Wednesday, July 9, 2014

Fwd: NASA and Human Spaceflight News - Wednesday – July 9, 2014 and JSC Today



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From: "Moon, Larry J. (JSC-EA411)" <larry.j.moon@nasa.gov>
Date: July 9, 2014 11:25:23 AM CDT
To: "Moon, Larry J. (JSC-EA411)" <larry.j.moon@nasa.gov>
Subject: FW: NASA and Human Spaceflight News - Wednesday – July 9, 2014 and JSC Today

Hope to see you if you can join us at Hibachi Grill tomorrow at 11:30 for our monthly NASA Retirees luncheon.

JSC Logo

 

 

 

 

   Headlines

  1. Mission Controllers needed for SMART-OP Study

Test Subject Screening (TSS) is seeking mission controllers to evaluate a self-guided, mutli-media stress management and resilience training computer program, called SMART-OP,that will be compared to an attention control group who will watch videos and read information on stress management. Volunteers will be randomly assigned to one of the two groups: they will attend 1 informational session; complete 2 pre-and post-test assessments (60 -90 minutes) involving questionnaires, neuropsychologial tasks, physiological data and biomarker assays; 6 weekly stress management training sessions (30-60 minutes); and a 3 month follow-up, equaling a total of 10 session contacts.

Volunteers must be healthy, non-smokers, and taking no medications. Individuals must pass or have a current Category I physical.

Volunteers will be compensated (restrictions apply to NASA civil servants and some contractors; contractor employees should contact your local HR department). Please email or call both Linda Byrd, RN, 3-7284, and Rori Yager, RN, 3-7240.

Linda Byrd 3-7284

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  1. IT Talk –The Year 2025

The July-September issue of IT Talk takes us back to the future; or at least to 2025 with:

• The Message from the NASA CIO

• Visions of 2025 from IT Labs, JPL, JSC and LaRC

• 2014 International Space Apps Challenge Winners

• Collaboration in Motion at JSC

• Virtual Executive Summit

• And 13P Updates

• And more…

Go to IT Talk and take a look at the future.

IT Talk is a quarterly publication that highlights Office of CIO IT innovations, initiatives and programs across NASA centers.

Previous issues of "IT Talk," go to Office of the CIO home page.

JSC-IRD-Outreach x34883

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  1. Weekly Senior Staff Safety Message

View the weekly senior staff safety message at: http://www6.jsc.nasa.gov/safety/SeniorStaff/

Don't become a victim of phishing. Phishing is a fraudulent attempt, usually made through email, to steal your personal information. View the weekly message and learn how to protect yourself and your computer.

Wayne Gremillion 281-483-4287

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  1. Tribute to Sally Ride Now Lives Online!!!

In June of 1983 Dr. Sally Ride became the first American woman and youngest person to fly into space. Celebrate this very private person through the stories of her inner circle. Join Partner- Tam O'Shaughnessy, Sister- Bear Ride and Biographer- Lynn Sherr as they discuss the triumphs and struggles of this fallen American hero. If you missed this one-time event or want to see it again, the streaming video is available through this "link". http://www.ustream.tv/recorded/49435153

Robert F. Blake 281-244-2525

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  1. Energy/Water Saving Tips in Your Work Areas

1. Adjust window coverings to reduce direct sunlight in summer and close window coverings at the end of the work day year round. Only raise mini blinds 12 inches from the top. Raising them all the way up can make lowering them difficult. For window covering repair, etc., please submit your request electronically to: jsc-furniture@mail.nasa.gov

2. Participate in the Super Flex schedule

3. Remove energy-using equipment from your work areas, particularly refrigerators, heaters and printers

4. Turn off lights in unoccupied rooms

5. Use task lighting in your work areas and coordinate with your building Facility Manager to reduce unnecessary lighting

6. Report energy- and water-wasting problems to PAE Work Control or your Facility Manager.

For more information and other energy saving tips, visit the Green Team Web page.

Kevin McCue x33649

 

Kevin McCue x33649

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   Organizations/Social

  1. Today! SAIC/S&MA Speaker Forum w/ Jon Hall

Reminder! Today, you're invited to JSC's SAIC/Safety and Mission Assurance (S&MA) speaker forum featuring Jon Hall, associate division chief of the Propulsion and Power Division. He will discuss "JSC De-Ionized Water System Investigation Results" in the Teague Auditorium from 11:30 a.m. to 12:30 p.m.

Did you get value from recent speaker forums featuring spacesuit water intrusion and Columbia lessons learned? If so, this presentation on the De-Ionized (DI) Issues encountered at JSC is perfect for you. Hall will discuss the following today around lunchtime:

    • What prompted the JSC DI water system investigation
    • DI water production, distribution and applications at JSC
    • DI water characteristics
    • Best practices
    • Findings from the investigation
    • Recommendations for improvements

Event Date: Wednesday, July 9, 2014   Event Start Time:11:30 AM   Event End Time:12:30 PM
Event Location: Teague Auditorium

Add to Calendar

Della Cardona/Juan Traslavina 281-335-2074/281-335-2272

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  1. Today! Guest Speaker - Agency Scheduling Practices

Are you a scheduler at JSC? Curious about how the agency is striving to be an industry leader in scheduling best practices? Join the JSC Scheduling Community of Practice (CoP) today for a presentation by Arnold Hill on the agency's new scheduling initiative. Hill will discuss the objectives, scope and approach of this group and how it will benefit the scheduling community here at JSC.

Interested in becoming a member of the JSC Scheduling CoP? The CoP was created to provide training for, and communication amongst, schedule practitioners at JSC to improve scheduling practices and efficacy. For more information, contact us!

Event Date: Wednesday, July 9, 2014   Event Start Time:2:00 PM   Event End Time:3:30 PM
Event Location: Building 1, Room 620

Add to Calendar

Lauren Attermeier x45992 https://pmi.jsc.nasa.gov/schedules/SitePages/Home.aspx

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  1. You're Invited to Lunch

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. The brightest high school students in Texas want to learn from your experiences.

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 hi and inspire our students.

Wednesday Summer Schedule

    • Building 3 Café
    • Noon to 1 p.m.
    • July 9, 16, 23 and 30

For more information, contact Christopher Blair.

Christopher Blair x31146

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  1. Parent's Night Out at Starport – July 18th

Enjoy a night out on the town while your kids enjoy a night with Starport! We will entertain your children with a night of games, crafts, a bounce house, pizza, movie, dessert, and loads of fun!

When: Friday, July 18th from 6-10pm

Where: Gilruth Center

 Ages: 5-12

Cost: $20/first child and $10/each additional sibling if registered by the Wednesday prior to event. If registered after Wednesday, the fee is $25/ first child and $15/ additional sibling.

Shericka Phillips 2814835563 https://starport.jsc.nasa.gov/en/programs/familyyouth-programs/parents-n...

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  1. JSC Lunarfins SCUBA Club Meeting

Are you a SCUBA Diver? Has it been a while since you were in the water? Has your SCUBA equipment been sitting in your closet, or worse, your garage or attic? If so, join us Wednesday at the monthly Lunarfins Club meeting to hear Barney Corbin talk about SCUBA equipment maintenance and repair. Barney has been the repair technician for Oceanic Ventures dive shop in Houston for 13 years and repairs all makes and manufacturers of recreational SCUBA equipment. Join us for this very informative presentation and see what's happening to that SCUBA equipment in your garage!

