Monday, January 12, 2015

Fwd: NASA and Human Spaceflight News - Monday – Jan. 12, 2015



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Begin forwarded message:

From: "Moon, Larry J. (JSC-EA411)" <larry.j.moon@nasa.gov>
Date: January 12, 2015 at 12:18:18 PM CST
To: "Moon, Larry J. (JSC-EA411)" <larry.j.moon@nasa.gov>
Subject: FW: NASA and Human Spaceflight News - Monday – Jan. 12, 2015

Nice try SpaceX
 
NASA and Human Spaceflight News
Monday – Jan. 12, 2015
HEADLINES AND LEADS
SpaceX Dragon heads to ISS, but 'no cigar' for rocket landing
James Dean – Florida Today
SpaceX lofted a Dragon cargo capsule on its way to the International Space Station early Saturday, but an attempted booster landing failed
 
A SpaceX rocket boosted a Dragon cargo spacecraft to a bull's-eye orbit early Saturday, then hit a target in the Atlantic Ocean – too hard, unfortunately.
 
SpaceX launches station supply ship; booster landing unsuccessful
William Harwood – CBS News
 
Last Updated Jan 10, 2015 9:03 AM EST
A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket successfully boosted a space station cargo ship into orbit Saturday, but an unprecedented attempt to land the rocket's first stage on a barge stationed off the coast of Florida was not successful, ending with an apparent crash landing that prompted company founder Elon Musk to tweet: "close, but no cigar."
Lockheed Martin begins taking apart first flown Orion capsule
Stephen Clark – Spaceflight Now
 
NASA's Orion spacecraft achieved all but two of 87 demo objectives on its first orbital flight last month, but details on the capsule's performance will require dismantling the spaceship's outer skin in a careful procedure designed to keep most of the Orion prototype intact for future testing.
 
NASA Completes First Test Firing of SLS Core Stage Engine (Updated)
Jason Davis – The Planetary Society
This evening in Mississippi, a space shuttle engine roared to life for the first time since 2011.
Kepler and SOFIA Survive Technical And Fiscal Challenges
Jeff Foust – Space News
 
Kepler and SOFIA, two NASA astronomy missions put in jeopardy by technical and budget issues have, survived their near-death experiences but still must deal with constrained funding, project officials told astronomers.
Green Comet Lovejoy Photobombs Night Sky Photos by Stargazers
Kelly Dickerson - Space.com
Amateur astronomers captured amazing photos of a bright comet as it raced across the sky this week.
Astronomers Measure Galactic Winds at Milky Way's Center, Detect Record-Breaking X-Ray Flares From Its Supermassive Black Hole
Leonidas Papadopoulos - AmericaSpace
 
Earth's location in the suburbs of the Milky Way galaxy provides us with a relatively quiet and safe haven, far from the hazards of all the high-energy phenomena that take place at the center of our galaxy, 26,000 light-years away, in the direction of the Sagittarius constellation. Despite our large distance from the Milky Way's central regions, astronomers have been meticulously studying the latter's surroundings for decades, in the hopes of gaining more insights about all the energetic goings-on that take place at the heart of our galaxy, while probing the physical processes which power the supermassive black hole that is believed to lie there. Now, by using the power of NASA's Hubble and Chandra space telescopes, two independent teams of astronomers have recently managed to measure the velocities and chemical composition of the two giant bubbles of outflowing gas that have been found to extend above and below the galactic center, while also detecting X-ray flares of unprecedented intensity from the vicinity of its supermassive black hole.
 
A Spectacular Spiral May Encircle the Milky Way
One of our galaxy's arms may do a full 360, upping the chances that our galactic home is a rare cosmic beauty
Ken Croswell - Scientific American

Mapping a galaxy isn't easy when you live inside it. It took astronomers a century after the discovery of the first celestial spiral to prove that the Milky Way itself looks like a giant spiral. Its spiral arms squeeze interstellar gas and dust, causing gas clouds to grow dense, collapse and create new stars; the brightest newborn stars illuminate the arms so gloriously that spiral galaxies resemble glowing cosmic hurricanes. The Milky Way has several of these arms. Now astronomers in China have discovered that one of them may wrap around the entire galaxy, putting our galactic home in an elite group among its spiral neighbors.
Basic plan on space policy to emphasize natl security
The Yomiuri Shimbun
 
A government task force on Friday finalized a new basic plan on space policy that will highlight national security.
 
Sarah Brightman to start training for space journey Thursday
ITAR TASS of Russia
British singer Sarah Brightman who is set to go into orbit in 2015 will start her training in Russia's Star City space training facility on Thursday, January 15.
What's Happening in Space Policy January 12-16, 2015
Marcia S. Smith - Spacepolicyonline.com
Here is our list of space policy events for the week of January 12-16, 2015 and any insight we can offer about them. The House and Senate are in session this week.
SpaceFlight 2015: What to expect in the coming year
Joe Latrell - Spaceflight Insider
The year 2015 is already starting off to a very busy start with Space Exploration Technologies (SpaceX ) successfully launching the first supply run to the International Space Station just this past week. The company also, unsuccessfully, attempted to land the Falcon 9 v1.1 rocket's first stage on an uncrewed ship 200 miles off the coast of Jacksonville, Florida. With Commercial Crew now in full swing we should expect to see more development in this area as the two companies involved in the effort work to return. Boeing and SpaceX engineers are hard at work on their current milestones.
COMPLETE STORIES
SpaceX Dragon heads to ISS, but 'no cigar' for rocket landing
James Dean – Florida Today
SpaceX lofted a Dragon cargo capsule on its way to the International Space Station early Saturday, but an attempted booster landing failed
 
A SpaceX rocket boosted a Dragon cargo spacecraft to a bull's-eye orbit early Saturday, then hit a target in the Atlantic Ocean – too hard, unfortunately.
 
Unable to slow down enough during its 80-mile descent from space, the first stage of a Falcon 9 rocket slammed into a custom-built ship serving as a landing pad and broke into pieces.
 
"Close, but no cigar this time," SpaceX CEO Elon Musk said on Twitter of the historic landing attempt. "Bodes well for the future tho."
 
The highly anticipated landing experiment, aimed at advancing development of a reusable rocket, almost overshadowed SpaceX's successful 4:47 a.m. launch of more than 5,000 pounds of food, supplies and experiments to the International Space Station, where the Dragon is due to arrive Monday morning.
 
The delivery is critical to maintaining normal operations for the station's six-person crew because NASA's other commercial cargo provider, Orbital Sciences, is recovering from a failed launch last October.
 
That means NASA will "lean on the Dragon vehicle to supply ISS here for the next little while" until Orbital is ready to fly again, ISS Program Manager Mike Suffredini said before the launch.
 
Lifting off on its second attempt, after SpaceX replaced a rocket part that scrubbed the first try Tuesday, the Falcon 9 streaked northeast from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station into pre-dawn darkness.
 
Three minutes into the flight, the booster shut off its nine engines and fell away, setting the stage for several engine firings intended to place it on a 300-foot long platform that SpaceX dubbed the "autonomous spaceport drone ship."
 
For the first time, the 14-story rocket stage was equipped with steerable fins to improve its control during the ride down from a peak speed of nearly a mile per second.
 
The company twice previously had guided boosters to soft landings in the water, where they promptly belly flopped and were destroyed.
But a soft touchdown on the ship would have represented a huge breakthrough toward recovering and re-flying a rocket, something SpaceX is confident will lower launch costs and upend the industry.
 
Instead, about nine minutes after liftoff the booster hit the ship – in itself an impressive feat – but was flying too fast.
 
