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From: "Moon, Larry J. (JSC-EA411)" <larry.j.moon@nasa.gov>
Date: December 17, 2014 at 10:33:57 AM CST
To: "Moon, Larry J. (JSC-EA411)" <larry.j.moon@nasa.gov>
Subject: FW: NASA and Human Spaceflight News - Wednesday – December 17, 2014
NASA and Human Spaceflight NewsWednesday – December 17, 2014HEADLINES AND LEADSCommercial Space Habitats Will Go For Launch In 2015The ISS is about to get some companyLoren Grush - Popular ScienceIn 2014, commercial spaceflight reached a major milestone when NASA selected two companies—SpaceX and Boeing—to deliver astronauts to the International Space Station (ISS). This year, the agency will turn its attention to the next logical step: commercial habitats. SpaceX will launch Bigelow Aerospace's Expandable Activity Module to the ISS in late summer or early fall. Once connected to the Tranquility node, the habitat will inflate to 13 feet long. Then, for two years, instruments will measure how well it holds up in space. Bigelow will use that data to build a 12-person station. NASA, meanwhile, has begun developing standards for use by commercial stations. Philip McAlister, the agency's director of commercial spaceflight, says private enterprise will help sustain robust human activity in low-Earth orbit. "American spaceflight is not just about us anymore," he says.(NO FURTHER TEXT)SpaceX launch forecast looks good for FridayJames Dean - Florida TodayThe forecast looks promising for SpaceX's planned 1:22 p.m. Friday launch of a Dragon capsule packed with cargo for the International Space Station.Everything You Need to Know About Friday's SpaceX Dragon LaunchMichael Belfiore - Popular MechanicsOn Friday, December 19, a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket will drop off an unmanned Dragon spacecraft in orbit and send it on its way to the International Space Station. Then, if all goes well, the rocket's first stage will turn around, fly itself back to Earth, and land on a platform floating in the Atlantic Ocean.How Space Station Tech Is Helping the Fight Against CancerNola Taylor Redd - Space.comOne of the tools used in the fight against cancer is, quite literally, out of this world.Down on the space farmWe can now grow plants in microgravity – and crops grown in asteroid soil could sustain vast human populations off-planetMichael Slezak - New ScientistIF YOU want to start a space farm, head for an asteroid. It seems there's enough fertiliser zipping around the solar system to grow veg for generations of space colonisers – and researchers are already beginning to grow viable, edible plants in space.International Space Station Experiment Could Hold Key To Unlocking What Causes Alzheimer'sRobin Burks - Tech TimesOne of the next experiments going up to the International Space Station (ISS) could provide new insight into what causes Alzheimer's disease.Boeing Offers CST-100 For ISS CargoJeff Foust - Space NewsAs Boeing begins work on its NASA commercial crew contract, the company is proposing to use a version of the same spacecraft to transport cargo to the international space station.Navy fighter pilot commands International Space StationDavid Larter - Navy TimesThe International Space Station, which orbits earth nearly 300 miles overhead, is now commanded by a naval aviator.Antares Upgrade Will Use RD-181s In Direct Buy From EnergomashFrank Morring, Jr. - Aviation WeekOrbital Sciences Corp. will buy directly from Russia's NPO Energomash a new rocket engine with a long heritage, to replace the surplus Russian powerplants tentatively implicated in the Oct. 28 failure of an Antares launch vehicle with a load of cargo for the International Space Station (ISS).Orbital Sciences Orders RD-181 Engines for Antares RocketPeter B. de Selding - Space NewsSatellite and rocket builder Orbital Sciences Corp. on Dec. 16 confirmed that it has contracted with Russia's Energomash to provide RD-181 engines to power the first stage of Orbital's Antares rocket, replacing the AJ-26 engine, also from Russia, that Orbital suspects was the origin of Antares' Oct. 28 failure.COMPLETE STORIESSpaceX launch forecast looks good for FridayJames Dean - Florida TodayThe forecast looks promising for SpaceX's planned 1:22 p.m. Friday launch of a Dragon capsule packed with cargo for the International Space Station.There's an 80 percent chance of acceptable conditions during the instantaneous launch window at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station, with thick clouds a potential concern, according to the Air Force's 45th Weather Squadron.SpaceX today raised a Falcon 9 rocket booster vertical at Launch Complex 40 in preparation for a brief test-firing of nine Merlin engines, the last big technical milestone before the launch countdown.The mission is SpaceX's fifth of 12 planned for NASA under a $1.6 billion Commercial Resupply Services contract.If the launch slips to Saturday, the weather odds drop to 70 percent "go" during the instantaneous window at 12:59 p.m., with thick clouds again a possibility.NASA last week announced that the launch, once scheduled for today, had been pushed back to no earlier than Friday to allow SpaceX to do "everything possible on the ground to prepare for a successful launch."The Dec. 11 statement said SpaceX's Falcon 9 rocket and Dragon capsule were healthy, and the launch appears to be on track for Friday.Kennedy Space Center will host a series of