena. When Armstrong's and Aldrin's first steps on the lunar surface achieved that goal, the Apollo program wound down and was eventually discontinued, without succeeding in creating a permanent human presence on the Moon or the rest of cislunar space, as envisioned by most space advocates at the time.
For space historian Roger Launius and space policy expert Howard McCurdy, over reliance on presidential leadership has helped to create false and unrealistic expectations about the future path of the U.S. space program. "Most space supporters did not understand how truly exceptional the Apollo mandate was," they argue in their book Spaceflight and the Myth of Presidential Leadership. "After the glamor of Kennedy's moment dimmed, space policy came to rest alongside all the other priorities of government, for which presidential leadership played a diminishing role. This eventually disappointed those who believed in the power of presidents to make space exploration special. The Apollo decision was therefore, an anomaly in the history of the space program." That view isn't shared by many, who see the absence of national leadership in space as the biggest cause for NASA's perceived detriment in the post-Apollo era. "The first law of bureaucracy is to guarantee its own continuance," wrote Sagan. "Left to its own devices, without clear instructions from above, NASA gradually devolved into a program that would maintain profits, jobs, and perquisites. Pork-barrel politics, with Congress playing a leading role, became an increasingly powerful force in the design and execution of missions and long-term goals. The bureaucracy ossified. NASA lost its way." A series of studies on the state of NASA's human spaceflight program that have been conducted during the last few decades have reached a similar conclusion, by acknowledging that without a stable, long-term continuous political and financial support by Congress and the White House, and a consistent, clearly defined space policy, NASA's deep space aspirations for sending humans back to the Moon and on to Mars will remain unrealised indefinitely. That fact became painfully obvious when the George W. Bush administration failed to properly support its own Vision for Space Exploration, leading to its later cancellation by the Obama administration. Furthermore, President Obama's passionate rhetoric toward the Apollo 11 crew during the White House 40th anniversary of the Apollo 11 Moon landing in 2009 was indicative of the attitude of most U.S. presidents, who treat these anniversaries as just PR opportunities for their own political gain, delivering grand speeches of support for the space program while silently go on to de-fund it.
Would then a new national mandate for sending astronauts to deep space destinations hold more water than the previous ones? According to American astrophysicist Dr. Neil deGrasse Tyson, in order for such a mandate to be successful it would have to satisfy either one of the two drivers he considers as being the most important for the successful outcome of any kind of huge and expensive long-term projects: military and economic. "[Kennedy] could have said: 'Let's go to the Moon: what a marvelous place to explore!'," said Tyson during a past interview for Rationally Speaking."But that's not enough to get Congress to write the check. At some point, somebody's got to write a check … Science alone has never been a driver of expensive projects. Below a certain level, depending on the wealth of a nation, money can be spent on science without heavy debate … Raise the cost of a project above $20 billion or $30 billion and if there's not a weapon at the other end, or you won't see the face of God, or oil wells aren't to be found, it risks not getting funded … Unless we're going to believe we're a fundamentally different kind of population and culture than those that have preceded us for the past five thousand years, I'm going to take my cue from the history of major funded projects and say that if we want to go to Mars, we'd better find either an economic driver, or a military driver for it."
A great number of space advocates, disillusioned with this chronic lack of leadership by the U.S. government to fund and execute an outward-moving and meaningful human space exploration program, tend to view NASA as being largely irrelevant, while placing their hopes at the hands of the private space industry instead. The private space sector has, without a doubt, seen a tremendous growth during the last decade, while also taking on all the low-Earth orbit transportation activities that were historically the domain of NASA. All this activity has created an impression among space enthusiasts and the general public alike, that a free-to-innovate private space sector unconstrained by the trappings of a slow and bureaucratic government can take on the challenge of deep-space exploration alone, and that the first human expeditions to the Moon and Mars are just a few years away. A past AmericaSpace article had taken a critical look at these assertions, by arguing that these ambitious announcements by various private space companies which call for the massive, fast, and affordable colonisation of Mars, starting in just a few years, conflict with the reality of the great financial and engineering challenges that these aspirations entail. Furthermore, many of these companies tend to announce highly ambitious deep space goals which are often perceived by the public as a done deal, without many times having demonstrated even a basic spaceflight capability. "[These companies] cheer and proclaim the advent of a new era in spaceflight, but their launch manifests don't begin to match the pace and predictability of their press releases," comments Dr. Paul Spudis, a senior staff scientist at the Lunar and Planetary Institute in Houston, Texas, and a long-time advocate of human space exploration, in his blog Spudis Lunar Resources. "Their endless demands to re-direct shrinking NASA funds to them, belies their proclamation of being either 'new' or 'commercial' … Got a wild idea for a space mission? You say you want to build a vacation resort on Jupiter? Hold a press conference and you'll have instant credibility as a space 'entrepreneur'. As for any skeptics in the audience – just ignore them or label them 'dinosaurs', 'old space fossils', 'cold-war warriors', 'senile', or shills for government space 'pork'. Got a difficult question for the space entrepreneur? There's the exit. Don't let the door hit you on the way out."
