NASA Archives

April 30, 2009December 24, 2015 by Nancy Atkinson

The NASA Buzz: Shuttle Extension, Abandoning the Moon, and What About an Administrator?

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The blogosphere and Twitterverse has been buzzing the past couple of days with NASA what-ifs and possibilities. But that usually happens whenever there are Congressional hearings about our favorite space agency. Here’s the run-down of what is really happening: No extra money has been given to extend the shuttle program as of yet but it is a possibility. NASA is not going to abandon going to the Moon. And no, President Obama hasn’t named a new NASA administrator yet. Want the details?

House and Senate leaders have agreed to authorize $2.5 billion to keep the U.S. space shuttle fleet flying through 2011. While no money has actually been appropriated for that yet, the extension would happen only if necessary to complete currently planned missions to the international space station. If another flight were added to the shuttle manifest, it’s possible the controversial Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer instrument would be brought to the station. AMS was mothballed after the Columbia accident in 2003 as a cost cutting move, but the because of the international scientific community’s outcry about cutting the one really exciting science experiment to fly on the space station (that was mostly paid for by other countries) last year Congress told NASA to reconsider. They are supposed to make a decision today.

But the shuttle retirement is controversial from a political point of view because it affects thousands of aerospace industry jobs, not only in Florida, but nationwide. Retiring the shuttle in 2010 would also give a five year gap (at least) until the Orion crew vehicle is ready to fly, making the US dependant on Russia for bringing humans and supplies to the ISS. This week House and Senate budget conferees agreed on “the strategic importance of uninterrupted human access to space” and said the extra $2.5 billion is provided “in anticipation that the funding is needed” to safely “complete the construction and equipping” of the space station.

But some NASA officials and contractors worry that giving more funding to the shuttle program would hamper the efforts for the Constellation program, funneling money away from the new rocket that will help return humans to the moon, hopefully by 2020. The Constellation program has already begun shifting gears and figuring out how to make flying by 2015 actually work. Ian reported last week that the Orion crew size would likely be decreased from six to four, which also makes the spacecraft lighter. One issue engineers have been facing has been excess weight. Other reports look like this is likely a done deal.

Speaking of returning to the Moon, Wednesday’s appropriation hearings created some buzz when Chris Scolese, the agency’s acting administrator, said he anticipates changes. Some reports said Scolese gave vague answers. Others had NASA abandoning the a base on the Moon, but that is likely an exaggeration.

“I just can’t tell you what those changes would be,” Scolese told members of the House Appropriations Subcommittee on Commerce, Justice, Science and Related Agencies. “We’re still looking at options for what do we mean by the moon. Do we mean a colony on the moon? That’s clearly very expensive. Are we looking at something along the lines of what we did with Apollo?” he said.

But that correlates completely with legislation passed in October, 2008 that says:

“As NASA works toward the establishment of a lunar outpost, NASA shall make no plans that would require a lunar outpost to be occupied to maintain its viability. Any such outpost shall be operable as a human-tended facility capable of remote or autonomous operation for extended periods.”

Scolese also pointed out that the budget overview released earlier this year by President Obama clearly backs the previous administration’s goal of sending astronauts to the moon by 2020, a decade after the scheduled retirement of the shuttle fleet.

“It will probably be less than an outpost on the moon, but where it fits between sorties — single trips to the moon to various parts — and an outpost is really going to be dependent on the studies that we’re going to be doing,” he said.

What will really end up happening on the Moon is likely to change over time, just as the Constellation program already appears to be changing.

And finally, the current administration has yet to name a new NASA administrator. One person whose name had been floating around recently, General Lester Lyles, withdrew himself from consideration Wednesday. Another name that has surfaced is Lori Garver, former NASA associate administrator who headed Obama’s space transition team.

Sources: Florida Today, Lunar Network Blog, MSNBC, Wall Street Journal

April 13, 2009April 26, 2016 by Nancy Atkinson

Will US Astronauts Ride Chinese Rockets?

Long March rocket launching the Shenzhou 5. Credit: Wikimedia

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The White House is reviewing possible options where NASA astronauts could catch rides to the International Space Station on Chinese rockets, according to an article in the Huntsville (Alabama) Times. The Times quoted President Barack Obama’s new science adviser, John Holdren, in an interview last week that using the Chinese National Space Agency’s Shenzhou spacecraft “should not be ruled out” during the interim between the retirement of the space shuttles and when the new Ares rocket and Orion capsule are ready to go. NASA’s plans are to rely on Russian Soyuz rockets from 2010, the planned shuttle retirement, to 2015, the tentatively scheduled first manned mission of Ares. Other options are possible commercial ferry flights to the International Space Station from the winners of the COTS (Commercial Orbital Transportation Services) contracts. But could China be in the mix, as well?