prelaunch briefings Thursday, starting at noon.Everything You Need to Know About Friday's SpaceX Dragon LaunchMichael Belfiore - Popular MechanicsOn Friday, December 19, a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket will drop off an unmanned Dragon spacecraft in orbit and send it on its way to the International Space Station. Then, if all goes well, the rocket's first stage will turn around, fly itself back to Earth, and land on a platform floating in the Atlantic Ocean.It will be SpaceX's most ambitious flight yet, and it could be the first big step toward SpaceX slashing the cost of spaceflight. Booster rockets are normally destroyed — "expended" in rocket parlance — in the course of launching payloads, which contributes greatly to the cost of launch since a new rocket has to be built for each mission.SpaceX has brought first stage boosters back to Earth twice before, but never on a stable platform, and the company has yet to recover one. CEO Elon Musk, in a Q&A session at MIT in October, gave the upcoming soft-landing mission no more than a 50 percent chance of success. But he also said that with multiple flights planned for the coming year, he expects SpaceX's chance of success for a future mission to be more like 80 to 90 percent.Why the launch could be a space milestoneIf SpaceX manages to land the first stage on the platform, which Musk called an "autonomous spaceport drone ship," it will be a spaceflight first, and a major milestone on the way to meeting Musk's goal of spaceflight with reusable rockets. That, Musk says, is a prerequisite for his ultimate goal of colonizing Mars."Low cost reusability would drive their already lowest launch prices down far further and put all on notice that rocketry need not be trapped by the throwaway missile model of the past 50+ years," Charles Lurio, publisher of The Lurio Report, a respected space industry newsletter, tells PM of SpaceX. "It could start a race to new markets and new practicality in space transportation resembling the advance of computer systems in the same period."The landing platform measures 300 feet by 100 feet, with slide-out panels that extend the width by another 70 feet. Underwater thrusters on the platform are designed to hold it steady even in rough seas. To land on it, the rocket must restart its engines and deploy small winglets for stability control and landing gear.If the Falcon 9 first stage successfully lands, Musk said at MIT, his company plans to fly it again on a future mission. For now, SpaceX won't try to recover its second stage boosters. "The next generation vehicles after the Falcon architecture will be designed for full reusability," Musk said at MIT. "I don't expect the Falcon to have a reusable upper stage."Why Falcon 9 / Dragon mattersIt's been a rough end to the year for private spaceflight, and SpaceX's upcoming flight comes on the heels of two major failures. On October 28, SpaceX's competitor for International Space Station cargo flights, Orbital Sciences Corporation, lost an Antares launch vehicle and Cygnus cargo ship in a spectacular explosion moments after liftoff from the Mid-Atlantic Regional Spaceport on the Virginia coast. The preliminary investigation pinned the failure on a misbehaving turbopump in one of the rocket's first-stage AJ26 engines — engines which had been built for the Soviet Union's failed moon rocket program and warehoused for decades.The same week as the Antares explosion, on October 31, Virgin Galactic lost its SpaceShipTwo rocket plane in a test flight being made in preparation for suborbital spaceflights with paying passengers. The company and its founder, Richard Branson, have since vowed to move forward with a second ship already under construction at its Mojave, California development center, even as a National Transportation Safety Board investigation of the crash continues."After the Antares and SS2 failures," Lurio tells PM, "it's important that Falcon 9 / Dragon fulfills its basic mission of cargo delivery to the ISS."In other words, the pressure is on SpaceX to complete its primary mission on the next flight, regardless of whether the first stage landing succeeds. Orbital Sciences announced on December 10 that it will suspend ISS cargo flights at least until the end of 2015 while it develops a new engine. With Antares down, NASA currently has no other American vehicle capable of reaching Space Station, and would have to rely on Russia if SpaceX fails.The upcoming flight will be the fifth cargo delivery mission in SpaceX's 12-flight, $1.6 billion contract with NASA. It will be the sixth visit by a SpaceX Dragon to the station, and the seventh to reach orbit. SpaceX is also on contract, along with competitor Boeing, to develop crew-carrying capabilities by 2017, which it plans to do with a Dragon 2 design that it unveiled in May.Watch live coverage of the December 19 launch from Cape Canaveral, currently scheduled for 1:20 pm Eastern, at spacex.com and on NASA TV. Live coverage starts at 12:15 pm ET.How Space Station Tech Is Helping the Fight Against CancerNola Taylor Redd - Space.comOne of the tools used in the fight against cancer is, quite literally, out of this world.Research performed on the International Space Station and its predecessors, along with technology developed initially for work in space, play important roles in understanding the disease and improving treatments.When the Soviet Union launched Salyut 1, the