Far from trying to provide any answers to the issues raised, this article has tried to examine some of the reasons behind the mismatch between the dreams of space advocates during and after the Apollo program, and the underlying political realities that dictated its rise and eventual demise in the first place. The upcoming 45th anniversary of the Apollo 11 mission, besides being a cause for celebration of past achievements, is also an opportunity for contemplation on these issues, which in the end will play a huge role on shaping our future in space and the kind of role we would likely have in it. Does that mean that our future in space (if there will be any at all) will be entirely dependent on the whims of Congress and the White House? "If you ask me, If I were head of NASA and I get the chromes that the nation handed me, how would I spend it, to prioritize [NASA's human spaceflight program] and make it exciting, I'd answer 'no, it's the wrong question!" argued Tyson during his launch keynote address at the 28th National Space Symposium in Colorado Springs, in 2012. "That's asking for handouts. That's just trying to make NASA a vanity project for engineers. That's the wrong attitude. It's the wrong understanding of [NASA's] role in our society. So, I don't want to lead anything. I want to convince the public that the right NASA budget will get us out of [the current] economic doldrums, because at the end of the day it's not what the President feels like, or Congress feels like, it's what we feel like doing, because the President works for us."
Buzz Aldrin's social media campaign serves as a reminder that humans are a curious, exploratory species. Yet these exploratory urges have consistently clashed with the political and economic factors that have plagued the U.S. space program since its inception and the real motives for which it was funded in the first place. Still, if the public's opinion of the U.S. human space program is the most decisive factor for its future, as Tyson argues, then what are the public's views and beliefs about man's greatest adventure and how can these affect its course? Seen in this light, will the public celebrate the upcoming 45th anniversary of the Apollo 11 mission as just another historical event, ever-receding further into the past, or as a source of inspiration for future achievements in space?
ORB-2 Cygnus completes ISS rendezvous and berthing
Chris Bergin – NASA Space Flight
Orbital's ORB-2 Cygnus spacecraft has successfully rendezvoused and berthed with the International Space Station (ISS) on Wednesday morning. The American spacecraft, partly built in Italy, guided in by Canadian sensors and grabbed by an American astronaut using another Canadian asset – Space Station Remote Manipulator System (SSRMS) – completed her arrival at 6:36 Eastern.
ORB-2 Cygnus Arrival at ISS:
Following her successful launch atop of the Antares rocket on Sunday, Cygnus continued to perform without issue during her transition from the Integrated Launch Operations Phase (ILOPS) – used for ascent and insertion – to the Phasing Operations Phase (POPS) segment of the mission – used for the pursuit of ISS.
Cygnus' goal during her orbital exploits was one of patiently driving down the orbital highway ahead of entering the ISS' neighborhood, otherwise known as the ""Keep Out Sphere (KOS)".
Up until this key point, Orbital controllers at the Mission Control Center (MCC-D) in Dulles had full control over the vehicle, with NASA controllers at the Mission Control Center in Houston (MCC-H) joining the team for the tricky rendezvous and berthing of the Cygnus.
The S.S. Janice Voss – as this spacecraft is named – already has the Delta velocity maneuvers one (DV1) through seven (DV7) completed ahead of Wednesday's final leg, along with a plane maneuver required to position the spacecraft for capture.
On the Station, there were a number of key items that had to be confirmed as showing they were in good working order to allow Cygnus to be eased towards its berthing.
These items included a strong communication link, required not least for the ability to manually abort the approach – or at least retreat – in the event of problems.
This phase of the mission is called the Joint Operations Phase (JOPS),as overviewed in documentation acquired by L2.
