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From: "Moon, Larry J. (JSC-EA411)" <larry.j.moon@nasa.gov>
Date: January 20, 2015 at 12:33:47 PM CST
To: "Moon, Larry J. (JSC-EA411)" <larry.j.moon@nasa.gov>
Subject: FW: NASA and Human Spaceflight News - Tuesday – Jan. 20, 2015 plus upcoming tree planting dates to be aware of
Below dates on Memorial Tree plantings is from our NASA Alumni League colleagues:Please make note of the following events:1. Thursday, Jan 29, 2015, 10 a.m. JSC 2015 Day of Remembrance and William R. Pogue Memorial Tree Planting Ceremony2. Thursday, Feb 12, 2015, 2 p.m. Steven R. Nagel Memorial Tree Planting CeremonyAlso, be sure to mark your calendar for Scott Carpenter's Memorial and Tree Planting on May 1, 2015.NASA and Human Spaceflight NewsTuesday – Jan. 20, 2015HEADLINES AND LEADSGoogle Nears $1 Billion Investment in SpaceXInfusion Would Back Push to Provide Internet Access Via SatellitesRolfe Winkler, Evelyn Rusli & Andy Pasztor - Wall Street JournalGoogle has been considering satellite-based Internet service for more than a year. In late 2013, it hired satellite-industry veteran Greg Wyler, who at one point last year had more than 10 people working for him. Mr. Wyler left Google last summer and is now developing his own satellite-Internet venture.White House announces State of the Union guestsDavid Jackson - USA TodayFormer Cuba prisoner Alan Gross and astronaut Scott Kelly will be among first lady Michelle Obama's guests at Tuesday night's State of the Union Address, the White House announced Monday.Redesign likely needed for Orion airbag systemStephen Clark – Spaceflight NowEngineers plan to redesign part of the Orion capsule's self-righting flotation system that only partially engaged as the spacecraft splashed down in the Pacific Ocean following an orbital test flight in December, NASA officials said.Dealing with Space Junk: The Rocky Road AheadLeonard David - Space.comEarth is encircled by an orbiting junkyard.Symbol of NASA's space shuttle program torn downJames Dean – Florida TodayA unique symbol of NASA's space shuttle program and Kennedy Space Center fixture since 1978 was brought to its knees in recent weeks, the latest structure demolished because it wasn't needed after the shuttle's 2011 retirement.NASA outlines why it passed over Sierra NevadaStephen Clark – Spaceflight NowNASA cited the complexity of Sierra Nevada's Dream Chaser space plane and an uncertainty of when the proposed crew transport craft would be ready to fly astronauts to the International Space Station as the primary reasons the agency picked Boeing and SpaceX for lucrative contracts to develop commercial space taxis.Virgin Galactic plans for new generation of SpaceShipTwoCollin Skocik - Spaceflight InsiderIt has been less than ten weeks since the fatal crash that destroyed Virgin Galactic's SpaceShipTwo which cost the life of co-pilot Michael Alsbury. Despite this setback, Virgin Galactic is already developing a test program for a replacement vehicle, and still hopes to begin tourist flights in 2016. With the setback of the crash behind it, the company appears to be learning from its failures – and moving forward with its efforts to open suborbital flights to paying customers.Ceres in sight: NASA's Dawn spacecraft eyes mysterious dwarf planetAmina Khan – Los Angeles TimesIt's the home stretch for NASA's Dawn spacecraft, which after a 3-billion-mile journey has finally got the dwarf planet Ceres in its sights. Now, Dawn's newest images reveal fascinating features on Ceres' surface that will only grow clearer in the run-up to the spacecraft's arrival March 6.Found dogDwayne A. Day – The Space Review
On December 19, 2003, Beagle 2 detached from its mothership and was never heard from again. Now it has turned up, spotted in high-resolution imagery taken by NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter spacecraft, apparently more or less intact on the Martian surface. Even if we never learn anything more about Beagle 2's fate, the little mutt may still have something to teach us, provided that people are willing to learn.Debating the future of exoplanet missions concepts and communityJeff Foust – The Space Review
The last several years have made it clear we are living in a golden era of extrasolar planet studies. Less than 20 years ago, astronomers discovered the first planets orbiting Sun-like stars. Now, the number of exoplanets is in the thousands, including a growing number of "Earth-like" planets, a designation based on some combination of the planets' mass, radius, and orbit around their stars. Just this past Friday, for example, astronomers reported detecting three planets between 1.5 and 2.4 times the radius of the Earth orbiting a single star, one of which lies in the star's habitable zone, where liquid water could exist on its surface.Follow up: Signs of Ancient Life in Mars Rover Photos?Johnny Bontemps - Astrobiology MagazineIn a paper published last month in the journal Astrobiology, geobiologist Nora Noffke drew attention to features in Martian rocks that she suggested bore striking resemblance to trace fossils of microbial mats on Earth. (For more details, read our original story here.)Russia to send Venus exploration mission in 2025 — designerITAR-TASS, of RussiaRussia's Venera-D exploration rover that was initially planned to be sent to Venus in 2016 will be launched in 2025, according to a report prepared by the rover's designer, Lavochkin NPO, for the Korolyov Readings in Moscow on January 27-30 that was made public on Monday.COMPLETE STORIESGoogle Nears $1 Billion Investment in SpaceXInfusion Would Back Push to Provide Internet Access Via SatellitesRolfe Winkler, Evelyn Rusli & Andy Pasztor - Wall Street JournalGoogle has been considering satellite-based Internet service for more than a year. In late 2013, it hired satellite-industry veteran Greg Wyler, who at one point last year had more than 10 people working for him. Mr. Wyler left Google last summer and is now developing his own satellite-Internet venture.SpaceX builds and launches rockets and spacecraft. Mr. Musk last week described a general concept for SpaceX to launch hundreds of satellites into relatively low orbit to deliver Internet access across the globe. Mr. Musk told BusinessWeek the project could cost $10 billion to build and take at least five years, but gave no details about funding or manufacturing plans.For several months Mr. Musk has been mulling ways to expand SpaceX's rocket-and-spacecraft manufacturing operations to designing and building satellites, according to aerospace-industry officials who have talked with him. Though short on specifics, his latest comments were the clearest sign yet of a long-term commitment to such expansion plans.It is likely to take years to establish designs and potentially set up a specialized satellite-making facility. But SpaceX already has some important building blocks. Industry officials said the company builds its own navigation and flight-control systems for spacecraft, which could provide some elements for satellites. There also are synergies between parts SpaceX makes today for solar arrays on spacecraft and such devices intended for satellites.One big technical and financial challenge facing the proposed venture is the cost installing ground-based antennas and computer terminals to receive the satellite signals. That issue has bedeviled some earlier Internet-via-satellite projects and threatens to complicate Google's efforts, satellite industry officials and consultants say.Another unanswered question is how SpaceX plans to transmit Internet signals to Earth. The company isn't believed to control rights to radio spectrum.Mr. Musk has discussed using optical-laser technology in his satellites, according to a person familiar with the matter. That technology works by beaming information from satellites in space. But lasers wouldn't be a reliable way to deliver Internet service to Earth because, unlike radio waves, they don't easily pass through clouds.The talks are somewhat unusual for Mr. Musk, who has resisted most outside investments that could reduce even slightly his control over SpaceX. Industry officials said if problems arise, SpaceX might need additional capital in the next few years to fund new rocket development and more launches. It isn't clear what terms are under discussion.The Wall Street Journal reported Mr. Musk's interest in satellite-Internet service in November, saying he was talking with Mr. Wyler.Mr. Wyler last week said his new venture, OneWeb Ltd., had secured funding from Richard Branson 's Virgin Group and chip company Qualcomm Inc. Mr. Wyler said he hopes to provide Internet service from a constellation of 648 satellites in low-Earth orbit, using a large block of radio spectrum he controls. Mr. Wyler estimated the plan would cost as much as $2 billion.Messrs. Musk and Wyler stopped working together because of disagreements over control of any joint project, according to a person familiar with their discussions.White House announces State of the Union guestsDavid Jackson - USA TodayFormer Cuba prisoner Alan Gross and astronaut Scott Kelly will be among first lady Michelle Obama's guests at Tuesday night's State of the Union Address, the White House announced Monday.The 22 guests also include students and educators, health care officials and recipients, government officials, and a wounded veteran who fought in Afghanistan. Some of the guests wrote letters to Obama about various issues.The invitees symbolize some of the themes of Obama's speech, such as his recent decision to normalize relations with Cuba following Gross' release.The White House list, in alphabetical order:Malik Bryant (Chicago), letter writerThe 13-year-old sent a letter to Santa over the holidays, but rather than request the usual gifts, Malik wrote: "All I ask for is for safety I just wanna be safe."Chelsey Davis (Knoxville, Tenn.), student, Pellissippi State Community CollegeA native of Jefferson City, Davis decided that community college was the best path to re-enter her collegiate career with the ideal support and resources.William Elder Jr. (Englewood, Colo), medical school studentElder graduated from Stanford and is currently a third-year medical student at the Boonshoft School of Medicine at Wright State University in Ohio. He was