Event Date: Wednesday, July 9, 2014   Event Start Time:7:00 PM   Event End Time:8:30 PM
Event Location: Clear Lake Park Recreation Center

Add to Calendar

Barbara Corbin 281-483-6215 www.lunarfins.com

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  1. Starport Youth Karate Classes-- Free Class July 12

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.

 TRY A FREE CLASS ON July 12th!

 Please call the Gilruth Center front desk to sign your child up for the free

class. (Only 25 available spots)

Five-week session: July 19 to August 16

Saturdays: 10:15 to 11:00 a.m.

Ages: 6 to 12

Cost: $75 | $20 Drop-in rate

Register online or at the Gilruth Center.

Shericka Phillips 2814835563 https://starport.jsc.nasa.gov/en/programs/familyyouth-programs/youth-karate

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  1. Mindful Eating

Have you ever had a candy bar and wished you had one more bite? Do you struggle with comfort eating? Mindful eating is not a diet or about giving up anything at all. It's about enjoying the experience of eating fully. You can eat a salad mindfully, if you wish. Or, you could decide halfway through your meal that you've had enough. Please join Takis Bogdanos, MA, LPC-S, CGP, for an introduction on "Mindful Eating" and techniques on how to practice it.

Event Date: Wednesday, July 9, 2014   Event Start Time:12:00 PM   Event End Time:1:00 PM
Event Location: Building 30 Auditorium

Add to Calendar

Lorrie Bennett, Employee Assistance Program, Occupational Health Branch x36130

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  1. 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."

Event Date: Wednesday, July 16, 2014   Event Start Time:12:00 PM   Event End Time:1:00 PM
Event Location: Building 30 Auditorium

Add to Calendar

Lorrie Bennett, Employee Assistance Program, Occupational Health Branch x36130

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

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

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NASA and Human Spaceflight News

Wednesday – July 9, 2014

HEADLINES AND LEADS

 

Astronaut Looks Down on Churning Eye of Typhoon Neoguri

NBC News

 

The International Space Station passed directly over the eye of Typhoon Neoguri and astronaut Alexander Gerst of Germany captured its terrifying size. In a tweet, Gerst marveled that even with a fish-eye lens, he couldn't capture the whole storm.

 

Japan's Super Typhoon Neoguri Looks Terrifying From Space

Gizmodo – Jamie Condliffe

 

This is the super typhoon, dubbed Neoguri, that's currently threatening Japan. It looks intimidating, even from the comfort of the International Space Station.

 

Join Us for a Conversation Between TIME and the Space Station

Jeffrey Kluger – TIME

 

Astronauts flying a million-pound machine 230 miles overhead don't have a lot of time to chat, but Time snagged them for a few minutes. Join us for some live air-to-ground chatter. Everything about the International Space Station (ISS) is built to wow. It's almost exactly the size of a football field, has as much habitable space as a six-bedroom house, orbits 230 miles overhead, required 115 space flights to build and carries a solar panel array with a surface area of one acre. The offices of TIME magazine—located on the slightly less glamorous Avenue of the Americas and 51st St. in New York City, and with about as much habitable space as, um, an office— can hardly compete. But on July 9, the two worlds will briefly collide, as TIME chats via video downlink with the ISS.

 

Soyuz rocket sends up Russian weather satellite

Stephen Clark – Spaceflight Now

 

A new Russian weather satellite lifted off from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan on Tuesday, riding a Soyuz launcher into space with six small piggyback satellites from Britain, the United States and Norway.

 

Buzz Aldrin calls NASA 'adrift,' wants to go to Mars, but first to White House

Joel Achenback – The Washington Post

 

"Joel, this is Buzz Aldrin. Apollo 11. First lunar landing." The message on my voicemail was, indeed, from that Buzz Aldrin, of that Apollo 11, and that first lunar landing. Aldrin — heck, let's call him Buzz — had a lot to talk about. After two long phone interviews, I can safely report that Edwin Buzz Aldrin, age 84, hasn't slowed down over the years. He's more than an American hero: He's a force of nature. He also doesn't edit his remarks — you get full-strength Buzz whenever he opens his mouth.

 

#Apollo45: Buzz Aldrin Helps Apollo 11 Moon Shot Go Viral Again

Alan Boyle – NBC News

 

When Buzz Aldrin returned from the moon in 1969 and saw all the earthly hoopla that surrounded the Apollo 11 mission, he turned to his fellow moonwalker, Neil Armstrong, and said: "We missed the whole thing." Forty-five years later, Aldrin doesn't intend to miss any of the buzz: He's orchestrating a social media campaign called #Apollo45, complete with a string of celebrity YouTube videos, to mark the anniversary and jump-start his four-point plan for space exploration and settlement.

 

Buzz Aldrin talks Mars, aliens, Sandra Bullock on Reddit

Javier Panzar – LA Times

 

Buzz Aldrin, the second human to walk on the moon, took to Reddit on Tuesday to promote the 45th anniversary of the July 20, 1969, Apollo 11 moon landing. Calling himself a "global space statesman," Aldrin answered questions about colonizing Mars, Elon Musk, his favorite movies about space and his appearance on "30 Rock."

 

What Spaceflight Planning Can Teach Us On Earth

Frank Morning, Jr. – Aviation Week

 

International Space Station crewmates are looking forward to a little more fresh food with their processed nutrition, thanks to a new plant-growth chamber delivered by the most recent SpaceX Dragon to reach the orbiting outpost. Developed by Orbitec in Madison, Wisconsin, the "Veggie" unit is a very small farm—11.5 X 14.5 in.—that will allow the crew to grow red romaine lettuce for researchers to evaluate and them to eat. Like much of the work on the ISS, the "Veg-01" experiment is aimed at the thorny problem of keeping deep-space explorers alive on long-duration missions to Mars.

 

What It Takes To Make A Decent Cup Of Coffee In Space

Maanvi Singh – NPR

 

When our pals at the Two-Way wrote last month that engineers had finally come up with a way to brew some good Italian espresso on the International Space Station, we were thoroughly intrigued. As the space-age coffee machine — called, naturally the "ISSpresso" — is a capsule-based brewing system. It's similar in principle to a Keurig machine. But engineers at the Italian aerospace firm , along with coffee company and the Italian space agency, finessed it to function in a microgravity environment.

 

Space Florida: Cape risks irrelevance

James Dean – Florida Today

 

Space Florida CEO Frank DiBello today delivered a call to action to make Cape Canaveral a more attractive site for commercial space operations, or else risk becoming irrelevant in the growing industry.

 

Calling All Space Tweeps! In Honor of STS-135, Share Your Fave Shuttle Pics

Elizabeth Howell – Universe Today

 

Has it been three years already? The last mission of the space shuttle program launched on this day in 2011. We've included some of the most beautiful NASA images from the final flight of Atlantis.

 

COMPLETE STORIES

 

Astronaut Looks Down on Churning Eye of Typhoon Neoguri

NBC News

 

The International Space Station passed directly over the eye of Typhoon Neoguri and astronaut Alexander Gerst of Germany captured its terrifying size. In a tweet, Gerst marveled that even with a fish-eye lens, he couldn't capture the whole storm.

