| | JSC TODAY CATEGORIES - Headlines
- Test Subjects Needed for Crew Training
- Failure Could Be an Option, IF ...
- New JSC Wireless Network Certificate
- Managed Elevated Privileges Continues
- IT Labs IT Heroes Showcase: Live ARRT Discussion - Organizations/Social
- 5K Fun Run - JSC Feeds Families 2014
- Ellington Spaceport - This Wednesday - Jobs and Training
- Evaluating and Presenting Analysis Results
- Job Opportunities |  |
| Headlines - Test Subjects Needed for Crew Training
Test Subject Screening is looking for volunteers to serve as test subjects for various crew training sessions. Sessions include practicing blood draws, intraocular pressure readings and retinal imaging of the eyes. Training times may vary from 30 minutes to two hours and are conducted on-site. Volunteers must pass a Category I physical and be at least 21 years old with no history of any eye disorders or corneal refractive surgery (RK, LASIK PRK). Volunteers must be free of any chronic disorders and have no allergies to topical corneal medications or latex. After passing the physical, volunteers must also pass a slit lamp eye exam prior to participation in the ocular studies. Volunteers will be compensated. (Restrictions apply to NASA civil servants and some NASA contractors.) If you are interested in becoming a test subject, please email both Linda Byrd, RN, x37284, and Rori Yager, RN, x37240. - Failure Could Be an Option, IF ...
... you know how to "fail smart." Are you someone who leans forward, in spite of risk, and consequently learns from the experience? If you confess, we aren't going to put your name on the naughty list and report you to Santa—and we MAY JUST award you for it. Intrigued? You could be the person who wins a new innovation award called Lean Forward; Fail Smart. If you're unsure whether you are the perfect fit, check out the evaluation criteria, eligibility requirements and submission instructions found here. Take another calculated risk—and reap the possible rewards. The odds are in your favor, since there will be two voting opportunities to win: one for the agency awards, and one for the JSC awards. The JSC voting will take place after the agency voting is completed. - New JSC Wireless Network Certificate
Beginning Thursday, July 31, wireless users in these areas will be presented with a new certificate that they will be required to accept before they can continue to connect to the "nasa" or "nasabyod" wireless networks. Only users connecting on the third floor of Building 45 and all of Building 46 will be affected by this change. Minimal user impact is expected. Wireless users in the affected areas should only experience the presentation and required acceptance of a new certificate when attempting to connect. This is a one-time acceptance. There is no outage required for this activity. The Information Resources Directorate (IRD) is making this configuration change to the authentication process as part of an ongoing effort to improve the JSC wireless network. For questions regarding this activity and other issues with the network, please contact the Enterprise Service Desk help desk at 281-483-4800 (x34800) - option 2, option 2. - Managed Elevated Privileges Continues
On Tuesday, July 29, Managed Elevated Privileges (MEP) continues with JA. MEP controls admin rights (Elevated Privileges, or EP) on NASA computers and allows users to request EP when needed. Users must complete SATERN training before submitting any requests for EP. All users, especially those scheduled for MEP deployment, are strongly urged to complete the SATERN training for "Basic Users" (Elevated Privileges on NASA Information System - ITS-002-09). Users can coordinate with their supervisor, OCSO or organization IT point of contact to determine the level of EP they may need beyond "Basic User" and any additional training required. The next scheduled deployment date is Aug. 5,which will continue with the JB-JS, F and H org codes. - IT Labs IT Heroes Showcase: Live ARRT Discussion
This NASA Information Technology (IT) Labs presentation of the IT Heroes Showcase discusses the acquisition, development and maintenance of new technology. The IT Labs project, Automating the Reporting and Releasing of Technologies (ARRT), sought to assess the current NASA technology reporting and release processes. The IT Labs Independent Verification and Validation project lead, Justin Morris, will share the team's research. He will also demonstrate the rough proof-of-concept system they developed that highlights their key observations. 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 Thursday, July 31, 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. Organizations/Social - 5K Fun Run - JSC Feeds Families 2014
Starport will be hosting an exciting event to support JSC Feeds Families. Click on the link below for additional details and registration information. Come help us build a mountain of food! We look forward to seeing you on race day. Registration is OPEN NOW. Date: Friday, Aug. 8 Time: 7 a.m. on the dot! Distance: 5K (3.1 miles) Location: Gilruth Center Prior to start: All runners must add their 10 pounds of non-perishable food to the pile Medals: Medals will be awarded to the top three male and female finishers in all age categories NO FEE: All runners must bring 10 pounds of non-perishable food to the Gilruth Center on race day - Ellington Spaceport - This Wednesday
Join the JSC National Management Association (NMA) this Wednesday, July 30, for a luncheon featuring Arturo Machuca, manager of Business Development Houston Airport Systems. Machuca will speak on the "Ellington Spaceport at JSC" at 11:30 a.m. in the Gilruth Alamo Ballroom. Event Date: Wednesday, July 30, 2014 Event Start Time:11:30 AM Event End Time:1:00 PM
Event Location: Gilruth - Alamo Ballroom
Add to Calendar
Leslie N. Smith x46752
[top] Jobs and Training - Evaluating and Presenting Analysis Results
There are slots available for the Evaluating and Presenting Analysis Results training. This course focuses on transforming analysis findings into information the organization can use to make effective decisions. Participants will learn how to determine if an analysis has met the project goals and steps to take when finalizing an analysis. The course then shifts to the design and development of presentations. Best practices for evaluation and presentation are provided in facilitated discussions and reinforced with practical exercises. Upon successful completion of this course, participants will be able to evaluate whether or not an analysis has met its goals. Event Date: Tuesday, August 12, 2014 Event Start Time:8:30 AM Event End Time:4:30 PM
Event Location: Building 12/Room 154
Add to Calendar
Patt Williams 713-249-1508
[top] - Job Opportunities
Where do I find job opportunities? To help you navigate to JSC vacancies, use the filter drop-down menu and select "JSC HR." The "Jobs" link will direct you to the USAJOBS website for the complete announcement and the ability to apply online. Lateral reassignment and rotation opportunities are posted in the Workforce Transition Tool. To access, click: HR Portal > Employees > Workforce Transition > Workforce Transition Tool. These opportunities do not possess known promotion potential; therefore, employees can only see positions at or below their current grade level. If you have questions about any JSC job vacancies or reassignment opportunities, please call your HR representative. | |
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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
Monday – July 28, 2014
HEADLINES AND LEADS
SpaceX executive calls for $22-25 billion NASA budget
Mark Whittington - Examiner
While participating in a panel called "The US Space Enterprise Partnership" at the NewSpace Conference that was held by the Space Frontier Foundation on Saturday, SpaceX Chief Operating Officer Gwynne Shotwell opined that NASA's budget should be raised to $22-25 billion, according to a tweet by Space Policy Online's Marcia Smith. The theory is that a lot of political rancor has taken place in the aerospace community because of the space agency's limited budget. If the budget were to be increased to pay for everything on the space wish list, the rancor will cease.