NASA has been paying the Russian space agency $21.8 million per passenger for flights on the Soyuz, and that cost will likely rise. Some space experts says that agreements, and even an eventual partnership with the Chinese, could keep prices lower, as well as and establish diplomatic ties to the nation. Victoria Samson, a space and defense expert with the Colorado-based Secure World Foundation was quoted by the Huntsville Times, “It’s a great idea to reach out to China. (NASA) is looking at a lot of options because the ones they have aren’t working well. The Russians are working on a follow-up to the Soyuz, and complications like this can keep everyone in line.”

Former NASA astronaut LeRoy Chaio wrote last year as a guest blogger on Discovery.com/Space that cooperating with China “certainly makes sense. Space is a good place to start a policy shift, as the United States showed with Russia in the early 1990s… China is emerging as a true world power, both economically and technologically. … It is important to take the global view because isolationism has long been obsolete. The U.S. should find mutually beneficial areas such as space to cooperate in, and turn our Chinese adversary into a friend.”

But if NASA wants to extend a cooperative hand to China’s space agency, it might encounter political as well as technical roadblocks. Laws such as the ITAR (International Traffic in Arms Regulation) trade laws have barred some transfer of technology to China, and would have to be amended to hand over the information China would need to modify its Shenzhou vehicle to dock with the ISS. China would also have to be able to produce more of the spacecraft than it currently does.

Sources: Huntsville Times, Discovery Space

April 13, 2009December 24, 2015 by Anne Minard

Interview with Astronaut Mike Massimino on the Hubble Servicing Mission, Viewing Earth from Space and … Twitter?

The long-awaited final Hubble servicing mission is a month out now, and the crew of seven astronauts who have been in limbo since at least October are finally gearing up to go. The space shuttle Atlantis is set to launch from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida on May 12.

This will be the second Hubble mission for Astronaut Mike Massimino, and he’s been sharing his excitement about the mission via live interviews from NASA’s Johnson Space Flight Center and Twitter, a popular social networking site. We took advantage of the chance to ask Massimino some questions.

massimino-pool — Astronaut Mike Massimino suits up for spacewalk practice in the pool. Credit: NASA

So the final Hubble servicing mission is finally going to happen. How are you feeling about it?

I’m feeling great. I’m ready, I think my crew’s ready, and looking forward to going into space and seeing Hubble again and seeing the Earth from space.

On Twitter, you “tweeted” a few days ago: “viewing the Earth from space is the most beautiful site, words cannot describe the experience, can’t wait to see that sight again!” And it made me wonder how long you’ve wanted to have that perspective, and whether you dreamed of this sort of thing as a kid?

I dreamt about being an astronaut when I was a little kid. I was 6 years old when Neil Armstrong first walked on the moon. But the view of the Earth … it is just so awesome to see the Earth from space. There’s no way to really prepare you for it; we can practice our space walks in the neutral buoyancy lab, we can go to simulators, but there’s nothing that can prepare you for what your eyes will actually see when it comes to the beauty of space and the beauty of the Earth. I can’t really describe it with words, but I can describe what my thoughts were. When I really had the chance to look, while I was spacewalking, the first thought that went through my mind was “if you were in Heaven, this is what you would see.” And then the thought that replaced it was “no, no, it’s more beautiful than that. This is what Heaven must look like.”

You performed two spacewalks to service the telescope during the STS-109 mission in 2002. Since then you’ve worked in Mission Control and taught some classes. Why so long between missions?

I flew in 2002, then I was hoping to get reassigned to another shuttle flight at some point, but the Columbia accident occurred. In the three years following Columbia, we didn’t have very many flights. I got assigned soon after STS 121 to the Hubble Space Telescope flight. Then comes that saga. My crew and I were assigned around Halloween, October 2006 … We thought we might be flying about a year and a half later. We were two weeks from launching in October of last year, and then we got delayed because something broke on the telescope. It’s been good for job security I guess. It gives you more time to get ready, and they hang onto you a little bit longer.

Have you noticed any differences between preparing for this mission and preparing for the STS-109 flight?