first space station, into orbit in the 1970s, humans began spending more and more time in extremely low-gravity environments. On the International Space Station today, gravity ranges from 1,000 to 1,000,000 times less than the force experienced on Earth. These weightless environments are also known as "microgravity" environments, offering an invaluable platform for cancer research in space.In a recent article published in the journal Nature Reviews Cancer, cell biologist Jeanne Becker, of Nano3D biosciences in Houston, explored how microgravity environments in space stations of the past and present allow biologists to study the cells in three-dimensional growth environments similar to those experienced in the human body.Getting rid of gravityOn Earth, gravityflattens the cells in a lab, but in space they retain their rounded shapes. At the same time, in microgravity, the cells arrange themselves into three-dimensional groupings, or aggregates, that bear a strong resemblance to what happens inside the human body. Becker was the principle investigator for a space station experiment that focused on ovarian cancer cells, according to a NASA statement.Since 2003, the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA), has studied the high-quality crystals formed by protein molecules in space, where microgravity no longer causes flows based on density differences and the sinking of heavier particles. The resulting orderly formation of protein crystals may hold the key to treating diseases. One newfound protein, H-PGDS, plays a useful role in the treatment of muscular dystrophy.Another study, Cellbox-Thyroid, examines cancer at a cellular level. Building on findings from a previous investigation, Cellbox-Thyroid studies the spherical structure of cancer cells in microgravity and how they spread, potentially providing an improved understanding on what drives the cells.Not all space research requires a station.One team of scientists, led by Daniela Grimm, a researcher with the Laboratory of Space Medicine and Space Pharmacology at Aarhus University in Denmark, studied the Science in Microgravity Box (SIMBOX) on the Shenzhou 8 spacecraft, an unmanned Chinese spacecraft that docked with that country's Tiangong 1 space module in 2011. The team determined that some tumors seem to become less aggressive in microgravity than they are on Earth. Grimm and her colleagues continue to search for as many genes and proteins as possible that are affected by microgravity.Radiation in spaceDoctors have plenty of experience fighting cancer on the ground. But astronauts in space are constantly bombarded by cosmic rays, a different form of radiation than is experienced on Earth, where gamma and X-ray radiation prevail. The different types of radiation can produce different changes in human DNA, the genetic material present in nearly every cell in the body."In space, living organisms are constantly exposed to cosmic rays resulting in damages in DNA," Honglu Wu, of NASA's Johnson Space Center in Houston, told Space.com by email."Whether the repair of these damages in space is different from that on the ground will impact the accuracy of assessment of health risks in the astronauts and the mutation rate of microorganisms in space."Wu serves as principle investigator for a new study, MicroRNA Expression Profiles in Cultured Human Fibroblast in Space (Micro-7), which examines the effects of microgravity on DNA damage and repair. The experiment induces DNA change using a chemotherapy drug, and observes how microgravity affects the mutations not only in DNA but also in the microRNA that regulate gene expressions. Changes in the microRNA in microgravity can affect how the cell responds to DNA damage in space.Although the experiment focuses on cancer caused by long exposure in space, it may have ramifications for the Earth-based mutations."One of the challenges in radiotherapy of cancer is resistance of certain tumor types to radiation," Wu said."If our study can identify microRNAs that are associated with the repair of DNA damages, manipulating these microRNAs in tumor cells will hopefully increase the sensitivity to radiation treatment."Embryo Rad is a radiation experiment that will search for the transgenerational effects of radiation exposure in rodents. Frozen mouse embryos will fly in the radiation environment of space. On their return to Earth, they will be implanted in surrogate mothers. Scientists will observe possible changes in life spans, as well as cancer development or gene mutations, in order to better understand secondary cancer risks involved in ground-based radiation therapy for humans.Arm operates on EarthA robotic arm onboard the space station has inspired a medical tool to combat cancer. The Canadian Space Agency's Canadarm, Canadarm 2 and Special Purpose Dexterous Manipulator (Dextre) helped build and maintain the space station, and provide heavy lifting and space berthing capabilities. But for neurosurgeon Garnette Sutherland, they also provided the seed for a robot that could operate inside a magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) machine.Sutherland contacted Macdonald Dettwiler and Associates (MDA), the company that built the space station arms, about the possibility of creating a new medical tool. The company's space engineers worked in collaboration with the University of Calgary to create neuroArm.By operating inside an MRI machine, neuroArm