Buzz Aldrin Attends Moon Landing Anniversary Event
Bay City (CA) News
Forty-five years after his iconic moon landing, former astronaut Buzz Aldrin reunited with the ship that recovered the Apollo 11 crew from the Pacific Ocean when they returned to Earth from their historic space mission.
Beyond the moon
Buzz Aldrin envisions the colonization of Mars
John Diaz – San Francisco Chronicle
Perched on a sofa inside the USS Hornet, Apollo 11 astronaut Buzz Aldrin is surrounded by nostalgia. The aircraft carrier that once scooped him and his fellow space travelers out of the sea is now a museum that showcases everything from the converted Airstream trailer that served as post-lunar quarantine quarters to a commemorative "Buzz Aldrin G.I. Joe." A '60s-era television plays a continuous loop of footage from the moon landing. Aldrin's black silk necktie features patches from NASA space missions.
'Neil Armstrong: A Life of Flight' by Jay Barbree
Lee Billings – The Washington Post
At one point in Gene Wolfe's "Book of the New Sun," a story set on a far-future Earth lapsed into a Dark Age, the narrator glimpses a "warrior of a dead world" in an enigmatic picture hanging in a dusty gallery. Clad in bulky white armor and a bubble-like helmet of polished gold, standing beside a stiff banner in a desolate gray wasteland, the "warrior" is actually an Apollo astronaut planting an American flag on the moon. For most of the inhabitants of Wolfe's fallen world, the moon landings and the people who made them had become little more than a half-remembered fairy tale.
Farmers drilling deeper for water as drought drags on
David Pierson – Los Angeles Times
On a dusty clearing between a fallow wheat field and wilting orange groves, Steve Arthur's crew of two mud-splattered well drillers worked furiously to deliver a lifeline to another despondent farmer.
Lightning strikes in coastal Southern California are rare, expert says
Teresa Watanabe – Los Angeles Times
Lightning strikes that critically injured two people and hit several more Sunday in coastal Southern California are extremely rare, with the West Coast experiencing the lowest incidence of them in the nation, a weather expert said.
NASA Prepares Mars Orbiters As Comet Siding Spring Heads Toward Red Plant For A Close Flyby
Kukil Bora – International Business Times
NASA is preparing its Mars orbiters to stay protected and gather valuable scientific data when a comet named C/2013 A1 Siding Spring closely flies by the red planet Oct. 19.
James Webb Space Telescope's Giant Sunshield Test Unit Unfurled First Time
Ken Kremer – Universe Today
The huge Sunshield test unit for NASA's James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) has been successfully unfurled for the first time in a key milestone ahead of the launch scheduled for October 2018.
On to Pluto!
We haven't been to the moon lately, but we haven't given up exploring.
There has been some fanfare this week over the 45th anniversary of Apollo 11. If the celebration has made you despair at the listless state of today's space program, you may be comforted by another astronomical date, a sort of pre-anniversary: One year from now, for the first time in human history, a probe will reach Pluto. The probe is a compact-car-sized NASA spaceship called New Horizons. It left Earth in 2006. Pluto's a long way away.
SpaceX's lawsuit against the Air Force is gaining steam
Brian Fung – The Washington Post
A federal judge has ordered a review of a U.S. Air Force contract to put dozens of military satellites into orbit. The contract, which was awarded to longtime federal partner United Launch Alliance, is being contested by SpaceX over claims that the bidding process was non-competitive.
Thermal Images of SpaceX Booster Flyback Elude NASA
Dan Leone – Space News
When the Falcon 9 first stage used to loft six Orbcomm satellites made a soft landing in the Atlantic Ocean after launch July 14, Space Exploration Technologies Corp. was not the only one watching.
NASA Realigns Red Planet Armada to Reap Science Bonanza During Upcoming Comet Flyby and Protect Priceless Probes
Ken Kremer – AmericaSpace
Earth's invasion fleet at Mars is about to experience an unprecedented close encounter with a new cometary visitor this fall, and NASA is implementing a multi-pronged strategy that's simultaneously aimed at reaping an unexpected scientific bonanza while also protecting its priceless orbiting armada from "Gravity" like destruction from a trail of hurtling space debris.
Court presses SpaceX and Air Force to resolve case in mediation
Jeff Foust – Space Politics
In a pair of orders issued Thursday, a federal court judge pushed SpaceX and the US Air Force to resolve the ongoing lawsuit over the EELV block buy contract through mediation rather than in the courtroom.
COMPLETE STORIES
SpaceX executive calls for $22-25 billion NASA budget
Mark Whittington - Examiner
While participating in a panel called "The US Space Enterprise Partnership" at the NewSpace Conference that was held by the Space Frontier Foundation on Saturday, SpaceX Chief Operating Officer Gwynne Shotwell opined that NASA's budget should be raised to $22-25 billion, according to a tweet by Space Policy Online's Marcia Smith. The theory is that a lot of political rancor has taken place in the aerospace community because of the space agency's limited budget. If the budget were to be increased to pay for everything on the space wish list, the rancor will cease.
The statement represents something of a departure of the usual mutual antagonism that exists between some in the commercial space community and some at NASA. Indeed Space Politics' Jeff Foust added a tweet, "Thought: a panel at a Space Frontier Foundation conf is talking about how to increase NASA budget. Imagine that in late 90s." The Space Frontier Foundation has been a leading voice for commercializing space, sometimes at the expense of NASA programs.
The shift to the idea that commercial space and NASA may benefit one another started when President George W. Bush first proposed the Vision for Space Exploration. Part of the VSE involved ending the space shuttle program and outsourcing the transportation of supplies and astronauts to and from the International Space Station. Thus NASA would be freed to conduct space exploration beyond low Earth orbit. President Obama caused some friction between NASA supporters and the commercial space community by cancelling the space exploration part of the VSE and doubling down on the commercial space initiative.
The idea of a $25 billion NASA is beguiling, mainly because it would allow the space agency to fully fund a whole slate of space exploration programs. They would include a return to the moon, asteroid capture schemes, and expeditions to Mars. Not coincidentally commercial space firms like SpaceX would stand to profit handsomely from partnership arrangements.
The idea of increasing NASA's budget will not be universally embraced by the "newspace" community, which includes advocates as well as actual businesspeople. Recently USA Today published a piece by space blogger Rand Simberg that basically called for ending any attempt by NASA to mount space exploration, regarding such as ill-conceived attempts to recreate the glory of the Apollo moon landing. Ironically he cited SpaceX as the example of a purely commercial space effort, free from the fetters of the past.
"Meanwhile, SpaceX has already shown the way to low-cost launch and plans to blazing a path to even lower costs through reusability, more in keeping with von Braun's original, more affordable vision until it was derailed by Apollo."