Musk said the ship was OK; some deck support equipment will need to be replaced.
 
Darkness and fog prevented SpaceX from capturing good video of the impact, but Musk joked that engineers would reconstruct the event from the data they managed to recover.
 
"Will piece it together from telemetry and ... actual pieces," he said.
 
A recovery crew was stationed more than 11 miles from the landing site.
 
If the ship repairs aren't too extensive, SpaceX could try to land on it again as soon as its next mission, a satellite launch planned no earlier than Jan. 29.
 
Musk later reported that the booster's new fin system had run out of hydraulic fluid too soon but would have more available on the next flight, and congratulated the launch team.
 
"Am super proud of my crew for making huge strides towards reusability on this mission," he said on Twitter. "You guys rock!"
 
Even if the Falcon 9 had stuck its landing, the launch industry establishment remains skeptical about whether reusing rockets will make economic sense.
 
Musk has said the key is to develop rockets that can be fully and rapidly readied for additional flights. In contrast, for example, shuttle orbiters and solid rocket boosters were reused, but required extensive refurbishment at high cost.
 
All the landing drama was of little consequence to NASA, which just wanted its cargo sent to the ISS.
 
The resupply mission was SpaceX's fifth of a dozen planned under a $1.6 billion NASA contract.
 
"We are delighted to kick off 2015 with our first commercial cargo launch of the year," NASA Administrator Charlie Bolden said in a statement afterward.
 
The launch was the first this year from Cape Canaveral and the 14th by a Falcon 9 rocket.
 
Next up from the Cape is a planned Jan. 20 launch of a Navy communications satellite by a powerful United Launch Alliance Atlas V rocket.
 
SpaceX launches station supply ship; booster landing unsuccessful
William Harwood – CBS News
 
Last Updated Jan 10, 2015 9:03 AM EST
A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket successfully boosted a space station cargo ship into orbit Saturday, but an unprecedented attempt to land the rocket's first stage on a barge stationed off the coast of Florida was not successful, ending with an apparent crash landing that prompted company founder Elon Musk to tweet: "close, but no cigar."
Recovering, refurbishing and relaunching rocket stages that otherwise would be thrown away is a major element in Musk's ambitious push to reduce the cost of spaceflight by operating a rocket company much like a commercial airline, re-flying boosters rather than building them from scratch for each flight.
In a series of tweets, Musk confirmed the first stage made it from the edge of space back down to the "autonomous spaceport drone ship" but said its velocity was apparently too high and the booster "landed hard. Close, but no cigar this time. Bodes well for the future tho."
He said the landing barge came through in good shape, but "some of the support equipment on the deck will need to be replaced." He added a few moments later: "Didn't get good landing/impact video. Pitch dark and foggy. Will piece it together from telemetry and ... actual pieces."
This was the company's third attempt to guide a Falcon 9 first stage booster through a controlled vertical descent back into the atmosphere following two successful ocean splashdowns. But Saturday's test marked the first attempt to actually land a booster, using a modified barge with a deck measuring 170 feet by 300 feet, as a platform.
The mission got underway at 4:47 a.m. EST (GMT-5) when the Falcon 9's nine Merlin 1D first stage engines thundered to life at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station. The 208-foot-tall rocket quickly climbed away from launch complex 40, arcing away to the northeast as it took off directly into the plane of the space station's orbit.
The launch originally was planned for December, but the flight was delayed three weeks because of problems encountered during an engine test firing and temperature constraints related to the space station's orbit. A launch try Tuesday was scrubbed less than 90 seconds before liftoff because of unusual readings from one of two second-stage engine steering actuators. The actuator was replaced, clearing the way for launch Saturday.
This time around, the countdown made it to zero without incident, and the climb out of the dense lower atmosphere appeared to go smoothly. Two minutes and 37 seconds after liftoff, the first stage engines shut down and the stage fell away, followed seconds later by ignition of a single Merlin engine powering the booster's second stage. The cargo ship was released into the planned preliminary orbit about 10 minutes after launch, kicking off a two-day flight to the International Space Station.
 
The first stage normally would have tumbled back into the lower atmosphere, breaking apart due to high temperatures and aerodynamic stresses, with surviving components crashing back into the Atlantic Ocean.
But this time around, the booster's flight computer was programmed to carry out three engine firings to adjust its trajectory and reduce its velocity, slowing the booster from about 2,900 mph to about 560 mph and then to a much more sedate 4.5 mph, deploying four landing legs shortly before touchdown.
The stage featured four deployable fins mounted around the upper end of the booster that could be repositioned in flight to help control the rocket's lift and orientation. The use of the fins, along with steering by the first stage engines, "will allow for precision landing -- first on the autonomous spaceport drone ship, and eventually on land," the company said in a blog post last month.
The company said "stabilizing the Falcon 9 first stage for re-entry is like trying to balance a rubber broomstick on your hand in the middle of a wind storm."
Going into the mission, Musk downplayed expectations, predicting just a 50 percent chance of success. It was not immediately known why the booster apparently landed with an higher-than-expected descent velocity. But after assessing the results of Saturday's attempt, SpaceX engineers are expected to try again on subsequent flights with the long-range goal of flying boosters back to the launch site for refurbishment and reuse.
"If commercial spaceflight is ever going to be anything like a 'normal' industry, fast turnaround and (relatively) low costs are imperative," Joan Johnson-Freese, professor of national security affairs at the U.S. Naval War College, told CBS News in an email exchange last month.
"Airplanes land ready to use again -- not requiring months of hanger time between flights," she said. "The analogy with recoverable rocket boosters isn't perfect, but it's close."
While the landing attempt marked a significant step toward what Musk calls "rapid reusability," the primary goal of the flight was putting the Dragon capsule on course for a rendezvous with the space station early Monday.
The launch marked the company's fifth operational resupply mission under a $1.6 billion contract with NASA calling for 12 space station cargo missions to deliver some 20 tons of equipment and supplies.
It was the first U.S. station supply flight since an Orbital Sciences Antares booster exploded seconds after liftoff Oct. 28. A Cygnus cargo ship making the company's third flight under a separate $1.9 billion contract was destroyed in the mishap.
Orbital's Antares rocket is now grounded pending a switch to different engines, leaving SpaceX as the only provider of U.S.-based resupply services. The Russians also launch supplies using unmanned Progress cargo ships, and larger Japanese HTV supply ships fly once every year or so.
But with Orbital out of action in the near term, the SpaceX flights are critical for sustaining the station's six-person crews. Space station Program Manager Mike Suffredini said a SpaceX failure in the months ahead, depending on its severity and the steps needed to recover, could force NASA to reduce the station's crew from six to three or, in a worst-case scenario, to briefly abandon the laboratory.
But he said the station always has enough supplies on board for four to six months of normal operation and that even with a second U.S. resupply failure, NASA and its partners would have months to decide on a course of action.
"In all cases, we have plenty of time to decide what to do next, figure out what we're really dealing with and then figure out how we want to react to it," he said.
The Dragon capsule that launched Saturday is loaded with more than 4,000 pounds of cargo in the ship's pressurized hold, along with a 1,000-pound atmospheric research instrument mounted in an unpressurized trunk section accessible by the lab's robot arm.
The Cloud Aerosol Transport System, or CATS, instrument will be extracted from the trunk later this month by the station's robot arm and mounted on a platform attached to the Japanese Kibo lab module.
Cargo packed into the Dragon capsule's pressurized compartment includes food, clothing and personal items for the station's crew, research equipment and spare parts along with high-priority items intended to replace cargo lost in the Antares launch failure in October, including a variety of student experiments.
Among the science gear is a fruit fly lab for studies of the immune system, a flatworm regeneration experiment to learn more about how the organisms replace damaged cells and an investigation to learn how proteins clump together in fibrous plaques like those believed to play a role in Alzheimer's disease.
If all goes well, the Dragon will catch up with the station early Monday, approaching from behind and below, pulling up to within about 30 feet and standing by while Expedition 42 commander Barry "Butch" Wilmore, operating the lab's robot arm, locks onto a grapple fixture.
Ground controllers then will take over arm operations, moving the Dragon capsule into position for berthing at the Earth-facing port of the forward Harmony module. Wilmore, assisted by European Space Agency astronaut Samantha Cristoforetti, will operate the common berthing mechanism, driving home motorized bolts to lock the spacecraft in place.
The Dragon is expected to remain attached to the station for about a month. After reloading the spacecraft with some 3,600 pounds of experiment samples, no-longer-needed gear and trash, the astronauts will release the capsule for a Feb. 10 splashdown in the Pacific Ocean southwest of San Diego.
Lockheed Martin begins taking apart first flown Orion capsule
Stephen Clark – Spaceflight Now
 