This critical approach period – also known as Proximity Ops – involves Cygnus using the JEM PROX system for direct communications with ISS, effectively resulting in the use of the same system Japan's HTV uses for arriving at the ISS, as much as there are a number of different settings employed for Cygnus' arrival.
As with SpaceX's Dragon, Cygnus was tasked with stalking the ISS, slowly creeping up to its target via a large series of approach milestones to test its systems.
As the Orbital spacecraft eased up the R-bar, under the ISS, she entered the KOS (Keep Out Sphere).
Once inside the KOS, Cygnus demonstrated that she could hold and retreat, prior to receiving the go – via polling – to proceed, mirroring the tasks it underwent during the ORB-D and ORB-1 missions.
Following a review of the data – including the passing of the final milestone relating to the lock on of the spacecraft's sensors – a final go was given for Cygnus to approach to the capture point.
During the previous two missions, Cygnus has employed Jena LIDARs (Light Detection And Ranging) sensors for this mission.
However, as was originally planned, Cygnus is now incorporating the use of the TriDAR vision system – designed by Canadian company Neptec, with the support of NASA and the Canadian Space Agency (CSA).
This system provides real-time visual guidance for navigation, rendezvous and docking procedures – and was successfully tested as a parting gift from the Shuttle fleet, flying on three missions, namely with Discovery on STS-128 and STS-131, prior to its final shuttle trip with Atlantis on STS-135.
With everything going to plan, the focus then switched to capturing the spacecraft via the ISS' Space Station Remote Manipulator System (SSRMS).
The Station's arm was already reaching out ahead of her new arrival, as part of the preparations for the berthing tasks that were primarily conducted by NASA's Steve Swanson.
As Cygnus closed in for grapple – at 6:36 Eastern, the robotic operations berthing tasks were then conducted, with first and second stage capture required. Slightly ahead of schedule, this operation was completed at 8:53 am Eastern – confirming Cygnus' safe berthing with the ISS.
Now Cygnus is successfully berthed, the ISS crew will begin vestibule ops and Cygnus activation via ISS power jumpers on rendezvous day, documented as a nine hour procedure.
Hatch opening and ingress is scheduled to occur early on Thursday morning. However, the crew has the option to press ahead with the procedures during Wednesday.
Cygnus' hatch is very similar to a standard US segment hatch, albeit slightly smaller, making it a familiar sight to the ISS crewmembers. A ventilation duct will be hooked up, and the spacecraft cleared of any dust prior to becoming safe to ingress without eye protection and masks.
With the hatch open, crewmembers will begin cargo removal operations, a phase of the mission known as the Berthed Operations Phase (BOPS).
A total of 1,664 kg (3,669 pounds) of supplies for the station are onboard this Cygnus, including research investigations, crew provisions, hardware, and science experiments from across the country.
Cargo ops involves the crew removing the "top layers" on PORT and STBD pallets to make room in PCM. They will then remove components of the Secondary Structure as required, ahead of emptying the FWD and AFT pallets to gain access to the Standoff pallets, which they will empty and repack.
The reverse sequence will be employed until the vehicle has been repacked, although all the return cargo won't be classed as downmass, because - unlike Dragon - Cygnus won't be returning to the ground or water.
Instead, it'll be sent on a path to a destructive re-entry.
The final phase of the mission – a reverse of the berthing procedures – is called the Descent & Reentry Operations Phase (DROPS), as Cygnus ends her life in a disposal corridor during entry, marking the conclusion to what will be the first of a series of CRS mission for the Cygnus fleet.
The deal to carry out ISS resupply flights - under the $1.9 billion CRS contract - encompasses eight missions between 2012 and 2015 carrying approximately 20,000 kg of cargo to the ISS.
Additional missions will be ordered via the CRS2 contract awards in the near future, based on the recent US decision to back an extension of the ISS' lifetime to 2024.
Russian Resupply Spacecraft to Deliver Snails to ISS for Experiments
RIA Novosti
Russia's Progress M-24M resupply spacecraft, due to be launched on July 24, is to deliver 45 snails to the International Space Station (ISS) for scientific experiments, Russian space agency Roscosmos reported Tuesday.
Containers with snails are to be delivered to the ISS to continue the Regenration-1 experiment.
"The goal of the experiment is to see how space flight influences morphological and electrophysiological properties of a biological object's regeneration process," the report reads.