It seems that at least one person at SpaceX would beg to disagree.
Buzz Aldrin Attends Moon Landing Anniversary Event
Bay City (CA) News
Forty-five years after his iconic moon landing, former astronaut Buzz Aldrin reunited with the ship that recovered the Apollo 11 crew from the Pacific Ocean when they returned to Earth from their historic space mission.
Aldrin, 84, visited the USS Hornet Museum on Saturday to participate in Splashdown 45, an event celebrating the July 20, 1969 moonwalk when Neil Armstrong and Aldrin became the first humans to set foot on the moon.
The USS Hornet, a U.S. Navy aircraft carrier, was charged with recovering astronauts Aldrin, Armstrong and Michael Collins after the crew returned from space.
"The Hornet is significant to me," Aldrin said. "I've been there twice before."
Aldrin said he wants to help humans on the next big mission--to land on the planet Mars.
"Now, we're setting a commitment to begin doing that on another planet in the Solar System, and that's the ultimate pioneering adventure for humanity," he said.
On Friday, he was at Facebook headquarters where he posted a selfie from Instagram's anti-gravity room in Menlo Park. During a Q-and-A session there, he said he thinks a mission to Mars could happen by 2040.
Saturday's event gave visitors an opportunity to meet not just Aldrin, but also Bay Area astronaut Yvonne Cagle and other NASA and Navy personnel.
Cagle, 55, of Novato, said she vividly remembers sitting in a tree as a child and staring up at the moon, wondering what it was like to be weightless.
"My father called me inside, pointed to the TV and said 'that's a man walking on the moon,'" she said.
Cagle said the boldness and vision of those first astronauts paved the way for her generation and for future generations.
"These guys got it started, and they've passed the torch to us," she said.
She said she wants to see the next generation of space explorers include citizen astronauts.
"Space is big enough for all of us," she said.
Aldrin, who was the lunar module pilot on Apollo 11, called that first moon landing a "historic time" but added it was a great feeling when the crew safely returned to Earth four days later, splashing down in the Pacific Ocean in the Apollo Command Module, albeit upside down.
"You knew you were home because you could smell the salt air," he said.
Aldrin said the crew was immediately placed in isolation suites when divers reached the floating module. They were then brought to the Hornet, where they entered a quarantine facility constructed from a converted Airstream trailer.
While in quarantine on the Hornet, the men were visited by President Richard Nixon, who was aboard the ship to personally welcome the astronauts back to Earth.
The Hornet, decommissioned in 1970 and now berthed in Alameda, is famous in its own right, having played a major role in the Pacific battles of World War II and serving in the Korean and Vietnam wars and as the recovery ship for the Apollo 11 and 12 space missions.
Beyond the moon
Buzz Aldrin envisions the colonization of Mars
John Diaz – San Francisco Chronicle
Perched on a sofa inside the USS Hornet, Apollo 11 astronaut Buzz Aldrin is surrounded by nostalgia. The aircraft carrier that once scooped him and his fellow space travelers out of the sea is now a museum that showcases everything from the converted Airstream trailer that served as post-lunar quarantine quarters to a commemorative "Buzz Aldrin G.I. Joe." A '60s-era television plays a continuous loop of footage from the moon landing. Aldrin's black silk necktie features patches from NASA space missions.
But Aldrin is not here to talk about missions accomplished.
The 84-year-old space pioneer, who followed Neil Armstrong onto the moon's surface on July 20, 1969, wants to focus on the future. He wants Americans to recapture the sense of imagination and technological mastery that allowed them to achieve President John F. Kennedy's 1961 call for landing a man on the moon by decade's end.
"Nobody ever heard of STEM (science, technology, engineering and math) back then ... we didn't need to, because we were at the top," Aldrin said in an interview inside the Hornet's Apollo 11 exhibit room. "But since then, things have dropped down considerably. Hopefully, the 'not invented here syndrome' will be overcome."
The retired astronaut, who came to Alameda this weekend for a 45th anniversary celebration of the Apollo 11 splashdown, takes seriously his role as an apostle for a robust boost of the space program. The Massachusetts Institute of Technology graduate with a doctorate in aeronautics and astronautics quickly gravitates to technical esoterica when talking about establishing space stations near the moon or sending spacecraft to encounter comets.
Yet he can also bring the conversation down to the corners of Earth where these political and fiscal commitments are launched or aborted.
"I do realize we need to do things for public awareness and support of the things we do," he said. "We need a very respected group of 10, 12 people who were part of space then, or occupied positions to have appreciated the contributions the space program did to overall national enthusiasm and inspiration."
He is thinking big. Real big. He's thinking red.
He's thinking Mars.
Aldrin laid out his vision in a New York Times opinion piece last year. He called for a "unified international effort" to explore and eventually colonize the Red Planet. He suggested that "a permanent human settlement" could be established in 25 years, allowing us to become a "two-planet species." If that sounds outrageously ambitious, Aldrin reminds that, after the moon landing, NASA had a three-option scenario for getting a manned spacecraft to Mars. The costliest and most aggressive plan would have accomplished it in the 1980s; the conservative alternative would have achieved it by 2000.
Those plans, he said, were "dealt a blow of a lack of enthusiasm" - a passion for discovery and U.S. pre-eminence he is determined to rekindle.
Aldrin and his fellow surviving Apollo 11 astronaut, Michael Collins, had a chance to meet with President Obama in the White House last week. Aldrin said the session was arranged at the last minute, so "there wasn't the opportunity to talk and develop" a discussion about the U.S. space future.
To listen to Aldrin is to fully grasp how pared down our nation's sense of possibility has become in the 45 years since Americans gathered around televisions in awe of the black-and-white video from the moon. Today, big visions are subject to ridicule and obstruction, from Obama's attempt to bring health care for the uninsured ... to Gov. Jerry Brown's determination to connect San Francisco and Los Angeles with high-speed rail ... to saving the planet from the effects of climate change.
Colonization of Mars? One can only imagine the Fox News guffawing if Obama, Hillary Rodham Clinton or even a Republican offered a Kennedyesque call to action.
Aldrin simply does not have the "can't be done" gene in his DNA. He is not giving up on his call for a permanent human settlement on Mars.
"That is, to me, going to be one of the greatest historical decisions in Earth history," he said. "I hope that realization is well on the mind of the next president, who will be in office during the 50th anniversary."
Aldrin maintains a rigid posture and straight-ahead style that one might expect of someone with The Right Stuff. He allowed that Obama said "something that was not too appropriate about going to the moon" during a 2010 conversation they had on Air Force One. "It wasn't something he got from me," Aldrin said of the president's notion, with a roll of the eyes.
And what, I asked, did the president say?
"That's for you to check on."
As we parted, I told Aldrin that it was an honor to interview one of the heroes of my adolescent years.
He smiled, put his hand on my shoulder, and offered one of the astronauts' favorite admonitions for one another.
"Don't screw it up."