performs microsurgery by using detailed brain images. It is also capable of performing biopsies. A doctor controls the tool from the outside, while the arm itself negates tremors and unintentional movements caused by the human arm, allowing for greater precision."In building neuroArm, engineers from MDA were challenged to recreate the sight, sound, and touch of surgery at a remote workstation," Sutherland told Space.com by email."We sometimes say, when using neuroArm, its telecapability allows the merging of the precision and accuracy of machine technology with the executive capacity of the human brain."Because Sutherland is a neurosurgeon, the tool has primarily been used to operate on brain tumors, and has been utilized in approximately 60 cases.The Canadian Space Agency arms also inspire another robotic toolto combat breast cancer. The Image-Guided Autonomous Robot (IGAR) also works in combination with an MRI scanner to take biopsies with an accuracy of three-tenths of an inch (1 millimeter), which improves sampling, reduces pain, and decreases time spent in the MRI suite, thus reducing the amount of money spent.Down on the space farmWe can now grow plants in microgravity – and crops grown in asteroid soil could sustain vast human populations off-planetMichael Slezak - New ScientistIF YOU want to start a space farm, head for an asteroid. It seems there's enough fertiliser zipping around the solar system to grow veg for generations of space colonisers – and researchers are already beginning to grow viable, edible plants in space.Asteroids are a hot topic with the 3 December launch of Japan's Hayabusa 2 spacecraft, which aims to return a sample from carbon-rich asteroid 1999 JU3. And astronauts are spending longer and longer in space, with the first crew to spend a full year aboard the International Space Station due to launch in 2015."Longer human missions will require the company of plants, in terms of providing both food and psychological comfort," says Bratislav Stankovic at the University of Information Science and Technology in Ohrid, Macedonia. His team is one of many running experimental mini farms on the ISS, and one of the first to grow plants successfully.Space farmers have had a tough row to hoe. Nearly every space shuttle flight through the 1980s and 1990s carried experimental plant payloads. But just as human bodies seem to need Earth-like gravity to function, so plants seemed to struggle in microgravity."It appears to influence cell biochemistry," says Stankovic. The plants displayed strange genetic mutations, grew in unpredictable and undesirable shapes, and seeds did not germinate or grow well. They also had trouble producing a second generation of fertile seeds, a key milestone for sustainable space farming.But now, Stankovic and his colleagues from the University of Wisconsin-Madison have made a capsule that enabled two generations of seeds to successfully grow on the ISS (Astrobiology, doi.org/xpz).The capsule tightly controlled soil moisture, light, air temperature, humidity, and levels of carbon dioxide and ethylene – a hormone plants release into the air when they begin to ripen. A mesh held down a base of fertilised gravel in which the plants could spread their roots.Once astronauts installed the system, it was remote-controlled and monitored from the University of Wisconsin. They grew Arabidopsis thaliana, a small, edible flowering plant that is often used as a model species.Not only did the plants produce seeds, but 92 per cent then germinated successfully. Some were grown on the ISS and others back on Earth. There was little difference between the two, the team found. The space seeds had their protein stores packed a little differently and the plants' branches grew in slightly different directions. But these are small details, Stankovic says. "It is likely that the previous failed attempts had to do with inadequate control of the growth environment," he says. "Microgravity per se is not a limiting factor."No gravity requiredOther would-be space farmers have focused on characterising differences more precisely. Robert Ferl at the University of Florida in Gainesville and his colleagues also grew A. thaliana on the ISS.They found that plants used adaptive strategies to deal with not having gravity, such as increasing their expression of genes associated with light perception in the leaves and remodelling root cell walls.Understanding those strategies could help engineer plants that grow even better in space than they do here, says Ferl. Still, that might not even be necessary, he says, since plants seem to find solutions themselves."I remain optimistic that before the end of the decade we will obtain seeds from plants grown on the moon," Stankovic says. But that raises an important question: will lunar soil support plants?Plants grown on spacecraft will need soils we bring with us and will be able to use human waste as fertiliser. Ongoing extraterrestrial colonies are another story, though. If off-Earth colonies want to grow, or if they can't recycle every last atom of waste, we will need additional nutrients. "Get to Mars or the moon and, yes, plants will pull minerals from whatever soils we give them," says Ferl. "Any atoms that plants pull, we don't have to pack."Although the Apollo missions carried out plant experiments using lunar regolith, which is mainly composed of basaltic and other volcanic material, there were not enough