NASA and Human Spaceflight News
Thursday – December 18, 2014
International Space Station
Getting ready for the one-year mission to ISS
TIME magazine is highlighting Scott Kelly on the cover of its first edition of 2015, which is online today http://time.com/meet-the-twins-unlocking-the-secrets-of-space/?pcd=hp-magmod, and a seven-page story on the one-year mission will be featured in the issue expected to hit stands on Tuesday, Dec. 23. NASA is working with this and other media to follow along and provide in-depth coverage of the mission. HEADLINES AND LEADS
Meet the Twins Unlocking the Secrets of Space
Jeffrey Kluger – TIME
When Scott Kelly calls home from the International Space Station (ISS) sometime next year, whoever answers the phone may simply hang up on him. The calls will be welcome, but the link can be lousy, with long, hissing silences breaking up the conversation. That's what happens when you're placing your call from at least 229 mi. (369 km) above the Earth while zipping along at 17,500 m.p.h. (28,164 kph) and your signal has to get bounced from satellites to ground antennas to relay stations like an around-the-horn triple play. "When someone answers, I have to say, 'It's the space station! Don't hang up!'" says Kelly.
Sen. Kaine tours site of catastrophic rocket explosion
Rachel Weiner - Washington Post
Six weeks after a catastrophic rocket explosion on Virginia's Wallops Island, Sen. Timothy M. Kaine toured the damaged site and touted $20 million in federal funds for the private space facility.
Launch Pad Where Rocket Exploded Back Next Year
Brock Vergakis - Associated Press
Despite a massive explosion in October, authorities say a state-owned launch pad at NASA's Wallops Flight Facility should be repaired and ready for testing late next year.
Member of German rocket team dies in Alabama
Associated Press
A member of the German rocket team that helped build America's space program in north Alabama has died.
NASA Delays Decision On Asteroid Redirect Mission Option
Jeff Foust – Space News
NASA has pushed back a widely anticipated decision on the design of its Asteroid Redirect Mission (ARM) until January as it seeks to understand if the technology offered by one option is worth its additional complexity and cost.
The Year in Space: From Tragedy to Triumph
Alyssa Newcomb – ABC News
2014 has been a year of picture-perfect, out-of-this-world moments and incredible firsts in space exploration.
Life on Mars? Scientists take major step in finding out
Lindsay Deutsch – USA Today
Scientists are a major step closer to figuring out whether there is, or was, life on Mars.
In findings that are the culmination of a decade of work by more than 1,000 people, NASA announced Tuesday that the Mars Curiosity found chemistry on the planet in the form of organics and methane.
What Will Curiosity Come Up With Next?
Irene Klotz – Discovery News
NASA's Mars rover Curiosity's discovery of organic compounds in the ground and plumes of methane in the air opens two potentially related investigations into whether or not the planet most like Earth in the solar system also hosted life.
European Comet Lander May Wake Up from Space Slumber
Europe's Philae comet lander may be about to wake up from its lengthy, unplanned slumber.
NASA Taps SpaceX To Launch TESS Satellite
Brian Berger – Space News
NASA has selected SpaceX to launch the Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS) aboard a Falcon 9 rocket in mid-2017, the U.S. space agency announced Dec. 17.
Designing a Mothership to Deliver Swarms of Spacecraft to Asteroids
Marcus Woo – Wired
An asteroid-mining company has unveiled plans for a new mothership spacecraft designed to carry a dozen small probes to explore asteroids, comets, or even the moon.
NASA Engineers Propose Combining a Rail Gun and a Scramjet to Fire Spacecraft Into Orbit
Rena Marie Pacella – Popular Science
In April, President Obama urged NASA to come up with, among other things, a less expensive method than conventional rocketry for launching spacecraft. By September, the agency's engineers floated a plan that would save millions of dollars in propellant, improve astronaut safety, and allow for more frequent flights. All it will take is two miles of train track, an airplane that can fly at 10 times the speed of sound, and a jolt of electricity big enough to light a small town.
SpaceX Awaits Certification Decision from Air Force
Mike Gruss – Space News
Rocket maker SpaceX has turned over to the U.S. Air Force the last of the information needed for certification to launch national security missions, the service's top space officer said Dec. 16.
Second woman joins team of Russian cosmonauts
ITAR-TASS News Agency
Anna Kikina, 30, has been awarded the qualification 'test cosmonaut', now she is to take special and advanced training, the press-service of the Russian space agency Roscosmos says
A second woman has joined the active-duty corps of Russian cosmonauts. Her name is Anna Kikina, 30, the press-service of the Russian space agency Roscosmos said on Wednesday.
COMPLETE STORIES
Meet the Twins Unlocking the Secrets of Space
Jeffrey Kluger – TIME
When Scott Kelly calls home from the International Space Station (ISS) sometime next year, whoever answers the phone may simply hang up on him. The calls will be welcome, but the link can be lousy, with long, hissing silences breaking up the conversation. That's what happens when you're placing your call from at least 229 mi. (369 km) above the Earth while zipping along at 17,500 m.p.h. (28,164 kph) and your signal has to get bounced from satellites to ground antennas to relay stations like an around-the-horn triple play. "When someone answers, I have to say, 'It's the space station! Don't hang up!'" says Kelly.
Photograph by Marco Grob for Time
That's not likely to be necessary when he calls his brother Mark. Perhaps best known as the husband of former Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords, who was grievously wounded in an assassination attempt in 2011, Mark is a former astronaut who has been to space four times. He knows the crackle of an extraterrestrial signal in his ear, just as he knows the singular feeling of weightlessness, the singular sweep of Earth outside the window—and the power of 229 miles of altitude to make a person feel alone. Drive that in the flat and it's nothing more than Syracuse to Boston. Fly it straight up and it's a whole other thing.
But most of all, Mark, 50, knows Scott, 50—which is how it is with brothers, especially when they're identical twins, born factory-loaded with the exact same genetic operating system. The brothers' connection will be more important than ever beginning in March, when Scott takes off for a one-year stay aboard the space station, setting a single-mission record for a U.S. astronaut.