diagnosed with cystic fibrosis when he was 8 years old, at a time when most cystic fibrosis patients were only expected to live to early adulthood.LeDaya Epps (Compton, Calif.), laborer apprenticeEpps never had things handed to her. Born in Compton and raised in the Los Angeles foster care system until she was a teenager, Epps graduated high school but found it difficult to secure a stable job, bouncing from job to job as a medical assistant for years. That changed when she was afforded the opportunity to complete a union apprenticeship in construction.Rebekah Erler (Minneapolis), letter writerErler is a 36-year-old working wife and mother of two preschool-aged boys. Her family was hit hard by the downturn in the housing market when her husband's construction business went under. After relocating from Seattle to Minneapolis and a number of difficult jobs, Erler's husband is now back in the re-modeling industry, gets home in time for dinner each night with their family, and is enjoying continued professional growth.Victor Fugate (Kansas City, Mo.), letter writerFugate first wrote to the president three years ago, sharing how he went from being an unemployed new father continuing his education to obtaining his degree and working with low-income patients to obtain medical care.Retired Army Staff Sgt. Jason Gibson (Westerville, Ohio), letter writer, wounded warriorGibson first met Obama in 2012 at Walter Reed while recovering from injuries he sustained serving his country in Afghanistan. In October, Gibson wrote a letter to thank the president for visiting him as he recuperated and to underscore that "there is life after a traumatic event and good can come of all things."Alan and Judy Gross (Washington)After five years of wrongful imprisonment in Cuba, USAID sub-contractor Alan Gross was reunited with his wife Judy and his family on Dec.17. That same day, Obama announced that the United States was changing its relationship with the people of Cuba.Nicole Hernandez Hammer (Southeast Florida), mother and sea level rise researcherGrowing up in South Florida, Hammer knows firsthand the impacts of climate change and sea level rise and is raising awareness to the disproportionate effects felt along the coast and beyond. As a sea level researcher, she has studied how cities and regions most vulnerable to the effects of climate change also have large concentrations of Hispanics.Scott Kelly (Houston), astronautThis March, Kelly will launch to the International Space Station and become the first American to live and work aboard the orbiting laboratory for a year-long mission.Anthony Mendez (Bronx, N.Y.), student, "Reach Higher" InitiativeGrowing up in the South Bronx with his mother and three siblings, Mendez names two experiences from his formative high school years. In ninth-grade, his best friend was murdered in his neighborhood, and the next year his family was evicted from their home and moved into a homeless shelter. Living two hours away from school, for six months Mendez had to wake up at 4:30 a.m. to continue his education. Overcoming these experiences, he became the first high school graduate in his family – his story of perseverance represents the core of first lady Michelle Obama's Reach Higher initiative.Larry J. Merlo (East Greenwich, R.I), president and CEO, CVS HealthMerlo, 59, is president and chief executive officer of CVS Health, which serves 100 million people each year through its 7,800 retail pharmacies, 900 walk-in medical clinics, and a pharmacy benefits manager with nearly 65 million plan members.Katrice Mubiru (Woodland Heights, Calif.), letter writer, career technical education teacherIn January 2012, Mubiru, a career-technical education teacher for the Los Angeles unified school district, sent a letter to the president encouraging him to support K-12, adult and career technical education.Astrid Muhammad (Charlotte, N.C.), letter writerMuhammad, a wife and mother of 6- and 10-year-olds, was diagnosed with a brain tumor in May 2013, but at the time she didn't have health insurance and delayed treatment. Last year, she enrolled in the Marketplace and obtained health insurance. Prior to the Affordable Care Act, insurance companies could have refused treatment for her pre-existing tumor, but on Aug. 28 — now fully insured — she had surgery to remove the tumor.Kathy Pham (Washington), United States Digital ServicePham is a computer scientist with a passion for public service. Throughout her career, she has used technology to tackle pressing challenges. From Google to IBM to Harris Healthcare Solutions, she has designed health care interoperability software, studied disease trends with data analytics, and built data warehouses for hospitals.Capt. Phillip C. Tingirides (Irvine, Calif.), Los Angeles Police DepartmentThe south Los Angeles neighborhood of Watts has seen dramatic improvement in the crime rate since the area was tied to the eponymous race riots of 1965 and a spate of gang violence in the '90s — and Tingirides has worked toward and seen a continued decrease in crime since the start of the Community Safety Partnership program in late 2011.Catherine Pugh (Baltimore City, Md.), Maryland Senate majority leaderState Sen. Pugh is a small-business owner who currently serves as the Maryland Senate majority leader and is also president-elect of the National Black Caucus of State Legislators.Carolyn Reed (Denver), letter writer, small-business ownerReed wrote to the president about how she was able to expand her small business and open an additional Silver Mine Subs shop in Denver thanks to a loan from the Small Business Administration.Dr. Pranav Shetty (Washington), International Medical CorpsDr. Shetty is the global emergency health coordinator for International Medical Corps, a critical partner in the U.S.-supported effort to bring the Ebola epidemic under control in West Africa.Prophet Walker (Carson, Calif.), Watts United Weekend, co-founderWhile serving a six-year prison sentence for robbery, Walker, now 27, vowed never to get caught in the revolving door of a life of crime and continued incarceration. He turned his focus to education, starting a program in prison that provides fellow inmates a chance to complete a two-year degree.Tiairris Woodward (Warren, Mich.), Chrysler auto workerWorking for the local school system, Woodward, 43, wasn't making enough money to support herself and her three children, the youngest of whom has special needs. She started working for Chrysler in 2010 on the assembly line, and after doing both jobs full time, working 17 hours a day, Tiairris was in a position to move solely to Chrysler — a union job that makes her a member of United Auto Workers Local 7.Ana Zamora (Dallas), letter writer, student, DREAMerZamora wrote to the president in September, "as with any other dreamer, my parents came to this country with a dream of a better future for their children." And through the Administration's Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program, Zamora is closer than ever to fulfilling those dreams.Redesign likely needed for Orion airbag systemStephen Clark – Spaceflight NowEngineers plan to redesign part of the Orion capsule's self-righting flotation system that only partially engaged as the spacecraft splashed down in the Pacific Ocean following an orbital test flight in December, NASA officials said.The airbag system was the only part of the Orion test flight that did not go according to plan, and NASA officials have hailed the mission as a success.The airbags are designed to flip the Orion capsule upright if it lands upside down. The craft splashed down in the so-called "Stable 1″ configuration — right side up — after its two-orbit test flight Dec. 5.But the airbags are designed to inflate on every mission, and only two of the five spheres kept pressure as designed. Two more bags quickly lost pressure after inflation, and another failed to fill with helium at all, according to Jules Schneider, Lockheed Martin's Orion operations manager at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida.Lockheed Martin is prime contractor for the Orion program. The company managed the capsule's Dec. 5 test flight.The Orion spacecraft launched from Cape Canaveral aboard a Delta 4-Heavy rocket and reached a maximum altitude of 3,600 miles during the mission, which lasted four-and-a-half hours from takeoff to splashdown.Lockheed Martin will deliver a post-mission report to NASA on March 4, and a first glance at the flight's results show the Orion spacecraft met 85 of 87 test objectives outlined before the launch."The two we didn't (meet) was to inflate all of the crew module uprighting system bags and keep them inflated for an extended period of time," said Bill Hill, NASA's deputy associate administrator for exploration systems development. "They're supposed to be able to maintain inflation for 24 hours, and we did not meet that capability."Pyrotechnic initiators in the airbag system fired as designed, Hill said, but only two of the airbags pressurized and stayed inflated.Hill told the NASA Advisory Council's human exploration and operations committee Jan. 13 that engineers will have to change the design of the internal plumbing that feeds the airbag system."We've got some redesigning to do on that," Hill said. "The plumbing, I don't think anybody believes is a long-term capability. It's a 5,000 psi (pounds per square inch) helium system, and we're using threaded connections. We believe that we probably leaked out anything that was attempted to be inflated. We don't know that yet for sure, but that's one of the things we're intending to investigate."NASA billed the Dec. 5 test flight — named Exploration Flight Test-1 — as an opportunity to wring out technical problems before a major engineering review planned this year to finalize the Orion spacecraft's design.Another unpiloted Orion test flight is scheduled for 2018 for liftoff on NASA's new Space Launch System heavy-lift rocket. The first Orion mission with astronauts on-board is set for 2021 to the vicinity of the moon."EFT-1 was tremendously successful," said Bill Gerstenmaier, head of NASA's human exploration and operations directorate. "The data review so far looks really, really good."Gerstenmaier said the spacecraft used "dramatically less" hydrazine maneuvering fuel than predicted, and