NASA's Orion spacecraft achieved all but two of 87 demo objectives on its first orbital flight last month, but details on the capsule's performance will require dismantling the spaceship's outer skin in a careful procedure designed to keep most of the Orion prototype intact for future testing.
Orion's engineering and production teams are back at work this week at Kennedy Space Center after the spaceport's annual holiday shutdown. Engineers from Lockheed Martin, Orion's prime contractor, will collect data recorded during the craft's Dec. 5 test flight and submit a final post-mission report to NASA by March 5, according to Jules Schneider, Lockheed Martin's Orion operations manager at KSC.
Their first tasks will be draining the capsule of hazardous hydrazine propellant and ammonia coolant left over from the four-and-a-half hour test flight.
After launching from Cape Canaveral aboard a United Launch Alliance Delta 4-Heavy rocket, the spacecraft reached a peak altitude of 3,600 miles and flew twice around the world before splashing down in the Pacific Ocean off the coast of Baja California.
The test flight was designed to prove the performance of Orion's heat shield, computers, separation events and other systems.
A team of U.S. Navy divers stationed on the USS Anchorage amphibious transport ship recovered the capsule from the Pacific for return to port at San Diego. Technicians packed the spacecraft in a shipping container for an eight-day road trip back to Kennedy Space Center, where it arrived Dec. 18.
Officials plan to move the Orion spacecraft between several KSC facilities in the next few months. It spent the holiday break inside the Launch Abort System Facility at KSC and will next move to the Payload Hazardous Servicing Facility, where workers in hazmat suits will decontaminate the capsule after emptying its reservoirs of hydrazine and ammonia, Schneider said.
In the coming weeks, Lockheed Martin's Orion team will remove panels covered in black ceramic tiles from the capsule's backshell, exposing the spaceship's olive-green aluminum- lithium metal structure, underlying wiring and plumbing, and avionics boxes for inspection.
The spacecraft's blackened ablative 16.5-foot diameter heat shield is also slated for removal and analysis, Schneider said.
Engineers are wary of taking apart the innards of the capsule beyond the disassembly of the craft's cocooning outer shell, Schneider told reporters in a briefing Dec. 19.
"There is a lot of debate right now as to how much of the vehicle we're going to take apart," Schneider said. "Because the vehicle performed so well, there are some people re-thinking how much we want to disassemble — and how much do they want to keep assembled — so we can use it going forward on the ground doing testing, etc."
The Orion spacecraft that flew Dec. 5 is not expected to fly on another space mission, but NASA and Lockheed Martin plan to use the vehicle for an ascent abort test in 2018. The capsule will launch on a modified rocket motor from a Peacekeeper missile before initiating an abort sequence to validate Orion's ability to escape from a failed launch.
The only technical failures on the Dec. 5 test flight were with the spacecraft's inflatable airbags, which would flip the capsule upright if it splashed down upside down.
Four of the spaceship's five airbags pressurized, but two of the bags quickly lost air, leaving two of the orange spheres inflated.
"Those were the only objectives on the entire flight that were not met," Schneider said.
"Everybody is incredibly pleased with the performance of the vehicle," Schneider said. "I think you can tell it came through the trial by fire pretty well."
Schneider said the metallic skeleton of the next space-rated Orion spacecraft is due to arrive at KSC from a welding facility in New Orleans in November 2015. It will be outfitted with computers, a European-built propulsion and power module and other gear ahead of its launch scheduled for 2018.
Like Orion's Dec. 5 flight test, the 2018 mission will not carry astronauts but will blast off aboard NASA's new heavy-lifting Space Launch System mega-rocket on a flight around the moon. A crewed Orion mission will follow around 2021.
While observers often focus on when the Orion spacecraft and Space Launch System will be ready for the next flight, managers in charge of preparing ground systems at KSC say they are also racing the clock.
"The long road ahead is kind of a two-edged sword," said Phil Weber, senior technical integration manager for KSC's Ground Systems Development and Operations program, which oversees KSC's upgrades to support SLS and Orion missions.
"We got the baseline configuration of what SLS and Orion are going to look like in 2011, so about three years ago," Weber said. "We've got about three more years to go until EM-1 (Exploration Mission-1 in 2018) … We're at hump day right now."
Major work to be completed before the 2018 launch includes modifications to the mobile launch platform originally built for the canceled Ares 1 rocket. NASA and contractor teams are also upgrading cranes inside the huge Vehicle Assembly Building and installing new platforms inside the high bay where the SLS and Orion will be stacked for launch.
"We have a tremendous amount to complete in the next three years, so although we want to do the launch as soon as we possibly can, we've got to get all of the ground systems put in, validated, ready to receive the flight hardware and then do the processing for the launch," Weber said. "You can look at it both ways. We want to launch soon, but we've got to have the time to get it ready.
"It's scary to me that we've got three years to do all this work," Weber said.
NASA Completes First Test Firing of SLS Core Stage Engine (Updated)
Jason Davis – The Planetary Society
This evening in Mississippi, a space shuttle engine roared to life for the first time since 2011.
NASA's Stennis Space Center completed a 500-second firing of the RS-25 engine, giving engineers a chance to test a new engine controller and monitor temperature and pressure readings throughout the system. Once a reusable workhorse used to send space shuttles into orbit, the RS-25 is now slated for installation on the core stage of NASA's heavy-lift Space Launch System, scheduled to debut in 2018. The hot-fire, which was conducted on Stennis' A-1 test stand, ran for the full eight-and-a-half-minute target duration.
Eighteen RS-25 engines are left over from the space shuttle program. Sixteen have flight experience, while two are used exclusively for testing. Today's test was made with development engine 0525.
While the space shuttle used three RS-25 engines to reach orbit, the Space Launch System is designed to operate with four. According to NASA, each RS-25 generated about 490,000 pounds of thrust during the shuttle era. That number is expected to increase to 512,000 for the Space Launch System's first four flights. A new engine controller, which is responsible for relaying commands between the rocket's avionics systems and engines, was also put through its first live test.
NASA intends to begin using expendable versions of the RS-25 after clearing its inventory of leftover shuttle engines. The agency plans to work with Sacromento, Calif.-based Aerojet Rocketdyne, which built the original shuttle engines, to make the new version more affordable.
"We had identified significant cost and time saving ideas for the RS-25 before the shuttle program ended," said Steve Wofford, the manager of the SLS liquid engines office at Marshall Space Flight Center, which oversees development of the Space Launch System. "We see many opportunities for process and manufacturing savings with the change to an expendable engine and the maturation of technologies, such as 3D printing and structured light scanning."
Today's test was the first time an RS-25 had been fired at Stennis since 2009. A total of eight tests are planned for engine 0525, totalling almost an hour of firing time. The second test is scheduled for April 2015, after engineers complete upgrades to the A-1 test stand's water cooling systems. The second RS-25 development engine will also undergo testing—10 firings in all, totalling 75 minutes.
NASA
Inaugural SLS RS-25 engine test
An RS-25 engine fires for 500 seconds on the A-1 test stand at NASA's Stennis Space Center near Bay St. Louis, Mississippi.
Kepler and SOFIA Survive Technical And Fiscal Challenges
Jeff Foust – Space News
 
Kepler and SOFIA, two NASA astronomy missions put in jeopardy by technical and budget issues have, survived their near-death experiences but still must deal with constrained funding, project officials told astronomers.
 