Scott will be partnered in his marathon mission with Russian cosmonaut Mikhail Kornienko. They, in turn, will be joined by a rotating cast of 13 other crew members, all of whom will be aboard for anywhere from 10 days to six months, conducting experiments and reconfiguring various station modules for the arrival of privately built crew vehicles, which could come early as 2017.
A year in space will require Scott to leave behind a lot: his Houston home, his daughters—Samantha, 20, and Charlotte, 11—and his girlfriend of five years, Amiko Kauderer, a NASA public-affairs officer. (He and his first wife are divorced.) But he won't, in some ways, leave Mark behind.
Ever since the Apollo days, the U.S. has vaguely discussed a crewed mission to Mars, though the target date for the grand expedition has always remained a convenient decade or two away. But on Dec. 5, NASA took a big step toward that goal, with the successful uncrewed test flight of the Apollo-like Orion spacecraft—America's deep-space ship of the future. Add to that the competition from upstarts like Elon Musk's SpaceX and newbie nations like China and India, with their own surging space programs, and the scramble for cosmic supremacy is accelerating fast.
The biggest problem with our exploratory ambitions is, simply, us. The human body is a purpose-built machine, designed for the one-G environment of Earth. Take us into the zero-G of space or the 0.38 G of Mars and it all comes unsprung. Bones get brittle, eyeballs lose their shape, hearts beat less efficiently since they no longer have to pump against gravity, and balance goes awry. At least that's what we know so far. "There's quite a bit of data [on human health] for six months in orbit," says space-station program manager Mike Suffredini. "But have we reached stasis at six months, or do things change at one year? Is there a knee in the curve we haven't reached yet?"
So NASA needs subjects to venture out and run the long-duration tests. In a perfect experiment, every one of those subjects would also have a control subject on the ground—someone with, say, the exact same genes and a very similar temperament, so you could tease apart the changes that come from being aloft for 12 months from those that are a result of growing the same year older on Earth. In the Kelly brothers—and only the Kelly brothers—NASA has that two-person sample group. "The twins study didn't come up when we were selecting crew for the mission," says Suffredini. "But it occurred to us later that we had this ground-based truth in Mark."
What NASA calls a "ground-based truth," of course, Scott calls a big brother (by six minutes). And while the mission that is to come may be equal parts science experiment, endurance test and human drama, it is to the Kelly brothers (and only the Kelly brothers) just the latest mile in a journey they've shared for half a century.
Rocket Men
It's a matter of historical record that Scott and Mark Kelly never got around to building an airplane. They never built a rocket ship either, but on both counts they can be forgiven. There's rarely much follow-through when you're 5 years old and you hatch your plans at night, in whispers, after your parents have put you to bed.
The brothers did their planning around the time of the Apollo 11 moon landing, when space travel seemed sublimely cool. They were alike in their fascination with space—and in other ways too. Like many twins, they spoke their own private language in toddlerhood, gibberish that was unintelligible to adults but seemed to make perfect sense to them. They dressed alike until first grade too. "There is a picture of us in orange shorts, orange striped shirts and bow ties," Mark says—with a small wince. "We did everything together until college and were always on the edge of getting into trouble."
By the late 1980s, both brothers were commissioned as naval aviators and both were assigned to active duty aboard aircraft carriers. Upon finishing their first squadron assignment and tour of duty, both became Navy test pilots. In 1995 they applied to NASA, and by 1996, they were dressing identically once again—and once again in orange—this time in the pressure suits of a space-shuttle astronaut.
From 1999, the brothers served a combined seven missions, though they never went to space together. (NASA had no policy against that, but Scott nixed the idea. "I thought it would really suck for our kids to lose both their dad and their uncle in one accident.") And while they insist there has never been any competition between them, their interplay suggests a gentle tweaking all the same. "Scott flew first," Mark says, "but I flew twice before he got his second flight. Then I flew my third before he did."
Over drinks at Boondoggles, an astronaut haunt in Houston, Scott describes a stubborn eye twitch he experienced during re-entry after his last mission, a 159-day stay aboard the space station that ended in 2011. It's something other long-duration astronauts have complained of too, but there is no explanation for it yet.
"What do you mean your eyes twitched?" Mark asks.
"Yours didn't?" Scott responds.
"No."
"Your flights weren't long enough."
By shuttle standards, Mark's flights were actually pretty standard in terms of duration. His four trips ran about two weeks each, giving him a total of 54 days in space. Scott's first two flights were similar, but his 159-day stay put him at a running total of 180, with a full year coming up next.
A Day in Orbit
As much of an adventure as Scott's mission is likely to be, neither Mark nor anyone else would envy him every part of it. The ISS is spacious enough: from end to end, it measures 358 ft. (109 m), a little larger than a football field. The 14 modules that make up the living and work space represent only a small fraction of that overall sprawl, but together they provide as much habitable space as the interior of a 747—or, as the astronauts prefer to think of it, as much as a four-bedroom house.
Still, stay inside any house for a year—even one in orbit—and you're going to fall into a routine. For all astronauts, a day aboard the station begins and ends in a private enclosure about the size of a phone booth that serves as sleep chamber and personal space, with enough room for a laptop computer, a few belongings and a sleeping bag. Reveille, in the form of an alarm from a wristwatch or an iPad in each astronaut's enclosure, comes at about 6:30 a.m. (Greenwich mean time), but Scott admits that on his last flight he often hit the snooze button. "I wouldn't wake up at the time it says on the schedule," he says. "I'd generally get 30 extra minutes of sleep."
When astronauts do crawl out of the sack, the day that unfolds usually follows a 30/40/30 work breakdown—30% of the time devoted to science experiments, 40% to physical exercise and monitoring the station's systems and 30% to fixing hardware breakdowns—which is the way of things when your home requires 52 computers, 3.3 million lines of code, 8 miles (13 km) of wiring and 90 kW of power coming from an acre of solar panels just to keep operating.
The daily schedule does allow for some downtime. Movies and books are stocked in the station, and NASA can send up nearly any TV show the astronauts request. The crew members are free to email with family members whenever they want, call home when they've got a good downlink and surf the Internet—though the connection can be sluggish.