the capsule received better than expected navigation data from GPS satellites.The Orion spacecraft consumed 93 pounds of hydrazine fuel during the test flight. The propellant fed thrusters that kept the capsule on track after separating from the Delta 4 rocket's upper stage for re-entry.Officials predicted the craft would burn about 119 pounds of hydrazine, according to a chart presented by Hill to the advisory committee."The biggest thing that we under-predicted on was the hydrazine consumption — the propellant for in-space maneuvers," Hill said.Hill credited an on-target launch from United Launch Alliance's Delta 4 for the low fuel consumption."ULA placed us right where we asked them to place us," Hill said. "We were actually over two sigma (two standard deviations) low on that prediction, and that's something we will take a look at because we've got about 300 pounds of hydrazine to off-load the vehicle."The capsule also used less battery power than NASA expected, according to Hill.After splashdown in the Pacific Ocean, U.S. Navy divers recovered the capsule and returned it to San Diego aboard the USS Anchorage amphibious transport ship. NASA trucked the spacecraft across the country to the Kennedy Space Center, where it arrived Dec. 18 for post-flight processing.The capability to reuse the Orion capsule was not part of the test flight's success criteria, but NASA plans to recycle the spacecraft to fly on an atmospheric high-altitude abort test in 2018."The spacecraft looks reusable, and it's in fine shape," Hill said, adding that a thorough engineering inspection is still needed to make a final determination whether the capsule can be used again."We're still taking a look at where we might use it," Hill said. "Our original plan was to use the EFT-1 command module for the altitude abort test, and we're in the process of evaluating that."Ground teams noticed a few dings on the outer skin of the spacecraft, likely from strikes by space debris."All in all, it's in great shape," Hill said. "The backshell portion that we're pulling off to de-service — those are the black portions on the upper part of the vehicle — they look like they could be reused."The capsule's 16.5-foot-diameter heat shield worked well, officials said.The Orion spacecraft plunged back into the atmosphere at 20,000 mph — about 84 percent of the velocity it would see coming back from the moon — and weathered temperatures near 4,000 degrees Fahrenheit.Avcoat insulation manually applied to 330,000 individual cells on the heat shield's fiberglass-phenolic honeycomb structure was supposed to ablate away during the Orion spacecraft's re-entry, protecting the underlying structure from searing temperatures.The Orion heat shield's titanium skeleton and carbon fiber skin was fabricated by Lockheed Martin in Colorado. The skeleton was shipped to Textron Defense Systems in Massachusetts for installation of the honeycomb structure and filling of the Avcoat cells.NASA and Lockheed Martin will likely change the heat shield design for future Orion missions, using the same material but a different manufacturing method.Hill said engineers are evaluating a "block" heat shield design to replace the "monolithic" structure used on EFT-1."We had cracking issues with the monolithic (design), very similar to what Apollo dealt with," Hill said. "We had a standard repair that they used, and we used, prior to launch. We're trying to get away from that."Under the block design approach, Textron will apply the Avcoat to the heat shield differently. The heat shield for Orion's Dec. 5 test flight was manufactured in one piece instead of in multiple blocks.Hill said switching to a heat shield composed of multiple blocks would allow Textron to add the Avcoat ablator over time instead of all at once, ensuring workers retain "critical skills" needed for the Orion program.A final decision on a new heat shield design is planned for April, Hill said.Dealing with Space Junk: The Rocky Road AheadLeonard David - Space.comEarth is encircled by an orbiting junkyard.Following 50 years of space exploration and utilization, more than 22,000 pieces of space junk at least 4 inches (10 centimeters) wide are now being tracked in Earth's orbit.And hundreds of thousands to millions of bits of space flotsam are too small to be spotted with current tracking capabilities. Many of these tiny, fast-moving pieces are capable of crippling or taking out a spacecraft. [7 Wild Ways to Clean Up Orbital Debris]In October, for example, the International Space Station had to be maneuvered via Europe's Automated Transfer Vehicle (ATV) to avoid a hand-size piece of Russia's Cosmos 2251 satellite, which broke up after colliding with another satellite in 2009.Any cleanup program will take years to implement and decades to carry out. To be sure, space junk is an international concern and will be the topic of many high-level discussions in 2015 and beyond.Domino effectThe University of Maryland's Center for Orbital Debris Education and Research (CODER) held an Orbital Debris Workshop over three days this past November to discuss.a number of space-junk issues, including intersections with space policy and national security, as well as treaty and legal concerns.Also detailed in the meeting were entrepreneurial opportunities, as well as debris tracking, modeling and simulation technologies.The historical aspects of debris creation were addressed by Donald Kessler, NASA's first senior scientist for orbital debris.Now retired from NASA, Kessler has been dubbed the "Father of Orbital Debris." In the 1970s, he proposed that space-junk collisions could have a dramatic cascading effect, eventually generating so much debris that the flotsam could threaten space exploration and satellite operations. This troubling snowball effect is now known as the "Kessler syndrome."Sustainable space environmentKessler was pleased to see a diversity of experts at the meeting, all of whom were interested in maintaining a sustainable space environment."In the past, most of the attention has been focused on technical issues. However, legal issues and outdated policy could discourage the financial incentives necessary to solve the technical issues and make them operational," Kessler told Space.com.Kessler said that there is a critical need for government, commercial and legal communities to work together "to develop a realistic long-term space management policy that leads to a sustainable space environment." [Satellite Quiz: How Much Do You Know?]Technological fixesAnother workshop participant was Roger Launius, Associate Director for Collections and Curatorial Affairs at the Smithsonian Institution's National Air and Space Museum in Washington, D.C."My first thought is that this is fundamentally a policy problem to be solved, yet there seems to be no serious effort underway — not even modest rules of the road — that will solve this problem," Launius told Space.com.A good majority of the people participating in the meeting were engineers who focused on technological fixes, Launius said. "Some of those [proposed solutions] might actually work, but they also raise more policy issues which no one seems to know how to fix," he said.Lasers in the jungleFor example, the use of lasers to de-clutter space was championed by some during the meeting."Even if technically feasible, what level of international saber rattling would come from efforts to laser anything in space, either from the ground or from spacecraft? Weapons in space … how could they be considered anything else?" Launius said. "What could possibly go wrong?""Orbital debris really seems to be a 21st century problem of the community of nations, and it will have to be solved in an international setting," Launius said. One worrisome trend, he said, is the increasing number of tiny CubeSats and their potential for creating large additional debris fields.Technical problemAnother workshop attendee was Dennis Wingo, CEO of Skycorp Inc., based at the NASA Ames Research Center in Moffett Field, California."The principal problem with low-Earth orbit [LEO] orbital debris is that the Russians own most of it and will allow nothing to be done," Wingo said. "Nothing will be done for the rest until a disaster happens and everyone is forced into it."Wingo's view is that there's a fundamental technical problem: the amount of energy that it takes to move from one piece of debris to the next."As far as I can see, electrodynamic tethers are the only realistic means of dealing with the problem," Wingo said, referring to a strategy that would use magnetic-field forces of the Earth to hasten the orbital decay of a satellite.Making a business caseThe experts at the CODER meeting also focused on ways to make taking out space junk profitable."Due to energies required to move from orbit to orbit, it is almost impossible to make a business case for commercial LEO orbital debris removal," Wingo said.But the situation at the higher-up geosynchronous orbit (GEO) — where many communications and weather satellites lie — is a different story, Wingo said. Most debris in GEO is co-orbital — two or more objects share, or almost share, an orbit."In GEO, we cannot wait until a disaster, due to the enormous financial consequences involved in a single collision," Wingo said. "Yet neither the operators nor the insurance underwriters seem to have any sense of urgency on the matter."Launius sees a host of unanswered questions surrounding the orbital debris issue."I wish I had some answers, but at least the first step is to admit we have a problem. The people at the workshop at least recognize the problem. I'm not sure most others do," Launius concluded.Symbol of NASA's space shuttle program torn downJames Dean – Florida TodayA unique symbol of NASA's space shuttle program and Kennedy Space Center fixture since 1978 was brought to its knees in recent weeks, the latest structure demolished because it wasn't needed after the shuttle's 2011 retirement.The Mate-Demate Device, or MDD, was a gantry-like structure designed to lift 100-ton shuttle orbiters on and off modified 747 jumbo jets that ferried shuttles home after landings at Edwards Air Force Base in California, and out west for maintenance.There are only two such devices. KSC's was nearly identical to the original at NASA's Armstrong (formerly