At a "town hall" session of the 225th meeting of the American Astronomical Society here Jan. 5, representatives of NASA's Stratospheric Observatory For Infrared Astronomy (SOFIA) project said the airborne observatory is in good shape after Congress largely restored funding for it in the 2015 omnibus spending bill passed in December.
 
SOFIA was in danger of being mothballed when NASA's 2015 budget request sought only $12.3 million for the project, down from $87.4 million in 2014. NASA said in the request that if it could not find partners to take over the agency's share of operations, it would place SOFIA in storage in 2015.
 
The omnibus bill instead provided SOFIA with $70 million, allowing the project to continue, although with 20 percent less funding than 2014. "There will be some impacts due to the cut for this year," SOFIA Project Scientist Pamela Marcum said at the town hall meeting.
 
Marcum said the project was still determining how to absorb the cut, but is working on the assumption that the 2015 funding is a "transient dip" that will be restored in later years. "Therefore, the decisions we are making to address the budget challenge for this year should not have permanent ripple effects for the duration of the program," she said.
 
At a separate town hall meeting here Jan. 7 about NASA's overall astrophysics program, Paul Hertz, director of the agency's astrophysics division, said he was confident SOFIA would be able to perform good science despite the reduced budget for 2015. "We'll be able to continue a compelling SOFIA science program through fiscal year 2015 with this funding," he said.
 
Just Back from Europe
 
SOFIA, a Boeing 747SP aircraft equipped with a 2.5-meter telescope, returned to the United States in December after a six-month overhaul in Germany overseen by the German Aerospace Center, DLR, which is NASA's partner on SOFIA. The project decided in June to go ahead with the maintenance of the observatory after it appeared likely Congress would restore funding for it.
 
Both the aircraft and telescope came out of the overhaul in excellent shape, Marcum said. "The plane has come back in 'like new' condition," she said. "We have a very healthy observatory." SOFIA science observations will resume later in January, and a new round of competitively selected observations, called Cycle 3, will start in March.
 
K2's Downhill Run
 
NASA's Kepler spacecraft has also found new life after suffering technical problems. The spacecraft, launched in 2009 to look for exoplanets in one region of the sky, had to abandon that original mission in 2013 when the second of four reaction wheels on the spacecraft failed, preventing it from pointing accurately at the selected region.
 
In 2014, a NASA senior review of astrophysics missions endorsed an alternative mission concept called K2, where the spacecraft looks at different parts of the sky for "campaigns" of about 80 days at a time, using solar pressure along with the remaining two reaction wheels and thrusters to orient the spacecraft.
 
"The spacecraft is doing really fine," project scientist Steve Howell said at a Kepler town hall meeting here Jan. 5. The spacecraft is currently in the third of nine planned campaigns, and in December, NASA announced the discovery of the first exoplanet in data collected during the K2 mission.
 
The spacecraft is using less propellant than previously projected, which means that it should be possible to extend the mission after the last campaign is completed in June 2016. "When we first proposed the K2 mission, we thought we had enough fuel to last for two years," Howell said. "We believe we can go about another year." That, he said, would allow for four additional observing campaigns.
 
Kepler's budget was cut by 10 percent from the recommended amount in the senior review, NASA officials said, although that report did not give a specific dollar value. However, agency officials said that cut should not have a major effect on the mission.
 
"We are currently in the process of developing the budget profile and finalizing that with the project," Douglas Hudgins, program scientist for NASA's Exoplanet Exploration Program, said at a Jan. 3 meeting here of the Exoplanet Exploration Program Analysis Group. "Everyone has sharpened their pencils and done a good job of mapping out a plan that will conduct the K2 mission pretty much as proposed."
Green Comet Lovejoy Photobombs Night Sky Photos by Stargazers
Kelly Dickerson - Space.com
Amateur astronomers captured amazing photos of a bright comet as it raced across the sky this week.
The comet was officially catalogued as C/2014 Q2, but many refer to it as Comet Lovejoy, named for the amateur astronomer Terry Lovejoy who discovered it in August 2014. On Wednesday night (Jan. 7) the comet reached its closest distance to Earth at about 43.6 million miles (70.2 million kilometers) away. The comet is traveling on a particularly elongated orbit and likely won't be visible again for another 8,000 years.
The comet is now faintly visible to the unaided eye in dark locations, but the bright January moon has been making it difficult for stargazers to spot it. Night sky photographer Tyler Leavitt of Las Vegas, Nevada was able to snap some photos of the comet Wednesday. [How to See Comet Lovejoy]
"I ran out tonight to try and grab a glimpse of Comet Lovejoy," Leavitt told Space.com via email. "Some high clouds were moving in, but I managed to grab a couple of photos."
Leavitt was able to snap one photo with a wide-angle lens and later drew in a box around the comet to help it stand out. For a second, close-up photo he used a telephoto lens and a tracking mount.
"I was obviously still too close to the Las Vegas lights and had a hard time seeing it without binoculars," Leavitt said. "With the aid of binoculars it was readily visible as a fuzzy patch with a green tone. I couldn't see a tail, but a small ion tail was captured in the telephoto shot."
Another amateur astronomer, photographer Chris Bakley of Cape May, New Jersey, took a different approach to capture a photo of Comet Lovejoy and the Orion nebula on Wednesday night. Bakley used a sheet of foam to create the double exposure and get both celestial objects into the same photo.
Amateur astronomer Terry Lovejoy discovered the comet last year from his roofdeck observatory in Australia, and it's the fifth comet he's discovered since 2007. The apparent green color of the comet likely comes from cyanogen, a poisonous gas that glows green when sunlight hits it.
Stargazers can pick out the comet by looking for it along a south to north path almost perpendicular to the celestial equator.
The comet will be visible throughout much of January, but it reached its brightest in the past week with a magnitude of 4.6. Right now it's speeding through the sky at about 3 degrees per day. (For reference, your clenched fist held to the sky covers about 10 degrees.)
The comet will pass through the Eridanus constellation and enter the Taurus constellation by Friday (Jan. 9). The comet will also pass through Aries, Perseus and Triangulum before speeding off toward the sun. By the end of the month the comet's brightness will have faded, but it should still be visible with binoculars and telescopes through the end of January.
To see photos, visit:
Astronomers Measure Galactic Winds at Milky Way's Center, Detect Record-Breaking X-Ray Flares From Its Supermassive Black Hole
Leonidas Papadopoulos - AmericaSpace
 
Earth's location in the suburbs of the Milky Way galaxy provides us with a relatively quiet and safe haven, far from the hazards of all the high-energy phenomena that take place at the center of our galaxy, 26,000 light-years away, in the direction of the Sagittarius constellation. Despite our large distance from the Milky Way's central regions, astronomers have been meticulously studying the latter's surroundings for decades, in the hopes of gaining more insights about all the energetic goings-on that take place at the heart of our galaxy, while probing the physical processes which power the supermassive black hole that is believed to lie there. Now, by using the power of NASA's Hubble and Chandra space telescopes, two independent teams of astronomers have recently managed to measure the velocities and chemical composition of the two giant bubbles of outflowing gas that have been found to extend above and below the galactic center, while also detecting X-ray flares of unprecedented intensity from the vicinity of its supermassive black hole.