The data obtained from the experiments could be used to help develop medical support for long-term space flights.
A total of 130 Progress spacecraft have supported orbiting outposts over the past three decades, lifting many tons of supplies to low Earth orbit.
The previous spacecraft in the Progress series, the Progress M-23M, was launched on April 9, on a mission to deliver fuel, additional hardware, food, water and oxygen for the crew, as well as scientific equipment for conducting experiments to the ISS.
Would-Be Rescuers of Wayward Spacecraft Previously Solved a NASA Mystery
Kenneth Chang - New York Times
Before reviving a zombie spacecraft, Dennis Wingo and Keith Cowing traveled to the past to rescue a trove of early moon photographs that otherwise would have been destined for oblivion.
They did not actually time travel, but that might have been easier.
In the past couple of months, Mr. Wingo and Mr. Cowing have popped into the news for re-establishing contact with a 36-year-old spacecraft, NASA's International Sun-Earth Explorer-3, or ISEE-3, which is quickly approaching Earth after a long trip circling the inner solar system. NASA retired ISEE-3 in 1997 and then dismantled the transmitter for talking to it, but most of the systems on the craft remain operational. A shoestring effort led by Mr. Wingo and Mr. Cowing got back in touch with ISEE-3 in May, although last week they ran into possibly insurmountable problems trying to fire the thrusters and change its course.
Mr. Wingo, an entrepreneur and an engineer, and Mr. Cowing, the editor in chief of the NASA Watch website, had confidence that they could decipher decades-obsolete NASA equipment, because, as Mr. Cowing said, "we've done this before."
The earlier project involved 1,500 magnetic tapes and a couple of old, broken tape drives. In 1966 and 1967, NASA sent five robotic spacecraft, the Lunar Orbiters, to photograph the moon's surface to help find safe landing sites for the Apollo astronauts. The tapes, which recorded the original high-resolution images, and the tape drives ended up in the garage of a former NASA employee, and Mr. Wingo and Mr. Cowing embarked on a quixotic mission to retrieve the images.
"It's the antithesis of your typical NASA project," Mr. Cowing said.
On Monday, the Carnegie Museum of Art in Pittsburgh posted a 22-minute documentary about that project, part of a series of short films looking at how modern digital technologies are transforming photography. An earlier episode showed how a forensic analysis of computer disks discovered previously unknown works by Andy Warhol. This week, the Carnegie team is in Switzerland, working on its next installment, about the CERN particle physics laboratory and how it employs techniques of photography to record the ephemeral tracks of subatomic particles.
"We're fascinated by that," said Divya Rao Heffley, the program manager for the Hillman Photography Initiative at the Carnegie Museum. "The subject matter is hidden and made visible by photography."
For the Lunar Orbiter project, Mr. Wingo and Mr. Cowing in 2007 rented a couple of trucks and drove the tapes and tape drives to NASA's Ames Research Center in Mountain View, Calif., setting up shop in a former McDonald's, which they nicknamed McMoon's.
"I can't think of a better use for an old McDonald's," S. Pete Worden, the director of NASA Ames, says in the documentary.
From there, they conducted a long-odds hunt for old manuals and data and fortuitous connections that put Mr. Wingo and Mr. Cowing in touch with people who knew how the tape drives worked.
"It's like having one wing of the Library of Alexandria suddenly dropped in your lap," Mr. Cowing says in the film. "And you just have to figure out the card catalog. That was the hard part."
The old electronics were hosed down and refurbished. In the film, Mr. Wingo demonstrates how he has to stop the spinning tape with his finger, because the tape drive's braking mechanism no longer functions.
And yet everything worked.
They got the images over several years starting in 2008 — much sharper than earlier versions that had been photographed off television screens as the data was beamed back to Earth.
With ISEE-3, engineers have similarly wrestled with missing manuals and balky mechanics. Mission control is in McMoon's, next to the deep fryers. The hope is to fire the thrusters to nudge the spacecraft on a trajectory where it will fly close to the moon and be captured into orbit around Earth. But last week, when they attempted the course correction maneuver, the thrusters sputtered. A troubleshooting session the next day suggested that nitrogen gas, used to push fuel to the thrusters, had leaked away over the years.
The team put out a call for help on the Internet, and experts chimed in with information and suggestions. "Because why not?" Mr. Cowing said. "We needed help. We asked. We got great help."