Dryden) Flight Research Facility at Edwards, which was torn down starting last summer.KSC's steel truss structure stood 105 feet tall and 105 feet wide, with platforms at various levels and cranes to hoist the orbiters.Crews began its demolition in late October and finished the roughly $250,000 job in early December. They weakened the steel structure at strategic points until it collapsed with a crash onto the apron of the Shuttle Landing Facility."It looked like it was coming down on its knees," said Ismael Otero, the NASA project manager for the demolition. "It was a tremendous amount of weight coming down hard."Otero, a 59-year-old Melbourne resident responsible for numerous demolition projects, felt no special attachment to the MDD.But its fall was an emotional event for some firefighters who work nearby."It was extremely meaningful to them, because they used to do training exercises there," said Otero. "So it was sad."The KSC device was first used to detach the orbiter prototype Enterprise from a 747 Shuttle Carrier Aircraft, then all five orbiters when they were first delivered from their Palmdale, California, assembly facility.It remained essential infrastructure even after the last shuttle landed at KSC, as it later hoisted Discovery and Endeavour onto jumbo jets for rides to their museum retirement homes in Virginia and California, respectively.The Mate-Demate Device had been eligible for listing on the National Register of Historic Places, "as it clearly embodies the distinctive characteristics of its design and method of construction," a survey found, and because "it has achieved exceptional significance within the past 50 years."NASA outlines why it passed over Sierra NevadaStephen Clark – Spaceflight NowNASA cited the complexity of Sierra Nevada's Dream Chaser space plane and an uncertainty of when the proposed crew transport craft would be ready to fly astronauts to the International Space Station as the primary reasons the agency picked Boeing and SpaceX for lucrative contracts to develop commercial space taxis.Sierra Nevada's Dream Chaser spacecraft, which would take off on top of a United Launch Alliance Atlas 5 rocket and land on a runway like the space shuttle, is not as far along in development as the competing CST-100 and Crew Dragon capsules proposed by Boeing and SpaceX, according to a source selection statement signed by Bill Gerstenmaier, head of NASA's human exploration and operations directorate."A winged spacecraft is a more complex design and thus entails more developmental and certification challenges, and therefore may have more technical and schedule risk than expected," Gerstenmaier wrote in the selection statement.NASA wants to have the commercial crew capsules operational by the end of 2017 to end U.S. purchases of astronaut seats on Russia's Soyuz ferry craft. Before NASA permits its astronauts to fly on the CST-100 and Crew Dragon, each spaceship will go through ground testing and complete unpiloted and crewed test flights.NASA released the document late Friday outlining the rationale for its selection of Boeing and SpaceX in a competitive procurement to develop and build spacecraft to ferry astronauts between Earth and the space station in low Earth orbit.Read the full selection statement.The space agency announced the Boeing and SpaceX contracts on Sept. 16, but officials initially withheld the reasoning for the agency's decision over concerns about the release of information considered proprietary by each company. A review by the Government Accountability Office sparked by a protest of the Boeing and SpaceX deals by Sierra Nevada, which was shut out of a contract, further delayed the release of the source selection document, according to a blog post on NASA's website.The statement describes why Boeing and SpaceX received contracts worth $6.8 billion to complete development of the CST-100 and Crew Dragon capsules.The Commercial Crew Transportation Capability, or CCtCap, contracts cover the design, testing and certification of the CST-100 and Crew Dragon spacecraft. The contracts guarantee each company at least two full-up operational missions to rotate crews on the space station, with options for up to six flights through 2019.The spaceships will accommodate up to seven astronauts — or a smaller crew mixed with supplies — and stay attached to the space station for up to 210 days, serving as a lifeboat back to Earth in case of an emergency.The CST-100 capsule will launch on ULA's Atlas 5 rocket, while the Crew Dragon vehicle will take off on SpaceX's Falcon 9 booster. Both spaceships will launch from Cape Canaveral.If NASA exercises all the contract options, Boeing's deal is worth up to $4.2 billion, and the value of SpaceX's contract is $2.6 billion.Gerstenmaier acted as the selection authority and made the final decision on which companies won the CCtCap contracts after advice from an evaluation board.In the source selection statement, Gerstenmaier writes that SpaceX's proposal had the best price and was rated "very good" on the mission suitability metric, with a high confidence level it could complete the work based on the company's past performance on similar contracts."Of the other two proposals, Boeing has a higher price than SNC (Sierra Nevada Corp.) but also is the strongest of all three proposals in both mission suitability and past performance," Gerstenmaier wrote. "Boeing's system offers the most useful inherent capabilities for operational flexibility in trading cargo and crew for individual missions. It is also based on a spacecraft design that is fairly mature in design."In its request for bids for the CCtCap contracts, NASA said price was the primary evaluation criteria for its decision. Two other factors, mission suitability and past performance, were to be combined to receive equal consideration by NASA when it decided which companies would win awards.SpaceX's price in its Crew Dragon proposal was $1.75 billion, Boeing's price was $3.01 billion and Sierra Nevada's was $2.55 billion, according to a GAO statement released Jan. 5 that upheld NASA's decision on the commercial crew contracts. Those prices do not include the extras bundled into the final contract values, such as full-fledged crew rotation flights once the CST-100 and Crew Dragon vehicles are certified by NASA.Gerstenmaier also wrote that Boeing has the "best management approach, with very comprehensive and integrated program management, and an effective organizational structure, further ensuring they will be able to accomplish the technical work in a manner than meets NASA's standards."He wrote that Boeing's "excellent past performance" on other work, particularly in a separate contract that covered the initial steps in certifying the CST-100 crew capsule for human occupants, gave him higher confidence the company will be ready to launch astronauts by 2017."I consider Boeing's superior proposal, with regard to both its technical and management approach and its past performance, to be worth the additional price in comparison to the SNC proposal," Gerstenmaier wrote.Sierra Nevada received the lowest technical evaluation rating — still "very good" — from NASA's source evaluation board, according to the selection document."I consider SNC's design to be at the lowest level of maturity, with significantly more technical work and critical design decisions to accomplish," Gerstenmaier wrote. "The proposal did not thoroughly address these design challenges and trades. SNC's proposal also has more schedule uncertainty. For example, some of the testing planned after the crewed flight could be required before the crewed flight, and the impact of this movement will greatly stress the schedule."Gerstenmaier noted that Sierra Nevada has not decided on a final design for the Dream Chaser's propulsion system, a major component of any spacecraft. He wrote that the space plane's abort system also needed additional verification.Sierra Nevada officials have touted the Dream Chaser's runway landing capability as offering less stressful return ride for astronauts and research specimens. The CST-100 capsule will parachute to an airbag-cushioned touchdown on land, and the Crew Dragon spaceship will return to land under parachutes with the aid of soft-landing rocket thrusters.But Gerstenmaier and NASA advisors concluded the winged design of the Dream Chaser, which is based on the HL-20 lifting body studied by NASA's Langley Research Center in the late 1980s and early 1990s, could pose more engineering challenges than the competing capsule concepts.Sierra Nevada officials say they will seek alternate funding to continue working on the Dream Chaser program.Virgin Galactic plans for new generation of SpaceShipTwoCollin Skocik - Spaceflight InsiderIt has been less than ten weeks since the fatal crash that destroyed Virgin Galactic's SpaceShipTwo which cost the life of co-pilot Michael Alsbury. Despite this setback, Virgin Galactic is already developing a test program for a replacement vehicle, and still hopes to begin tourist flights in 2016. With the setback of the crash behind it, the company appears to be learning from its failures – and moving forward with its efforts to open suborbital flights to paying customers.Despite the crash and the $250,000 price tag, more than 700 potential space tourists have signed up for a ride on the experimental spacecraft. SpaceShipTwo was designed and constructed by Mojave, California-based Scaled Composites. The SpaceShip Company, a subsidiary of Virgin Galactic, is taking over the manufacture of the new vehicles, the first of which is under construction at the company hangar in Mojave, Calif.Virgin Galactic is a part of Richard Branson's Virgin Group, which includes the airline companies Virgin America, Virgin Atlantic, AirAsia X, and hot air balloon operator Virgin Balloons. The prolific Branson also owns book publishers Virgin Books and Liquid Comics, and even owns a drink manufacturer Virgin Drinks, as well as many other, diverse, companies.George Whitesides, the CEO of Virgin Galactic, said that the crash of SpaceShipTwo was: "…the toughest thing that our business could undergo."On Jan. 9, 2015, in a speech at the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics Science and Technology Forum and Exposition in Orlando, Fla., Whitesides said, "Whether