STS-109 was my first flight. I was trying to figure out what I was going to do not to get in everybody’s way. I was wondering how I would react to space; I was kind of concerned about how I was going to do. This flight here, I’m pretty confident about how I’ll do … and I’m concerned a little bit more about how the team will do. It’s … a little more responsibility. I’m the experienced guy on our spacewalking team now. Actually it’s a little bit more enjoyable because I know what I’m going to do and I’m looking forward to it.

You’re on Twitter! Why?

I feel very fortunate to have the opportunity to be an astronaut. I think I’m extremely lucky. We get to do so many wonderful things; one of my interests has been to try to share that with people the best I can. It seemed like this Twitter idea was a great way to share our experiences with other people. One of the great things about Twitter it doesn’t really take that long. You have 140 characters … I checked this weekend and we were up to 35,000 people–

You’re up to 40,000 now

… I figure if there are that many people listening, that’s a pretty good deal. You get responses to it. It’s just wonderful to hear the excitement and all the good wishes from people around the world.

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The May servicing mission will be the fourth and final trip to the Hubble Space Telescope. Over the course of five spacewalks, astronauts will install two new instruments, repair two inactive instruments and replace parts that will keep the telescope functioning at least into 2014.

Check out Mike Massimino’s Twitter profile here, where he’ll continue tweeting about mission preparations. More information about the servicing mission is here, and more information about the Atlantis crew is here.

April 9, 2009December 24, 2015 by Nancy Atkinson

NASA’s Biggest Challenge? Congress

Earlier this week, Orlando Sentinel columnist Mike Thomas wrote a scathing opinion piece on how NASA has been scamming the American taxpayers for decades, delivering very little for a whole lot of money. Additionally Thomas believes the Constellation program needs to be stopped to allow the concepts and technologies to be reviewed before more money is spent. The view from Thomas’ desk doesn’t seem to include a solution to any problems NASA may have, or any reasons why NASA might be in the predicament he proposes.

So, how do others see NASA’s current situation, particularly someone who might have a closer view of what NASA is trying to accomplish? I recently had the chance to talk with Taber MacCallum, CEO of Paragon Space Development Corporation, a company working with NASA to help develop the Orion and Altair spacecraft. His opinion of NASA’s state of affairs is that the space agency is working as hard as it can and as best it can, given the constraints imposed by the US government.

“I think NASA has done an incredible job of getting Constellation this far with the funding they’ve received,” he said. “The more of us who have gotten into this program, the more we have appreciated how much of the things we derogatorily attribute to NASA are really things that Congress has created. I think all Americans need to realize that when we say NASA has problems, the problems are really with Congress. NASA has become the organization it has in response to what Congress has made it do.”

“Congress has asked NASA to do things and not given them the money, or marked certain money for this or that or tied their hands a certain way,” MacCallum continued. “The more we’ve gotten into this the more I think that NASA does an admirable job given the challenges Congress gives them.

Taber MacCallum, CEO of Paragon Space Development Corporation.

It should be noted that MacCallum’s opinions are not in response to Thomas’ article, and they came unprompted during a generic interview a couple of weeks ago about Paragon, their work with the Constellation program and their recent partnership with Odyssey Moon in the Google Lunar X PRIZE.

Paragon is contracted by NASA to help develop the thermal control and life support systems for the Orion and Altair spacecraft, as well as doing preliminary work on a series of life support technologies for spacesuits for Mars.

When asked about the challenges of helping to creating a new human spacecraft, MacCallum said that the biggest challenge for NASA is that Congress needs to fund the Constellation program at a level where it can be successful.

“Congress keeps putting NASA on continuing resolutions, but doesn’t have them on a funding profile that the program needs to be successful,” said MacCallum. “Its lots of money, yes, and you can’t equate Constellation to Apollo. Apollo was different because Congress and the Administration gave it a different agenda. NASA makes the smallest mistake now and it’s time for a congressional inquiry as to why all this taxpayer money is being wasted rather than saying that NASA is trying do something really hard and this time it didn’t work. Instead of an investigation we need to go try it again. We don’t seem to mind when a test pilot crashes a hundred million dollar aircraft into the ground. That’s part of developing high tech airplanes; that’s part of being on the cutting edge of defense. We accept all that. But when NASA plummets a spacecraft into the surface of Mars it’s time for a Congressional inquiry. It’s a whole lot harder to land a spacecraft on Mars than fly an airplane. But somehow, we treat this differently, and I haven’t figured out why that is, aside from congressmen trying to get brownie points.”

MacCallum said Americans need to see NASA’s mission with new eyes.