On this flight, the time for distractions may be especially tight, thanks to the battery of 10 medical and psychological tests that will be on the agenda for both Scott and Kornienko in orbit and for Mark on the ground. Flight surgeons will run studies of cardiovascular efficiency, blood-oxygen levels and blood volume. Bone density will be monitored, as well as cellular aging and fluid shifts in the body. Sonograms will be taken of the eye and optic nerve to determine how those shifts affect vision.
The body's microbiome will come in for scrutiny as well. The bacteria that make their home in your gut are critical to maintaining bodily function, but everyone's internal ecosystem is different, depending on diet and environment. The twins' microbiomes will be regularly compared, via the unlovely business of analyzing body waste. "Giving urine and stool samples is an incredibly exciting thing to do," Mark says drily. But in the service of human spaceflight—even when that service is secondhand—it's worth the small indignity. "I miss every day I spent in space," Mark readily admits.
Your Brain on Space Travel
If the body can suffer from long-term space flight, the mind is hit even harder—and that causes NASA particular concern. Psychologists will track Kornienko's and Scott's cognitive function, mood and stress level, partly with regular—and private—interviews. They will be especially alert for what is known as the third-quarter effect, a slacking off of psychological performance that hits between the half and three-quarter point of any long confinement or tour of duty.
"Scott has flown a six-month mission, so we have data on him," says NASA psychologist Al Holland. "But it's not a linear thing. Running a full marathon is different from running two half-marathons."
Here, the science must yield a bit to the wild card of human emotion, and even a veteran like Scott may have trouble wrapping his mind around the scope of the mission he's about to undertake. His flight begins on March 28, but he has to leave the U.S. on Feb. 16, since he will take off from the Russians' Baikonur launch complex. Recently, Kauderer, his girlfriend, mused that since his birthday is Feb. 21, he'll be 50 when he leaves the country and 52 when he comes home . "I was like, 'Thanks for pointing that out,'" he laughs.
It's easy to make jokes at T minus three months. Things will get harder in the spring, when the mission's 5,920 orbits get under way. It is then that the brother in space will be especially fortunate to have the brother on the ground. "This is a dangerous job," says Mark. "The public doesn't understand how dangerous. But Scott can talk to someone who's done this before."
During Scott's last mission, it was Mark who had to lean on him—in January 2011, when Giffords was shot. NASA got the news up to Scott, and it was only later that the brothers could talk. For Mark, it wasn't quite the same. "The one person who could have given me the most support," he says, "was off the planet." This time, the support will likely come from the ground up.
Mark has already retired from NASA but is a consultant for SpaceX and has not given up thoughts of returning to space one day. Scott has not decided whether he'll retire when he returns to Earth in 2016. Either way, it's unlikely that the Kelly brothers, who once dreamed of building a rocket ship side by side, will ever fly in one together. But if humanity hopes to beat the biological limits that confine us to one small planet in a trackless universe, it will depend on the kind of science both brothers will soon make possible. Only one Kelly name will be on the mission patch, but to those who appreciate the brothers' bond, it will stand for both.
Sen. Kaine tours site of catastrophic rocket explosion
Rachel Weiner - Washington Post
Six weeks after a catastrophic rocket explosion on Virginia's Wallops Island, Sen. Timothy M. Kaine toured the damaged site and touted $20 million in federal funds for the private space facility.
The funds should help "speed along" the repairs from an Oct. 28 crash, Kaine (D-Va.) said Wednesday, noting that the launchpad run by Orbital Sciences Corp. "survived remarkably well."
Repairing the site — and public confidence in the commercial space industry — is of particular interest to Kaine. He helped bring Orbital to the Eastern Shore while governor of Virginia, and he credits the site with enlivening a struggling regional economy.
About a half-dozen workers were in the process of what an official described as "surgical demolition" of the launch system during Kaine's visit. Two of the four lightning rods that border the launchpad had been knocked out; signs and grass around the site were burnt black. Wearing hard hats, Kaine and state Sen. Lynwood W. Lewis Jr. (D) took a short tour of the aftermath with officials and engineers, who emphasized the lack of major damage from debris.
"This is one of the best-kept secrets in Virginia," Kaine said afterward from the ramp of the launchpad. He noted that "vastly more rockets have been shot out of Wallops Island" than from Vandenberg Air Force Base in California or Kennedy Space Center in Florida, although unmanned. "It's becoming a deeper and deeper part of the economy."
Kaine defended the inclusion of funds for a private enterprise in the federal budget, saying that Orbital's mission is a national one. The rocket that exploded had food, water and other supplies that were headed for the International Space Station, part of a $1.9 billion contract with NASA. The company intends to complete that contract with four more launches; it will start testing late next year with a rocket built by a veteran NASA contractor.
"The missions that are flown from here are very necessary," Kaine said.
Repair costs for the $120 million launchpad were estimated to cost up to $20 million, but other parts of the facility will need refurbishing and repair.
The failure, attributed to a faulty engine, raised questions about the company's use of decades-old Russian rocket engines mothballed during the Cold War. The company is purchasing new Russian engines to replace them, according to Aviation Week.
It also reignited debate over the Obama administration's decision to cede most space travel to private companies. The Federal Aviation Administration is tasked with overseeing a fast-growing industry with few rigid guidelines.
Kaine argued that the system worked Oct. 28, with the coordination between NASA, Orbital and firefighters as well as the structural soundness of the site helping to contain the damage.
"What was it like?" he asked one of those firefighters, who joined the group at the launchpad Wednesday. The senator was in the middle of votes at the U.S. Capitol at the time.
"Uh, bright," the firefighter responded.
Launch Pad Where Rocket Exploded Back Next Year
Brock Vergakis - Associated Press
Despite a massive explosion in October, authorities say a state-owned launch pad at NASA's Wallops Flight Facility should be repaired and ready for testing late next year.
Orbital Sciences' Antares rocket exploded seconds after liftoff from Wallops Island on the Eastern Shore of Virginia on Oct. 28. The rocket was carrying a cargo ship that was bound for the International Space Station.