experiments to get an idea of whether it would be suitable, Ferl says.Other groups have tried growing plants in simulated lunar and Martian soil, whose mineral composition is similar to volcanic Earth soils. Wieger Wamelink and colleagues at the Alterra research institute, part of the University of Wageningen in the Netherlands, reported this year that they grew a veritable salad – wheat, tomato, cress and mustard – for 50 days with no added nutrients (PLoS One, doi.org/xp3). The plants even grew better in the simulated space soil than controls grown in poor quality Earth soil.Looking even further forward, others have pondered how large human populations might sustain themselves in space. That's where asteroids come in, specifically carbonaceous or "c-type" asteroids, which are known to be packed with organic compounds.They are highly nutritious for plants, according to Michael Mautner of Lincoln University in New Zealand. He has grown edible plants directly in material from c-type asteroids, which fell to Earth in meteorites. He simply ground up the meteorite and added water.He has also analysed the nutrient content of these meteorites and extrapolated to asteroids. He calculated that a 200-kilometre-wide space rock could provide enough fertiliser to sustain 10,000 people for a billion years.You'd need to control the air pressure and provide water, but the nutrients are there, he says. If we grabbed all the carbonaceous asteroids in the solar system, it could sustain a population of a billion for a billion years, according to his estimates.Both Stankovic and Ferl say Mautner's work is useful, quantifying the long-term vision of nutrients availability for space farming. "There are great resources in space that can yield immense human populations in this solar system, and much more in billions of solar systems in the galaxy, for billions of future aeons," Mautner says.But we can't count our space lettuces before they germinate, Maunter warns. This vision relies on the success of the home planet. "For this future, we must make secure our human survival on Earth first, so that we can spread life in space."International Space Station Experiment Could Hold Key To Unlocking What Causes Alzheimer'sRobin Burks - Tech TimesOne of the next experiments going up to the International Space Station (ISS) could provide new insight into what causes Alzheimer's disease.The experiment, which now sits in a 4-inch box, arrives later this month via the SpaceX CRS-5 resupply mission to the station.Scientists call the experiment Self-Assembly in Biology and the Origin of Life: A Study Into Alzheimer's, or SABOL for short. The experiment seeks to look at how protein fibers possibly grab hold and strangle nerve and brain cells, causing Alzheimer's.The experiment itself will be hands-free: it's completely autonomous and will work in space on its own. It doesn't even require a lot of power and only needs plugging into a USB port.So why test this theory in space? Weightlessness makes such experiments easier and more accurate. It also speeds up results because these protein fibers will probably grow larger and faster in space than on Earth because of the lack of gravity. On Earth, gravity pulls them down into the bottom of the box, inhibiting the fibers. Seeing how they grow and layer around each other in space opens up new insights on how they eventually choke nerve and brain cells associated with Alzheimer's."If we're lucky, then we'll find out whether proteins will aggregate in space," says Dan Woodard of NASA's Kennedy Space Center. "Only in weightlessness can you produce an environment free of convection so you can see whether they form on their own."Scientists stress that it's tough finding a cure for a disease like Alzheimer's without first understanding what causes it. This new theory and resulting experiment could change that.Scientists believe that these fibers grow throughout one's lifetime and the body has no way of getting rid of them. Understanding how they form and develop, however, could help us figure out how to slow them down or stop their growth altogether in patients diagnosed with Alzheimer's.The experiment's samples will eventually make their way back to Earth where they'll be looked at with an atomic force microscope. After that, scientists will then seek answers as to why these fibers, if linked to Alzheimer's, form in such a way in some people, but not in others."We've got to understand why some people get these conditions and others don't," says Woodard. "There have to be chemicals or processes that hinder or encourage the growth of protein fibers. It may be something as simple as temperature or salt concentration of the fluid in the brain."At present, more than 5 million Americans suffer from Alzheimer's disease. It is the 6th leading cause of death in the U.S. and around 500,000 people die from it every year. In people aged 65 and older, it is the 5th leading cause of death.Boeing Offers CST-100 For ISS CargoJeff Foust - Space NewsAs Boeing begins work on its NASA commercial crew contract, the company is proposing to use a version of the same spacecraft to transport cargo to the international space station.Company officials said in a Dec. 9 interview here that they submitted a proposal earlier this month for NASA's Commercial Resupply Services (CRS) 2 competition, a follow-on to the existing CRS contracts held by Orbital Sciences Corp. and Space Exploration