Based on the discussions, the team came up with a repair plan, and on Wednesday, it will send commands that could clear possibly clogged fuel lines.
"We're all space plumbers now," Mr. Cowing said.
Even if the propulsion system cannot be fixed and ISEE-3 zooms past Earth, the plan is to stay in contact and have the spacecraft send back scientific readings as it continues to orbit around the sun.
And then there's Mr. Cowing and Mr. Wingo's next project: an intercontinental ballistic missile lying on its side in the parking lot next to McMoon's. The Titan 1 missile, a relic from the 1960s, had been on display at Ames for years and is still intact, except for the warhead. "They wouldn't give me that," Mr. Cowing said. "I asked."
He would like to refurbish it and transform it into a display that shows how rockets work, including having some of the moving parts move again.
"We just like getting old stuff and giving it a new purpose," he said.
NASA: That meteor that broke up over North Texas was actually an 'Earth-grazing fireball'
Robert Wilonsky – Dallas Morning News
Mike Prendergast's video of the one meteor that became two over North Texas Saturday night has been viewed some 50,000 times - impressive for an 11-second clip. But here's the deal: It was more than just a meteor.
"That was a bright fireball we call an Earth-grazer," says Bill Cooke, head of NASA's Meteoroid Environment Office in Huntsville, Alabama. "Those are meteors that come in a shallow angle and travel at a long distance before they burn up. They don't plunge into the atmosphere. They just skim along the top and travel a long way. And a fireball is a meteor brighter than the planet Venus."
Cooke says he's seen a few videos of the fireball, including Prendergast's, and has looked at the eyewitness accounts - around 95 from Florida, Alabama, Louisiana and Texas. From what he's been able to gather, it first became visible off the Mississippi coast, entered U.S. airspace near the Louisiana border, and headed toward Texas.
"It terminated somewhere just southeast of Dallas a little after 8 p.m.," says Cooke. "It booked and went a long way before it fragmented, which isn't uncommon with fireballs."
Cooke says Prendergast, who'd been shooting video of the Supermoon Saturday night, was fortunate to get video of the Earth-grazer, as they're not especially common - especially if you don't spend all night every night staring at the sky. Says Cooke: "We really don't see them very often."
NASA To Fund Studies of Science Instruments for Europa Probe
Dan Leone – Space News
NASA plans to parcel out $25 million to study scientific instruments for a proposed probe to Jupiter's moon Europa, the agency said July 15.
Whether the probe would go into orbit around the icy moon — which some scientists believe has an ocean of liquid water beneath an ice crust roughly 20 kilometers thick — or perform multiple Europa flybys from a Jupiter orbit is something NASA has yet to decide.
Prospective instrument developers were told to consider both options in an announcement of opportunity NASA posted online as an amendment to the agency's Second Stand Alone Mission of Opportunity Notice for planetary science proposals.
In the announcement, NASA said it wants to select as many as 20 instrument concept studies by April 2015, then choose up to eight of those concepts for development around April 2016. Whatever instruments come out of the effort must be ready for integration with the Europa probe by 2021, according to NASA's announcement.
However, NASA has reserved the right to skip the initial year-long instrument study and pick eight concepts to proceed into development as soon as it has proposals in hand, the agency said. A preproposal conference is set for July 29, and proposals are due Oct. 17, NASA said.
NASA, at the White House's behest, is trying to figure out how to do a Europa mission for $1 billion or less, excluding launch. That is less than half the price of the Europa Clipper flyby concept being worked by the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, and the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory in Laurel, Maryland.
Clipper, which is relatively mature as Europa mission concepts go, would cost an estimated $2.1 billion, excluding launch. The estimate was validated by the government-funded Aerospace Corp. of El Segundo, California.
The Clipper concept tracks closely with an eight-instrument flyby concept detailed in NASA's July 15 announcement of opportunity. A six-instrument orbiter concept from the announcement, meanwhile, bears some resemblance to a hypothetical spacecraft described by NASA science chief John Grunsfeld back in March during a panel discussion at the American Astronautical Society's Robert H. Goddard Memorial Symposium in Greenbelt, Maryland.