“The paranoid, risk-averse, over-conservative appearance that we see NASA in currently is their response to Congress raking them over the coals repeatedly,” he said. “When you talk to people at NASA at an individual level they are so dedicated and really want to do the right thing. I think there are very few people just sitting on NASA’s laurels. For the most part these are people who want to see an aggressive space program and are working night and day to do it.”

“The other real challenge we have is because we’ve put NASA in this sort of stand down mode for the past 30 years, we haven’t designed a new spacecraft. So there’s nobody around, literally, who has designed a manned spacecraft before,” MacCallum continued, “so all that experience from Mercury, Gemini, Apollo and the shuttle isn’t around. Even if they all were around, the tools are so radically different that we have to manage the technical side of these programs in a different way.”

However, MacCallum said these are good challenges to have. “Gosh, we as a nation really need to learn how to do this. We have woefully under-challenged our youth, our people and our NASA. JPL does a great job, because every couple of years they crank out a new space mission. The planetary science people and companies like Lockheed have cranked out spacecraft regularly, so they have people who are used to that cycle; they’ve gone from concept to mission closeout. But a human spacecraft that goes in all the different environments from launch to on-orbit to around the moon to re-entry to landing, with all our of our human safety requirements, it’s a surprisingly new deal.”

So, what if the Constellation program were halted and NASA had no way to fly humans to space?

“Soon we’re going to be at place, and people will wake up one day and realize we are in stand down mode and America can’t fly people to space, but only current and former communist countries can,” MacCallum said. “It’s going to be an interesting day. That gap is going to be pretty big. It terms of NASA’s charter to lead and Congress’s charter to give them what they need to lead, we’re in an interesting position where the most modern human spacecraft is made by China – not to demean the Chinese at all, but it’s not what we think of as American’s leadership in space.

MacCallum said he will be interested in how the Obama administration deals with everything on NASA’s plate in addition to everything else currently facing the country. “They are clearly fighting lots of fires, and NASA has certainly been without an administrator longer than this before,” MacCallum said. “I think Obama realizes we need to be a leading country in science and technology. That’s our only chance to hold our own in the global economy. I was certainly inspired by space to take a career in science and be interested in engineering. I think a lot of kids are. We need to be doing interesting things that inspire kids and make them want to study math and science.”

April 2, 2009April 26, 2016 by Nancy Atkinson

NASA Looks to Rebalance Aging Workforce

NASA has taken action to rebalance its aging workforce, according to Open NASA, a collaborative blog written by NASA employees. The space agency has adopted a policy to have a goal of 50% of all new civil servants hired to be “fresh-out hires,” or be within three years of receiving their degrees. This move comes from discussions from a strategic management group that focused on the long-term effects of NASA’s past hiring practices and the upcoming gap in US human space flight. This is a somewhat of a big move on NASA’s part, which some say is long overdue.

NASA’s aging workforce has long been a focus of discussion. With over thirty percent of the NASA workforce eligible for retirement, it has been widely recognized that the space agency needs to attract a new generation of workers, but also preserve institutional memory. NASA’s Strategic Management Council (SMC) decided that the risk of a shortfall in critical skills is so great, that dramatic action was needed to change these trends.

Not many people leave NASA in any given year, so the agency doesn’t hire many civil servants in one year. However, the average age of NASA is now 47 and yet the average age of their few new hires is just shy of 40. Only 19% of recent hires have been in their 20’s. “It’s been no wonder that the space business continues to age rapidly,” a member of the SMC wrote.

They continued, “If we get close to the 50% fresh-out hiring goal this year, that’ll probably mean more than doubling the number of new people in their 20’s and early 30’s that we hire.”

A hiring experiment run at MSFC this past year showed that applying this policy NASA-wide means the agency’s average age could actually begin to turn around and start to come back down.

NASA is also looking at a number of other actions:

Exploring the possibility of hiring co-op students at NASA Headquarters;

Promote leadership training and identify high-potential candidates;

Ensure Agency-wide consistency and quality of mentoring programs;

Implement new employee rotation programs;

Expand communication technologies;

Institute a business resource management model that provides employees time for innovation;

Motivate employees, e.g. set aside launch tickets for employees, at all levels, at each center;

Source: Open NASA

April 1, 2009December 24, 2015 by Ian O'Neill

NASA Could be “Criminally Negligent” Over Brian the Bat Death

The injured long-tailed bat clings onto Discovery's external fuel tank (NASA)

[/caption]NOTE: This was the Universe Today’s contribution to April Fools Day, just in case you were wondering. However, it isn’t a joke that a bat died during a shuttle launch. Brian will forever be remembered by the Brian Bat Foundation…