The Virginia Commercial Spaceflight Authority on Wednesday provided news media outlets a tour of the damage from the explosion. Two lightning towers at the launch pad were knocked down by the blast while the two others suffered damage and will need to be replaced. A water tower next to the launch pad was slightly charred and had exterior lighting damaged, but otherwise withstood the blast. A large crater was created in the sand next to the launch pad from the blast where the rocket came down.
Two nearby buildings scheduled to be removed prior to the explosion were also damaged, but the vast majority of the complex was unscathed.
"This pad has come through in very good shape. It's still some significant repairs, but it's a $120 million pad and the repairs are less than $20 million," said Dale Nash, executive director of the Virginia Commercial Spaceflight Authority.
ENVIRONMENTAL REMEDIATION
NASA says no environmental hazards were discovered in the air following the explosion. The space agency says the water-retention basins at the launch pad have been pumped dry and will be cleaned to prevent future contamination. The impact crater was pumped dry five times to remove what NASA describes as significant levels for perchlorate. Additional pumping will continue, and water samples will be taken each time. The pumped water is being kept in large, enclosed storage tanks and will be taken to an off-site treatment facility. Soil near the crater is also being excavated to remove any residual chemicals, which will also be taken to an off-site disposal facility.
FUTURE LAUNCHES
Orbital Sciences plans to launch its next Antares rocket carrying supplies to the International Space Station in 2016. The Virginia Commercial Spaceflight Authority says the launch pad should be able to conduct what's known as a hot-fire test at the launch pad by the end of 2015 in anticipation of the launch.
REPAIR COSTS
The Virginia Commercial Spaceflight Authority has said repairs to the launch pad should not exceed $20 million. Congress has agreed to pick up the tab for those costs. U.S. Sen. Tim Kaine, D-Va., toured the launch pad on Wednesday and said it is of national interest to see the facility repaired as quickly as possible.
"This infrastructure survived remarkably well, given the magnitude of the challenge," Kaine said. "But there's obviously a cost to repair. The missions that are flown here are very necessary. The mission that is being done serving the space station and other missions here definitely have a public component."
Member of German rocket team dies in Alabama
Associated Press
A member of the German rocket team that helped build America's space program in north Alabama has died.
An announcement from a funeral home in Huntsville says Dieter E. Grau died Wednesday at age 101.
A worker says relatives are still working on the arrangements and further details weren't immediately available.
Grau came to the United States after World War II with other German rocket scientists led by Wernher von Braun.
Grau moved to Huntsville to work at Redstone Arsenal in 1950. He was in charge of quality control programs.
Together the engineers helped design and build early U.S. rockets including the Saturn V, which first took astronauts to the moon in 1969. Grau was one of the NASA executives who gave final approval for lunar launch.
NASA Delays Decision On Asteroid Redirect Mission Option
Jeff Foust – Space News
NASA has pushed back a widely anticipated decision on the design of its Asteroid Redirect Mission (ARM) until January as it seeks to understand if the technology offered by one option is worth its additional complexity and cost.
NASA Associate Administrator Robert Lightfoot said in a Dec. 17 media teleconference that, after briefings the previous day by teams working on two ARM concepts, he needed more information before deciding between them.
"I expected to make a decision today," he said. "We really got to the point where I needed to get some more clarification on some areas." He added that NASA Administrator Charles Bolden agreed with Lightfoot's decision to ask the teams to look into additional details about their concepts.
NASA is considering two options for ARM. In one approach, called simply Option A, a robotic spacecraft would shift the orbit of a small near Earth asteroid, up to ten meters in diameter, into an orbit around the Moon. The alternative, Option B, would use a robotic spacecraft to grab a boulder a few meters across from a larger asteroid and move that into lunar orbit.
In both cases, the asteroid would arrive into lunar orbit in the mid-2020s. An Orion spacecraft, launched on a Space Launch System rocket, would then fly to the captured asteroid. Astronauts would spend several days studying the asteroid, including performing spacewalks to collect samples, before returning to Earth.
The two options were closely matched, Lightfoot said. In the call with reporters, he said an independent review team assessed the options and found them effectively tied. "It was just close," he said. "We needed more information in a couple of areas to make sure we were making the right call here."
However, Lightfoot suggested a slight preference for Option B, based on the technologies it offers that can be used for future human exploration missions. "It demonstrates a lot more of the technologies that we need," he said.
Those technologies, though, bring with them additional complexity in the design of a spacecraft that would land on an asteroid, grapple a boulder, and then lift it off the asteroid. "It's the balance between the complexity of that particular part of the mission versus the reward for exercising those technologies" that he said that will be the subject of additional study over the next few weeks.
Option B is also about $100 million more expensive than Option A, Lightfoot said. "That's the discussion we have to have: if I was to go one way or another, what do I get for that $100 million?" he said.
Lightfoot did not disclose the specific costs of the two options, but said both were less than the goal they had set of $1.25 billion, plus the cost of the launch of the robotic mission. Launch vehicles being considered for the robotic mission include the SLS, Delta 4 Heavy, and Falcon Heavy. NASA plans to perform an independent cost assessment of the selected option before a mission concept review in late February.
Lightfoot said he anticipated the additional studies of the two options would take two to three weeks, allowing him to make a decision in January. That should not affect the long-term schedule for the mission, he said, although it may cause the mission concept review to be delayed slightly.
"It's two or three weeks well spent for the teams to bring back some clarifications around a couple of areas we want to understand more," he said of the additional studies. "Taking two or three weeks now is not going to change the overall schedule."
The Year in Space: From Tragedy to Triumph
Alyssa Newcomb – ABC News
2014 has been a year of picture-perfect, out-of-this-world moments and incredible firsts in space exploration.
The European Space Agency landed a probe on a speeding comet and NASA celebrated a successful maiden voyage of "America's spacecraft," Orion.
Among the triumphs, there was also tragedy. Here are seven moments from 2014 that defined the year in space travel, exploration and appreciation.
| Philae Lands on Comet 67P |
It's an image billions of years in the making.