Grunsfeld said a Europa orbiter fitted with a mass spectrometer similar to the Mars Organic Molecular Analyzer the European Space Agency plans to include on its 2018 ExoMars rover might allow scientists to take samples from water plumes thought to erupt periodically from beneath Europa's ice crust. The sample science payload for the orbiter concept in NASA's July 15 announcement included such an instrument, although prospective developers are free to propose types of instruments NASA did not mention in the announcement.
Evidence of water plumes around Europa was detailed in a December paper published by Lorenz Roth, an astronomer at the Southwest Research Institute in San Antonio. Roth's paper was based on observations made with the Hubble Space Telescope.
NASA has not formally committed to any Europa mission, although the White House requested $15 million for 2015 to get the ball rolling with preliminary mission studies.
Congress has offered a little more support.
Europa is very popular in the House, which approved $100 million for a mission to the jovian moon as part of a spending bill that passed the chamber May 30. A report accompanying the latest spending bill from the Senate Appropriations Committee mentioned Europa only in passing, directing NASA to launch any such mission using the Space Launch System heavy-lift rocket under development at the Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama. The Senate bill passed committee June 5 but got locked up in partisan gridlock that has so far prevented a floor vote.
Huge Space Telescope Needed to Seek Life on Alien Planets
Humanity will probably have to wait a few decades to find out if life is common beyond our own solar system.
While NASA's James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) — which is scheduled to launch in 2018 — will be capable of finding signs of life on nearby exoplanets, a broad and bona fide hunt for life beyond Earth's neighborhood will require bigger spacecraft that aren't even on the agency's books yet, experts say.
"To find evidence of actual life is going to take another generation of telescopes," JWST telescope scientist Matt Mountain, director of the Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore, said during a NASA briefing Monday (July 14). "And to do that, we're going to need new rockets, new approaches to getting into space, new approaches to large telescopes — highly advanced optical systems." [10 Exoplanets That Could Host Alien Life] A chance to find signs of life
The $8.8 billion JWST features 18 hexagonal mirror segments that will work together to form one 21-foot-wide (6.5 meters) mirror — larger than any other mirror that's ever flown in space, NASA officials said. (For comparison, the agency's iconic Hubble Space Telescope sports an 8-foot, or 2.4 m, primary mirror.) JWST is optimized to view in infrared light. The telescope should be able to do lots of different things during its operational life, researchers say, including scanning the atmospheres of alien planets for oxygen and other gases that could be produced by living organisms. (Such delicate work is best performed by space telescopes, which don't have to look through Earth's atmosphere.)
JWST will work in concert with another NASA space mission in this regard, performing follow-up observations on promising nearby worlds found by the agency's Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS), which is scheduled to blast off in 2017. "With the James Webb, we have our first chance — our first capability of finding signs of life on another planet," MIT astrophysicist Sara Seager said during Monday's NASA briefing. "Now nature just has to provide for us." [5 Bold Claims of Alien Life] A numbers game
But nature may not be so willing, at least during the JWST mission, Seager and other experts stress. And it all comes down to numbers.
There is no shortage of planets in the Milky Way. Our galaxy teems with at least 100 billion planets, 10 to 20 percent of which, Mountain said, likely circle in their host star's "habitable zone" — that just-right range of distances that could allow liquid water to exist on a world's surface. If there's nothing terribly special about Earth, then life should be common throughout the cosmos, many scientists think.
But most exoplanets are very far away, and all of them are faint. JWST, while large by current standards, won't have enough light-collecting area to investigate more than a handful of potentially habitable planets, researchers say.
A spacecraft with a 33-foot (10 m) mirror would give researchers a much better chance of finding biosignatures in alien atmospheres, but Mountain would like something even bigger.
"With a 20-meter telescope, we can see hundreds of Earth-like planets around other stars," he said. "That's what it takes to find life."
Laying the foundation
There are no concrete plans to build and launch such a large space telescope, whose size would pose a number of logistical and engineering challenges. However, JWST is a potentially big step along the way to this goal.
For example, the JWST team figured out how to make mirror segments with incredible precision — a skill that could come in handy down the road.
"They're basically perfect," said JWST senior project scientist John Mather of NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, who won a Nobel Prize in 2006 for his work with the agency's Cosmic Background Explorer satellite.
"If we were to expand the mirror to the size of the continental United States, the mirror would be accurate to within 3 inches," Mather said. "This is completely amazing technology we have now mastered and are using."