on the ground or in the air, developmental test is intended to understand, improve and confirm the capabilities of new systems. Failure in the context of test, while unfortunate and in our case tragic, is essentially part of the deal."Whitesides' comments touched on the fact that the original SpaceShipTwo was lost on a test flight.On Oct. 31, 2014, SpaceShipTwo was dropped from its mother ship White Knight Two. Thirteen seconds later it tumbled out of control, breaking up and plummeting back to Earth. The cause of this accident appears to have been initiated by pilot error. When the craft had achieved Mach 1, Alsbury unlocked the aerodynamic braking system, which is meant to be deployed at Mach 1.4.SpaceShipTwo uses an innovative braking system referred to as "feathering," in which the tail and wing assembly rotates to increase its surface area, creating drag. Although the mechanism was unlocked, postflight analysis showed that the feathering deployment handle was not engaged. It is not yet known why the feathering system deployed, but aerodynamic pressure tore the plane apart as soon as the system was extended.Pilot Peter Siebold was thrown from the craft during the breakup. According to the NTSB,"He stated that he was extracted from the vehicle as a result of the break-up sequence and unbuckled from his seat at some point before the parachute deployed automatically."Siebold went on to state, "'I must have lost consciousness at first. I can't remember anything about what happened but I must have come to during the fall. I remember waving to the chase plane and giving them the thumbs-up to tell them I was OK. I know it's a miracle I survived."Sadly, Alsbury was killed in the crash. Both pilots were employed by Scaled Composites. Siebold is Scaled Composites' Director of Flight Operations, and he flew SpaceShipOne's second powered flight. Alsbury had previously flown as co-pilot on SpaceShipTwo's first powered flight with pilot Mark Stucky.The new SpaceShipTwo was already under construction before the crash, but Whitesides said that he would work with the NTSB to determine the cause of the exact crash and to make any necessary modifications to the spacecraft."Our team has organized the final steps of the build schedule to accommodate any learnings from the NTSB investigation, and we're committed to making any modifications or improvements that we feel are necessary to improve the safety of the vehicle," Whitesides said. "These experienced flight test professionals are now planning the test program for the second spaceship. That test program will not be the same as the test program for the first spaceship, as we will be able to take lessons of the flight test program for that first vehicle and apply them to the second."Michael P. Moses, who was launch integration manager for NASA's Space Shuttle Program, is now Virgin Galactic's vice president of operations. The flight test team is headed by Todd Ericson, former chief of safety at the U.S. Air Force Test Center. Whitesides said the test team also includes experienced military test pilots. One of the test pilots is former space shuttle astronaut Frederick Sturckow, who flew on shuttle missions STS-88 and STS-105 as pilot, and STS-117 and STS-128 as commander.According to Whitesides, flight testing should resume later this year, and, as noted, the company still aims to begin flying commercial flights in 2016."Our company is turning the corner and looking to the future. Our team and our investors remain committed to the goal of opening space to all," Whitesides explained."Understanding space is crucial to save our planet, to solve its greatest challenges, and bringing people into space will help connect people to the Earth in ways not possible now," Whitesides concluded. "We will also see advances in vehicles, which are the key to the solar system. We are undeterred in our commitment to these goals. We have another spaceship at hand, and we are hard at work on LauncherOne. And we will succeed!"When SpaceShipTwo begins its commercial flights, it will not take passengers into orbit; it will take them on suborbital flights to an altitude of 62 miles. Customers will get a great view of the Earth, a few minutes of weightlessness – before returning to the Mojave Air and Space Port. As mentioned, the company has already signed up a number of individuals who want the opportunity to be considered astronauts. Stephen Hawking, Katy Perry, Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie, Ashton Kutcher and an array of other celebrities have also signed up to take to the skies when SS2 begins flights.Ceres in sight: NASA's Dawn spacecraft eyes mysterious dwarf planetAmina Khan – Los Angeles TimesIt's the home stretch for NASA's Dawn spacecraft, which after a 3-billion-mile journey has finally got the dwarf planet Ceres in its sights. Now, Dawn's newest images reveal fascinating features on Ceres' surface that will only grow clearer in the run-up to the spacecraft's arrival March 6.Dawn's newly released images of Ceres are 27 pixels across; that may not sound like much, but it's about three times better than the images it took in December. Those were being used for calibration; these, which cover more than half the planetoid's surface, will be used for navigation as Dawn closes in on its target.At 590 miles across, Ceres is the largest asteroid in the belt of rocky debris between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter, and one of five dwarf planets (a list that includes Pluto). Its nature has long remained a mystery. The best images of Ceres were taken by the Hubble Space Telescope more than a decade ago, and those are still quite blurry.But the Dawn spacecraft, set to enter orbit March 6, is soon to change that. These just-released navigation images, taken Tuesday, are about 80% of the resolution of the Hubble portraits. Taken when the spacecraft was about 238,000 miles from the surface (close to the average Earth-moon distance), Dawn's fuzzy images reveal surface structures that could be craters.A few of the dwarf planet's features -- a bright spot in the northern hemisphere, and two larger dark spots in the southern hemisphere — have been identified by Hubble before. But the images also feature extensions near the dark spots' upper edges that hadn't been previously seen.When Dawn takes its next set of images in late January, the quality should surpass that of Hubble's images, according to officials at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory.Ceres is not Dawn's first target. That honor goes to Vesta, another asteroid in the main belt, which the spacecraft circled from July 2011 to September 2012. Vesta is the second most massive asteroid after Ceres, but the two heavyweights are very different in character: Vesta is dry and elongated in shape, while Ceres is round and thought to be very wet and icy.Found dogDwayne A. Day – The Space Review
On December 19, 2003, Beagle 2 detached from its mothership and was never heard from again. Now it has turned up, spotted in high-resolution imagery taken by NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter spacecraft, apparently more or less intact on the Martian surface. Even if we never learn anything more about Beagle 2's fate, the little mutt may still have something to teach us, provided that people are willing to learn.Beagle 2 has an interesting story: It started out in the latter 1990s as a "private" spacecraft. British scientist Colin Pillinger raised money to build it and have it attached to a larger European Space Agency (ESA) spacecraft named Mars Express, gaining approval in November 1999. In order to drum up support for his project, Pillinger frequently badmouthed NASA, saying that NASA's Mars spacecraft were expensive and bloated and he would show that a Mars lander could be built for relatively little money, privately. But Pillinger ran into fundraising problems and ended up having the British government bail him out. He also may have ended up stiffing his aerospace contractor with an unpaid bill. Eventually the British government grew nervous enough about the mission that it sought help from some Mars experts at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL)—the very people that Pillinger had been ridiculing earlier. All of this should sound like a familiar tune, from the "private" operation that relies upon a government bailout to bashing the experts until it becomes necessary to enlist their help.Mars Express launched in June 2003 and arrived at the Red Planet in December, and still operates there today. Beagle 2 had no system for sending telemetry during its descent, so once it separated from Mars Express there was no way of knowing what happened to it until it activated itself on the Martian surface. When that didn't happen, Pillinger blamed the Martian atmosphere, which he said had gotten unpredictably thin at the landing site, dooming Beagle 2. Pillinger's explanation became the standard public explanation repeated in the media, and he began trying to raise money for Beagle 3.Following Beagle 2's loss, the UK Minister of Science and Innovation and the ESA Director General then created a "Commission of Inquiry" to investigate it. They produced their report in April 2004. Their 42-page inquiry makes for interesting reading. In bureaucratic tones it is quite damning, recounting numerous problems in Beagle's development, testing shortcuts, and potential causes of failure. The investigation specifically ruled out the Mars atmosphere explanation and although it could not pinpoint the cause of failure, the report laid the blame on management. It is in many ways a case study in how not to build a spacecraft.But after the commission produced the report and reporters asked when they would see it, ESA and the British National Space Centre (which helped fund Beagle 2 when Pillinger could not raise sufficient private funding) refused to release it. According to a BNSC statement, "the report was always seen by BNSC and ESA as an internal inquiry. Its purpose was to learn lessons for the future"—something that would be difficult to do if nobody could actually see the report. The report contained 19 recommendations, and BNSC released the recommendations, but not any of the evidence to support them.David Southwood, the head of science for ESA, when