John Diaz is The San Francisco Chronicle's editorial page editor.
'Neil Armstrong: A Life of Flight' by Jay Barbree
Lee Billings – The Washington Post
At one point in Gene Wolfe's "Book of the New Sun," a story set on a far-future Earth lapsed into a Dark Age, the narrator glimpses a "warrior of a dead world" in an enigmatic picture hanging in a dusty gallery. Clad in bulky white armor and a bubble-like helmet of polished gold, standing beside a stiff banner in a desolate gray wasteland, the "warrior" is actually an Apollo astronaut planting an American flag on the moon. For most of the inhabitants of Wolfe's fallen world, the moon landings and the people who made them had become little more than a half-remembered fairy tale.
I recalled Wolfe's scene while reading one of the final anecdotes in Jay Barbree's admirably accessible new book, a biography of Neil Armstrong, who died at age 82 in 2012. At the conclusion of a global tour promoting space exploration, Armstrong, the first man on the moon, sits in a roadside diner with Gene Cernan, the last, chatting over coffee about when humans might at last return to the lunar surface, and how we might someday visit Mars. More than 40 years ago, their Apollo missions had captivated billions, but now Armstrong and Cernan were retired and relatively anonymous, pining for a future that had never fully arrived.
Like most people Armstrong and Cernan now encountered, the server refilling their cups had no idea that his customers were living bookends to what, even now, is our modern era's most astounding adventure. Yet unlike in Wolfe's tale, the moonwalkers' fade to near-myth has happened not over countless millennia, but in less than a half-century. Somehow, as Apollo and its astronauts have aged, its legacy has been perversely twisted, with human interplanetary voyaging now routinely depicted as just an old-fashioned eccentricity of the Cold War rather than the existential imperative it truly is. Barbree's well-crafted book is both a passionate defense of space travel's importance for humanity's long-term future and a personal remembrance of NASA's most celebrated astronaut, though in both tasks it occasionally falters.
Much of Barbree's writing has a "you are there" immediacy, because he was present for many of the book's key events. During his more than a half-century as space correspondent for NBC News, Barbree witnessed and reported on each and every launch of the U.S. human space program. He is at his best when describing the visceral thrill of rocket flight, the lifeless majesty of the moon, and the visual splendor of Earth from space. These poetic passages are made all the more poignant by his close brush with becoming an astronaut, as a finalist in NASA's failed-to-launch "Journalist in Space" program.
Over the course of his long career, many of the astronauts Barbree covered inevitably evolved from subjects to close friends. He knows and keeps their secrets, so that the stories he tells about them are often the same ones they love to tell about themselves: jovial, well-spun yarns scrubbed of inconvenient or unwholesome details through countless retellings at dinners and cocktail parties. Barbree's story of Armstrong's life is no exception — those hoping that his half-century of conversations with the first man on the moon will produce sensational bombshells or a work of exhaustive detail could be disappointed by the book's streamlined, sanitized narrative.
Barbree's graceful portrait of Armstrong is a familiar tale of a stoic, somewhat reluctant hero, an adept aviator who always seemed destined to be among "the people who punched holes in the sky." As a teenager in rural Ohio, he had recurring dreams of soaring in which he could stay aloft simply by holding his breath, and he performed his first solo flight before he could even legally drive. Throughout his eventual aerospace career, Armstrong's hallmark was his unflappability in the face of potential disaster. Time after time, he escaped unscathed from deadly situations through quick wits and a cautious respect for the limits of humans and machines — see, for instance, Barbree's pulse-pounding account of Armstrong's near-death experience in 1968 on the "Flying Bedstead," NASA's finicky lunar-landing test vehicle. Armstrong's legendary cool head, combined with his well-deserved reputation for humility, are often said to have been what propelled him to those first, fateful steps upon the Sea of Tranquility.
But, in one of the most touching new details Barbree reveals, the deciding factor in Armstrong's eventual voyage to the moon may well have been the untimely death in 1962 of his 3-year-old daughter due to a brain tumor. The tragedy, according to Barbree, galvanized Armstrong and gave him "a new purpose" in volunteering for NASA's astronaut corps. Barbree tastefully doesn't dwell on his subject's grief, but makes clear that it flowed as a dark undercurrent throughout the rest of Armstrong's life, and even hints that the astronaut left a secret, unauthorized memorial to his departed daughter on the moon.
Somewhat like NASA's human spaceflight program itself, after the pinnacle of the Apollo missions the book loses steam, compressing all the rest of Armstrong's long life and all of post-Apollo space exploration into a few short chapters. In the remainder of the book, Barbree's treatment of Armstrong verges on the hagiographic.
NASA, on the other hand, receives a proper flogging. Since the retirement of the space shuttle fleet in 2011, the agency has had no direct way to get humans into space, and America's astronauts have been forced to rely on Russian rockets for rides into orbit. Like Armstrong himself, who spent his last years dismayed that, in Barbree's words, "NASA was going nowhere fast," Barbree has a low opinion of the institution today. Poor political stewardship and an institutional attitude of "arrogant complacency" have reduced the once-mighty agency to where it now "can't send a live flea to the moon and bring the speck of life back still breathing." The book lays the lion's share of blame for this sorry state of affairs at the feet of every post-Apollo presidential administration. Strangely, Richard Nixon — the president who cancelled the Apollo program, scaled back NASA's post-Apollo ambitions, and saddled the agency with a dangerously compromised space-shuttle design — entirely escapes Barbree's wrath.
Armstrong's preferred solution for NASA's woes — and presumably Barbree's, too — consisted of rekindling the glory days of Apollo, using colossal (and colossally expensive) rockets, built and operated by NASA, to go back to the moon and eventually on to Mars. Part of this plan is already underway: In the book, Armstrong expresses joy that NASA's Space Launch System (SLS), which includes a rocket bigger than Apollo's Saturn V, is now being developed. Detractors argue that the SLS will prove so expensive it will leave NASA with no funding to conduct missions properly utilizing the new hardware, but Barbree avoids mentioning these criticisms.
Indeed, the most glaring absence from this book about Armstrong is any deep reflection on the practical lessons to be learned in the aftermath of his greatest achievement. Why, after consuming so many billions of dollars, did Apollo's momentum fizzle? Why, after investments of hundreds of billions more to build and operate space shuttles and a space station for decades, are the benefits from those projects still so elusively intangible? How can the extremely high costs of an ambitious human space program be sustainably managed, or, better yet, drastically reduced? Barbree writes that Armstrong believed the conquest of space was ultimately about becoming "masters of our own survival," because Earth's time in the sun won't last forever, and sooner or later we will need new homes elsewhere. Though this fundamental truth makes finding answers to the foregoing tough questions all the more important, we do not encounter Armstrong's thoughts on them here. Perhaps such matters are beyond the traditional purview of a biography, but facing them head-on would be the most fitting tribute possible for Armstrong and his fellow astronauts, those fading pioneers who first punched holes in the sky.