The hunt for life on distant worlds will be a multi-generational effort that goes from TESS and JWST to other, larger space telescopes, Seager said. And overcoming the various challenges involved will almost certainly require the cooperation of a number of different countries and organizations.
"Putting together the partnership that can find Earth 2.0 is a challenge worthy of a great generation," Mountain said.
Closer to home
All of this does not necessarily mean, however, that alien life won't be detected until humanity launches an enormous space telescope. Indeed, confirmation that Earthlings aren't alone in the universe may come from worlds much closer to home.
For example, NASA's next Red Planet rover, which is due to launch in 2020, will hunt for signs of past Mars life. And both NASA and the European Space Agency have plans to mount a mission to Jupiter's ocean-harboring moon Europa, which many experts regard as the solar system's best best to host alien life.
Europe's JUpiter ICy moons Explorer (JUICE) mission is currently scheduled to blast off in 2022 to study the Jovian satellites Callisto and Ganymede in addition to Europa. NASA officials have said they hope to launch a Europa mission sometime in the mid-2020s.
New Venus NASA Missions Could Lift Planet's Hellish Veil
Bruce Dorminey - Forbes
If Mars is mysterious, Venus is truly scary. Long called Earth's twin, it's only four months away via unmanned probe and lies more than 70 percent of Earth's distance from the Sun.
But with surface pressures and temperatures high enough to melt lead and crush steel, why is Venus so hauntingly different from Earth? And when did it go bad?
"Venus and Earth are virtually identical twins; they're almost the same size," said Robert Herrick, a planetary geophysicist at the University of Alaska in Fairbanks. "But Venus is completely uninhabitable; we really don't understand how that dichotomy came about."
The European Space Agency's (ESA) Venus Express orbiter has spent the last eight years trying to dissect its hellish atmosphere and surface. But now with dwindling fuel, by year's end the spacecraft is expected to make its final plunge into Venus' toxic atmosphere.
While Venus Express has made scientific progress, planetary scientists say, a few major puzzles have yet to be solved.
Larry Esposito, a planetary scientist at the University of Colorado at Boulder, says the most puzzling things are: How did Venus go bad? How did the high-wind dynamics of the atmosphere arise on Venus? What is its surface made of? And does Venus still have volcanic activity?
Venus Express took infrared images of the planet's surface and found that its biggest volcanoes do indeed indicate lava flow there within the last 250,000 years.
"Venus Express also detected a sudden increase in sulfur dioxide; the same thing that comes out of unscrubbed coal-powered plants on earth," said Esposito. "But on Venus Express, it was interpreted as a possible real-time volcanic eruption."
One explanation is that Venus undergoes giant volcanic eruptions every few decades. But how do these putative eruptions contribute to Venus' ongoing dense, noxious atmosphere?
Calculations of surface-atmosphere interactions indicate that the planet's atmospheric sulfur should be "sopped up" by the surface in a few tens of millions of years, says Kevin Baines, a planetary scientist at NASA JPL and the University of Wisconsin at Madison. Baines says this means if the present cloudy atmosphere is typical and ongoing, then there must be active volcanism to resupply the atmosphere with sulfur. He notes that "a hot atmosphere" may "soften" the surface, allowing increased sulfur emission.
One of a handful of potential Venus mission proposals — each vying for a slot in NASA's Discovery-class mission program — could help clear up Venus' remaining mysteries.
A proposed VASE (Venus Atmosphere and Surface Explorer) mission might skim the clouds and on a final landing even get data from the surface, says Mark Bullock, a planetary scientist at the Southwest Research Institute in Boulder, and a VASE definition team member.
But Bullock says "if you really want to understand this you have to put lots of balloons in the atmosphere to understand how the surface and the atmosphere interact."
As for why Venus ultimately became so inhospitable?
The short answer is that as the Sun increases in luminosity, the inner edge of our solar system's habitable zone also continually moves outward; thus, long ago, Venus simply became too hot to hold onto its liquid water.
This loss, says Baines, was likely caused by the "ravaging solar wind" and the effects of ultraviolet photons "ripping water molecules into hydrogen and oxygen," which in turn led to the escape of Venus' hydrogen into space.
"To me, the main puzzle is when did Venus lose its oceans," said Bullock. "The paradigm is that Venus lost its oceans up to 600 million years after its formation. But there is absolutely no data which contradicts the possibility that Venus was actually Earth-like for billions of years."
Could Earth suffer a similar fate?