told by reporters that NASA did not suppress its failure investigations, declared, "We live in an open society too, but it's open in a different way." That openness involved secrecy. He provided no reasons such as national security, trade secrets, or proprietary data. (See "A Different kind of openness", The Space Review, February 28, 2005.)Fortunately, Britain has a freedom of information law that includes the sensible requirement that the government needs a reason other than covering up embarrassments to keep information secret. The magazine New Scientist sued and the report was released in January 2005—and in fine bureaucratic form, the British government acted like it was their idea to release it all along (that is, no mention of that pesky lawsuit.) And after a few news stories, Beagle 2 was forgotten. Pillinger was never able to raise money for a follow-on spacecraft. He died in May 2014 at age 70.And now Beagle 2 has been found. So what can we learn?There are engineering practices and techniques that should not be ignoredSpotting the spacecraft more or less intact on Mars' surface is an important data point. It indicates that the spacecraft survived reentry intact and its parachute system operated. Some of its solar panels appear to have deployed as well. It is possible that some event during entry, descent, and landing may have caused internal damage that prevented it from fully deploying and operating. Those familiar with Beagle 2's design may be able to make some better guesses about possible failures or, at the very least, rule out some causes.One of the primary reasons it was so important to release the Beagle 2 failure investigation back in 2005 was so that it can be taught in engineering schools and used as a guide for future spacecraft development. It provided a litany of things not to do. Some of those lessons are familiar ones to NASA, which learned them in the late 1990s, like "don't skimp on testing."As the investigation report demonstrated, lessons cannot simply be learned once. They have to be learned again and again, both because people forget, devalue, or ignore them, and because new people are always entering the field. One of the investigation report's recommendations was to provide telemetry during entry, descent and landing—a lesson NASA had applied after its Mars mission failures but the Beagle 2 team ignored. A British undergrad entering engineering school today may have no memory of Beagle 2's failure over a decade ago, so making him read the report will be a valuable training tool.Inquiry and introspection are inherently valuableAnother lesson is the value of lesson-learning itself, of inquiry. Right now NASA and JPL are conducting advanced design work and preliminary construction of the Mars 2020 rover, which will use the entry, descent, and landing system and rover systems developed for the Curiosity rover currently on Mars. NASA and JPL have a long string of technical successes at Mars. But there is more to success than just technical accomplishments. Curiosity has been a success, but it ran significantly over-budget and behind schedule, slipping its launch date by a full Mars window from 2009 to 2011, which cost NASA over $400 million—the equivalent of another small spacecraft. Another way of putting that is that managerial failures with Curiosity cost NASA another, unbuilt, spacecraft.Has JPL learned the lessons of the Curiosity development? Certainly many people working on Curiosity probably believe they have, and there have been public "lessons learned" presentations about Curiosity by project engineers. But have they really learned Curiosity's lessons? Many of the important lessons are not technical, but managerial, such as how soon managers could have realized that they were not going to make the 2009 launch window and throttled back on the funding instead of slamming the pedal to the floor. Somewhere inside JPL there probably exists a thick report on lessons learned from Curiosity, and that report is more useful if it is widely shared, and taught, not only in the halls of JPL but in engineering schools across the country. That lesson can feed forward to future spacecraft designs, and to young engineers who are only now starting to learn about systems engineering and program management.Beware when cutting corners in spaceflightBased upon the imagery, it looks like Beagle 2 may have deployed some of its solar panels but did not uncover its communication system. At least one person has already commented on the Internet that Beagle 2 is "fully operational" except for the communication system. There is no way to know that, and it is possible that even if the communications system had deployed there were other problems with the spacecraft. When spacecraft are designed small and inexpensively, one of the first design decisions is to eliminate redundancy. Instead of two systems, you include only one and save money, mass, and complexity. What if the addition of a backup system on Beagle 2 would have enabled the activation of the communications system? What if the elimination of a relatively inexpensive system caused the entire mission to fail?Cost is not the only or even the most important factorEven if Beagle 2 had operated successfully, it would be a mistake to claim that it was somehow equivalent to the far more sophisticated, ambitious, and scientifically valuable spacecraft that NASA has sent to Mars. It is common for members of the public and the media to make comparisons of spacecraft based primarily on cost and not on capabilities or quality.For example, just last year India successfully deployed its Mars Orbiter Mission spacecraft around Mars. This was an impressive accomplishment, especially for a first try. Many media articles compared the Indian spacecraft to NASA's MAVEN Mars orbiter by noting that the Indian spacecraft was considerably cheaper. Setting aside the fact that the Indian cost figures are not credible (by the Indian space agency's own admission they exclude many costs, like engineers' salaries), the Indian mission carries few, relatively simple instruments, and was primarily a small engineering test spacecraft, not a full-scale scientific spacecraft. NASA's missions are designed to answer important scientific questions, and designed with greater redundancy.Bloated and expensive programs are not good for space science, but cheap spacecraft that don't answer scientific questions do not have much utility of their own. The important factor is not the cost, but what the mission accomplishes for the money spent. NASA's Mars spacecraft have been outstanding in this regard. On January 25, the Opportunity rover will mark its eleventh year operating on Mars.Learning lessons from an old dogWith this new data from Mars we also have a new mystery. Why exactly did Beagle 2 fail? That mystery could serve as a great learning exercise for both new and experienced spacecraft designers. It serves as a reminder that even when we think we know what we need to know, we should still evaluate our assumptions.Beagle 2, silent for more than 11 years, has things to tell us still.Debating the future of exoplanet missions concepts and communityJeff Foust – The Space Review
The last several years have made it clear we are living in a golden era of extrasolar planet studies. Less than 20 years ago, astronomers discovered the first planets orbiting Sun-like stars. Now, the number of exoplanets is in the thousands, including a growing number of "Earth-like" planets, a designation based on some combination of the planets' mass, radius, and orbit around their stars. Just this past Friday, for example, astronomers reported detecting three planets between 1.5 and 2.4 times the radius of the Earth orbiting a single star, one of which lies in the star's habitable zone, where liquid water could exist on its surface.We don't know, however, if these or other Earth-like planets are really like the Earth in the characteristics that really count: whether they have atmospheres like the Earth, oceans of liquid water like the Earth, and life like the Earth. Those determinations are largely beyond the capabilities of ground- and space-based observatories in operation today. A new generation—arguably, generations—of instruments and telescopes will be needed to determine just how Earth-like these Earth-like worlds really are. And the ability to develop those instruments will depend, at least in part, on the ability of exoplanet scientists to come into agreement on what's needed to enable that next round of discoveries.Avoiding the circular firing squadThat agreement is necessary since exoplanet scientists will be competing with researchers in other fields of astrophysics for funding from NASA and the National Science Foundation (NSF) that's unlikely to increase significantly for the foreseeable future, even as missions and instruments become increasingly sophisticated and expensive. Yet, in recent years, the exoplanet research community has gained a reputation—at least among other astronomers—as a fractious one, prone to infighting and disagreement about scientific priorities to pursue and how.In an effort to overcome that reputation, and get as much as the community as possible on the same page regarding future research priorities, the Exoplanet Exploration Program Analysis Group (ExoPAG), a scientific group that advises NASA, discussed development of an "exoplanet community plan" during a meeting in Seattle January 4, just before the start of the American Astronomical Society (AAS) meeting there."We all want to see this science happen, and want to maximize the science we can achieve," Scott Gaudi, an Ohio State University astronomer who is chairman of the ExoPAG, said in remarks kicking off the discussion.Exoplanet astronomers also want to avoid repeating what happened in the last astrophysics decadal survey, published in 2010. That study, prepared by the astrophysics community for the National Academies, and which guides NASA and NSF investments in the field, made frequent mentions of exoplanet science, yet that community felt underserved by the report's recommendations."Planets were everywhere in that report," said Chas Beichman of the NASA Exoplanet Science Institute, "but I think many people in this room found that the recommendations were somewhat less that what