On Sunday, March 15th, Space Shuttle Discovery launched from Cape Canaveral, beginning the highly successful STS-119 mission to “power up” the International Space Station (ISS). Unfortunately, a tiny stowaway was discovered clutching onto the external tank of the shuttle and refused to budge. For the whole of Sunday, NASA waited for the free-tailed bat (unofficially named “Brian” by yours truly) to fly away. Alas, Brian held on to Discovery all the way up to launch. NASA even took a photo of the shuttle as it cleared the launch tower, Brian still attached. He wasn’t frozen to the external tank (infrared images showed the bat was warm), a wildlife expert studied the last pictures of Brian, informing the space agency that Brian had in fact suffered a broken wing and was unable to fly away, even as the rockets ignited.

Although NASA was not thought to be responsible for the death of the little animal at first (calling the whole incident “sad but unavoidable”), a Florida state official is pursuing legal action against the ground staff at the Cape. According to state animal protection law, NASA may be charged with negligence, after making little effort to prevent “animal interaction” with the launchpad and apparent unwillingness to remove Brian by hand before launch. However, as investigated by the local press, there are far more animal deaths during shuttle launches than we realise…

NASA can be prosecuted under the same animal protection rules that cover Florida highways (Ian O'Neill)

“First and foremost, the safety of the crew must be ensured,” said NASA spokeswoman Francis Rae, “it is unfortunate that the agency could be reprimanded over the death of an animal, but in the interest of safety and smooth launch operations, we will enact any preventative measures deemed necessary by the state.”

It turns out that NASA is a little shocked that a Florida official has decided to pursue the issue. NASA and Florida have enjoyed very close ties ever since the beginning of the Space Age and this is the first accusation of criminal negligence over the death of an animal (possibly in reaction to the huge international interest in the story). Little did the agency realise that the death of one unfortunate bat could land them in court.

“NASA enjoys total freedom of the airspace above the state, however the agency must still abide by the laws of the state, no matter how insignificant the rules may appear when compared with the endeavors of US activities in space.” — Statement by the District Attorney’s Office, Florida

According to local press, NASA can be fined for the preventable death of the bat under the same state laws that govern goods transportation (i.e. company-owned vehicles are liable if they hit endangered animal species on Florida highways). Therefore, if a truck hit a free-tailed bat on a freeway, and the driver was pulled over by a police officer, the company who owns the truck would be accountable. “This is exactly the same rule that is being applied to NASA, a free-tailed bat was killed during the operations of the shuttle. In the county’s eyes, that’s no different from a Walmart truck running over a protected animal. Like a cougar [the state animal],” reported the Orlando Sentinel.

The Ares V at the launchpad, including the possible configuration of the anti-bat mesh (NASA) — The Ares V at the launchpad, plus artist's impression of what the anti-bat mesh would look like on launch day (NASA)

Regardless of the outcome to the possible legal action, NASA has already prepared plans for an anti-bird/anti-bat mesh that will surround the launchpad after exterior inspection but before launch. This is where NASA tripped up, they performed an inspection on Saturday, March 14th, of Discovery’s external tank, but the pneumatic cranes (used to lift inspectors to the upright shuttle) were removed from the launchpad on launch day. Therefore, if NASA had to remove Brian by hand (if they knew he was injured), the Discovery launch would have been delayed further still, to wait for cranes and personnel to arrive on the scene.

This preventative measure isn’t thought to affect the remaining shuttle launches (before the shuttle is decommissioned in 2010), but the mesh will be built into the launch tower of the Constellation Program scheduled for launch in 2015 (pictured above).

“Estimates place the cost of the mesh at around $10 million,” said Rae. “However, if you factor in unforeseen project overruns and design issues, that cost could easily triple. Possibly more. We simply do not have the technology to fabricate such a large, lightweight net. It will, however, be worth it in the long-run.”

It would appear the mesh couldn’t come too soon for one NASA employee. Soon after Discovery launched on that fateful Sunday night, the Orlando Sentinel interviewed launch safety officer Aniline Lo who went into some detail about the real costs of a shuttle launch.

“…of course animals die during launches. We’ve had collisions with eagles during ascent, we’ve even found dead rats, mice and gophers left on the pad, there has also been injuries to some larger animals in the past. As the Cape is surrounded by water, it is hard to prevent alligators straying too close […] shuttle exhaust can hurt these reptiles, making them difficult to treat. It also seems the flash from the boosters cause confusion in some animals, including rabbits, actually attracting them to the launch pad at lift off. That always ends very badly.” — Aniline Lo, NASA Safety Officer

Lo then went into detail about the clean-up operation after launch. “It’s a shame, the adrenaline is pumping through your body before launch, but it is up to my team to clear up the mess which is the downer,” she said. “If you thought roadkill was bad, imagine it roasted. Hundreds of thousands of dollars post-launch could be saved in man-hours [for clean-up operations] if these animals are prevented from getting near to the rockets.”