After a decade-long journey spanning nearly 400 million miles, the Philae lander separated from the Rosetta spacecraft and landed on a speeding comet -- not once or twice but three times.
After bouncing twice, the lander came to rest against a walled area, obstructing its solar panels from sunlight, said Philae Lander Manager Stephan Ulamec.
"The not-so-good news is that the anchoring harpoons did not fire, so the lander is not anchored to the surface," Ulamec said.
However, the mission was still a resounding success, transmitting the first-ever photos from the surface of a comet and conducting new experiments that could yield insight about the origins of the solar system.
| SpaceX and Boeing Get NASA Contracts |
NASA awarded contracts in September to Boeing and Elon Musk's SpaceX to ferry astronauts to and from the International Space Station, signaling the agency's return to manned spaceflight after the end of the space shuttle program.
The winning designs will end U.S. dependence on the Russian Soyuz for transportation back and forth to the International Space Station.
"This is the fulfillment of the commitment President Obama made to return human space flight launches to U.S. soil and end our reliance on the Russians," NASA administrator Charles Bolden said.
| Virgin Galactic's Fatal Crash |
Virgin Galactic's SpaceShipTwo broke up over the Mojave Desert in California after being released from a carrier aircraft at high altitude.
It could be as long as a year before federal investigators have any answers about what caused the Virgin Galactic spacecraft crash, which killed one co-pilot and left another injured.
Among the causes being explored are pilot error, mechanical failure and the design of the spacecraft.
National Transportation Safety Board Acting Chairman Christopher Hart said in a November briefing that investigators found the feathering system that slows the spacecraft's descent was deployed before it reached the appropriate speed, however it was unclear how that factored into the crash.
Sir Richard Branson, founder of the Virgin Group, said "safety has guided every decision" Virgin Galactic has made over the past decade and vowed that the company's dream of commercial space travel would continue.
Within seconds of launching, the Antares rocket, which was destined for a supply mission to the International Space Station, exploded into a fireball over Wallops Island, Virginia.
Orbital Sciences, which owned the Antares rocket and Cygnus spacecraft, cited a "vehicle anomaly" for the failed launch.
| Orion Blasts Off on Test Mission |
We're one step closer to sending a manned mission to Mars.
Orion's maiden voyage on Dec. 4 was picture perfect from the moment it launched from Florida until it splashed down four and a half hours later in the Pacific Ocean.
During its journey, the space capsule passed a series of milestones, flying through the Van Allen radiation belts and even managing to send live video of the entire globe back to Earth -- the first time this has happened since Apollo 17 in 1972.
The spacecraft, which has seats for four astronauts, orbited Earth twice at an altitude of 3,600 miles before splashing down 600 miles off the coast of California, where it was recovered by the U.S. Navy.
| Astronauts Tweet Stunning Photos From International Space Station |
Social media savvy astronauts at the International Space Station shared details of life in microgravity and some incredible snaps taken from their home in low Earth orbit.
During his stay at the International Space Station, astronaut Alexander Gerst tweeted a photo showing what the conflict between Israel and Gaza looked like in July.
"My saddest photo yet. From #ISS we can actually see explosions and rockets flying over #Gaza & #Israel," he wrote.
While Gerst's photo was somber, there were other lighter moments showing life at the ISS.
| Incredible Year For Eclipses |
The year brought a calendar packed with gorgeous eclipses -- including two gorgeous blood red moons.
The special lunar eclipse happens when Earth positions itself between the sun and the moon, casting a majestic red hue.
Here's something to look forward to in 2015:
You'll have two more chances to catch a blood moon. The next total lunar eclipse will be on April 4, 2015, according to NASA.
Life on Mars? Scientists take major step in finding out
Lindsay Deutsch – USA Today
Scientists are a major step closer to figuring out whether there is, or was, life on Mars.
In findings that are the culmination of a decade of work by more than 1,000 people, NASA announced Tuesday that the Mars Curiosity found chemistry on the planet in the form of organics and methane.
Organics indicate there could have been life in the past (think billions of years ago), and the presence of methane indicates that there could be activity now.
"We can't rule out the possibility of life on Mars now," said Danny Glavin, a Mars Science Lab participating scientist at NASA. "It's really exciting. There are other explanations, of course — they could come from asteroids or comets, or non-biological reactions."
"But the other possibility is that we're looking at the chemical fingerprint of a Martian Biotia that died out."
The next step to detect whether the organic findings do indicate life, Glavin says, is a wet chemistry experiment that allows us to target molecules that are important to life on Earth like amino acids and the bases that make up our DNA.
At the same time, the methane discovery was made by using the Curiosity's Sample Analysis at Mars laboratory 12 times during a 20-month period from 2013 to 2014, according to NASA. Four measurements showed the level at seven parts per billion; before that, they had reached only one-tenth, the report stated.
"The methane results tell us Mars is active even now, because we see it from some venting source," said Glavin.
The origin of the methane will take further testing. "It could come from water-rock processes, but there could be life even today in the subsurface, and we don't know until we do additional testing," Glavin said.
Regardless, it's certainly an exciting time in the space community.
"On a scale from 1-10, this is the next best thing other than conclusive signs of life," Glavin said.
What Will Curiosity Come Up With Next?
Irene Klotz – Discovery News
NASA's Mars rover Curiosity's discovery of organic compounds in the ground and plumes of methane in the air opens two potentially related investigations into whether or not the planet most like Earth in the solar system also hosted life.
The Mars rover Curiosity just found out that Martian soil is 2 percent water! Anthony tells us what that means for the age-old question of whether life once existed on Mars and what it means for future human colonists on the red planet.
The methane spikes, announced by scientists at a press conference Tuesday, may be the easier issue for rover scientists to tackle since it is basically a waiting game to see if the plumes reoccur.
Between late November 2013 and late January 2014, samples of the atmosphere collected and analyzed by Curiosity showed a 10-fold increase in concentrations of methane, a gas which on Earth is strongly tied to life.