 

The typhoon battered Japan's Okinawa islands with sustained winds of 120 mph Tuesday, paralyzing transport and forcing the U.S. military to move 61 aircraft from Kadena Air Base.

 

Japan's Super Typhoon Neoguri Looks Terrifying From Space

Gizmodo – Jamie Condliffe

 

This is the super typhoon, dubbed Neoguri, that's currently threatening Japan. It looks intimidating, even from the comfort of the International Space Station.

The Japanese meteorological agency reckons it's the strongest typhoon of the year, so far, and that it could generate winds of up to 170 mph and waves 45 feet in height. Authorities in the country are in the process of evacuating 500,000 people, closing schools and cancelling hundreds of flights to safeguard against its effects. [Reid Wiseman, Alexander Gerst]

 

Join Us for a Conversation Between TIME and the Space Station

Jeffrey Kluger – TIME

 

Astronauts flying a million-pound machine 230 miles overhead don't have a lot of time to chat, but Time snagged them for a few minutes. Join us for some live air-to-ground chatter.

 

Everything about the International Space Station (ISS) is built to wow. It's almost exactly the size of a football field, has as much habitable space as a six-bedroom house, orbits 230 miles overhead, required 115 space flights to build and carries a solar panel array with a surface area of one acre. The offices of TIME magazine—located on the slightly less glamorous Avenue of the Americas and 51st St. in New York City, and with about as much habitable space as, um, an office— can hardly compete. But on July 9, the two worlds will briefly collide, as TIME chats via video downlink with the ISS.

 

There are currently six crewmen aboard the station, and we'll be talking to three of them: commander Steve Swanson and flight engineer Reid Wiseman, both of NASA, as well as flight engineer Alexander Gerst of the European Space Agency. Like all space station crews, this one has been tending both to matters celestial (conducting biomedical, engineering and materials science experiments, as well as maintaining the station itself) and matters terrestrial, most recently their eye-in-the-sky observations of Hurricane Arthur.

 

Other matters down on Earth concern the crew too. It may have been fun and games when Gerst's native Germany bested the U.S. in the first round of the World Cup, but the dust-up between Russia and the U.S. over Ukraine is awfully hard to ignore when the other three members of the crew are Russian cosmonauts. TIME will be chatting with the crew about these and other matters—and would like to hear your suggestions.

 

Consider what you'd like to ask three men in a million-pound machine flying overhead at 17,500 mph if you had the chance—because now you do.

 

Soyuz rocket sends up Russian weather satellite

Stephen Clark – Spaceflight Now

 

A new Russian weather satellite lifted off from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan on Tuesday, riding a Soyuz launcher into space with six small piggyback satellites from Britain, the United States and Norway.

 

The polar-orbiting Meteor M2 satellite will track cloud cover, storm systems, temperature and humidity, and polar ice for weather forecasters.

 

The 6,124-pound Meteor M2 satellite launched at 1558:28 GMT (11:58:28 a.m. EDT) from Site 31 at the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan, where it was 9:58 p.m. local time.

 

A Soyuz 2-1b rocket -- a modernized version of the venerable Russian launcher -- and a Fregat upper stage were programmed to reach a temporary parking orbit about 11 minutes after liftoff. The hydrazine-fueled Fregat engine fired two times before deploying the Meteor M2 weather observatory about an hour after launch in a sun-synchronous orbit more than 500 miles above Earth at an inclination of 98.8 degrees.

 

The Fregat upper stage reduced its altitude before releasing a small Russian space weather research satellite. A fourth ignition of the Fregat engine set up for separation of five other satellites in a circular orbit with an altitude of about 390 miles.

 

Russian planned a live video stream of the launch on the Internet, but officials announced less than an hour before liftoff there would be no webcast.

 

Designed for a five-year mission, the Meteor M2 weather satellite is the second in a series of upgraded observatories owned by the Russian government. Its launch Tuesday came nearly five years after the launch of the Meteor M1 satellite, which is still operational, according to Roscosmos, the Russian Federal Space Agency.

 

Meteor M2 will collect timely global information for weather forecasting, monitor the ozone layer and the radiation environment in near-Earth space, measure sea surface temperatures, and track ice in the polar regions to aid navigation.

 

The spacecraft's six instruments include multi-channel cameras, a microwave radiometer and infrared sounder to measure temperature and moisture in the atmosphere, an X-band radar payload to detect ice, snow and vegetation, and a radiation detector to probe the environment around the satellite.

 

Meteor M2 also carries a radio system to relay data from remote weather stations and ocean buoys on the ground, according to NPO VNIIEM, the satellite's manufacturer.

 

The satellite will supply data on global weather systems, helping meteorologists craft forecasts.

 

More than 70 Meteor weather satellites have launched since 1964.

 

Secondary payloads were launched Thursday for customers in Britain, the United States, Norway and Russia.

 

Built by Surrey Satellite Technology Ltd. in the United Kingdom, the TechDemoSat 1 spacecraft hosts high-tech payloads engineers hope will be a pathfinder for future missions.

 

The mission was funded by private capital and grants from government agencies.

 

TechDemoSat 1, also known as TDS 1, will measure sea state by measuring radio waves reflected off the ocean surface. Another suite of sensors will monitor conditions around the satellite, such as radiation levels and other particles, for space weather research.

 

Solar storms can damage satellites in orbit, where they are not protected by Earth's radiation belts and atmosphere.

 

Ground controllers in Harwell, England, established contact with TechDemoSat 1 on Tuesday evening.

 

"The successful launch of the TechDemoSat 1 satellite marks the end of an exciting spacecraft build challenge for SSTL, with no less than eight payloads and more than 25 of our own engineering developments on-board," said Luis Gomes, director of Earth exploration and science at SSTL. "We can now look forward to the mission phase, where data is returned from the satellite in orbit and we, alongside our payload providers, can prove new concepts in space."

 

The dishwasher-sized TDS 1 satellite carries a compact atmospheric sounding instrument that could lead to lower-cost meteorological and Earth observation missions, and the British craft will be removed from orbit at the end of its three-year mission by a "de-orbit sail" designed to help mitigate risks from space debris.

 

"The successful launch of TechDemoSat 1 has given UK space companies a unique opportunity to test their cutting-edge technologies in orbit," said David Willetts, Britain's minister for science and universities. "These innovators can now show investors and potential customers how their products perform in the harsh environment of space. TechDemoSat 1 is also the first satellite to be controlled by the Satellite Applications Catapult. This was established by the government to harness the success of the UK space sector and its world-leading companies like SSTL."

 

The first satellite built in Scotland -- UKube 1 -- launched Thursday. The technological testbed has a camera to take pictures of Earth, and a payload to demonstrate the feasibility of using impacts from cosmic particles to make satellite communications more secure.

 

Designed and assembled by Clyde Space in Glasgow -- and jointly funded by Clyde Space and the UK Space Agency -- the UKube 1 CubeSat weighs less than 8 pounds and measures about the size of a shoe box.

 

Clyde Space officials said they received a beacon signal from UKube 1 after launch.

 

Another payload released in orbit Thursday was the SkySat 2 imaging satellite, the second spacecraft put in space for Skybox Imaging. The Silicon Valley startup, which specializes in high-resolution videos of Earth from space, was acquired by Google last month for $500 million.