Technologies Corp. to ferry cargo to and from the station.The cargo version of Boeing's CST-100 spacecraft will be based on the crewed version the company is developing for NASA, said John Mulholland, Boeing commercial crew program manager. Boeing will remove spacecraft components not needed for crew missions, like its launch abort system and environmental controls, to free up room in the spacecraft for cargo.The cargo version of CST-100 would, like the crewed version, launch on a United Launch Alliance Atlas 5 rocket. The cargo version will also be able to return cargo to Earth, landing in the western U.S. like the crewed version.That similarity between the two CST-100 versions is intended to improve the spacecraft's overall economics. "It gives us a chance to use the launch vehicle and capsule that are being integrated for crew and get more missions out of it to help with affordability," said John Elbon, vice president and general manager for space exploration at Boeing.The CST-100's ability to come down on land, versus splashing down in the ocean, will allow it to take advantage of a new element of the CRS2 procurement for the accelerated return of cargo from the ISS. In that optional portion of CRS2, cargo is handed over to NASA within 3 to 6 hours of landing instead of 24. "We'll be able to get access to the science that's coming down within an hour or so," Elbon said.Mulholland declined to specify how much cargo the CST-100 could carry to the ISS, but said it exceeds the minimum of 2,500 kilograms per mission required by NASA.Mulholland argued that using a vehicle already under development for crewed vehicles, launched on the Atlas 5, offers a degree of robustness that puts Boeing at an advantage in the competition. "It really helps our bid," he said. "It will position us to have at least one of the awards."Boeing is facing competition from several other companies for the CRS2 contracts. Orbital and SpaceX had been widely expected to submit proposals to keep their existing ISS cargo business. Executives with Sierra Nevada Corp. (SNC) said in September they were considering a CRS2 bid using the Dream Chaser vehicle it was previously developing for NASA's commercial crew program.Spokespersons with Orbital and SNC confirmed that their companies each submitted CRS2 proposals, which were due to NASA by Dec. 2. SpaceX spokesman John Taylor said Dec. 15 that the company does not comment on bid decisions in advance of any contact awards.NASA is expected to award CRS2 contracts by June 2015, with cargo missions scheduled to begin in 2018. NASA has not disclosed how many contracts it will award, but many in the industry expect at least two contracts to provide redundancy should one provider experience problems.While putting together its CST-100 cargo proposal, Boeing has also started work on its Commercial Crew Transportation Capability (CCtCap) contract, awarded by NASA in September.Mulholland said the company has completed two early milestones in that contract. One is a certification baseline review that covered what Boeing must do to win NASA certification to carry astronauts on the CST-100. The second was a critical design review of the CST-100 ground segment, including mission operations and training. A third milestone, a safety review, had just started, he said.As Boeing ramps up its work on the CCtCap contract, it is keeping an eye on a protest filed by SNC with the U.S. Government Accountability Office. SNC, which lost the competition to Boeing and SpaceX, claims it offered a similar technical capability at a lower price than Boeing. The GAO is scheduled to render a decision on the protest by Jan. 5."There's not much we can do to influence the process," Elbon said of the protest. "I think NASA did a heck of a job and made a sound decision, and I'm hopeful those who are auditing that decision will see it that way."Navy fighter pilot commands International Space StationDavid Larter - Navy TimesThe International Space Station, which orbits earth nearly 300 miles overhead, is now commanded by a naval aviator.Navy Capt. Butch Wilmore, a Tennessee native and F/A-18 fighter pilot with nearly 7,000 flight hours and more than 660 carrier landings, took command of the station Nov. 9, and will be there until March.Air Force Col. Terry Virts, a veteran F-16 pilot and fellow U.S. astronaut, arrived at the station recently and will be there until May.Wilmore and his crew from across the globe perform research that may someday push human space exploration into the far reaches of the solar system.In an exclusive interview with Military Times, Wilmore — who wears a gold-crested Navy command ball cap during the mission — said the opportunity to command the ISS was a special moment in his Navy career."As you know, in the Navy, as soon as you come in you start being groomed for leadership," Wilmore said via satellite link from the space station. "This is the first opportunity in my more than 20 years that I've had an opportunity to command anything. It's an honor and a privilege."Wilmore, who is a test pilot, said the discipline of his military career served him well in making the transition to the space program."In the test work you have to be disciplined," he said. "You plan before you fly a test, you execute your plan – you don't deviate from that plan. And I think space flight is very similar."Wilmore is in the unique position of commanding Russian cosmonauts. But despite