Lee Billings's first book, "Five Billion Years of Solitude: The Search for Life Among the Stars," will appear in paperback later this year.
Farmers drilling deeper for water as drought drags on
David Pierson – Los Angeles Times
On a dusty clearing between a fallow wheat field and wilting orange groves, Steve Arthur's crew of two mud-splattered well drillers worked furiously to deliver a lifeline to another despondent farmer.
Using a diesel-powered rig that rumbled like a moving subway car, the workers bore deeper and deeper into the packed clay in hopes of tapping a steady supply of groundwater — about the only source of water that remains for many growers in this parched rural community about 40 miles north of Bakersfield.
Only a lucky few get a visit from Arthur. His waiting list, recorded in two 4-inch-thick binders, would take a year to clear. Most farmers can't wait that long to save their fields. Arthur has declined cash offers from growers to jump ahead in line.
"Many of these farmers tell me they'd hate to be in my shoes," said Arthur, 54, a second-generation driller. "What do you tell someone who is losing their crop?"
California's three-year drought has sparked a surge in demand for wells in the state's agricultural heartland. With federal and state allocations of surface water reduced to a trickle, growers are searching deeper underground for sources of water to keep their farms from ruin.
The clamor has overwhelmed California drillers and pump installers, forcing some farms to hire contractors from neighboring states.
It's also setting the stage for more problems later as groundwater supplies are shrinking faster than they can be replenished. In parts of the Central Valley, the water table has plummeted, drying up old wells and sinking the land above, a phenomenon called subsidence.
That's resulted in even deeper wells that cost hundreds of thousands of dollars to build and require more energy to pump water to the surface. As recently as two decades ago, a well several hundred feet would suffice. Today, large farms are drilling to depths of 2,000 feet in anticipation of falling water levels.
"We're going bigger horsepower every year," said Charles Barber, president of Caruthers Pump south of Fresno, who has customers on a three-month waiting list. "We've lost 30 feet of groundwater in a year in some places. We keep that up for 10 years and we won't be farming like this anymore."
At the end of June, the state's top agricultural producing county, Tulare, had issued 874 well permits, 44 more than all of last year. Fresno County, the second-biggest farm producer in California, issued 601 well permits over the same period, about 100 short of matching its total for 2013.
Without access to groundwater, an industry responsible for roughly half the nation's fruit, nuts and vegetables would founder, according to a recent study released by the UC Davis Center for Watershed Sciences.
Well water has kept losses in California's agricultural industry relatively modest considering the severity of the ongoing drought, the report said. The researchers estimated $1 billion in lost revenue and $500 million in additional pumping costs this year. That's a fraction of the $40 billion the industry rings up annually.
Still, there's little optimism the industry can weather another year relying on so much groundwater without significant consequences.
By the end of 2014 alone, groundwater is expected to replace three-quarters of the 6.6 million acre-feet of surface water lost to drought this year — raising groundwater's share of the state's agricultural water supply from 31% to 53%, the UC Davis report said.
"If there's no surface water available, farmers really have no choice but to use the groundwater and use it in a very big way," said Jay Famiglietti, a senior water scientist at the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory at Caltech and a professor of Earth system science at UC Irvine. "The question is how long can we keep doing this before we hit rock bottom? ... We are on a current path that is nearly the definition of unsustainable."
In an attempt to staunch the crisis, two bills have been proposed in the California Legislature to create the state's first groundwater management system. There are currently no restrictions on how much water a landowner can pump from beneath his or her property.
That's given larger farms that can afford to dig deeper wells a distinct advantage over small farmers like Juan Carranza.
The Terra Bella grower farms 40 acres of navel oranges relying strictly on water from his 450-foot well. That may have been deep enough in years past, but now, after irrigating about five acres, the pump would usually start spitting air.
"Everyone around here was pumping water from their wells so the water level kept dropping," said Carranza, 48.
There was nothing else he could do except build a deeper well. So Carranza called Arthur's Fresno headquarters and placed an order for an 800-foot shaft, a $120,000 project. That was in November. Arthur's crew arrived at the end of June.
"He was lucky," Arthur said. "Our calls started doubling in March when people realized the rains weren't coming."
Put simply, there aren't enough contractors and equipment in California to meet today's unprecedented demand, said John Hofer, executive director of the California Groundwater Assn., which represents about 200 well drillers. (There are 782 active well drilling licenses in California, according to the Contractors State License Board.)
There aren't any quick fixes either. Drilling rigs can cost $1 million and can take manufacturers months to deliver. The grueling work of managing a drill site around the clock has also discouraged many from entering the business.
"The perception is we're getting fat off somebody else's misery," Hofer said. "But nobody was asking us for help three years ago. We are busy when there's a need. And if there's a need, it means somebody's hurting."
Arthur's never been busier. He often sleeps only three to four hours a night. His cellphone rings every few minutes and his voicemail is perpetually full. At any given time, he must manage five drill sites miles apart in the Central Valley. All but one operates 24 hours a day. If he had the manpower, the fifth would too.
Arthur was 14 when he started apprenticing with his dad and uncle 40 years ago. Back then, no one could fathom having to drill several thousand feet.
"A guy would have thought you were nuts if you wanted to drill that deep," Arthur said.
Lightning strikes in coastal Southern California are rare, expert says
Teresa Watanabe – Los Angeles Times
Lightning strikes that critically injured two people and hit several more Sunday in coastal Southern California are extremely rare, with the West Coast experiencing the lowest incidence of them in the nation, a weather expert said.
Bill Patzert, a climatologist with the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory, said an intense high-pressure system pulled an unusual mass of hot and moist air from Mexico and the Gulf of California to coastal areas, creating the unstable atmospheric conditions that produced the lightning strikes. Normally, he said, those air masses travel no farther west than the high desert and mountains.
"This was a sneak attack that took everybody by surprise," he said. "Coastal Southern California is virtually lightning proof. Because it's so unusual, people are not sensitized to the dangers."
Patzert said the odds of lightning striking a person in California is 1 in 7.5 million. Montana has among the highest odds at 1 in about 250,000 but Florida is the "nation's lightning champion" with 31 recorded incidents in 2011, he said.
He added that the unusual weather conditions were expected to persist through Wednesday, potentially bringing more lightning and thunder. He advised people to follow the National Weather Service's warning: "When thunder roars, go indoors."
NASA Prepares Mars Orbiters As Comet Siding Spring Heads Toward Red Plant For A Close Flyby
Kukil Bora – International Business Times
NASA is preparing its Mars orbiters to stay protected and gather valuable scientific data when a comet named C/2013 A1 Siding Spring closely flies by the red planet Oct. 19.