 

SkySat 2 joins a similar spacecraft launched from Russia in November 2013. Skybox plans to send up more satellites next year in a launch aboard an Orbital Sciences Corp. Minotaur rocket from California.

 

Skybox announced engineers contacted SkySat 2 on the first opportunity, confirming it was functioning after liftoff.

 

The small cube-shaped DX1 satellite launched Thursday will track maritime traffic from space. DX1 was designed and built by Dauria Aerospace, which touts the satellite as the first spacecraft financed, designed and assembled in Russia by a private company.

 

Officials said they heard radio signals from DX1 after the launch.

 

The Soyuz rocket also delivered Norway's AISSat 2 microsatellite to orbit. Like DX1, the satellite will monitor ships to determine their position, speed and direction.

 

A Russian magnetospheric research satellite named MKA-FKI, or Relek, was also launched Thursday.

 

One satellite not on Thursday's mission was Canada's Monitoring and Messaging Microsatellite, or M3M, which carries a ship-tracking payload and a low data rate communications package to relay data from isolated Earth-based transmitters.

 

The Canadian government pulled the M3M satellite from the Soyuz launch due to Russian sanctions following the Ukraine crisis.

 

Buzz Aldrin calls NASA 'adrift,' wants to go to Mars, but first to White House

Joel Achenback – The Washington Post

 

"Joel, this is Buzz Aldrin. Apollo 11. First lunar landing."

 

The message on my voicemail was, indeed, from that Buzz Aldrin, of that Apollo 11, and that first lunar landing. Aldrin — heck, let's call him Buzz — had a lot to talk about. After two long phone interviews, I can safely report that Edwin Buzz Aldrin, age 84, hasn't slowed down over the years. He's more than an American hero: He's a force of nature. He also doesn't edit his remarks — you get full-strength Buzz whenever he opens his mouth.

 

Right now, his big focus is the 45th anniversary of the first lunar landing. His company has launched a social media campaign, featuring a YouTube video in which celebrities and scientists relay their memories of July 20, 1969. [Mine: Upstairs in Grandma Marjorie's house in Richmond, Ind., awakened in the night to watch Neil Armstrong and then Buzz go down the ladder. Black-and-white flickering images on a big ol' console TV like they don't make anymore — almost the size of a mini-Cooper. At the time, we all thought "One small step for man, one giant leap for mankind" was immaculate and brilliant. So what if, technically, he meant to say "for a man" — and for the rest of his life said he really did say it and it got lost in transmission.]

 

In the new YouTube video, Buzz speaks into the camera:

 

"I feel we need to remind the world about the Apollo missions and that we can still do impossible things. The whole world celebrated our moon landing, but we missed the whole thing, because we were out of town."

 

Buzz told me he hopes to meet with President Obama on July 20, the 45th anniversary of the lunar landing, in keeping with a tradition that Aldrin says goes back to 1969. President Richard M. Nixon met the quarantined Aldrin, Neil Armstrong and Mike Collins in the Pacific after they splashed down, and every five years since, the Apollo 11 crew has been honored with a ceremony at the White House, Aldrin says. Obama met with the three astronauts in 2009.

 

The White House hasn't commented on what it will do July 20. The White House typically does not announce the president's schedule this far in advance. Buzz said, "The president should be involved in the celebration." He'd like Obama to use the anniversary to announce some long-term plans for human space exploration.

 

Armstrong died in 2012 (see my Armstrong appreciation on the A-blog); Collins keeps a low profile in Florida but presumably would show up, along with the eager Aldrin, who is ubiquitous at space conferences and is a passionate advocate for sending humans to Mars.

 

In his book "Mission to Mars: My Vision for Space Exploration," he notes that his Mars ambitions weren't shared by Armstrong. Armstrong thought the U.S. should focus on returning to the moon for longer-duration missions. (Armstrong, though taciturn by nature, became vocal in his final years about NASA strategy. When I blogged about Armstrong and other astronauts lobbying for a moon mission, Armstrong sent me an on-background e-mail, taking issue with various points in my blog item.)

 

Aldrin writes about his periodic visits to the White House with his crewmates:

 

"Conversation in some cases turned to where the next step into the future should lie: Return to the moon or on to Mars? For me, Mars. Neil disagreed. He thought that the moon had more to teach us before we pressed onward to other challenges. Still, while we disagreed at times on that next destination and how best to get there, we were both resolute and shared a common belief: America must lead in space."

 

I asked him what the other Apollo astronauts think about the future direction of NASA.

 

"The few that I know are so interested in calling attention to their achievement in life that they're interested in return to the moon. I think that's the biggest mistake we could ever do," he said.

 

Of NASA, Buzz said, "I believe that we are — in other people's terminology — adrift right now. We cannot take our own people to the space station. We invested 100 billion dollars." [NASA currently pays the Russians to launch American astronauts to the International Space Station.]

 

He argues that the ancillary benefits of human spaceflight make the cost and effort worth it. Thinking back to Apollo 11, he says, "We had never heard of the word STEM. We didn't know what was going on in Silicon Valley. And we didn't think that beating the Russians to the moon would help immeasurably in ending the Cold War, but it did."

 

He told me he'd like the next president to use the 50th anniversary of the lunar landing to say something Kennedyesque, such as, "I believe that this nation should commit itself within two decades to leading international permanence on the planet Mars."

 

A NASA spokesman said, "As an agency, we'll be talking about the 45th Anniversary in the context of what we are calling the 'next giant leap' which is our ambitious Path to Mars." [The National Research Council says current NASA strategy and current budgets are not likely to produce a human mission to Mars in the foreseeable future, but NASA has recently been emphasizing that its long-term goals are Mars-centric.]

 

Buzz's good friend Norm Augustine — who once journeyed with Buzz to the North Pole — says of the second man on the moon,  "It would have been very easy for him to sit back and rest on his laurels, but he's out there working like the dickens to help the human spaceflight program."

 

Augustine remembers being with Buzz when he testified on Capitol Hill in favor of one-way missions to Mars — in which astronauts would live out the rest of their lives without hope of returning to Earth.

 

Augustine: "Who would ever want to do that?"

 

Buzz: "Did you ever hear of the Pilgrims?"

 

#Apollo45: Buzz Aldrin Helps Apollo 11 Moon Shot Go Viral Again

Alan Boyle – NBC News

 

When Buzz Aldrin returned from the moon in 1969 and saw all the earthly hoopla that surrounded the Apollo 11 mission, he turned to his fellow moonwalker, Neil Armstrong, and said: "We missed the whole thing."

 

Forty-five years later, Aldrin doesn't intend to miss any of the buzz: He's orchestrating a social media campaign called #Apollo45, complete with a string of celebrity YouTube videos, to mark the anniversary and jump-start his four-point plan for space exploration and settlement.

 

"This country is enamored with celebrities," Aldrin, 84, told NBC News. "To carry it to the extreme, at the Olympics, the gold-medal winners are the celebrities. We don't seem to care that much about the silver, the bronze and the others. ... There is an emphasis on who gets the Oscar, who gets the Grammy, on Hollywood, on people who are known."