When the next sample was taken two months later, the gas was gone, a mystery in and of itself since methane gas should last for 300 years in the Martian atmosphere.
The rover, which is now exploring the base Mount Sharp, a three-mile high mound of sediment rising from the floor of its Gale Crater landing site, will continuously sniff the air for methane, said lead scientist John Grotzinger, with the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena.
If higher concentrations are detected, the rover's onboard chemistry lab will attempt to enrich the samples by scrubbing away atmospheric carbon dioxide, leaving more methane for analysis. Detailed studies of how quickly the methane dissipates could provide clues about its origin and what causes its periodic release. For now, scientists suspect the methane burp came from somewhere in or near Gale Crater.
If a very large burst of methane was detected, scientists could attempt to chemically analyze its isotopic composition, which again might provide insight into whether it was produced by past or present day microbes, or if it is a byproduct of geochemical processes, such as meteorite impacts or hydrated mineral transformations.
The emissions show that "Mars is currently active and that the subsurface is communicating with the atmosphere," Curiosity participating scientist Sushil Atreya, with the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor, said at the American Geophysical Union press conference.
The scientists had news about ancient Mars too, revealing – after 18 months of analysis – that chlorobenzene organics were detected in samples drilled out from an ancient mudstone called Cumberland.
"We knew we were on to something but it's hard to know for sure that it wasn't a false positive until you've analyzed more rocks," Grotzinger said. "You don't want to get faked out if it was contamination from the instrument."
Finding more organics and bigger molecules is tricky since the same process that turns sediment into rock tends to destroy organics. Plus, Mars' surface is continuously blasted by deadly cosmic rays; its soil is extremely oxidizing (hence the planet's reddish hue from the breakdown of iron) and it is loaded with perchlorates, which can release chlorine molecules that combine with organics and transform them.
The Curiosity science team has been developing hunt strategies, which will continue to be tested as the rover explores Mount Sharp.
"We may never get lucky again, we may never find more organics but … maybe we will and we can get smart at learning how to explore for these materials," Grotzinger said.
Like the methane, scientists have no idea if the organic compounds found in the rock sample were remnants of a carbon-rich and fortuitously preserved bit of meteorite or cosmic dust speck, or were produced by some type of living organism.
Grotzinger said the chance that Curiosity will be able to differentiate between biotic and abiotic organic compounds is slim.
If the quantity of organics was high enough it's possible that Curiosity, also known as the Mars Science Lab, or MSL, could assess their molecular structure, giving scientists a clue about whether they were produced by life or not.
More likely, it will be up to NASA's next Mars rover, slated to launch in 2020, to find the right samples and cache them for a future return to Earth.
"Hopefully, the legacy of the MSL mission will be to leave behind for the 2020 mission a blueprint for how to go about the deliberate search" for organics, Grotzinger said.
European Comet Lander May Wake Up from Space Slumber
Europe's Philae comet lander may be about to wake up from its lengthy, unplanned slumber.
Philae, part of the European Space Agency's Rosetta mission, went into hibernation in mid-November, a few days after executing a dramatic and historic touchdown on the surface of Comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko — the first-ever soft landing on one of these icy relics from the solar system's formation.
The highly anticipated maneuver didn't go entirely as planned. Philae's anchoring harpoons failed to fire, and the robot bounced twice before finally settling down on Comet 67P/C-G in the shadow of an ice cliff. Philae was cut off from sunlight for much of the day, so the solar-powered lander went into hibernation when its primary batteries ran out, shortly after wrapping up its initial round of science observations on the comet's surface.
But it's now approaching summer in Philae's presumed location, so the washing-machine-size lander could soon access enough energy to open its eyes and start working again, mission scientists said.
"Pessimistically, it will be after Easter; [optimistically], it will be much prior to that," Philae lead scientist Jean-Pierre Bibring said during a news conference today (Dec. 17) here at the annual fall meeting of the American Geophysical Union. "It all depends on how the sun will go over the horizon, the local horizon."
The uncertainty stems, in large part, from the fact that the mission team still doesn't know exactly where Philae landed on the comet. Researchers have performed several search campaigns using cameras aboard the Rosetta mothership, which remains in orbit around Comet 67P/C-G, but so far, they haven't been able to pinpoint the lander.
However, images from the most recent campaign, which extended from Dec. 12 through Dec. 14, are still coming down to Earth, and mission scientists expressed optimism that at least one of them would show Philae's location.
Philae should survive the frigid conditions on the comet's surface and be ready to go when the time comes, Bibring said, adding that the lander and its 10 science instruments were designed to operate in the cold.
"I think we managed to make a very robust system," he said. "My suspicion is that we will be in good shape."
The unplanned (final) landing site may even prove to be a blessing in disguise. Photos taken by Philae shortly after its touchdown show a landscape that has scientists licking their chops, eager to conduct a lengthier investigation.
"The material that we have ahead of us is certainly fantastic," Bibring told Space.com. "We see the building blocks we are desperately looking for — icy material loaded with organics." The nearby cliff may also allow Philae to keep operating on the comet's surface for longer than scientists had anticipated. Comet 67P/C-G is currently zooming toward the sun, with its closest approach coming in August 2015, when the icy body will be about 1.2 astronomical units (AU) from our star. (1 AU is the distance from Earth to the sun — about 93 million miles, or 150 million kilometers.)
Mission scientists had thought that increasing temperatures would render Philae inoperable by February or March. But the lander may be able to keep working for significantly longer in its more shaded location. (The intended landing site, which Philae hit before bouncing away the first time, was very open.)
Meanwhile, exciting things are afoot for the Rosetta mothership, which continues to study Comet 67P/C-G from orbit. Rosetta will fly within 4 miles (6 km) of the comet's surface in February, returning imagery with a resolution of just a few inches per pixel, researchers said.
And in July or thereabouts, the mission team will attempt to fly Rosetta through a "jet" of material outgassing from 67P's surface, said Rosetta project scientist Matt Taylor.
Rosetta launched in 2004 and arrived in orbit around Comet 67P/C-G in August of this year. The mission aims to learn more about composition of comets, as well as their structure, thereby revealing insights about the conditions prevalent during the solar system's early days.