On the day of its close encounter with Mars, Siding Spring will pass by the planet at a distance of about 82,000 miles, dropping residue at nearly 35 miles per second, NASA reported. At such a velocity, even the smallest particle of half a millimeter in size could cause serious damage to a spacecraft, the U.S. space agency said. It currently operates two Mars orbiters, with a third one is expected to arrive in Martian orbit one month before the comet flyby. Scientists said they would have to position all spacecraft on the opposite side of Mars before the comet comes closer.
"Three expert teams have modeled this comet for NASA and provided forecasts for its flyby of Mars," Rich Zurek, chief scientist for the agency's Mars Exploration Program, said in a statement. "The hazard is not an impact of the comet nucleus, but the trail of debris coming from it. ... Mars will be right at the edge of the debris cloud, so it might encounter some of the particles -- or it might not."
According to NASA, its Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, or MRO, performed one orbit-adjustment maneuver July 2, while an additional maneuver is planned for Aug. 27. Meanwhile, the Odyssey Mars orbiter is planned for a similar maneuver Aug. 5.
NASA's Mars Atmosphere and Volatile Evolution, or Maven, spacecraft, which is on its way to the planet, is scheduled to enter orbit Sept. 21. The team of scientists working on the Maven project is planning to conduct a precautionary maneuver Oct. 9.
At its closest, Siding Spring's nucleus will pass by Mars at a distance that is 10 times nearer to that planet's surface than any identified comet has ever flown past Earth, scientists said. They added the Mars orbiters will be at greatest risk nearly 90 minutes after the planet comes closest to the center of the widening dust trail from the comet's nucleus.
The Maven orbiter will study gases emitted by the comet's nucleus, while also looking for effects the comet flyby may have on Mars' upper atmosphere. Odyssey will study thermal and spectral properties of the comet's coma -- a cloud around the nucleus -- and tail, and MRO will monitor Mars' atmosphere for possible temperature increases and cloud formation, NASA said.
James Webb Space Telescope's Giant Sunshield Test Unit Unfurled First Time
Ken Kremer – Universe Today
The huge Sunshield test unit for NASA's James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) has been successfully unfurled for the first time in a key milestone ahead of the launch scheduled for October 2018.
Engineers stacked and expanded the tennis-court sized Sunshield test unit last week inside the cleanroom at a Northrop Grumman facility in Redondo Beach, California.
NASA reports that the operation proceeded perfectly the first time during the test of the full-sized unit.
The Sunshield and every other JWST component must unfold perfectly and to precise tolerances in space because it has not been designed for servicing or repairs by astronaut crews voyaging beyond low-Earth orbit into deep space, William Ochs, Associate Director for JWST at NASA Goddard told me in an exclusive interview.
The five layered Sunshield is the largest component of the observatory and acts like a parasol.
Its purpose is to protect Webb from the suns heat and passively cool the telescope and its quartet of sensitive science instruments via permanent shade to approximately 45 kelvins, -380 degrees F, -233 C.
The kite-shaped Sunshield provides an effective sun protection factor or SPF of 1,000,000. By comparison suntan lotion for humans has an SPF of 8 to 40.
The extreme cold is required for the telescope to function in the infrared (IR) wavelengths and enable it to look back in time further than ever before to detect distant objects.
The shield separates the observatory into a warm sun-facing side and a cold anti-sun side.
Its five thin membrane layers also provides a stable thermal environment to keep the telescopes 18 primary mirror segments properly aligned for Webb's science investigations.
JWST is the successor to the 24 year old Hubble Space Telescope and will become the most powerful telescope ever sent to space.
The Webb Telescope is a joint international collaborative project between NASA, the European Space Agency (ESA) and the Canadian Space Agency (CSA).
NASA has overall responsibility and Northrop Grumman is the prime contractor for JWST.
Webb will launch folded up inside the payload fairing of an ESA Ariane V ECA rocket from the Guiana Space Center in Kourou, French Guiana.
In launch configuration, the Sunshield will surround the main mirrors and instruments like an umbrella.
During the post launch journey to the L2 observing orbit at the second Sun-Earth Lagrange point nearly a million miles (1.5 million Km) from Earth, the telescopes mirrors and sunshield will begin a rather complex six month long unfolding and calibration process.
The science instruments have been mounted inside the ISIM science module and are currently undergoing critical vacuum chamber testing at NASA Goddard Space Flight Center which provides overall management and systems engineering.
The mirror segments have arrived at NASA Goddard where I've had the opportunity to observe and report on work in progress.
On to Pluto!
We haven't been to the moon lately, but we haven't given up exploring.
There has been some fanfare this week over the 45th anniversary of Apollo 11. If the celebration has made you despair at the listless state of today's space program, you may be comforted by another astronomical date, a sort of pre-anniversary: One year from now, for the first time in human history, a probe will reach Pluto. The probe is a compact-car-sized NASA spaceship called New Horizons. It left Earth in 2006. Pluto's a long way away.
Pluto used to be our smallest, remotest planet, the ninth planet from the sun. In 2006, the International Astronomical Union redesignated Pluto as a "dwarf planet." Despite the indignation of everyone who grew up with a now-obsolete solar-system mnemonic, the demotion was not without justice. According to the IAU, a planet ought to "clear its neighborhood" — that is, it should be the dominant massive object in its orbit. In fact, Pluto is less than a tenth of the total mass following its path around the sun. Earth, for reference, is very nearly 100 percent of the mass in our orbit. Pluto is smaller than Earth's moon. It's smaller than Saturn's largest moon, and Neptune's, and all four of Jupiter's major, "Galilean" moons.
So, Pluto is a dwarf. But, in a year, it might get a promotion — along with its largest moon, Charon — to a binary dwarf-planet system. Charon is big enough, at more than 10 percent Pluto's mass, that the center of its orbit is a point outside Pluto's body — a point that Pluto orbits too, the system's center of mass, its "barycenter". In essence, the two orbit each other.
(Though, of course, that's true of all astronomical bodies with satellites, in much the way you have to lean backwards if you spin around holding something large at arm's length. The barycenter of the Earth–moon system is not the center of the Earth; the barycenter of the sun–Jupiter system is actually outside the body of the sun. Fun facts, but back to Pluto:)
We don't know if Pluto and Charon will end up being called a binary system because we don't know a whole lot about them. We know their masses and orbits, but not much else. Pluto is a mystery; nothing manmade has ever come near it. New Horizons, which is still a year from its destination, has been the closest manmade object to Pluto since 2011. Not just the closest at the moment, but the closest ever.
New Horizons was (is) the fastest spacecraft ever launched, hitting 37,000 miles per hour as it left Earth — and it has taken eight and a half years to get as close to Pluto as it is now. Pluto is so distant that our best photographs show it as a smudged disc. At its closest approach to the sun, it's two and three-quarter billion miles away; four and a half billion miles at its furthest. But one year from now, we're going to get a close-up look with a car-sized cosmic camera. What a time to be alive.