"Earth is definitely on a path to a Venus-like condition and anthropogenic carbon emissions are the beginning of it," said Bullock. "That's dramatic, but there's no question that Earth will go in that direction."
As for finding proof of Venus' ancient lakes or seas, Baines says a surface lander that sampled rocks and found water-bearing materials or materials that could only be formed in standing water would clinch that.
However, Bullock says there are also people who think it may not ever have had an ocean and its water was always steam.
In terms of our geological understanding of Venus, Herrick says we're where we were with Mars three decades ago. NASA's 1990s Magellan mission to Venus was only able to see things several football fields across and larger. But he says a newer generation of Synthetic Aperture Radars (SAR)s is capable of giving researchers much better images.
For a planet with a dense atmosphere, like Venus, Herrick says synthetic aperture radar would image the surface and researchers would interpret the black and white image results very much like images from planets with more transparent atmospheres.
A proposed RAVEN (Radar at Venus) mission would compare a new radar-imaging orbiter focused on understanding Venus' geology as well as identifying future potential landing sites. One of its goals would be to definitively determine whether Venus has continents and whether such putative continents are composed of granitic rock, as here on Earth.
"We don't know that the high-lying regions on Venus are actually like Earth's continents," said Esposito. "We haven't identified granite yet on Venus and don't know its major surface rock types."
Venus doesn't have Earth-styled plate tectonics, says Herrick, but he says we don't have enough high-resolution topography information to understand how Venus is releasing its heat.
NASA will put out a Discovery mission Announcement of Opportunity this September. By year's end, the agency is expected to then pick three to five proposals for further study. Conceivably, one or more of a handful of competing Venus mission proposals may ultimately be chosen and see launch as early as 2020.
As for longer range Venus missions?
"New missions that orbit the planet for decades," said Baines, "may allow us to complete the picture of what happened to Venus to convert it from a verdant oasis to a (non)living hell."
Three Teams To Develop Spaceplane Concepts for DARPA
Mike Gruss | Space News
The U.S. Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency has awarded contracts to three companies to develop concepts for an experimental spaceplane capable of flying 10 times in 10 days, according to a July 15 DARPA press release.
The companies selected to develop the XS-1 spaceplane concepts are: Boeing, working with Blue Origin; Masten Space Systems working with XCOR Aerospace; and Northrop Grumman with Virgin Galactic.
DARPA's press release did not announce the contract values, but the agency previously said the awards would be worth roughly $4 million apiece. However, the Federal Business Opportunities website separately posted the value of the Masten contract, which is worth nearly $3 million, and Boeing said the value of its deal was $4 million.
"We chose performers who could prudently integrate existing and up-and-coming technologies and operations, while making XS-1 as reliable, easy-to-use and cost-effective as possible," Jess Sponable, DARPA's spaceplane program manager, said in a prepared statement. "We're eager to see how their initial designs envision making spaceflight commonplace — with all the potential military, civilian and commercial benefits that capability would provide."
In a press release issued shortly after DARPA's announcement, Boeing said it would focus its work on a launch vehicle with a reusable first stage that would fly to Earth after each mission.
"Our design would allow the autonomous booster to carry the second stage and payload to high altitude and deploy them into space. The booster would then return to Earth, where it could be quickly prepared for the next flight by applying operation and maintenance principles similar to modern aircraft," Will Hampton, Boeing's XS-1 program manager, said in the company release.
Boeing's concept will also focus on the ground infrastructure necessary for quick turnaround between flights, the release said.
Boeing also is working on a separate DARPA contract, worth as much as $104 million, to build and demonstrate a low-cost airborne launching system for small satellites known as Airborne Launch Assist Space Access.
For the XS-1 spaceplane, DARPA intends to select a single concept by the end of 2015 to receive up to $140 million for a second- and third-round effort culminating in a 2018 orbital launch.
The XS-1 program aims to develop a reusable first stage that could carry an expendable upper stage capable of placing payloads weighing up to 1,800 kilograms into orbit. DARPA is looking for a spaceplane that could debut in 2018 and ultimately fly 10 times in 10 days and boost payloads into low Earth orbit for less than $5 million per launch.
DARPA said the selected companies will evaluate the technical feasibility of a demonstration vehicle, conduct risk reduction activities of core technologies and develop a technology maturation plan for a flight test of system capabilities, the agency said.
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