The sad story of Brian the Bat captivated the world, but it looks like his demise was the tip of the iceberg. He was first named on the social networking site Twitter and on Astroengine.com. On launch day @DiscoveryBat appeared on Twitter, apparently tweeting from space and tweeting to this day. Even mainstream media refer to the ill-fated free-tailed bat as “Brian”. Consequently, the Brian Bat Foundation was set up to recognise animal endeavours in space. However, it appears the Foundation’s scope must now be extended to all the birds, angry alligators and rabbits on, or near, the shuttle’s launchpad during lift-off.

Source: Orlando Sentinel

March 31, 2009April 26, 2016 by Anne Minard

New Bill Would Extend Shuttle Life, but NASA Doesn’t Need the Time

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The Senate Budget Committee has given the green light to fund NASA’s shuttle program past the end of 2010, when the program is set to retire.

But NASA isn’t asking for an extension.

Florida Sen. Bill Nelson requested the $2.5 billion provision, which was included in the broader five-year spending plan that passed committee Monday afternoon. His office argues that launching nine missions in 18 months puts too much pressure on the agency, and could compromise safety.

NASA is preparing to launch the shuttle Atlantis on May 12 for a servicing mission of the Hubble Space Telescope, and the eight remaining missions are dedicated to completing the International Space Station.

“We are confident that we can fly out the shuttle manifest before the end of 2010,” said John Yembrick, a spokesman out of NASA’s Washington headquarters.

Nelson’s office isn’t as optimistic.

“Given that there are roughly only 18 months but nine flights left, we have a concern that may be unrealistic,” said Dan McLaughlin, a spokesman for Nelson’s office. He cited the Challenger and Columbia accidents, where “the investigation board in both cases identified scheduling pressure as a contributing factor to those accidents.”

orion — Artist's rendering of the next-generation Orion crew exploration vehicle docked to a lunar lander in lunar orbit. (Obsolete configuration.) Credit: Lockheed Martin Corp.

In the past, NASA has been “overly optimistic about schedules for shuttle missions,” McLaughlin said. But in reality, the agency has gotten four or five launches off the ground in each of the past several years. “It doesn’t take but a bad hurricane season and the best laid plans can fall apart. Could NASA do it? Yeah. But a lot of things would have to go right.”

The $2.5 billion provision, if it passes the full Senate and House, would alleviate the pressure, Nelson thinks, by opening up the possibility for additional funding in 2011 — and allow NASA to proceed with safety as a first concern. The measure would soften a firm line both the Bush and Obama administrations have taken on retiring the program by the end of 2010.

The Budget Committee’s decision sends a strong signal that the shuttle shouldn’t be retired on a date-certain, but only when all the missions are completed, Nelson reportedly said immediately after the Thursday vote.

ares-collage1 — Concept of Ares I, left, the crew launch vehicle and Ares V, the cargo launch vehicle. Credit: NASA/Marshall Space Flight Center

Meanwhile, NASA is looking forward to the next generation of launch vehicles, Orion (above, concept credit Lockheed Martin Corp.) and the Ares series. The vehicles are designed to return people to the moon — and perhaps even Mars — to live and explore. The first Ares test flight is planned for later this year.

The gap between the planned shuttle retirement in 2010, and the availability of the next generation launch vehicles, will be five years. During that time the United States is likely to partner with Russia to use Soyuz launch vehicles for low-orbit work and as the space station’s docked emergency vehicle — which is part of the astronauts’ escape plan in the event of debris hits or other dangers aboard the ISS.

It is also possible that commercial vehicles could rise to the challenge before 2015, NASA’s Yembrick said. NASA has awarded two contracts to companies that will deliver cargo to the space station after the retirement of the space shuttle: Orbital Sciences Corp. of Dulles, Virginia, and Space Exploration Technologies (SpaceX) of Hawthorne, California.

“Once they’ve proven that they can successfully deliver cargo, we also may one day look at purchasing crew services,” Yembrick said. “We don’t want to speculate when that may occur.”

Sources: Spaceref, interviews with Dan McLaughlin and John Yembrick.