And that's not all. Pluto isn't the only dwarf planet; there are four others, and about three dozen "probables." Three of the four confirmed dwarves are beyond Pluto's orbit, but the fourth is right here in the inner solar system, orbiting in the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter. How about that? Its name is Ceres, and — like Pluto — for a time after it was discovered (in 1801) it was considered a planet. It was demoted to an asteroid, then promoted to a dwarf planet. Like Pluto, it has been photographed only as a pixilated blur. But in just eight months, NASA's Dawn spaceship will enter a Ceres-centered orbit.
So, we haven't had a manned mission to the moon since the end of the Apollo era in 1972. Certainly, we ought to go back; certainly, things in space have been better. But in less than a year's time, we will have first-ever looks at two brand-new worlds. And that should take your breath away.
— Josh Gelernter is a writer in Connecticut.
SpaceX's lawsuit against the Air Force is gaining steam
Brian Fung – The Washington Post
A federal judge has ordered a review of a U.S. Air Force contract to put dozens of military satellites into orbit. The contract, which was awarded to longtime federal partner United Launch Alliance, is being contested by SpaceX over claims that the bidding process was non-competitive.
In a filing this week, Judge Susan Braden of the Court of Federal Claims said that United Launch Alliance, or ULA, would need to hand over details of a contract with the U.S. Air Force that it secured last year. The terms of the agreement are expected to shed light — behind closed doors, anyway — on the cost to taxpayers of using United Launch Alliance's rockets.
The decision marks an early victory for SpaceX, which in April sued the government and accused it of simply giving the $11 billion dollar contract away without providing ample opportunity for competition. The Defense Department expects to spend as much as $70 billion on the wider launch program by 2030 — but SpaceX has claimed it can put payloads into orbit for far cheaper than ULA.
ULA is a joint partnership between aerospace giants Boeing and Lockheed Martin; the company has helped the Pentagon launch payloads into space for years. Because of contracting failures in the 1990s, the military is skittish about entrusting its satellites to other launch providers. In April, access to Russian-made rocket engines were temporarily suspended over concerns that the purchase of Russian rockets violated U.S. sanctions against the country — bringing the future of the U.S. space launch business into question — but a federal court lifted the injunction in May on the government's appeal.
SpaceX's launch vehicles don't rely on Russian-made engines. It's argued that because of its domestic production base, it should be the natural choice for the U.S. Air Force moving forward. But the Air Force has delayed giving SpaceX the ability to compete for launch contracts, citing "anomalies" in recent flight tests.
SpaceX didn't get everything it wanted with the court's decision this week. It had called for an outright cancellation of the 36-rocket contract. Still, the fact that the court is taking a closer look at the ULA contract is a good sign for Musk's company.
Correction: The original version of this post reported that U.S. purchases of Russian-made rocket engines were blocked by a court due to U.S. sanctions. That injunction has since been lifted.
Thermal Images of SpaceX Booster Flyback Elude NASA
Dan Leone – Space News
When the Falcon 9 first stage used to loft six Orbcomm satellites made a soft landing in the Atlantic Ocean after launch July 14, Space Exploration Technologies Corp. was not the only one watching.
NASA too had eyes on the falling booster, hoping to snap some infrared images of its engines relighting as the rocket stage screamed back to Earth at supersonic speeds. Reconnaissance like that, the agency maintains, could provide valuable insight into the propulsive landing of massive payloads — something essential for putting humans on Mars one day.
SpaceX got the footage it was looking for. The company released an 80-second video July 22, taken from one of Falcon 9's onboard cameras, that shows the rocket's liquid-fueled first stage executing the second of two planned engine burns, then extending its landing legs for a simulated landing at sea.
NASA, which was watching Falcon 9's landing spot in the Atlantic from a Martin WB-57 twin-jet airplane, was not as lucky.
The crew aboard the NASA-operated aircraft, circling about 15 kilometers above the expected splash zone, caught sight of the Falcon 9 as it ascended, and of the first stage as it plummeted toward the ocean, but was unable to get a good shot of the descending stage's first engine burn.
The WB-57 crew had the plane's midwave infrared imager trained on the falling stage, but was "unable to obtain the external thermal imagery of the rocket engines relighting," according to NASA spokesman David Steitz.
Steitz compared imaging a falling rocket stage with "trying to find something while looking through a soda straw," and added that clouds in the area further complicated the effort.
It is the second time NASA has tried, and failed, to snap a shot of a descending SpaceX rocket stage.
The first time, the agency's plan was spoiled when a plane set to observe the booster's ocean landing after an April 18 cargo launch to the international space station was not able to get off the ground due to icy conditions at the runway near NASA's Langley Research Center in Hampton, Virginia.
NASA's next chance to record Falcon 9's engine relighting will be during the company's next NASA-sponsored cargo resupply mission to the international space station, currently scheduled to lift of Sept. 12 from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida.
SpaceX has two missions on the slate before September, but both are flying to geostationary transfer orbit for Hong Kong-based telecommunications satellite fleet operator AsiaSat and will require all the fuel Falcon 9 can carry, the company said in a July 22 note on its website. That means no booster-flyback attempt until the next ISS resupply mission.
That attempt, which SpaceX says has only a "low probability of success," will be Falcon 9's final attempted water-landing before SpaceX tries later this year to land the booster on a solid surface — either terra firma or a floating platform, SpaceX said in the July 22 note.
SpaceX says the July 14 test confirmed that Falcon 9's liquid-oxygen and -kerosene-fueled booster "is able consistently to reenter from space at hypersonic velocity, restart main engines twice, deploy landing legs and touch down at near zero velocity." The test marked the second time SpaceX has guided the Falcon 9's first-stage booster to a near-zero-velocity splashdown with landing legs deployed.
NASA Realigns Red Planet Armada to Reap Science Bonanza During Upcoming Comet Flyby and Protect Priceless Probes
Ken Kremer – AmericaSpace
Earth's invasion fleet at Mars is about to experience an unprecedented close encounter with a new cometary visitor this fall, and NASA is implementing a multi-pronged strategy that's simultaneously aimed at reaping an unexpected scientific bonanza while also protecting its priceless orbiting armada from "Gravity" like destruction from a trail of hurtling space debris.
Comet C/2013 A1 Siding Spring is swinging around the Sun and heading toward an extremely close flyby with the Red Planet on Oct. 19, 2014. See the flyby graphics and animation above and below.
The comet's nucleus will fly by Mars at a distance of only about 82,000 miles (132,000 kilometers) at 2:28 p.m. ET (18:28 GMT). That's barely one-third the distance from the Earth to the Moon.
And as if that wasn't exciting enough, the ultra close flyby of Comet Siding Spring will be about 16 times closer to Mars than the closest ever recorded Earth approach by a comet.
When the now-defunct comet Lexell sped by Earth two and a half centuries ago, on July 1, 1770, it flew to within 1.4 million miles (2.3 million km) or about six times farther away than the Moon.