Studying the Breeze of the Galactic Winds
 
Of all the objects in the Universe, black holes can be considered the most fascinating and mystifying: extremely massive objects of infinite density which occupy a zero volume and from where nothing, not even light, can escape. Due to their very nature, black holes can't be observed directly, making their study a really painstaking process. Nevertheless, because of the immense gravitational forces that they exert on their surroundings, they are responsible for some of the most violent and energetic phenomena in the Cosmos, which can often be observed from billions of light-years away. A long list of observational evidence, which have been collected with ground- and space-based telescopes in recent decades, have indicated that indeed most galaxies in the Universe harbor such gargantuan powerhouses at their centers, containing between a few million to a billion times the mass of the Sun in an area of space no bigger than our own Solar System. The cores of many of these galaxies, which are better known as Active Galactic Nuclei, or AGNs, exhibit such high luminosities across the entire electromagnetic spectrum, outshining all the rest of the stars in the galaxy itself. The consensus among astronomers is that the mechanism behind these high-energy phenomena is the accretion of matter from the supermassive black holes that reside there, which is heated to many millions of degrees in the process and emits very high-energy X-rays before finally falling toward oblivion into the black hole itself.
 
The energy that is released from AGNs often results in the creation of powerful jets along the galaxies' polar axes, which emit huge streams of matter that can stretch for many thousands of light-years away from the core into intergalactic space, like in the case of the nearby massive elliptical galaxy M87. In addition, the combined energy output of the jets and accretion disks, as well as the very high rates of star formation and supernova explosions in many active and starburst galaxies respectively, can result in the formation of diffuse, galaxy-wide outflows of material that can expel huge amounts of interstellar gas away from the galaxies themselves, at speeds of up to a few thousand kilometers each second, like in the case of spiral galaxies M82 and NGC 1068. These "galactic winds" are thought to play an important role in the evolution of galaxies, by affecting the distribution of their interstellar material and regulating their overall star formation rates, while also enriching the intergalactic medium with heavy elements, thus making the better understanding of the processes that drive them a major topic of research in astrophysics.
 
Despite their importance in the study of galactic dynamics, galactic winds had traditionally been poorly documented ever since they were first discovered more than 40 years ago, mainly due to the fact that their constituent gas becomes increasingly diffuse with distance, hindering astronomers' ability to study it in distant galaxies. Nevertheless, a newer generation of ground- and space-based telescopes that have come online during the last 15 years have helped to revolutionize astrophysics, allowing scientists to make many important discoveries. One of these was the detection by NASA's Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope in 2010 of two giant high-energy emitting bubbles of outflowing gas that extend approximately 25,000 light-years above and below the central regions of our own Milky Way galaxy. Even though the exact origin of these structures remains unknown, most astronomers believe that they are the result of galactic winds moving outward from the center of our galaxy, creating a bipolar distribution of material perpendicular to the disk of the Milky Way. Their exact source is still an object of debate, with the two most popular hypotheses being either the eruption of material from our galaxy's supermassive black hole, or the result of outflowing winds from an intense star formation activity at the central regions of our galaxy. "In other galaxies, we see that starbursts can drive enormous gas outflows," says David Spergel, a theoretical astrophysicist at Princeton University in New Jersey. "Whatever the energy source behind these huge bubbles may be, it is connected to many deep questions in astrophysics."
 
One way for astronomers to answer some of these questions would be to determine the chemical composition of the Fermi bubbles and to study their motion along our line of sight. To that end, a research team led by Dr. Andrew Fox, an astronomer at the Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore, Md., presented the results of just such observations, at the recent 225th Meeting of the American Astronomical Society, in Seattle, Wash. The researchers, whose study had been accepted for publication at The Astrophysical Journal Letters, utilised the superior capabilities of the Hubble Space Telescope, in order to conduct detailed spectroscopic observations of both the near and far side of the gas of the northern Fermi bubble, allowing them to probe its properties for the first time. "When you look at the centers of other galaxies, the outflows appear much smaller because the galaxies are farther away," said Fox in a statement. "But the outflowing clouds we're seeing are only 25,000 light-years away in our galaxy. We have a front-row seat. We can study the details of these structures. We can look at how big the bubbles are and can measure how much of the sky they are covering."
 
Fox's team used the Cosmic Origins Spectrograph, or COS, onboard Hubble in February 2014, in order to target the distant quasar PDS 456 in ultraviolet wavelengths, which was positioned just 15 degrees above the Milky Way center and whose light passed through the northern bubble along the researchers' line of sight. By analysing the absorption lines that were imprinted in the quasar's spectrum as its light traveled through the gas in the bubble, they were able to measure the latter's speed relative to Earth, as well as its temperature and chemical composition. The astronomers' results showed that the light from the gas at the bubble's near side was shifted toward shorter wavelengths, indicating that it was moving toward Earth, while the one from the bubble's far side was redshifted, indicating that it was moving away. Overall, Fox's team was able to determine that the galactic winds from the Milky Way's center, which were shaping the Fermi bubbles, were blowing at a speed of approximately 900 to 1,000 km/sec or 3 million km/h. "This is exactly the signature we knew we would get if this was a bipolar outflow," explained Rongmon Bordoloi a postdoctoral fellow at the Space Telescope Science Institute and co-author on the study. "This is the closest sight line we have to the galaxy's center where we can see the bubble being blown outward and energized."
 
"Once we have the speed [of the galactic wind] and we also know how far away from the center of the galaxy this gas has gone, we can determine its age – how long it has taken for the gas to get to that point," explained Fox during the presentation of his team's findings at the recent American Astronomical Society meeting. "And when we do that calculation, we find its between 2.5 and 4 million years old. What that means is, that a few million years ago, there was a very energetic event close to the galactic center, where we see a remnant of that event where the gas has been blown up into the [galactic] halo and is now venting into the Fermi bubbles."
Complementary observations of PDS 456 with the Green Bank radio telescope in West Virginia in October 2014 revealed that the outflowing gas in the bubble had a temperature of approximately 10,000 degrees Celsius, which was much cooler than that of the superheated material of millions of degrees of the accretion disk around the Milky Way's supermassive black hole. This could indicate, according to the researchers, that the much cooler interstellar gas is compressed and carried along by the bubbles' outward motion into intergalactic space. "We are seeing cooler gas, perhaps interstellar gas in our galaxy's disk, being swept up into that hot outflow," says Fox. The elemental composition of the gas also hinted at its stellar origin, with astronomers identifying the chemical fingerprints of silicon, carbon, and aluminum ions, which are heavy elements that are routinely forged in stellar cores. "It looks like there's a link between the amount of star formation and whether or not these outflows happen," adds Fox. "Although the Milky Way overall currently produces a moderate one to two stars a year, there is a high concentration of star formation close to the core of the galaxy."
The study of PDS 456 is part of an observing program by Fox's team, to study the light of a total of 20 quasars with the Hubble Space Telescope that passes through the Fermi bubbles, allowing them to measure their velocities at various locations above the galactic disk. Such studies could allow researchers to put more constraints on theoretical predictions regarding the exact mechanisms that power the Milky Way's galactic winds and possibly determine their exact cause. "What is driving the [galactic] wind causing it to be launched into the [galactic] halo, is still an ongoing mystery," explains Fox. "The two main explanations for this are: you have a burst of star formation and supernovae close to the galactic center that drove the gas out, or alternatively it has something to do with the supermassive black hole. The latter can also accrete gas onto its surroundings and that gas can then be blown out into the Fermi bubbles. So, what we're doing is that we're enlarging our sample instead of just looking into a single line of sight, we're gonna be looking at more directions and looking for trends to see if the gas is slowing down, or if it's accelerating as it moves away from the core."
Probing the Heart of Darkness
Yet, as fascinating as the observations by Fox's team were, the heart of the Milky Way had nevertheless some more exciting offerings to give to astronomers recently.
 