 

The #Apollo45 celebrities include actors such as Tom Hanks, Stephen Colbert and John Travolta; space luminaries such as astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson, Bill Nye the Science Guy and former NASA astronaut Kathryn Sullivan; and officials such as NASA Administrator Charles Bolden, U.S. Rep. Lamar Smith and London Mayor Boris Johnson.

 

But Aldrin doesn't want #Apollo45 limited to the celebs: He's calling on regular folks to share their moonshot memories and their hopes for the future via Facebook, Google+ and Twitter — avenues for interaction that weren't even twinkles in their creators' eyes when Armstrong and Aldrin landed on the moon on July 20, 1969.

 

The campaign already has generated hundreds of tweets and Facebook comments — a response that has Aldrin looking ahead as well as looking back.

 

"These anniversaries mean a lot to me, especially with the 50th anniversary coming up with a new president," Aldrin said. "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."

 

Point 1: Bring China on board

 

That's the ultimate goal of Aldrin's four-point plan, which begins with China. Aldrin noted that yet another big anniversary was coming up in 2015: the 40th anniversary of the Apollo-Soyuz Test Project, which blazed the trail for U.S.-Russian cooperation in space in 1975.

 

Aldrin said July 2015 would be a "very opportune time" for the first docking of a Chinese spacecraft with the International Space Station. U.S.-Chinese space cooperation is currently banned by U.S. law, but Aldrin said that situation had to change.

 

"That is so essential to restoring the position of leadership of the United States, by not competing with China or any other nation to send humans to the surface of the moon," he said.

 

Point 2: Put robots to work on the moon

 

Aldrin believes the moon still needs to be one of the long-term destinations for humanity, and he thinks President Barack Obama made a mistake by dismissing lunar visits as a case of "been there, done that." But he agrees that it needn't be up to NASA to put astronauts back on the moon.

 

Instead, he favors setting up crewed outposts at the Earth-moon gravitational balance points known as L1 and L2. From there, astronauts from different countries can manage robotic operations on the lunar surface.

 

"Eventually, other nations, or the world [as a whole] will want a permanent habitat laboratory on the near side and the far side" of the moon, Aldrin said.

 

NASA has suggested that commercial ventures could play a key role in future lunar missions — and it just so happens that one of Aldrin's sons, Andrew Aldrin, is the president of Moon Express, one of the teams that's going after a piece of the $30 million Google Lunar X Prize. Buzz Aldrin said Andrew is prepared "to carry on my legacy when I'm not able to continue doing that."

 

If Moon Express and other lunar ventures can perfect telerobotic operations, that would represent a not-so-small step toward a giant Martian leap.

 

Point 3: Dig into asteroids, robotically

 

Aldrin isn't exactly fired up about all the aspects of NASA's plan to send astronauts to a near-Earth asteroid by the mid-2020s. "We have this asteroid mission that's going to bring a rock back. People are going to go up there and open the hatch, chip off some pieces of the rock and bring them back," he said. "In many people's minds, including mine, that's a waste of time and money."

 

However, he acknowledges that a hybrid human-robotic mission could help demonstrate the capabilities that would be required for the more ambitious deep-space journeys to Mars and its moons. "After humans leave the asteroid, the robotic exploration can continue, remotely controlled from Earth," Aldrin says in his four-point outline.

 

Point 4: Get settled on Mars and its moons

 

All these human-robotic efforts, plus mission simulations in Hawaii, would lead up to a years-long crewed mission to Phobos, the bigger of Mars' two moons. Just as lunar robots could be controlled by human operators at the Earth-moon gravitational balance points, robots on Mars could be controlled from an operations center on Phobos.

 

Aldrin said it would be easier to let the robots build habitats on Mars for the eventual human settlers, rather than forcing the humans to start from scratch on the Red Planet's surface. A base on Phobos would eliminate the minutes-long delay in back-and-forth communications.

 

Aldrin said his "cycler" concept for a space transit system could be part of a U.S.-led effort aimed at establishing a permanent Mars colony within two decades. (SpaceX founder Elon Musk, however, is doubtful that the cycler concept would work, at least at first.)

 

Humans living on Mars by the end of the decade of the 2030s? In Aldrin's view, it's essential for the U.S. president to commit the country to such a vision — and the 50th anniversary of the Apollo 11 moon landing would be the perfect time to do it.

 

"I could almost write the speech for whoever is president on July 20, 2019," Aldrin said.

 

Postscript: Buzz reflects on Neil

 

This year marks the first five-year milestone for Apollo 11's legacy since Neil Armstrong's death due to heart problems in 2012, and Aldrin said that means it's particularly important for #Apollo45 to keep that legacy alive.

 

It's a time to pay tribute to the accomplishments of Armstrong, Aldrin and the mission's third crew member, command module pilot Michael Collins — as well as the accomplishments of the tens of thousands of space workers who supported them back on Earth.

 

"I really feel strongly that the success of Apollo in landing on the moon, compared to the Soviet Union, had an awful lot to do with ending the Cold War," Aldrin said.

 

Aldrin said Armstrong was "indisputably, probably the best test pilot" in Apollo's astronaut corps, but he also acknowledged that "there was somewhat of a contrast in the personalities between Neil and myself."

 

"We did not agree on all the things that should be done in the future," Aldrin noted.

 

Remembering astronaut Neil Armstrong

Nightly News

 

In the years before his death, Armstrong advocated an approach that would have had NASA return to "the lunar vicinity" with an Apollo-style program. He also raised red flags about NASA's move toward space commercialization, and favored keeping NASA's shuttle fleet in operation. In contrast, Aldrin has been a longtime booster for commercial ventures in space, and has promoted missions to Mars as opposed to a return to the moon.

 

Armstrong was famous for staying out of the spotlight, while Aldrin tends to seek it out. But Aldrin told NBC News that his primary motivation isn't fame or fortune. Instead, it's the same motivation he had as a 17-year-old cadet at West Point, when he swore an oath to support and defend the Constitution of the United States.

 

"When someone asks me what is my driving purpose in life, it's to serve my country," Aldrin said.

 

Update for 5:40 p.m. ET July 8: Aldrin handled scores of questions during a Reddit AMA ("Ask Me Anything") chat session on Tuesday. Here are a few nuggets:

 

    When asked about favorite music, Aldrin said he preferred "the soft singing voice of Karen Carpenter."

    Favorite space movie? "2001: A Space Odyssey." Aldrin said he hoped to retrieve some underwater treasure during a scuba dive with Arthur C. Clarke, the late author of "2001" and other science-fiction novels. "That never happened, unfortunately."

    Aldrin acknowledged that some of the effects in the movie "Gravity" bent the laws of physics, but nevertheless said the depiction of zero gravity "was really the best I have seen."

   When asked about people who claim the moon landings were faked, Aldrin replied, "I personally don't waste very much of my time on what is so obvious to a really thinking person."

    Aldrin referred to his sighting of a bright "unidentified flying object" during the trip to the moon. "It was either the rocket we had separated from, or the four panels that moved away when we extracted the [lunar] lander from the rocket. ... It was not an alien," he said.

 

NBC News space correspondent Jay Barbree, author of "Neil Armstrong: A Life of Flight," will discuss the Apollo legacy on "Virtually Speaking Science," an hourlong talk show that airs on Blog Talk Radio and in the Exploratorium's Second Life virtual auditorium. The show, originally set for Wednesday, has been rescheduled for July 21 at 8 p.m. ET due to logistical complications.