we might have expected."Those recommendations included naming as its top-priority large mission the Wide-Field Infrared Survey Telescope (WFIRST), a mission with cosmology as its primary purpose. The survey recommended some technology development for exoplanet research, but another mission that had long been supported by exoplanet researchers, the Space Interferometry Mission, suffered what Beichman called "death by footnote" in the report.Beichman argued that the exoplanet community suffered in the development of the 2010 decadal because of a lack of consensus within it about its priorities. "The community was evolving extremely rapidly," he said, citing developments among a number of techniques to discover and study exoplanets. "Everybody wanted a piece of the pie, a pie that had not yet been made or baked."There was also, he said, tension between what NASA and scientists wanted. "The community was split between a NASA goal, directed by NASA Headquarters, to detect and do spectroscopy of nearby habitable Earths—that's what the then-Origins program was studying—and more modest goals of comparative exoplanetology," he said. "In that case, it was really impossible to arrive at a consensus."Beichman illustrated that point with a cartoon showing a firing squad, each person labeled with a particular exoplanet technique and technology. The firing squad, though, was arranged in a circle, firing inward. "It was not a pretty sight," he said.Astronomers want to avoid a similar situation in the 2020 decadal, which is closer than one might think. "If you start with the decadal survey and work backwards, and think about the things you need to do to be ready for the decadal survey and have this coordinated science vision, we need to be starting to do this process now," Gaudi said. "Maybe we should have started it two years ago."NASA's overall astrophysics program has already laid out one broad vision of its long-term future. In late 2013, NASA published a 30-year strategic roadmap report that identified both the key science goals and the missions—or, at least, general concepts of missions—needed to achieve those goals.That study included science goals for exoplanet science, which Aki Roberge of NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center said included three "quests" over the next three decades. One of those is cataloging the "exoplanet zoo" and their basic properties. The second quest is to better characterize them, while the final one is to look for life on these worlds.While scientists have made great strides in that first quest, achieving the second and third ones will require missions beyond those active today or on the drawing board. One such concept included in the strategic roadmap is the Large Ultraviolet/Optical/Infrared (LUVOIR) Surveyor. It would be space telescope, likely with a mirror eight meters or larger in diameter, equipped with either a coronagraph or a starshade to block starlight and thus directly image exoplanets.LUVOIR is not the only exoplanet mission included in the roadmap. Astronomers went even further out and proposed something called ExoEarth Mapper, which would have the ability to resolve Earth-like exoplanets. As envisioned, ExoEarth mapper would feature a number of large space telescopes arrayed over baselines of hundreds of kilometers in deep space, using interferometry to provide the images.It will be towards the end of that 30-year timeframe of the roadmap report before something like ExoEarth Mapper is feasible, astronomers acknowledged. "This is obviously extremely challenging, especially at optical wavelengths," Roberge said.The discussion that followed those presentations at the ExoPAG meeting didn't reach any consensus about what missions and technologies to pursue, although organizers said from the beginning that the discussion was intended to be the start of a longer-term process. The discussion did help identify where the fault lines might exist within the exoplanet community.One of them is whether their pursuit of a truly Earth-like planet—one that is habitable, if not inhabited—should be a long-term goal. Some people at the meeting said that comparative exoplanetology, including study of a broad range of exoplanets and not just those that may be like the Earth, was an important goal, and wondered if the two efforts could coexist."This isn't a zero-sum game," said Roberge. "If you study habitable worlds, you will inevitably do all that other stuff, too. The spectroscopy of Earth twins provides all the other capabilities that you need to study a wide range of all kinds of planets, and planet formation topics as well."Others also cautioned against designing missions optimized primarily or exclusively for exoplanet studies, versus missions that could carry out a broader range of studies and thus attract support from other astronomers.NASA associate administrator for science John Grunsfeld, who sat in on the ExoPAG meeting, advised for the broader approach based on experience with previous large space telescopes like Hubble. "Most of what those telescopes have discovered weren't imagined at the time those telescopes were conceived," he said.Others at the meeting reminded scientists of the role groundbased telescopes and instruments play in the study of exoplanets, and the technical challenges those efforts face. Debra Fischer, a Yale University astronomer who is one of the pioneers in the use of the radial velocity technique that measures the Doppler shift of stars to look for the wobble created by orbiting exoplanets, argued for a renewed emphasis on increasingly precise spectrographs in order to detect more Earth-like planets.Fischer warned that current spectrographs had precisions of about one meter per second, but needed to get down to about 10 centimeters per second. "It's time for us to admit as a community that we are stuck. We've been stuck for a long time with a velocity precision of about a meter per second," she said. She called for the development of high-resolution spectrographs that would allow astronomers to distinguish between Doppler shifts from orbiting planets and "stellar noise" and thus provide better overall prevision.Concepts for future missionsSome missions already in development or planning will certainly be of help to exoplanet researchers. The James Webb Space Telescope (JWST), due for launch in late 2018, will be able to support exoplanet science, from spectroscopy of potentially Earth-like planets to direct imaging of some exoplanets.WFIRST, while originally seen as primarily a cosmology mission, will also support exoplanet science. NASA has been studying outfitting WFIRST—now likely to make use of one of two 2.4-meter telescopes donated to NASA by the National Reconnaissance Office—with a coronagraph that can block the light from a star, allowing for direct observations of orbiting planets that would otherwise be lost in the star's glare.WFIRST, though, hasn't officially started as a program. An official "new start" for WFIRST is not expected until at least the fiscal year 2017 budget request, due out in just over a year, said Paul Hertz, director of NASA's astrophysics division, at the AAS meeting. That decision will also require the concurrence of the administration.Given concerns that the administration and/or Congress might be wary of starting another flagship-class mission so soon after JWST, because of its earlier budget and schedule problems, NASA has been performing studies of two "probe-class" exoplanet science missions that could be started should work on WFIRST be deferred. These would be smaller missions, with a total cost not to exceed $1 billion.One of the concepts, called Exo-C, would involve a smaller space telescope similar in size to NASA's Kepler mission, but equipped with a coronagraph. A second, Exo-S, would also use a similar space telescope but instead use a "starshade": an external disk flying in formation with the telescope to block out light from the star.Those studies are wrapping up, and for at least one of the concepts, the results look promising. "We have come up with what Paul Hertz asked us to do, which is to come up with a probe mission at the cost cap of $1 billion," said Karl Stapelfeldt of NASA Goddard in a presentation about Exo-C at the ExoPAG meeting.An independent cost estimate of an earlier iteration of the mission concept, performed by the Aerospace Corporation in September, came out to be $1.1 billion, he said. An updated design, submitted to Aerospace for costing in December, should be less, he said.Exo-C would make use of the Kepler spacecraft bus, equipped with a 1.4-meter telescope and a coronagraph to allow direct imaging of exoplanets. The use of the Kepler-heritage technology, plus a launch on a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket, allows the mission to fit into the $1 billion cost cap, he said. "Even if we don't get to fly this mission, we've done the community a service by showing that there does exist at least one probe mission concept in this $1 billion cost cap level," Stapelfeldt said.Exo-S, which would fly a starshade 30 meters in diameter 30,000 kilometers from its telescope, has shown great technical promise, but may be more difficult to do within a single probe-class mission. Launching a starshade by itself to use in conjunction with another space telescope could be done well within the $1-billion limit, said Shawn Domagal-Goldman of NASA Goddard. "Unfortunately, a co-launched mission, where we launch the starshade and the telescope together, looks like they'd be safely over $1 billion together."He said that Exo-S, Exo-C, and the coronagraph-equipped version of WFIRST each have the ability to detect habitable exoplanets. "Essentially, you can view them as a lottery ticket" for potentially determining the habitability of an Earth-like exoplanet.Astronomers are also starting to look beyond WFIRST, or probe-class exoplanet-specific missions, for missions that would get closer to the goals laid out in NASA's strategic roadmap. At the AAS meeting, Hertz formally asked ExoPAG and two other program analysis groups for feedback on a shortlist of potential flagship missions to be considered for the next astrophysics decadal survey, to be published in 2020.Hertz provided astronomers with NASA's initial list of missions, taken from that