Past studies of our galaxy's central regions had indicated that, despite being relatively moderate and quiet compared to those of other galaxies, the black hole that is believed to lie there, called Sagittarius A*, or Sgr A* for short, is a truly monstrous object, with a mass of approximately 4 million times that of the Sun, occupying a volume of space with a radius of no more than 45 Astronomical Units, slightly less than the aphelion of Pluto's orbit around the Sun. More direct evidence for the presence of Sgr A* came in recent years, following a series of observations of the orbits of dozens of stars that seemed to be revolving very closely around an invisible and very massive point source, with orbital velocities that exceeded 5,000 km per second.
Among the many closely packed objects that astronomers had observed in the vicinity of Sgr A* during the last decade was a massive hydrogen gas cloud called G2, whose orbit around the black hole was calculated to be about 300 years long. Theoretical predictions had shown that the gas cloud was ultimately on a rendezvous with oblivion and was expected to fall onto the Milky Way's black hole in late 2013 or early 2014. Astronomers lined up every major ground- and space-based telescope for the occasion, eagerly awaiting to be treated to a spectacular celestial fireworks display, courtesy of Sgr A*. But when the time came and went, all that telescopes recorded was, well … nothing. Subsequent observations revealed that the gas cloud had instead remained intact following its close gravitational embrace with Sgr A*, leaving astronomers perplexed as to the reason why.
One of the research teams monitoring the behavior of G2 during its closest approach to the black hole, with the help of NASA's Chandra X-ray space Observatory and the Very Large Array at Socorro, N.M., was led by Dr. Daryl Haggard, an assistant professor of astronomy, at the Amherst College in Massachusetts. Even though Haggard's team was disappointed by what initially seemed as a total lack of action from Sgr A*, they were nevertheless rewarded with some unexpected findings in the end. "Unfortunately, the G2 gas cloud didn't produce the fireworks we were hoping for when it got close to Sgr A," said Haggard in a statement during the unveiling of her team's results at the recent American Astronomical Society meeting. "However, nature often surprises us and we saw something else that was really exciting." What the astronomers discovered was a surprisingly bright X-ray flare coming from Sgr A, during mid- September 2013, with a luminosity that was 400 times brighter than the average X-ray output of the black hole itself, making it the largest such flare ever to be detected in its vicinity. Furthermore, this particular spike in X-rays from Sgr A* was almost three times greater than the previous one which had been recorded a year earlier and twice that of the following one that was observed in October 2014.
 
By pinpointing the exact position of the X-ray flares, Haggard's team soon realised that they were unrelated to the G2 gas cloud, which was located many billions of kilometers away at the time. "We do not think that these flares are connected to G2," explained Haggard, during the presentation of her team's findings at the recent American Astronomical Society meeting. "This is not pieces of G2 being pulled off and the reason for that is that the time scales don't quite match. The time scales for these flares is fairly rapid; thousands of seconds, something in the order of an hour or two, which is really characteristic for objects that are something like 1 Astronomical Unit [away from Sgr A], roughly something like the Sun-Earth distance. G2's closest encounter [with Sgr A] is 150 AU. So the time scale doesn't actually match up for G2, at least not at this particular point in time." According to the researchers, two of the most probable reasons for this sudden, unexpected rise of X-ray emissions from Sgr A* are: either the black hole had devoured a large asteroid that had passed by too close, or the flares were magnetic in origin, caused by the breakup and reconnection of the black hole's magnetic field lines which have been entangled together, releasing huge amounts of energy in the process. "If an asteroid was torn apart, it would go around the black hole for a couple of hours – like water circling an open drain – before falling in," says Fred Baganoff, a research scientist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and co-author of the study. "That's just how long we saw the brightest X-ray flare last, so that is an intriguing clue for us to consider."
Theoretical hypotheses aside, the fact is that the exact nature of the X-ray flares of Sgr A* remains a complete mystery. "The skeptical among you should be looking at this and saying 'you've got to be kidding me, your two models are magnetic reconnection like something that happens on the Sun, or asteroids being shredded apart, like, you can't do better than that?'" commented Haggard. "And the answer is 'not yet'. This is an unsolved mystery, we really don't know."
Despite all the unknowns, however, these latest findings at the heart of our galaxy represent a chance for scientists to gain more important insights regarding the supermassive black hole that lies there, possibly shedding more light into many fundamental questions of astrophysics and cosmology in the process.
 
A Spectacular Spiral May Encircle the Milky Way
One of our galaxy's arms may do a full 360, upping the chances that our galactic home is a rare cosmic beauty
Ken Croswell - Scientific American

Mapping a galaxy isn't easy when you live inside it. It took astronomers a century after the discovery of the first celestial spiral to prove that the Milky Way itself looks like a giant spiral. Its spiral arms squeeze interstellar gas and dust, causing gas clouds to grow dense, collapse and create new stars; the brightest newborn stars illuminate the arms so gloriously that spiral galaxies resemble glowing cosmic hurricanes. The Milky Way has several of these arms. Now astronomers in China have discovered that one of them may wrap around the entire galaxy, putting our galactic home in an elite group among its spiral neighbors.
The spiral arm is named Scutum–Centaurus, after two of the constellations seen from Earth through which it threads. Even before the new discovery many astronomers regarded Scutum–Centaurus as one of the greatest spiral arms in the Milky Way. It emerges from the near end of the Milky Way's bar, a long cigar-shaped structure at the galaxy's center. The arm winds outward in a counterclockwise direction, passing between us and the galactic center before stretching all the way to the other side of the Milky Way. In 2011 astronomers discovered that this arm reaches across the galaxy's far side and begins to approach our side of the galaxy again.
 
Now astronomer Yan Sun of the Purple Mountain Observatory in Nanjing, China, and colleagues suggest the Scutum–Centaurus Arm may extend even farther. Using a large radio telescope with a dish 13.7 meters across the astronomers sought the dense interstellar gas clouds that mark spiral arms. Such gas is made mostly of molecular hydrogen, which is difficult to detect. Instead, Sun's team searched for radio waves from the next most abundant interstellar molecule, carbon monoxide gas.
 
The astronomers detected 48 new molecular clouds as well as 24 others that earlier observers had seen in the outer galaxy. The clouds are about twice as far from the center of the galaxy as our solar system is: Whereas the sun is located about 27,000 light-years from the galactic center the new clouds are 46,000 to 67,000 light-years out. As the astronomers report in the January 10, 2015, issue of The Astrophysical Journal Letters, the 72 clouds line up along a previously unknown spiral-arm segment that is around 30,000 light-years long.
 
What is most remarkable, the astronomers say, is that the segment may extend from the outermost part of Scutum–Centaurus, making this arm even longer. If so, the arm actually makes a full 360-degree turn around the galaxy. "That's amazing," says Robert Benjamin of the University of Wisconsin–Whitewater, an astronomer who was not involved with the discovery. "It's rare," notes Thomas Dame, an astronomer at the Harvard–Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics. "I bet that you would have to look through dozens of face-on spiral galaxy images to find one where you could convince yourself you could track one arm 360 degrees around." Dame helped discover the 2011 extension of the Scutum–Centaurus Arm. "My impression was that we had found the end of it," he says. "So I was very surprised to see this."
 