 

Buzz Aldrin talks Mars, aliens, Sandra Bullock on Reddit

Javier Panzar – LA Times

 

Buzz Aldrin, the second human to walk on the moon, took to Reddit on Tuesday to promote the 45th anniversary of the July 20, 1969, Apollo 11 moon landing.

 

Calling himself a "global space statesman," Aldrin answered questions about colonizing Mars, Elon Musk, his favorite movies about space and his appearance on "30 Rock."

 

Here are some highlights, verbatim from the Reddit AMA:

 

On his favorite films about space:

Returning to the Moon with NASA astronauts is not the best usage of our resources. - Buzz Aldrin

 

I thought that the movie "Gravity," the depiction of people moving around in zero gravity, was really the best I have seen. The free-falling, the actions that took place between two people, were very, I think, exaggerated, but probably bent the laws of physics. But to a person who's been in space, we would cringe looking at something that we hoped would NEVER, EVER Happen. It's very thrilling for the person who's never been there, because it portrays the hazards, the dangers that could come about if things begin to go wrong, and I think that as I came out of that movie, I said to myself and others, "Sandra Bullock deserves an Oscar."

 

Returning to the Moon with NASA astronauts is not the best usage of our resources. Because OUR resources should be directed to outward, beyond-the-moon, to establishing habitation and laboratories on the surface of Mars that can be built, assembled, from the close-by moons of Mars. With very little time delay - a second or less. Much better than controlling things on the Moon from the Earth. So when NASA funding comes up for review, please call your lawmakers to support it.

 

On Elon Musk and his Space X, and the next "monumental achievement by humanity" in space:

 

Some people may be rooting for Elon -- I think he could, with his Space X, contribute considerably, enormously, to an international activity not only at the moon but also on Mars. I have considered whether a landing on Mars could be done by the private sector. It conflicts with my very strong idea, concept, conviction, that the first human beings to land on Mars should not come back to Earth. They should be the beginning of a build-up of a colony / settlement, I call it a "permanence." A settlement you can visit once or twice, come back, and then decide you want to settle. Same with a colony. But you want it to be permanent from the get-go, from the very first.

 

There may be aliens in our Milky Way galaxy, and there are billions of other galaxies. The probability is almost CERTAIN that there is life somewhere in space. - Buzz Aldrin

 

I know that many people don't feel that that should be done. Some people even consider it distinctly a suicide mission. Not me! Not at all. Because we will plan, we will construct from the moon of Mars, over a period of 6-7 years, the landing of different objects at the landing site that will be brought together to form a complete Mars habitat and laboratory, similar to what has been done at the Moon. Tourism trips to Mars and back are just not the appropriate way for human beings from Earth - to have an individual company, no matter how smart, send people to Mars and bring them back, it is VERY very expensive. It delays the obtaining of permanence, internationally.

 

Your question referred to a monumental achievement by humanity - that should not be one private company at all, it should be a collection of the best from all the countries on Earth, and the leader of the nation or the groups who makes a commitment to do that in 2 decades will be remembered throughout history, hundreds and thousands of years in the future of the history of humanity, beginning, commencing, a human occupation of the solar system.

 

On Carl Sagan, "Cosmos" and Neil deGrasse Tyson:

 

I met Carl Sagan and his wife. Both were very dedicated people to explaining to young people and to all people the benefits to be derived from space, the history of how our universe was formed, and the history of the advancement of the technologies that hundreds of years ago, enabled present day nations to use them to begin to add more science discoveries in space. And to write stories and television series that reach many people and after his passing away, you have a rejuvenation of the series COSMOS, featuring a very good friend of mine, Neil deGrasse Tyson. We were on a commission together to look at the future of space activities for the United States, that was about 12 years ago, and we've been good friends ever since. I was on his TV show. He did Michael Jackson's moonwalk far better than I did on "Dancing With the Stars."

 

On space aliens:

 

There may be aliens in our Milky Way galaxy, and there are billions of other galaxies. The probability is almost CERTAIN that there is life somewhere in space. It was not that remarkable, that special, that unusual, that life here on Earth evolved gradually, slowly, to where we are today.

 

But the distances involved in where some evidence of life may be, they may be hundreds of light-years away.

 

On his "30 Rock" appearance:

 

Well, "30 Rock" means 30 Rockefeller Plaza. My father, in 1925, 1926, in the Reserve of the Air Corps, worked as Aviation Fuel Manager for Standard Oil of New Jersey, that's where I lived at that time, and he would go into NYC and work at 30 Rockefeller Plaza. So when I was asked to consider participating, I jumped for joy, and I can't remember a more pleasant episode of discussions with Tina Fey as we talked about her fictitious mother's (I think it was) love affair that she had with me, Buzz Aldrin. And then we looked at the Moon, and we both sort of cursed at it for various reasons and said - I'll never forget the line - "I walked on your FACE!"

 

His words of advice for the crew of a future mission to Mars:

 

Realize that you are perhaps the most ambitious, the most historical pioneers that the Earth has produced since its beginning.

 

And you are given a great honor in spending the rest of your lives pioneering for mankind.

 

AND HAVE FUN!

 

What Spaceflight Planning Can Teach Us On Earth

Frank Morning, Jr. – Aviation Week

 

International Space Station crewmates are looking forward to a little more fresh food with their processed nutrition, thanks to a new plant-growth chamber delivered by the most recent SpaceX Dragon to reach the orbiting outpost. Developed by Orbitec in Madison, Wisconsin, the "Veggie" unit is a very small farm—11.5 X 14.5 in.—that will allow the crew to grow red romaine lettuce for researchers to evaluate and them to eat. Like much of the work on the ISS, the "Veg-01" experiment is aimed at the thorny problem of keeping deep-space explorers alive on long-duration missions to Mars.

 

"Those plants can help with carbon dioxide removal and generating some other products that are beneficial to us, as well as providing a food source," says William Gerstenmaier, associate NASA administrator for human exploration and operations (HEO).

 

Engineers working for the HEO and space-technology NASA mission directorates have a huge task ahead of them in environmental control and life support systems (Eclss) as they prepare for a Mars mission, and Veggie is just a part of it.

 

"When we go to Mars, this will be a definitively closed system," says Sam Scimemi, the ISS program director at NASA headquarters. "There will be no resupply. There will be no repair parts. There will be no ground analysis. It will all be closed within the spacecraft and the humans together to go to Mars."

 

The unique station environment is the only place to test Eclss hardware for that long journey. The ISS has "dissimilar redundancy"—a key concept in exploration architecture (AW&ST June 23, p. 29)—in its U.S. and Russian life support, but it must rely on its proximity to Earth for the consumables that make the systems work.

 

"Our life support system is about 86% closed now," says Gerstenmaier. "We recycle urine. We recycle moisture out of the atmosphere. We take waste carbon dioxide and generate more water from that, and then the waste gas that comes out of it is methane. So everything is fairly closed cycle."

 

That is not good enough for a Mars mission. On top of the recycling shortfall, station engineers are learning that today's Eclss hardware has an engineering oversight that must be corrected before the life-support loop can close. The problem centers on the urine recycling system, which processes the human waste into potable water. It is a complicated piece of gear that requires careful maintenance (see photo), but it works—up to a point.