roadmap document as well as the 2010 decadal: Far Infrared Surveyor, Habitable-Exoplanet Imaging Mission, Ultraviolet/Optical/Infrared Surveyor, and X-Ray Surveyor. He asked astronomers for feedback on which, if any, of those concept missions should be replaced, and if so, with what.By the end of the year, Hertz said he plans to select three or four mission concepts for science and technology studies to flesh out their scientific utility, technology development needs, and, eventually, their cost. Those reports would be completed in time to deliver to the team working on the decadal survey, which will start work in 2018.The studies, Hertz said, are intended "to make the 2020 decadal survey as effective as possible." However, he said it will ultimately be up to the team working on the report to make use of—or ignore—those reports when developing their recommendations for large-scale missions.Whichever mission does end up being selected as the top-priority flagship mission in the 2020 report still won't fly for some time. Hertz indicated it's unlikely such a mission would get a new start until the mid-2020s, as WFIRST approaches launch, and itself would not likely fly until some time in the 2030s.Despite that long time horizon, Hertz said now was the time to start thinking about such missions and their technology requirements. "It's not too early," he said. "We need to identify some missions for after WFIRST in order to start making technology investments."That may make the upcoming decadal a key test of how unified the exoplanet science community really is. At the ExoPAG meeting, some scientists argued that they were not as fractured as they have been portrayed in some media accounts. "I think that opinion is largely outdated," Gaudi said. "Most of us get along pretty well.""I think we're all really going for the same goal," he added. "We're well on our way of achieving that consensus."Follow up: Signs of Ancient Life in Mars Rover Photos?Johnny Bontemps - Astrobiology MagazineIn a paper published last month in the journal Astrobiology, geobiologist Nora Noffke drew attention to features in Martian rocks that she suggested bore striking resemblance to trace fossils of microbial mats on Earth. (For more details, read our original story here.)Not everyone agreed with her interpretation. As Curiosity's project scientist Ashwin Vasavada explained to other news outlets, the team had evaluated the features as non-biological, likely having been shaped by erosion or the transport of sand in water. Vasavada had also raised questions about the decision to publish the report.Astrobiology Magazine reached out to members of the Curiosity team for clarification, to Dr. Noffke for further comments, as well as to the managing editor of the journal Astrobiology for insight into the review process.Hypothesis-Driven Science"I'm intrigued by the topic, and skeptical about the interpretation," said Jack Farmer, a geobiologist at Arizona State University and member of the Curiosity team. "But she does provide a valuable set of observations, and a hypothesis that is potentially testable in the future.""We want hypothesis-driven science, but we should always strive to disprove our own hypotheses." he added. "Science has been described as the orderly accumulation of rejected hypotheses. We need multiple and integrated lines of evidence to show that the features are not easily explained by non-biological processes."Linda Kah, a geobiologist the University of Tennessee and co-investigator on the Curiosity team, said the team carefully investigates all outcrops, and that in the Gillespie outcrop they did not see anything that could not have been explained via abiotic processes. "There cannot simply be the assumption of biogenicity. In science, the null hypothesis (that these are abiotic) must be disproved in order to accept biogenicity."However, Noffke argues that her report does take into account non-biological explanations. "The third part of my article describes potential abiotic modes of formations for these structures, and also explains why they point towards a possible biological origin," she said.She also notes that the distribution patterns of microbial structures on Earth vary depending on where they are found, and also change in a specific way over time. She argued that the distribution patterns of the Martian structures are consistent with those for microbial structures on Earth."Again, I do not claim to have found fossil life on Mars," she said. "My paper is carefully framed as a founded hypothesis, and I only go as far as the data allows me to."Trace Fossils or Erosion?"Noffke did a substantial amount of work and analysis, but it is based on a flawed underlying assumption," Dawn Sumner, a geobiologist at UC Davis and Curiosity team member, wrote in an email. "The surfaces described in the paper are very strongly shaped by recent erosion and thus do not preserve original structures."Noffke responded to the argument by noting that erosion typically follows the biological structures embedded in rocks. "Erosion is strong where there is little resistance in the rock, and weak where there is a lot of resistance," she said.She added: "With a sedimentary surface composed of harder material, erosion will exhume these harder portions by removing the softer parts around it first. This is how dinosaurs and other fossils often resurface after being buried for millions of years."Still, Sumner, who also studies modern and ancient microbial mat communities on Earth, does not agree with the interpretation. "I would argue that the textures on the surfaces of the rocks are weathering-like, not MISS-like (Microbially-Induced Sedimentary Structures), but I haven't made diagrams to show that," she said. "I simply don't see anything that can't be explained by differential weathering, which we know happens on Mars."Preserved in Sandstone?Another objection raised by Curiosity's project scientist Ashwin Vasavada dealt with the formation of microbial sedimentary structures under water current."Given that the Gillespie formation was sandstone, it probably formed in a more active stream environment, which would not be the most conducive for preserving organics," he told the LA Times.But Noffke says this argument is incorrect. A 2014 study by Jack Farmer and colleagues described microbial sedimentary structures preserved in such environments on Earth."Her report can't be dismissed casually; it draws attention to things we should look for in the future," Farmer said. "Her hypothesis is something to carry forward and test objectively."He added: "In the case of our 2014 study, we applied multiple lines of evidence, including microfossils and sedimentological observations, to support our claims."As NASA planetary scientist Chris McKay had commented in our earlier article, a sample return mission would be the best way to resolve the case. But unfortunately this is just not technologically feasible yet.Publishing a HypothesisMembers of the Curiosity team had also raised questions about the decision to publish the article. "We were surprised that such a bold claim was out there in the scientific literature," the Curiosity project scientist told the LA Times. "It's interesting… It's just that we don't think the evidence is quite as strong as what is described in the paper."Astrobiology Magazine reached out to the journal Astrobiology (a scientific publication non-affiliated with the magazine) for further insight into the review process.Its editor-in-chief, Sherry Cady, is a biogeochemist and an expert on microbe-sediment interaction. She also serves as chief scientist at the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, a research facility in Richland, WA, funded by the U.S. Department of Energy.She commented: "The peer-review process was in-depth and held to the highest standards. The original manuscript was sent out to five referees, experts in the field and all seasoned referees. The paper went through four formal revisions with four of those referees until all of their concerns were met. The paper was then edited and reviewed again by myself and Senior Editor Norm Sleep.""Noffke's paper proposes a testable hypothesis, based on three lines of evidence, as a rover on Mars can carefully image and chemically sample putative MISS-like features. Experts in the field who wish to clarify matters of scientific content in papers published in Astrobiology are encouraged to submit their comments for publication in the Journal.""In this way, mission scientists and scientific experts around the world, whose research aligns with planetary exploration goals and objectives, can together strengthen the community's efforts to contribute in meaningful ways to ongoing planetary and space science."Russia to send Venus exploration mission in 2025 — designerITAR-TASS, of RussiaRussia's Venera-D exploration rover that was initially planned to be sent to Venus in 2016 will be launched in 2025, according to a report prepared by the rover's designer, Lavochkin NPO, for the Korolyov Readings in Moscow on January 27-30 that was made public on Monday."Russia's federal space program for 2006-2015 that was drafted back in 2006 provided for a Venus mission project (Venera-D) — a long-lived orbiter and lander to explore Venus' atmosphere and surface. Initially, it was planned to realize the project in 2016, but now the year 2025 is a probable date," the document says.In 2013, the Venera-D project consisted of an orbiter with an operational life of more than two years, a subsatellite, a Vega-type lander with a working life of three hours, and a long-lived station that was to operate on the surface for at least three days."Now, it is suggested to look at a possibility of concurrent operation of the Vega-type lander and a long-lived station with an active life of at least 24 hours and at extending the working life of the long-lived station to 100 hours," the report says.Venera-D's prime purpose is to make radar remote-sensing observations around the planet Venus in a manner similar to that of the Venera 15 and Venera 16 probes in the 1980s or the US Magellan in the 1990s. Venera-D will be the first Venus probe launched by Russia after the collapse of the former Soviet Union.ENDMore at www.spacetoday.net
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