March 31, 2009December 24, 2015 by Anne Minard

Fresh Mars Impact Craters Blast Ice Onto Surface

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Fresh impact craters on Mars have revealed more evidence of stable ice that’s been hiding just beneath the surface all along, say scientists working on images sent back by the HiRISE camera aboard NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter.

The craters appeared sometime between January and September of last year, in areas that had been previously imaged without them prior to January 2008. The impacts served as “natural probes” to excavate evidence that gets to a long-standing question about ice on Mars: where is it stable, and where is it residual, in the process of sublimating away?

Study leader Shane Byrne, of the University of Arizona’s Lunar and Planetary Laboratory, presented the new set of images last week, at the Lunar and Planetary Science Conference in Texas.

Computer models agree that Mars contains stable high-latitude ice, but researchers have encountered difficulty deciding the quantity and geographical boundary of the ice, partly because they can’t see it beneath the surface and partly because pinning down an indirect measure of sub-surface ice — a long-term, global average water vapor concentration in the atmosphere — has proved challenging.

mars-ejecta2 — Credit: NASA/JPL/University of Arizona

The new craters are a significant clue, because they hit not in the high latitudes where planetary scientists are fairly certain about stable ice, but in the mid-latitudes where the ice’s reach is unclear.

“Here we report on natural probes of the Martian subsurface which have ‘detected’ ice in this critical mid-latitude zone,” wrote Byrne and his co-authors.

“In five such cases (with latitudes spanning 43.3° to 55.6° N), these impacts have excavated bright material which in High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment (HiRISE) data have a brightness and color consistent with water ice.”

Each of the five new craters is a few meters in diameter, several decimeters deep and with associated bright material a few meters across, the authors report. Four of them showed no spectral evidence of water ice. But one proved a jackpot.

“Spectra from this site show clear water ice absorption features at 1.25, 1.5 and 2 ?m,” the team reported. Exposed surface ice is not expected to be stable at the latitudes, and the team has already noticed shrinkage and fading.

Based on atmospheric water vapor data, even stable underground ice isn’t expected to be widespread at the mid-latitudes where the reservoir was found: “Thus the ground ice exposed here is probably in the process of retreat from a previously larger extent,” the authors wrote.

Source: LPSC proceedings

March 20, 2009December 24, 2015 by Anne Minard

Ozone Success Story: NASA Video of Enviro Action That Worked

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Imagine the year 2065. Two-thirds of Earth’s ozone is gone. The infamous ozone hole over Antarctica is a year-round fixture with a twin over the North Pole. People living in mid-latitude cities like Washington, D.C., get sunburned after five minutes. DNA-mutating UV radiation is up 650 percent, with likely harmful effects on plants, animals and human skin cancer rates.

Such is the world we would have inherited if 193 nations had not agreed to ban ozone-depleting substances, according to atmospheric chemists at NASA, Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore and the Netherlands Environmental Assessment Agency in Bilthoven. The researchers have unveiled new computer simulations this week of a worldwide disaster that humans managed to avoid.

In retrospect, the researchers say, the Montreal Protocol was a “remarkable international agreement that should be studied by those involved with global warming and the attempts to reach international agreement on that topic.”

ozone-simulation — This time series from the ozone "World Avoided" model shows the concentration of ozone over the South Pole at four key times. Reds represent normal to high concentrations; blues show depleted areas. Credit: NASA Goddard's Scientific Visualization Studio

Ozone is Earth’s natural sunscreen, absorbing and blocking most of the incoming UV radiation from the sun and protecting life from DNA-damaging radiation. The gas is naturally created and replenished by a photochemical reaction in the upper atmosphere where UV rays break oxygen molecules into individual atoms that then recombine into three-part molecules (O3). As it is moved around the globe by upper level winds, ozone is slowly depleted by naturally occurring atmospheric gases. It is a system in natural balance.

But chlorofluorocarbons — invented in 1928 as refrigerants and as inert carriers for chemical sprays — upset that balance. Researchers discovered in the 1970s and 1980s that while CFCs are inert at Earth’s surface, they are quite reactive in the stratosphere (10 to 50 kilometers altitude, or 6 to 31 miles), where roughly 90 percent of the planet’s ozone accumulates. UV radiation causes CFCs and similar bromine compounds in the stratosphere to break up into elemental chlorine and bromine that readily destroy ozone molecules.

In the 1980s, ozone-depleting substances opened a wintertime “hole” over Antarctica and opened the eyes of the world to the effects of human activity on the atmosphere. In January 1989, the Montreal Protocol went into force, the first-ever international agreement on regulation of chemical pollutants.