The Rosetta mission is currently scheduled to operate until December 2015, but team members are looking at possibly extending the mission into 2016 to keep studying 67P. Taylor said he and other team members would like to land Rosetta on the comet when the probe's end is near, rather than simply letting its fuel run out in orbit.
"It appears to be more compelling to do this spiraling in," Taylor told Space.com. "So we'll probably have a fourth landing." (Philae "landed" three times, finally staying put the third time.)
NASA Taps SpaceX To Launch TESS Satellite
Brian Berger – Space News
NASA has selected SpaceX to launch the Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS) aboard a Falcon 9 rocket in mid-2017, the U.S. space agency announced Dec. 17.
NASA will pay $87 million for the launch, which is slated to lift off from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station, Florida, in August 2017. NASA says the contract covers the launch service, spacecraft processing, payload integration, tracking data and telemetry, and other launch support requirements.
TESS, a spacecraft designed to search for extrasolar planets around the brightest stars in the sky, is being built by Dulles, Virginia-based Orbital Sciences Corp. NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland is managing the mission, which NASA selected in April 2013 as part of its Explorers program of small astrophysics missions and formally approved for development just last month.
Although SpaceX has made four cargo deliveries to the international space station under contract to NASA and is poised to make its fifth in January, the TESS contract marks only the second time NASA has tapped SpaceX to launch a science satellite.
In 2012, NASA Launch Services awarded SpaceX an $82 million contract to launch NOAA's Jason-3 satellite. At the time of award, that launch was supposed to take place this month but has slipped into 2015.
Designing a Mothership to Deliver Swarms of Spacecraft to Asteroids
Marcus Woo – Wired
An asteroid-mining company has unveiled plans for a new mothership spacecraft designed to carry a dozen small probes to explore asteroids, comets, or even the moon.
The mothership, designed by Deep Space Industries, is about 3 feet in diameter and 1.5 feet tall, weighing about 330 pounds. It would carry a swarm of small satellites called cubesats, small cube-shaped spacecraft about six inches on each side that would carry instruments to study and probe the target object.
As for what exactly those instruments will be, the company wants to poll scientists about the mothership, how useful it could be to their research, and whether there are design changes that could improve its utility, says James DiCorcia of Deep Space Industries, who presented the idea Dec. 15 here at the meeting of the American Geophysical Union in San Francisco.
In addition to providing transportation and a communications link to Earth, the mothership would shield the cubesats from space radiation during the journey to its destination. NASA already has a cubesat program and has sent satellites into low-Earth orbit, where they're safe inside the protective bubble of Earth's magnetic field. Still, depending on the particular design, a cubesat could last years in deep space far from Earth's protection.1
Deep Space Industries, of course, is a business whose goal is to make money. The US company's main interest since it was founded early last year has been asteroid mining. DiCorcia says scientists would have to pay for a ride onboard the mothership if they already have a cubesat designed and ready to go. If not, the company could work with the researchers to engineer one. He estimates that each mission would likely cost a researcher on the order of a couple million dollars.
Although that may not sound cheap, the idea is that hitching a ride on the mothership would still be a lot less costly and more efficient way of sending probes into space, DiCorcia says. For example, a researcher won't have to go through a long proposal process with NASA that may never lead to an actual mission. But whether there are enough interested scientists—and more importantly, available grant money—remains to be seen. "We have to see if the money's there," DiCorcia said. "If the money's not there, then we can't do it."
In addition to charging to ferry researchers' cubesats, sending the mothership out would be an opportunity for the company to test its system and learn how to explore asteroids as potential places for mining. Eventually, they might create prospecting kits that they could just send out to any asteroid that shows promise. In the most optimistic scenario, DiCorcia says, the mothership's first mission to an asteroid could launch onboard a rocket in 2018.
Ultimately, Deep Space Industries is interested in mining asteroids for water, ices, and other volatile chemicals that can be used to make rocket fuel, which can then be stored in orbiting refilling stations for spacecraft on their way to Mars or other distant destinations.
1Correction: 5:40 p.m. EST 12/17/14 This story has been corrected to reflect the fact that cubesats can potentially last for years in deep space, not three hours, as was originally stated.
NASA Engineers Propose Combining a Rail Gun and a Scramjet to Fire Spacecraft Into Orbit
Rena Marie Pacella – Popular Science
In April, President Obama urged NASA to come up with, among other things, a less expensive method than conventional rocketry for launching spacecraft. By September, the agency's engineers floated a plan that would save millions of dollars in propellant, improve astronaut safety, and allow for more frequent flights. All it will take is two miles of train track, an airplane that can fly at 10 times the speed of sound, and a jolt of electricity big enough to light a small town.
The system calls for a two-mile- long rail gun that will launch a scramjet, which will then fly to 200,000 feet. The scramjet will then fire a payload into orbit and return to Earth. The process is more complex than a rocket launch, but engineers say it's also more flexible. With it, NASA could orbit a 10,000-pound satellite one day and send a manned ship toward the moon the next, on a fraction of the propellant used by today's rockets.
It may sound too awesome to ever be a reality. But unlike other rocket-less plans for space entry, each relevant technology is advanced enough that tests could take place in 10 years, says Stan Starr, a physicist at NASA's Kennedy Space Center. NASA's scramjets have hit Mach 10 for 12 seconds; last spring, Boeing's X-51 scramjet did Mach 5 for a record 200 seconds. Rail guns are coming along too. The Navy is testing an electromagnetic launch system to replace the hydraulics that catapult fighter jets from aircraft carriers. "We have all the ingredients," says Paul Bartolotta, a NASA aerospace engineer working on the project. "Now we just have to figure out how to bake the cake."
How To Fly Into Orbit:
Rev Up The Rail Gun
A 240,000-horsepower linear motor converts 180 megawatts into an electromagnetic force that propels a scramjet carrying a spacecraft down a two-mile-long track. The craft accelerates from 0 to 1,100 mph (Mach 1.5) in under 60 seconds— fast, but at less than 3 Gs, safe for manned flight.