tensions back on earth, none of that has manifested itself on the ISS."It if wasn't for the news, I wouldn't know there were any tensions whatsoever," he said. "For the jobs we do day in and day out … there were no tensions [and] no discussion about it. Very kind, very cordial: These people are passionate about their work, passionate about training us for what we're doing now. So you'd never know anything about it."During the interview, Virts reacted to the news of the successful launch and recovery by the amphibious transport dock Anchorage of the new spacecraft Orion. NASA hopes Orion will one day ferry astronauts to asteroids and even Mars."Orion is a very important part of the future of our space program," Virts said. "It allows us to leave earth and come back to earth at very high speeds. Right now we're traveling at 17,000 miles per hour, but if you return from the moon or from Mars, you'd be going 25,000 miles per hour, which is a lot higher and you need a sturdier capsule."It was a big day. It was very good news for America and for NASA that it worked as well as it did."Antares Upgrade Will Use RD-181s In Direct Buy From EnergomashFrank Morring, Jr. - Aviation WeekOrbital Sciences Corp. will buy directly from Russia's NPO Energomash a new rocket engine with a long heritage, to replace the surplus Russian powerplants tentatively implicated in the Oct. 28 failure of an Antares launch vehicle with a load of cargo for the International Space Station (ISS).Designated the RD-181, the new engine will be used on Antares in shipsets of two to accommodate as closely as possible the two-engine configuration built around the AJ-26 engines supplied by Aerojet Rocketdyne, Orbital Sciences managers said Dec. 16.A descendant of the RD-171 that powers the Ukrainian-built Zenit launch vehicle, the RD-181 will be manufactured in the same Khimki factory that builds the RD-180 used on the United Launch Alliance Atlas V. It closely resembles the RD-191 on Russia's new Angara launcher and the RD-151 that powers South Korea's Naro-1 launch vehicle.In testing at Energomash, "the RD-181s have seen more than two times the Antares flight duration to date, and if you take a look at some of the heritage of this engine, the RD-151 and the RD-191 combined have over 10 hr. of test time for their configuration testing," said Mark Pieczynski, Orbital's vice president for space launch strategic development.Like the AJ-26, the single-thrust-chamber, single-nozzle RD-181 uses liquid oxygen and refined petroleum (RP) as propellants, generating a sea-level performance in the two-engine configuration of 864,000 lb. thrust with a specific impulse of 311.9 sec. That is equivalent to the twin-nozzle RD-180, but the two engines are a better fit with the Antares main stage, built for Orbital by Ukraine's Yuzhmash."While there is no such thing as a plug-and-play in this business, the RD-181 in its dual-engine configuration is about as close as you could possibly get to replacing the current twin AJ-26 engines in Antares, so it minimizes the redesign of the core," Pieczynski told Aviation Week. "It allows us to keep the core nearly identical."Ron Grabe, executive vice president and general manager of Orbital's Launch Systems Group, said his company has been looking for an engine to replace the AJ-26 for three years. Two of the surplus Russian powerplants suffered major failures in acceptance tests at the Stennis Space Center before the October failure shortly after liftoff from the Antares pad at NASA's Wallops Flight Facility in Virginia."We evaluated several alternatives, really all available alternatives both foreign and domestic," Grabe said Tuesday. "Ultimately, we decided upon the RD-181 engine because it offered the best combination of schedule availability, technical performance and cost compared to the other possible options. The RD-181 came out on top of the evaluation in terms of the performance improvement that it offered and its cost-effectiveness, but where it really stood out for us as the clear winner was with regard to its near-term availability."Pieczynski said Energomash will deliver the first shipset next summer and a second in the fall of 2015. Planning is still underway for integrating the new Russian engines into the series of existing and on-order Antares vehicles, the managers said, but the company intends to mount the first shipset in an Antares for a hot-fire test on the repaired Wallops pad next year."The first shipset that we receive in mid-summer of next year will be integrated into the booster," Pieczynski said. "And then in the fall,, our plan is to conduct an on-pad static fire to prove out that system in the core, just as we did in the existing Antares system, where we strapped the first stage down to the pad, conducted about a 29-sec. hot fire and then we shut it down."In the meantime, we will be receiving our second set of engines in the fall of 2015. Our plan is to then use that test article as our first launch, but with another set of engines arriving, should we need to do some additional work that we don't anticipate today on that test article, we will have another set of engines that will be ready to be incorporated into a core vehicle."Orbital has selected the Atlas V 401 as a substitute for Antares until it has finished the upgrades, as it works to complete its $1.9 billion contract to deliver 20,000 kg (44,000 lb.) of cargo to the ISS by the end of 