In the new study, published online in the journal Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics, Goddard scientist Paul Newman and his team simulated “what might have been” if chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs) and similar chemicals were not banned. The simulation used a comprehensive model that included atmospheric chemical effects, wind changes, and radiation changes. The “World avoided” video can be viewed here in Quicktime (for more formats, go here).

By the simulated year 2020, 17 percent of all ozone is depleted globally. An ozone hole starts to form each year over the Arctic, which was once a place of prodigious ozone levels.

By 2040, global ozone concentrations fall below the same levels that currently comprise the “hole” over Antarctica. The UV index in mid-latitude cities reaches 15 around noon on a clear summer day, giving a perceptible sunburn in about 10 minutes. Over Antarctica, the ozone hole becomes a year-round fixture.

By the end of the model run in 2065, global ozone drops 67 percent compared to 1970s levels. The intensity of UV radiation at Earth’s surface doubles; at certain shorter wavelengths, intensity rises by as much as 10,000 times. Skin cancer-causing radiation soars.

“Our world avoided calculation goes a little beyond what I thought would happen,” said Goddard scientist and study co-author Richard Stolarski, who was among the pioneers of atmospheric ozone chemistry in the 1970s. “The quantities may not be absolutely correct, but the basic results clearly indicate what could have happened to the atmosphere.”

“We simulated a world avoided,” added Newman, “and it’s a world we should be glad we avoided.”

As it is, production of ozone-depleting substances was mostly halted about 15 years ago, though their abundance is only beginning to decline because the chemicals can reside in the atmosphere for 50 to 100 years. The peak abundance of CFCs in the atmosphere occurred around 2000, and has decreased by roughly 4 percent to date. Stratospheric ozone was depleted by 5 to 6 percent at middle latitudes, but has somewhat rebounded in recent years.

March 15, 2009December 24, 2015 by Anne Minard

Liftoff! Discovery Finally Leaves Earth for ISS

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NASA’s space shuttle discovery launched successfully from Cape Canaveral Air Force Base at 7:43 p.m. (EDT) on Sunday, under flawless skies and without a single significant complication, despite past issues that had postponed the launch no less than five times.

Less than a minute after leaving the launch pad, Discovery was traveling 365 miles (578 kilometers) per hour. Less than two minutes after that, the craft was speeding away at 1,100 miles (17,000 kilometers) per hour and climbing, toward the International Space Station.

All three main engines performed perfectly throughout Discovery’s flight. Eight minutes after launch, the twin solid rocket boosters burned out and fell away as the craft was traveling 17,500 miles (28,000 kilometers) an hour.

Now that it’s orbiting Earth, it will take Discovery about two days to catch up to the International Space Station.

Early Sunday afternoon, Launch Director Mike Leinbach sent a “red team” to launch pad 39A to manually correct a valve issue that caused a drop in helium pressure. But following that minor adjustment, NASA encountered no issues to delay the launch.

In fact, the weather improved as the day went on. Original weather predictions had been 80 percent favorable for launch, but by 6 p.m. that prediction had been upgraded to 100 percent.

Discovery’s payload includes technology to boost the station’s power capacity in line with doubling the size of the ISS crew from three to six in May.

The set of solar arrays that the STS-119 crew will be bringing up includes two solar array wings, each of which has two 115-foot-long arrays, for a total wing span of 240 feet, including the equipment that connects the two halves and allows them to twist as they track the sun. Altogether, the four sets of arrays can generate 84 to 120 kilowatts of electricity – enough to provide power for more than 40 average homes. Since the three existing arrays can handle the majority of the station’s day-to-day operational and life support needs, the newest solar array will double the amount of power available for scientific research.

The Discovery crew has been bouncing between NASA’s Kennedy Space Center, in Florida, and the Johnson Space Center in Houston since late January; the first launch attempt was scheduled for early February. But four times, managers rescheduled the launch based on their concern following a hydrogen control valve malfunction on the shuttle Endeavour last fall. They wanted to rule out any similar glitches on Discovery.

Things were looking good for the fifth attempt on Wednesday — when skies would have been clear across much of the east coast — but a leak during refueling led to another cancellation.

Fueling of Discovery’s tank — with nearly 500,000 gallons of chilled liquid oxygen and hydrogen propellants — went off Sunday morning without a hitch.

Discovery’s flight is STS-119, but NASA has actually flown 131 missions with shuttles. Under the Obama administration, the shuttle program is expected to retire next year.