Fire The Scramjet
The pilot fires a high-speed turbojet and launches from the track. Once the craft hits Mach 4, the air flowing through the jet intake is fast enough that it compresses, heats to 3,000ºF, and ignites hydrogen in the combustion chamber, producing tens of thousands of pounds of thrust.
Get Into Orbit
At an altitude of 200,000 feet, there isn't enough air for the scramjet, now traveling at Mach 10, to generate thrust. Here spaceflight begins. The two craft separate, and the scramjet pitches downward to get out of the way as the upper spacecraft fires tail rockets that shoot it into orbit.
Stick The Landing
The scramjet slows and uses its turbojets to fly back to Earth for a runway landing. Once the spacecraft delivers its payload into orbit, it reenters the atmosphere and glides back to the launch site. The two craft can be ready for another mission within 24 hours of landing.
SpaceX Awaits Certification Decision from Air Force
Mike Gruss – Space News
Rocket maker SpaceX has turned over to the U.S. Air Force the last of the information needed for certification to launch national security missions, the service's top space officer said Dec. 16.
Gen. John Hyten, commander of Air Force Space Command, said that the final word on certification now rests with Lt. Gen. Sam Greaves, commander of the Space and Missile Systems Center at Los Angeles Air Force Base.
"He'll make that decision when he's ready," Hyten said in an interview with SpaceNews. "All of the information has come to him now. He has to walk through and decide where he's going to go and what he's going to do.
"I would imagine there would be an announcement this month sometime. I think we need to make a public announcement some time because it is December and that's the month we've been shooting for," Hyten continued. "I don't know where he's going to come out but I can tell you SpaceX and the 150 Air Force personnel who have been working that issue have been working it night and day to try to get there. I think we're close."
Air Force officials have repeatedly said they want to certify Space Exploration Technologies Corp.'s Falcon 9 in time to allow SpaceX to compete for a mission for the U.S. National Reconnaissance Office, which operates the nation's spy satellites. Bids for the NRO launch were due in August.
SpaceX must earn certification before it can win any Air Force launch contracts, Hyten said. But Air Force officials have long said they expect SpaceX to gain that credential.
As part of its plan to reduce its satellite launching costs and mollify critics of United Launch Alliance's current monopoly in the national security launch market, the Air Force in 2012 ordered a large batch of rockets on a sole-source basis from ULA while setting aside an additional seven to eight missions for competition.
SpaceX is challenging ULA's $11 billion, sole-source contract in a lawsuit filed in federal court in April.
SpaceX already has completed three launches, submitted the required data and finished a series of 19 engineering review boards as part of the certification process, Air Force officials have said.
Second woman joins team of Russian cosmonauts
ITAR-TASS News Agency
Anna Kikina, 30, has been awarded the qualification 'test cosmonaut', now she is to take special and advanced training, the press-service of the Russian space agency Roscosmos says
A second woman has joined the active-duty corps of Russian cosmonauts. Her name is Anna Kikina, 30, the press-service of the Russian space agency Roscosmos said on Wednesday.
"Upon completion of the general space training program and after a state certification test a panel of examiners made a decision to award the qualification 'test cosmonaut' to applicant Anna Kikina," the Roscosmos press-service said.
Now she is to take special and advanced training — a mandatory procedure all 'test cosmonauts' undergo before being assigned to a crew.
According to information available from the website of the Gagarin Space Training Center, Kikina, b. August 27, 1984, is a graduate of the Novosibirsk State Academy of Inland Waterways Transport, with degrees in engineering and economics. Also, she is a certified rescue worker. Kikina is the holder of a master of sports degree in polyathlon and rafting and has four parachute jumps to her credit.
At a certain point, early last summer the certification commission expelled Kikina from the team of Russian cosmonauts by secret ballot only to overturn its own decision a short while later. In just several months Anna Kikina completed an advanced training course, which normally lasts one year, and acquired a number of special skills, including those crucial for survival after water landing.
So far four Soviet and Russian women cosmonauts have been in space: Valentina Tereshkova, Svetlana Savitskaya, Yelena Kondakova and Yelena Serova. The latter is currently well into her first mission aboard the ISS, which began last September.
END
Photograph by Marco Grob for TimeThat's not likely to be necessary when he calls his brother Mark. Perhaps best known as the husband of former Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords, who was grievously wounded in an assassination attempt in 2011, Mark is a former astronaut who has been to space four times. He knows the crackle of an extraterrestrial signal in his ear, just as he knows the singular feeling of weightlessness, the singular sweep of Earth outside the window—and the power of 229 miles of altitude to make a person feel alone. Drive that in the flat and it's nothing more than Syracuse to Boston. Fly it straight up and it's a whole other thing.But most of all, Mark, 50, knows Scott, 50—which is how it is with brothers, especially when they're identical twins, born factory-loaded with the exact same genetic operating system. The brothers' connection will be more important than ever beginning in March, when Scott takes off for a one-year stay aboard the space station, setting a single-mission record for a U.S. astronaut.Scott will be partnered in his marathon mission with Russian cosmonaut Mikhail Kornienko. They, in turn, will be joined by a rotating cast of 13 other crew members, all of whom will be aboard for anywhere from 10 days to six months, conducting experiments and reconfiguring various station modules for the arrival of privately built crew vehicles, which could come early as 2017.A year in space will require Scott to leave behind a lot: his Houston home, his daughters—Samantha, 20, and Charlotte, 11—and his girlfriend of five years, Amiko Kauderer, a NASA public-affairs officer. (He and his first wife are divorced.) But he won't, in some ways, leave Mark behind.Ever since the Apollo days, the U.S. has vaguely discussed a crewed mission to Mars, though the target date for the grand expedition has always remained a convenient decade or two away. But on Dec. 5, NASA took a big step toward that goal, with the successful uncrewed test flight of the Apollo-like Orion spacecraft—America's deep-space ship of the future. Add to that the competition from upstarts like Elon Musk's SpaceX and newbie nations like China and India, with their own surging space programs, and the scramble for cosmic supremacy is accelerating fast.
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