 

"With the urine processor, we can only recycle so much of the urine because we end up where, essentially, the brine that's generated clogs up all our pumps, and stops the system from working and operating," Gerstenmaier says.

 

NASA engineers are trying to find ways to wring the last drops of moisture from the brine, Gerstenmaier says, but that addresses the symptom instead of the underlying problem: the humans who drink the recycled water, and what happens to their bodies when their bones no longer have to support them in Earth's gravity.

 

"It turned out, when we were having all the bone-loss problems, [that] the biggest constituent of the urine was actually bone, or calcium," Gerstenmaier says. "And that was causing all our pumps to clog up. So here the humans [are] destroying the mechanical system that's supposed to provide water for them. It's the 'perfect system the engineers built,' because we tested with reference urine on the ground, which didn't have the high calcium content because nobody had that high a calcium content on the Earth. So the standard urine that you get to practice with wasn't really urine that was on board [the] station."

 

For Gerstenmaier, the lesson is to pay more attention to the crew's biological output as well as the air, water and other inputs Eclss must provide for their survival. "I think we need to look at it as more of a system than we have before," he says. "It's intriguing when I think about this; the human is really now a piece of the spacecraft."

 

NASA and its ISS partners are paying close attention to lessons like this, which illustrate the station's utility as a laboratory for deep-space exploration. The upcoming year-long stay by astronaut Scott Kelly and cosmonaut Mikhail Kornienko will be a chance to learn more.

 

Of course, there is another lesson in the urine-calcium discovery, and it is as plain as the changing blue Earth spinning below the windows of the station cupola. In the 60-plus years that we have been observing Earth from space, the human impact has been on view in the growing urban sprawl, dwindling forests and melting polar ice. Sophisticated instruments that view the invisible effects of human activity on the planetary Eclss only underscore what the astronauts see. As an engineer, Gerstenmaier gets it.

 

"It couples right back here to the Earth," he says. "The Earth is the ultimate closed system, and how do we do things that perturb the Earth? And don't realize what they do? And they have long-duration impact."

 

What It Takes To Make A Decent Cup Of Coffee In Space

Maanvi Singh – NPR

 

When our pals at the Two-Way wrote last month that engineers had finally come up with a way to brew some good Italian espresso on the International Space Station, we were thoroughly intrigued.

 

As they , the space-age coffee machine — called, naturally the "ISSpresso" — is a capsule-based brewing system. It's similar in principle to a Keurig machine. But engineers at the Italian aerospace firm , along with coffee company and the Italian space agency, finessed it to function in a microgravity environment.

The new ISSpresso orbital espresso machine.

 

Just when did space get so hipster? First they the start growing their own and up there, and now they've got fancy coffee — what's next, a microbrewery on Mars?

 

But mainly, we wondered — why is it so complicated to make coffee on the ISS? To help answer that question, we called up , the manager of the NASA Space Food Systems Laboratory.

 

"You can't just send a regular espresso machine to orbit and expect it to work," she says. Here on Earth, coffee machines depend heavily on gravity, she explains. But on the ISS, there's only a minuscule amount of gravity — called microgravity. So everything floats.

 

The biggest challenge is figuring out how to keep the scalding water inside the espresso machine contained, Kloeris says. Everything has to be sealed, secure and safe.

 

There's also the issue of keeping everything sanitary. "On the ISS, they don't have a sink where they can wash everything up," she says. A small amount of liquid left over in the machine could become rank and unhealthful pretty quickly.

 

But once these safety concerns are addressed, there's the whole issue of making sure the espresso tastes good. And that where it gets really tricky, says at Agrotec, who helped develop the ISSpresso.

 

"To make good Italian espresso there are two major components — the pressure and the temperature," Avino says. Water has to approach the coffee grounds at around 98 Centigrade (208 Fahrenheit), and leave the brewing unit at 75 C (167 F), Avino says. Fluctuations in the temperature of either the water or the steam can leave you with a substandard brew.

 

But the balance is really hard to achieve in space. When you boil water on Earth, the bubbles of steam stay evenly distributed in the water because of gravity. In space, these bubbles can come together and create pockets of really hot air.

 

That can really mess with the temperatures inside the espresso machine, Avino says. It can also get dangerously hot.

 

The engineers behind the ISSpresso got around this by using sturdy steel tubes to move the water around, instead of the rubber tubes used in regular espresso machines. They also equipped it with various temperature controls.

 

These extra bells and whistles make the ISSpresso weigh over 40 pounds, according to Avino. The plan is to send the machine up to the ISS with Italian astronaut next year.

 

Initially, the machine will come with only 20 single-serve coffee capsules. "Our machine is still an experiment," Avino says. If all goes well, he says, the machine could become a permanent addition to the space station.

Astronauts may have a particular affinity for Tabasco sauce in space because their sense of smell and taste is distorted.

 

Of course, drinking coffee up in space still won't be the same as sipping it down here on Earth. Classic Italian espresso comes with a creamy layer of foam on top. But that foam may behave a lot differently in space, Avino says. "It will most likely spread around the whole container."

 

And the astronauts will have to drink it out of a sippy pouch so the hot liquid doesn't float away from them. It's not quite as elegant as drinking from an espresso cup.

 

It also means the astronauts won't be able to smell the coffee very well, Avino says. And smell has a on the way we perceive food and drink.

 

But hopefully, it will be an improvement over the instant coffee that the astronauts have been drinking thus far. With a shot of sharp espresso to start the day, Avino says, "they'll live much, much better."

 

Space Florida: Cape risks irrelevance

James Dean – Florida Today

 

Space Florida CEO Frank DiBello today delivered a call to action to make Cape Canaveral a more attractive site for commercial space operations, or else risk becoming irrelevant in the growing industry.

 

DiBello said he expects Texas leaders to announce within a week or two that SpaceX has agreed to build a private launch complex on the Gulf Coast near Brownsville.

 

He said Florida should be "mad as hell" that it has been unable to create a competitive alternative for SpaceX and other emerging space companies considering launch operations in Texas, New Mexico and Georgia, among other states.

 

"Unless we can evolve the state's spaceport capabilities into the kind of business environment they seek, we will spend the next 50 years still celebrating the glories of the past five decades," he said.

 

Space Florida has proposed building the Shiloh commercial launch complex at the north end of Kennedy Space Center and the Merritt Island Wildlife Refuge. It is now undergoing an environmental review.

 

DiBello said U.S. Sen. Bill Nelson has asked for a joint review to determine where NASA or the Air Force could accommodate such a commercial complex on federal property if not at Shiloh.

 

Space Florida is also negotiating with NASA to take over operation of KSC's former shuttle runway for horizontal launches and landings by space vehicles and unmanned aircraft, but the negotiations have dragged on for more than a year without an agreement.

 

Confirmed: Voyager 1 in Interstellar Space

Mike Wall – Space.com

 

New data collected by NASA's Voyager 1 spacecraft have helped scientists confirm that the far-flung probe is indeed cruising through interstellar space, the researchers say.

 

Voyager 1 made headlines around the world last year when mission scientists announced that the probe had apparently left the heliosphere — the huge bubble of charged particles and magnetic fields surrounding the sun — in August 2012.