There is a problem, however: a 40,000-light-year-long gap between the end of the segment astronomers discovered in 2011 and the start of the new one. So although Benjamin and Dame say the clouds almost certainly represent the discovery of a new spiral-arm segment, it may not truly be part of the Scutum–Centaurus Arm. Fortunately, scientists know how to test the new claim: Look for molecular clouds in the gap. "It should be easy in the next few years to confirm or refute their hypothesis," Benjamin says.
 
If the proposal holds up, our galaxy viewed from afar may be more striking than previously thought. Most spirals are modest, but a prestigious few galaxies, known as grand-design spirals, flaunt their beauty. The prototype is the incredible Whirlpool Galaxy, one of the most beautiful galaxies in the universe. "I don't think we're as spectacular as the Whirlpool Galaxy," Benjamin says. The Whirlpool probably owes its stunning looks to an orbiting galaxy that stirs up its disk and intensifies its spiral. In our galaxy the rotating bar may play a similar role, and the tentative discovery of a 360-degree spiral arm, Benjamin says, certainly strengthens the case that we, too, live in a grand-design spiral—a galaxy so attractive that it may be the envy of its spiral neighbors for many millions of light-years around.
Basic plan on space policy to emphasize natl security
The Yomiuri Shimbun
 
A government task force on Friday finalized a new basic plan on space policy that will highlight national security.
 
The 10-year plan, which includes measures to strengthen the nation's information-gathering capabilities using satellites, is set to be implemented next fiscal year. Under the plan, the government aims to make the aerospace-related industries in both the public and private sectors worth ¥5 trillion over a decade.
 
The Strategic Headquarters for Space Policy, headed by Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, listed three goals in the plan: ensuring space security; promoting the creation of new aerospace industries and other uses of outer space; and maintaining and reinforcing the basis of industrial and scientific technology. As the security environment surrounding Japan has further deteriorated, the plan seeks more funding to develop space technologies related to national defense.
 
Among measures to boost security, the plan calls for increasing the number of quasi-zenith satellites — a high-precision positioning information system, or the Japanese version of the American global positioning system (GPS) — from the current one to four in fiscal 2017. The figure would eventually be raised to seven, enabling their 24-hour operation. The plan also seeks to improve the capabilities of information-gathering satellites, which effectively act as reconnaissance satellites. The strategic body also included policies to take advantage of technologies developed by the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency and work together with the Defense Ministry.
 
On the industry side, the basic plan indicates a timeline for the development and launch of nearly 40 satellites and space probe vehicles over the next decade to enable private firms to make investment plans more easily. Under the plan, the government also aim to submit a bill in 2016 to create a space activity law.
 
Regarding manned space exploration, the government hopes to decide by the end of fiscal 2016 whether it will continue participating in the International Space Station beyond 2020.
 
The current basic plan on space policy had originally covered five years from fiscal 2013 but was reviewed in the middle due to security circumstances.
 
"As the basis for future space policy, this plan marks a historic turning point," Abe said during the headquarters' meeting Friday.
 
Sarah Brightman to start training for space journey Thursday
ITAR TASS of Russia
British singer Sarah Brightman who is set to go into orbit in 2015 will start her training in Russia's Star City space training facility on Thursday, January 15.
"She will arrive here on Wednesday, January 14, and will start her training the following day," the press service of the space training facility told TASS.
Brightman's flight is scheduled for September 1-11, 2015. She is expected to spend 10 days at the International Space Station (ISS).
Brightman, who starred in Andrew Lloyd Webber's "Phantom of the Opera" and is the world's best-selling soprano singer with over 30 million of CDs sold, first announced her intentions to travel to the ISS as a space tourist in August 2012.
Expedition 45/46 crew members will include Russian cosmonaut Sergey Volkov and European Space Agency astronaut Andreas Mogensen.
The press service of the training facility said a 51-year-old Japanese businessman Satoshi Takamatsu, who has been selected as backup for Brightman, is due to come to Moscow on Wednesday and arrive in the Star City on Thursday together with the singer.
Takamatsu is the president of the newly created Space Travel company. He has already undergone medical tests and training at the Russian space agency, Roscosmos. The businessman is expected to be trained at the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA).
The pioneer space tourist is US entrepreneur Dennis Tito, who made the flight to the ISS in 2001 for $20 million and spent eight days at the station. The most recent space tourist at the station is Cirque du Soleil co-founder Guy Laliberte, who spent 11 days at the ISS in 2009 for $40 million.
The only female space tourist so far reaching the ISS is Anousheh Ansari, an Iranian-American engineer and co-founder and chairwoman of Prodea Systems. Her 12-day stay at the space station in 2006 cost her $20 million.
What's Happening in Space Policy January 12-16, 2015
Marcia S. Smith - Spacepolicyonline.com
Here is our list of space policy events for the week of January 12-16, 2015 and any insight we can offer about them. The House and Senate are in session this week.
During the Week
The week starts off with the berthing of the SpaceX CRS-5 (SpX-5) Dragon spacecraft with the International Space Station at about 6:00 am ET Monday morning. It may seem anticlimatic compared with Saturday's SpX-5 launch -- or rather the attempted landing of the Falcon 9 first stage on an autonomous drone ship. While that didn't go as planned, as a test it certainly was a success as a step towards reusability.
 
Congressional committee activities for the 114th Congress get off to a start this week. Many House committees, including the House Armed Services Committee (HASC), are holding their organizational meetings to adopt rules, lay out majority and minority agendas, and complete administrative tasks. Rep. MacThornberry (R-TX) takes over the HASC gavel this Congress from Howard "Buck" McKeon (R-CA), who retired. Over in the Senate, SASC is holding an actual hearing with a single witness -- Henry Kissinger -- expounding on global challenges and U.S. national security. Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) will chair SASC in this Congress. Space topics do not usually arise in hearings like these on broad, top level national security issues, but U.S. dependence on Russia for rocket engines, the overall state of national security space assets, or perceived threats posed by China's space activities might come up depending on where the conversation goes.
Down at Stennis Space Center, MS, the NASA Advisory Council (NAC) and two of its committees -- Science and Human Exploration and Operations (HEO) -- will meet this week. A joint session Monday afternoon between the Science and HEO committees might be particularly interesting. Then, on Tuesday morning HEO Associate Administrator Bill Gerstenmaier will provide the HEO committee with an update on HEO activities overall and Michele Gates and Lindley Johnson will present an update on the Asteroid Redirect Mission. Later in the day, Alan Lindenmoyer will offer NAC-HEO "lessons learned" from the Commercial Orbital Transportation Services (COTS) program. The meetings are available virtually via WebEx and telecon (click on the links to those meetings below or on the right menu for instructions).
Those and other events of interest that we know about as of Sunday afternoon are listed below.
Monday, January 12
Monday-Tuesday, January 12-13
  • The two committees will meet in joint session on January 12 from 1:00-5:30 pm Central Time (2:00-6:30 pm Eastern)
    •
Tuesday, January 13
Wednesday-Thursday, January 14-15
Thursday, January 15
Friday, January 16
European Space Agency Director General Dordain's Annual Breakfast Press Briefing, Paris, FR, 9:00 am Central European Time (3:00 am Eastern)
 