2016. Ultimately, the RD-181 will be able to lift 20% more cargo to the space station than the AJ-26 shipsets, in conjunction with an upgraded solid-fuel upper stage that flew on the failed October mission and an extended Cygnus cargo carrier already in the works. But the new engines will be held back to the AJ-26 level until the thrust structure and tankage on the Antares core stage can be modified to accommodate the increased performance, which will be 100,000 lb. thrust more than provided by the AJ-26-powered variant.Congressional concern about Russian aggression in the Crimean peninsula led to a ban in the new National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) on using RD-180s purchased after Russia occupied the Ukrainian territory on Feb. 1. Grabe said that legislation will not affect the deal to buy RD-181s from Energomash."We've coordinated with all relevant congressional committee staffs to keep them informed of our decision," Grabe said."Certainly the NDAA places future restrictions on the use of the Russian engines for national security space applications. Our application is in civil space. There's a long history of U.S.-Russian cooperation in civil space, dating back to Apollo-Soyuz in the 1970s at the height of the Cold War. Since our immediate objective is in civil space supporting the International Space Station, it's got a slightly different twist or perspective than supporting national security space. NASA already relies on cooperation with its Russian partner in other ways to execute the ISS program [including] crew transport. Certainly it would not make sense to restrict the use of engines manufactured in Russia on a program that's already inherently dependent on cooperation between the United States and Russia."Orbital hopes eventually to use the Antares with its new Russian engines for commercial satellite launches, as well as in follow-on ISS cargo-delivery work already out for bid. Orbital Chairman/CEO David Thompson has vowed that the company will finish its current contract without increasing the cost to NASA—and with four more flights instead of the five originally planned because of the performance enhancements in the launch vehicle and Cygnus (AW&ST Nov. 17, p. 35).Pieczynski said the company's contract with Energomash calls for the delivery of as many as five Antares shipsets of the RD-181 per year, although there will not be a need for that many engines initially."Our contract with Energomash covers our obligations under the current [station cargo-delivery] contract, and hopefully anticipating an award for the next phase," Grabe said. "Beyond that, we have options that, if exercised, would satisfy our requirements out beyond 2020."Orbital Sciences Orders RD-181 Engines for Antares RocketPeter B. de Selding - Space NewsSatellite and rocket builder Orbital Sciences Corp. on Dec. 16 confirmed that it has contracted with Russia's Energomash to provide RD-181 engines to power the first stage of Orbital's Antares rocket, replacing the AJ-26 engine, also from Russia, that Orbital suspects was the origin of Antares' Oct. 28 failure.Dulles, Virginia-based Orbital had withheld public announcement of the engine until Dec. 16 despite widespread reports in Russia of the selection, saying it did not want to show its hand in advance of one or more U.S. rocket-selection competitions.Orbital announced its choice via Twitter and through an article in Aviation Week and Space Technology.Khimki, Russia-based Energomash also supplies the RD-180 engine to United Launch Alliance of Denver for U.S. government launches of ULA's Atlas 5 rocket. The ULA contract with Energomash is handled through RD Amross of Cocoa Beach, Florida, whose contract terms are now under review in the U.S. Congress.Orbital apparently will contract directly with Energomash. Russia's Izvestia press agency on Dec. 17 quoted an official from the Russian space agency, Roscosmos, as saying the Energomash-Orbital deal is valued at about $1 billion and includes a firm order for 20 engines, plus two options for 20 engines each.Orbital was not immediately available for comment Dec. 17.Despite the widely assumed choice of a Russian engine and the announcements in Russia, Orbital's choice maintained an element of surprise because of the political context. U.S.-Russian relations have soured since early this year and Russia's annexation of Ukraine's Crimea and continued implication in eastern Ukraine.The United States and the European Union have slapped multiple sanctions on Russian businesses without touching the ULA-RD Amross-Energomash contract directly. But the U.S. Congress has moved to limit long-term reliance on Russian engines.Orbital is planning to merge with the aerospace and defense division of ATK or Arlington, Virginia. The merger was delayed as ATK evaluated the consequences to Orbital of the Oct. 28 Antares failure, and is now subject to shareholder votes by both companies scheduled for Jan. 27.ATK officials said they conducted their own due-diligence review of Orbital's Antares post-failure business prospects, including an assessment of political risk – presumably associated with the Russian engine selection – and concluded that the merger should continue.In its Twitter statement, Orbital said it would take delivery of the first RD-181 engines in 2015, with a launch scheduled for 2016.ENDMore at www.spacetoday.net
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