October's swingby also marks the comet's first passage through the inner Solar System on its millions-year orbital journey from the Oort cloud.
So just imagine the breathtaking celestial view if you were circling over Mars or driving across its surface! And the thrill of investigating pristine, primordial material!
But at the distance of only 82,000 miles (132,000 kilometers), the comet is close enough that gas and dust in the outermost reaches of the comet's atmosphere, or coma, will impinge the Martian atmosphere of Mars—and maybe impact spacecraft.
And Siding Spring will be spewing out material at a velocity of about 35 miles (56 kilometers) per second, relative to Mars and Mars-orbiting spacecraft.
NASA says that when Siding Spring flies by Mars, "even the smallest particle — estimated to be about one-fiftieth of an inch (half a millimeter) across — could cause significant damage to a spacecraft."
And precisely because of the potential for damage from a shower of hurtling debris, NASA is repositioning its two orbiters currently operating at Mars as well as a third one arriving less than one month before the comet's swingby. Engineers will reposition all the orbiters on the opposite side of the Red Planet when the comet is most likely to pass by.
Therefore, NASA has to balance the magnificent opportunities for science with the deadly potential for utter destruction.
NASA's currently operating orbiter fleet comprises Mars Odyssey (MO), launched in 2001, and the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO), launched in 2005.
NASA's next and final planned Mars orbiter, the Mars Atmosphere and Volatile EvolutioN (MAVEN) spacecraft, is scheduled to arrive in the vicinity on Sept. 21.
MO and MRO currently provide the essential communications link for transmitting virtually all of the imagery and measurements from NASA's Curiosity and Opportunity rover expeditions on Mars' surface today. MAVEN will assist.
In a nutshell: "No Mars Orbiters, No Mars Images."
So MO and MRO are the indispensable science relay links for NASA's current surface assets, as well as the next vehicles arriving in coming years: the 2016 InSight lander and the 2020 Curiosity-like Rover.
The period of greatest spacecraft risk starts about 90 minutes after closest approach and lasts about 20 minutes, when Mars will come closest to the center of the widening dust trail from the comet's nucleus.
"Three expert teams have modeled this comet for NASA and provided forecasts for its flyby of Mars," explained Rich Zurek, chief scientist for the Mars Exploration Program at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Pasadena, Calif., in a statement.
"The hazard is not an impact of the comet nucleus, but the trail of debris coming from it. Using constraints provided by Earth-based observations, the modeling results indicate that the hazard is not as great as first anticipated. Mars will be right at the edge of the debris cloud, so it might encounter some of the particles — or it might not."
MRO already executed its first orbit-adjustment protective maneuver on July 2. Another is planned for Aug. 27. MO will implement an adjust burn on Aug. 5. The MAVEN team plans to conduct a "precautionary maneuver on Oct. 9, prior to the start of the mission's main science phase in early November," says NASA.
No precautions are necessary for Curiosity and Opportunity due to the shielding effects of Mars' thin atmosphere.
All three orbiters and the two surface rovers will train their arrays of instruments and cameras to study the nucleus, coma surrounding the nucleus, and tail of Siding Spring in the days just before and after the flyby to take advantage of this unparalleled bonus opportunity.
The spacecraft will also investigate possible effects on the Martian atmosphere.
MAVEN is particularly well-suited in this regard since its specific mission is to conduct the first science study of Mars' upper atmosphere.
"It will study gases coming off the comet's nucleus into its coma as it is warmed by the sun. MAVEN also will look for effects the comet flyby may have on the planet's upper atmosphere and observe the comet as it travels through the solar wind," according to a NASA statement.
"Odyssey will study thermal and spectral properties of the comet's coma and tail. MRO will monitor Mars' atmosphere for possible temperature increases and cloud formation, as well as changes in electron density at high altitudes. The MRO team also plans to study gases in the comet's coma. Along with other MRO observations, the team anticipates this event will yield detailed views of the comet's nucleus and potentially reveal its rotation rate and surface features."
Curiosity and Opportunity will attempt to image the comet as they have the Martian moons Phobos and Deimos. They will also monitor the atmosphere for potential meteors in the wake of the dust trail.
Optical and ultraviolet measurements from NASA's Swift science satellite in May 2014 determined that the icy nucleus of comet Siding Spring is about 2,300 feet (700 meters) across. It was also offgassing water as frozen material sublimates from the Sun's heating effect at a rate of 13 gallons, or 49 liters, per second.
Other space-based probes have also imaged Siding Spring to prepare for the Oct. 19 flyby, including NASA's Hubble Space Telescope and Neowise mission.
Comet C/2013 A1 Siding Spring was discovered by Robert H. McNaught on Jan. 3, 2013, using the .05-meter (20-inch) Uppsala Schmidt Telescope, at Siding Spring Observatory in New South Wales, Australia. It was 7.2 AU from the Sun and located in the constellation Lepus.
McNaught has discovered numerous comets and asteroids including Comet Mcnaught, or C/2006 P1, which was widely visible to the naked eye in the Southern Hemisphere during 2007 and was the brightest in four decades.
Stay tuned here for continuing updates.
Court presses SpaceX and Air Force to resolve case in mediation
Jeff Foust – Space Politics
In a pair of orders issued Thursday, a federal court judge pushed SpaceX and the US Air Force to resolve the ongoing lawsuit over the EELV block buy contract through mediation rather than in the courtroom.
In the first order, Judge Susan Braden directed the Air Force and SpaceX to take the first steps towards mediation. By August 8, The Air Force must provide to SpaceX a list of missions it plans to perform using the vehicles acquired in the block buy contract "together with sufficient technical information to allow Plaintiff to determine whether and when it can perform those missions."
SpaceX, by September 10, will submit a list of issues that it will seek to resolve through mediation as well as other issues involved with mediation, including a proposed mediator and schedule for the mediation process. The Air Force must respond by October 14. "To facilitate the good faith efforts of the Government and Plaintiff to undertake these initial steps in a mediation process, all parties are ordered to decline to comment in the press about the substance or assignments set forth herein," the order states.
In a second order, largely dealing with the "administrative record" of the case, Judge Braden threw out a motion by United Launch Alliance (ULA), the "defendent-intervenor" in the case, to dismiss the SpaceX suit. That decision, though, was not based on the merits of ULA's arguments in its motion, but because the court concluded ULA had no standing to request a dismissal. "The Defendant-Intervenor has no basis to challenge Plaintiff's standing in this case, as all relevant evidence is within the custody and control of the Plaintiff and/or Government."
The decision was considered a victory for SpaceX in many media reports, although it may be more accurate to consider it not a defeat. The court has not thrown out the SpaceX suit, although it hasn't ruled on the Air Force's motion to dismiss. (The fact that Judge Braden is setting up a mediation process suggests she will not rule on that motion while mediation is ongoing.) SpaceX has hinted in the past that it would be open to some kind of settlement in its suit, but has been vague on what it would accept.
END
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