SpaceFlight 2015: What to expect in the coming year
Joe Latrell - Spaceflight Insider
The year 2015 is already starting off to a very busy start with Space Exploration Technologies (SpaceX) successfully launching the first supply run to the International Space Station just this past week. The company also, unsuccessfully, attempted to land the Falcon 9 v1.1 rocket's first stage on an uncrewed ship 200 miles off the coast of Jacksonville, Florida. With Commercial Crew now in full swing we should expect to see more development in this area as the two companies involved in the effort work to return. Boeing and SpaceX engineers are hard at work on their current milestones.
As mentioned, SpaceX started the year off with a cargo flight to the ISS. This 5th operational cargo flight (and the sixth mission for one of the company's Dragon spacecraft overall) included the first attempt to land the booster's first stage on a barge at sea, however, according to SpaceX CEO and founder Elon Musk, the booster encountered a "hard landing." Imagery of this historic event has, as of yet, not been released. The flight was originally scheduled for late 2014 but launch was delayed due to problems uncovered during a static engine test.
SpaceX also has just completed the first milestone under the Commercial Crew transportation Capability (CCtCap) phase of NASA's Commercial Crew Program. The milestone, a certification baseline review was completed in December of last year. The next milestone that SpaceX has on its place is the certification of the Falcon 9 v1.1 rocket and the Dragon v2 spacecraft.
Boeing continues its efforts with the CST-100, their winning entry in NASA's Commercial Crew Program. Designed to hold 7 astronauts, three structural test articles of the spacecraft are already under development at their processing facility, the former Orbiter Processing Facility 3 (OPF3) located at NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida.
Orbital Sciences Corporation has been forced to make some big changes in terms of their Antares booster, the rocket that the Dulles, Virginia-based firm uses to launch the Cygnus spacecraft on its way to the International Space Station. After the catastrophic failure of an Antares rocket's AJ-26 rocket engine (at present it is believed that the cause of the failure was a turbopump in one of the two engines that power the upper stage) the company was forced to accelerate plans already in motion to replace the antiquated engines.
 
Orbital had announced that they will no longer be using the Aerojet Rocketdyne AJ-26 engines, which were first brought into usage 40 years ago. Orbital announced that the AJ-26, previously known as the NK-33, would be replaced by the RD-181. Antares will be undergoing engine testing later this year in preparation for a return to flight status sometime in 2016. In the interim, the company has tapped United Launch Alliance's Atlas V 401 rocket to launch a Cygnus spacecraft to the ISS, that mission is tentatively scheduled to take place at the close of 2015.
Space Tourism
This year should see the return of test flights at Virgin Galactic. According to a report written by Space News' Jeff Foust, the team at Scaled Composites is working on SpaceShipTwo, tail number 2 and should have construction completed this summer. The first tests of the new craft are likely to be captive carry as they slowly ramp back up after the loss of their first vehicle over Mojave last year.
 
While the company has remained pretty quiet about the actual roll out date, XCOR is expected to debut their new Lynx Mark I vehicle later this year. While actual flights might be a bit of a stretch, the vehicle will probably undergo a series of ground and taxi tests in preparation for flight.
 
Rocket Launches (2015 first quarter)
NASA once again has a rather full launch calendar this year. The first quarter will see the launch of two cargo runs (number 5 and 6) from SpaceX. Additionally, NASA has a set of satellites for Earth observations slated for deployment. Both of these will be launched on ULA rockets.
 
Soil Moisture Active Passive (SMAP) – Jan 29, 2015
SMAP is an Earth satellite mission designed to measure and map Earth's soil moisture and freeze/thaw state to better understand terrestrial water, carbon and energy cycles. It will launch on a Delta II 7320 from Complex 2 at Vandenberg Air Force Base, Calif.
 
Magnetospheric Multiscale (MMS) – March 12, 2015
Launching from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station, Fla. on an Atlas V 421 launch vehicle, the Magnetospheric Multiscale, or MMS, mission will study the mystery of how magnetic fields around Earth connect and disconnect, explosively releasing energy via a process known a magnetic reconnection.
 
This could prove to be a very busy year in terms of spaceflight. United Launch Alliance alone has 13 missions planned to take place with SpaceX showing 17 launches on their manifest. These missions run the gamut from commercial resupply flights to the ISS, to classified payloads for the U.S. Department of Defense, to test flights of new boosters
 
Solar System Science
Last year was a bounty of information coming back from the various robotic craft we have scattered around the Solar system. 2015 promises to be a year of even more discoveries as more and more science data pours in.
 
The Mars Science Laboratory, also known as Curiosity, is running strong and healthy despite wheel issues. Curiosity has measured a tenfold spike in methane while traversing the red planet. Researchers used Curiosity's onboard Sample Analysis at Mars (SAM) laboratory a dozen times in a 20-month period to sniff methane in the atmosphere. For two of those months, the readings averaged 7 parts per billion. Most other readings are at 1/10th that level. Curiosity is currently at the base of Mount Sharp.
Opportunity is getting brain surgery to fix an amnesia issue. The outcome could affect the mission. According to mission scientists, the rover is suffering from a fault in its flash memory storage. The plan is to rewrite Opportunity's software to avoid using the damaged memory. Already well past the 90 day initial mission, if Opportunity cannot be repaired, it may be the end of the line for the plucky rover.
The Cassini mission is still going strong after more than 10 years of orbiting Saturn, Cassini-Huygens continues to relay information about, and images of, the Gas Giant and its moons. The probe will perform some intricate maneuvers in 2016 when it start to prepare for its fiery plunge into Saturn's atmosphere.
The MESSENGER mission winds down. All good things come to an end, and the MESSENGER probe is slated to conclude its mission with a final descent to the surface of Mercury in March, after more than 3 years on station. The probe recently observed that Mercury is hit by meteor showers very similar to what we experience here on Earth. MESSENGER found traces of the event as a surge of calcium that happens at regular intervals.
Voyager 2 is expected to follow its younger brother past the outer boundary of the Solar System. Voyagers 1 and 2, along with Pioneer 10, are the most distant man-made objects. While Pioneer 10 is no longer transmitting telemetry, both Voyager probes continue to send information back to Earth. Just like Voyager 1, the departure of Voyager 2 from the Solar system will be confirmed much later.
Another mission underway is Dawn. Currently en route to Ceres, the largest asteroid between Mars and Jupiter, Dawn will look at the chemical makeup of the small dwarf planet sized rock. Is there water present, frozen or otherwise? Dawn science equipment consists of a visible camera, a visible and infrared mapping spectrometer, and a gamma ray and neutron spectrometer. Dawn can also use radiometric and optical navigation data to provide insights relating to the Ceres' gravity field and internal structure.
 
The blockbuster event in the NASA probe lineup this summer will be the arrival of New Horizons probe at Pluto will be the biggest event this year. New Horizons was launched this month in 2006 from Cape Canaveral. It is expected to encounter Pluto on or about July 14. New Horizons was awakened late last year to begin system checkout in preparation for the big event. The probe includes sensor packages such as the Long Range Reconnaissance Imager (LORRI) and Plasma and high-energy particle spectrometer suite (PAM).
 
Heavenly Views
In addition to the annual meteor showers and lunar events, a special treat is making itself visible for sky watchers everywhere. Peaking around Jan. 7, Comet Lovejoy can be seen with the naked eye on a clear night. Discovered by prolific amateur astronomer Terry Lovejoy (he has found four other comets) this comet has surprised scientists with its brightness. Comet Lovejoy will be about 44 million miles (70 million km) from Earth at its closest point making the comet equivalent to a 4th magnatude star in brightness. You can find the comet by looking just to the right and down from the lower limb of Orion's bow.
 
 
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