 

They came to this conclusion after analyzing measurements Voyager 1 made in the wake of a powerful solar eruption known as a coronal mass ejection, or CME. The shock wave from this CME caused the particles around Voyager 1 to vibrate substantially, allowing mission scientists to calculate the density of the probe's surroundings (because denser plasma oscillates faster.)

 

This density was much higher than that observed in the outer layers of the heliosphere, allowing team members to conclude that Voyager 1 had entered a new cosmic realm. (Instellar space is emptier than areas near Earth, but the solar system thins out dramatically near the heliosphere's edge.)

 

The CME in question erupted in March 2012, and its shock wave reached Voyager 1 in April 2013. After these data came in, the team dug up another, much smaller CME-shock event from late 2012 that had initially gone unnoticed. By combining these separate measurements with knowledge of Voyager 1's cruising speed, the researchers were able to trace the probe's entry into interstellar space to August 2012.

 

And now mission scientists have confirmation, in the form of data from a third CME shock, which Voyager 1 observed in March of this year, NASA officials announced Monday (July 7).

 

"We're excited to analyze these new data," Don Gurnett of the University of Iowa, the principal investigator of Voyager 1's plasma wave instrument, said in a statement. "So far, we can say that it confirms we are in interstellar space."

 

Interstellar space begins where the heliosphere ends. But by some measures, Voyager 1 remains inside the solar system, which is surrounded by a shell of comets known as the Oort Cloud.

 

While it's unclear exactly how far away from Earth the Oort Cloud lies, Voyager 1 won't get there for quite a while. NASA scientists have estimated that Voyager 1 will emerge from the Oort Cloud in 14,000 to 28,000 years.

 

The craft launched in September 1977, about two weeks after its twin, Voyager 2. The probes embarked upon a "grand tour" of the outer solar system, giving the world some its first good looks at Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune and the moons of these planets.

 

Like Voyager 1, Voyager 2 is still active and operational. It took a different route through the solar system and is expected to follow its twin into interstellar space a few years from now.

 

Mechanical 'hiccups' complicate satellite reboot mission

Monte Morin – LA Times

 

Is NASA's forsaken ISEE-3 satellite finally headed home? On Tuesday a private team of engineers initiated a series of propulsive bursts intended to return the aging spacecraft to Earth orbit.

 

However, several mechanical "hiccups" occurred that prevented the spacecraft from completing the maneuver and raised questions about the condition of the spacecraft's fuel system.

 

The team will attempt to refire the spacecraft's thrusters on Wednesday.

 

"The good news is the propulsion system works -- when it wants to," said Keith Cowing, a former NASA astrobiologist and a spokesman for the ISEE-3 Reboot Project.

 

The half-ton, drum-shaped satellite, which was retired by NASA in 1997, has been orbiting the sun since the 1980s.

 

As the probe neared Earth this year on a pre-arranged flyby, NASA gave permission to a group of former agency employees and engineers to take control of the 36-year-old spacecraft -- a historic first.

 

Operating in an old McDonald's restaurant at NASA's Ames Research Center in Mountain View, Calif., the reboot team initiated a sequence of "burns" just before 11 a.m. PDT.

 

"Command accepted ACCELERATION!!," the team announced on its Twitter feed.

 

The maneuver is an eleventh-hour attempt to wrest the probe from its sun-centric orbit. Each day that the probe nears Earth, it requires more fuel to change its flight path. By Aug. 1, the maneuver would require more than twice the amount of fuel available, according to the team's calculations.

 

The orbit change will require a total of 432 invidual pulses from the spacecraft's engines, and engineers have grouped those pulses into seven burn sessions.

 

"When you fire these little engines its like shooting out of a pea-shooter," Cowing said. "You have to do it a lot."

 

On Tuesday, ISEE-3 completed the first of its seven burn sessions without a hitch. When engineers commanded the satellite to begin its second session however, it quickly became clear there was a problem.

 

"We could tell the valves and things were working, but we did not see that the spacecraft was changing its trajectory or speed, which told us something was going on," Cowing said.

 

ISEE-3 is equipped with a dozen monopropellant hydrazine thrusters. Hydrazine, an extremely toxic substance, freezes at roughly the same temperature as water, so a series of heaters are used to liquefy the propellant before executing maneuvers.

 

The hydrazine is kept in eight fuel tanks, which also contain pressurized gas. When the spacecraft receives a command to open a fuel valve, the pressurized gas forces the hydrazine through a fuel line and into a catalyst.

 

The catalyst causes the hydrazine to break down, which produces a propulsive blast of hot gas. Unlike rockets taking off from Earth, the hydrazine blast is invisible to the human eye.

 

Before executing the first burn on Tuesday, the reboot team turned off the fuel line heaters to save power, raising the possibility that the fuel had become frozen and thus unable to come in contact with the catalyst.

 

"That's the first thing you think of," Cowing said. "But it could be something else. There may not be enough fuel for that to be an issue, or it's possible that the pressurant may have run out, or that there's a valve not doing its thing."

 

Like most spacecraft, ISEE-3's propellant system contains numerous redundant elements, and Cowing said he was confident that the team would determine the cause of the firing failure and figure out a work-around solution.

 

The window for ISEE-3's course alteration will remain open for several days.

 

"Ideally, we would have done it today, but if we do it in the next day or two or three, we're good to go," Cowing said.

 

Calling All Space Tweeps! In Honor of STS-135, Share Your Fave Shuttle Pics

Elizabeth Howell – Universe Today

 

Has it been three years already? The last mission of the space shuttle program launched on this day in 2011. We've included some of the most beautiful NASA images from the final flight of Atlantis.

 

But we're also interested in publishing photos from Universe Today readers! If you attended STS-135 or any other launch of the space shuttle program, we'd like to hear from you. More details below the jump.

 

The mission's major goal was to heft a multipurpose logistics module into space, as well as a bunch of spare parts that would be difficult to ship after the space shuttle retired. But it also served as a point of remembrance for the thousands of workers who constructed and maintained the shuttle, and the millions of people who watched its flights.

 

Where were you during that flight? What pictures did you take? Let us know in the comments and if you'd like to see your images published in a future Universe Today story, share your photos in our Flickr group. The photos must belong to you and be free to share. While this story focuses on STS-135, pictures from any shuttle launch or event are welcome. Let us know which one it was!

 

To kick off the memories, I'll talk about where I was during the launch: I was on my way to a wedding in Toronto, Canada — five hours away from my hometown of Ottawa. I managed to pull into a parking lot just a few minutes before the launch sequence started.

 

I tried and tried to get a steady signal for video, but my phone was having none of it, so I instead "watched" the launch on Twitter. Luckily for me, friends were tweeting and sending text updates from watching television or in person, so I didn't miss a thing. Then a couple of days later, my best friend and I both watched the NASA launch video together for the first time.

 

Randy Meyers (left) and Mitchell Bromwell of United Space Alliance, the primary industry partner for space shuttle operations, show off an American flag to crowds of people gathered for the rollout of STS-135 Atlantis on May 31, 2011. Credit: NASA/Bill Ingalls

The STS-135 crew admires the shuttle Atlantis just prior to launching July 8, 2011. From left, Rex Walheim, Doug Hurley, Sandy Magnus and Chris Ferguson. Credit: NASA/Bill Ingalls

 

 

 

 

END

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