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From: "Moon, Larry J. (JSC-EA411)" <larry.j.moon@nasa.gov>
Date: February 12, 2015 at 12:09:32 PM CST
To: "Moon, Larry J. (JSC-EA411)" <larry.j.moon@nasa.gov>
Subject: FW: NASA and Human Spaceflight News - Thursday – Feb. 12, 2015
NASA and Human Spaceflight NewsThursday – Feb. 12, 2015HEADLINES AND LEADSThe Number of Asteroids We Could Visit and Explore Has Just DoubledDavid Dickinson - Universe TodayThere's a famous line from Shakespeare's Hamlet that says "There are more things in heaven and Earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy," and the same now holds true for brave new worlds for humans to explore.Would you leave your family behind to be the first human to set foot on Mars?Jessica Contrera - Washington PostLeila Zucker remembers the ping of her inbox that launched her on this quest.Falcon 9 Launches DSCOVR on Third AttemptJeff Foust – Space NewsA SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket successfully launched a space and Earth sciences satellite Feb. 11 after two previous attempts were scrubbed by weather and technical problems, but high seas prevented SpaceX from attempting to land the rocket's first stage on a ship.After Plenty Of Starts And Stops, Satellite DSCOVR Starts Its Million-Mile JourneyEyder Peralta - National Public RadioAfter a 17-year back story that involved politics and agency peacemaking, the Deep Space Climate Observatory, or DSCOVR, has now begun a million-mile journey that will take it to a place where the gravitational forces between the sun and Earth are balanced.Let's send a private mission to Europa, expert saysTomasz Nowakowski - Spaceflight InsiderJupiter's icy moon Europa puzzles astrobiologists and sparks the imagination of those interested in extraterrestrial life. It is believed that the moon has a subsurface ocean of liquid water, where life could possibly be similar to microbial life forms on Earth. The likely presence of liquid water has ignited persisting calls to send a probe there. Currently NASA and the European Space Agency (ESA) are planning to conduct their own missions to the Jovian moon.Opportunity Rover on Mars to Hit Marathon Milestone SoonMike Wall - Space.comNASA's long-lived Opportunity Mars rover is about to run a marathon on the Red Planet.NASA panel: Commercial crew program more openJames Dean – Florida TodayNASA is sharing more information needed to evaluate the safety of private rockets and spacecraft being developed to launch astronauts from Florida to the International Space Station, a panel of safety advisers said Wednesday at Kennedy Space Center.Boeing revamps defense, space unit to tighten programsAndrea Shalal - ReutersBoeing Co on Wednesday announced a major restructuring of its defense and space business to tighten oversight of the troubled $52 billion KC-46A aerial tanker and other key development programs, cut costs and keep programs on schedule.European space plane flies around the world on test flightStephen Clark – Spaceflight NowEurope launched a sleek new space plane more than 250 miles above Earth on Wednesday, testing its maneuverability, on-board guidance systems, and a next-generation heat shield as the experimental vehicle glided through the atmosphere toward a pinpoint splashdown in the Pacific Ocean.COMPLETE STORIESThe Number of Asteroids We Could Visit and Explore Has Just DoubledDavid Dickinson - Universe TodayThere's a famous line from Shakespeare's Hamlet that says "There are more things in heaven and Earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy," and the same now holds true for brave new worlds for humans to explore.This result was published earlier this week courtesy of the NASA/JPL Near-Earth Program Office. The study found that the number of possible asteroid targets for human exploration has now doubled from the 666 known in the first study, completed in late 2010.This information comes from NHATS, which stands for the Near Earth Object Human Spaceflight Accessible Targets Study. Yes, it's an acronym containing acronyms. NHATS is an automated system based out of Greenbelt, Maryland which monitors and periodically updates its list of potential target candidates for accessibility. The NHATS system data is readily accessible to the public online, and as of February 11th 2015, 1346 NHATS compliant asteroids are known.This is the Holy Grail for the future of manned spaceflight, and will represent a good stepping stone (bad pun intended) for future crewed missions to Mars. Several hundred NHATS asteroids require less time and energy to reach than the Red Planet, and a few dozen even require less energy to reach than it does to enter lunar orbit.Relative delta-V and return velocity is crucial. Apollo astronauts were subject to a blistering 11 kilometre per second reentry velocity on their return from the Moon, and future asteroid missions would be subject to the same style of trajectory on return to Earth from a solar orbit.The test of the Orion heat shield on reentry during last year's EFT-1 flight was a step in this direction, and the next test will be an uncrewed launch atop an SLS rocket in September 2018. If all goes according to schedule — and NASA can successfully weather the ever-shifting political winds of multiple future changes of administration — expect to see astronauts exploring an NHATS asteroid placed in lunar orbit sometime around late 2023.I know. "When I was a kid back in the 70's…" we expected to be vacationing on Callisto by 2015, as well.Brent Barbee at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center designed the automated NHATS system. It pulls data from a source that many comet and asteroid hunters are familiar with: JPL's Small Bodies Database. The NHATS system then makes trajectory calculations and patches in conical solutions for possible spacecraft trajectories and actually gives potential launch window dates for future missions. Seriously, its fun to play with… you can even tailor and filter these by target dates versus maximum velocity constraints and the length of stays.The first discovered NHATS-compliant NEO was 2.3 kilometre 1943 Anteros way back in 1973, and famous alumni on the NHATS list also include 10 metre asteroid 2011 MD, which passed 12,000 kilometres from the Earth on June 27th, 2011. 2011 MD is on NASA's short list of asteroids ideal for human exploration. Another famous asteroid on the NHATS list is 99942 Apophis which — triskaidekaphobics take note — will safely miss the Earth by 31,300 kilometres on Friday the 13th, April 2029. More are added every day, and the growing curve of discoveries also closely mirrors the rise of automated all-sky surveys such as LINEAR, PanSTARRS and the Catalina Sky Survey, though dedicated amateurs do get in on the act occasionally as well.To date, over 12,000 NEA asteroids are now known, and you can expect future surveys such as the Large Synoptic Survey Telescope set to see first light in 2021 to add to their ranks. The Sentinel space telescope set to launch in 2017 will also boost the known number of NEOs as it covers our sunward blind spot from an orbit interior to the Earth's. Remember Chelyabinsk? That could actually be a great rallying cry for Sentinel's cause, as the asteroid came at the Earth from a sunward direction and avoided the sky sweeping robotic eyes of astronomers.Sometimes, NEOs turn out to be returning space junk from the early Space Age (a low relative velocity and low orbital inclination is often a dead giveaway). Earth has also been known to capture an NEO as an occasional temporary second Moon, as occurred in 2006 in the case of asteroid 2006 RH120.But beyond just creating a database, the NHATS system also presents key opportunities for astronomers to perform follow-up observations of NEO asteroids, which is vital for precisely characterizing their orbits. Two future missions are also planned to return samples from NHATS asteroids: Hayabusa 2, which launched on December 3rd 2014 headed for asteroid 1999 JU3 in July 2018, and the OSIRIS-REx mission, set to launch in late 2016 headed for asteroid 101955 Bennu in 2018.NHATS is providing a crucial target list for that day when first human footfall on an asteroid occurs… or should we say docking?Would you leave your family behind to be the first human to set foot on Mars?Jessica Contrera - Washington PostLeila Zucker remembers the ping of her inbox that launched her on this quest.From: Ron ZuckerSubject: I don't WANT you to...Dan Carey remembers the tears on his wife's face when they discussed his outrageous plan. He wanted to land his name in the history books. She wanted to know: "You would leave me?"Derrick Johnson remembers the moment a bartender asked, "Hey Derrick, how's that Mars thing going?" He remembers his heart lurching. Right then, he was standing next to his new boyfriend. The boyfriend he hadn't expected. The boyfriend who didn't know that Derrick had spent his whole life striving for something bigger than himself, so he had signed up for the biggest something he'd ever heard of."What Mars thing?" the boyfriend asked.Derrick stuttered and stumbled, trying to explain, as they all must have done, Leila and Dan and the 202,583 other people who had applied for this seemingly crazy thing, this life-ending thing, this trip to the planet Mars."Wait, I read about that," the boyfriend said. "Isn't that . . . " he slowed, stressing each word.". . . a one-way trip?"The name of the organization that could be the first to put humans on the Red Planet is Mars One. "One," as in, yes, one-way. It will launch people into space, land them on Mars and attempt to keep them alive for the length of their natural lives — but it won't be bringing them back.One-way is cheaper, according to the entrepreneur, physicist and physician masterminding the Mars One project. One-way is more technologically feasible. One-way, they believe, can happen in the year 2024.NASA has no public plans to attempt a human landing on Mars until the 2030s, and even then, it will certainly be NASA astronauts who take the trip.So what the Dutch not-for-profit endeavor promised was groundbreaking: Anyone could apply. With a decade until takeoff, Mars One founders reasoned that they don't need the most experienced, educated or credentialed astronauts. They need people — four for the first trip, and four every two years after that — who can psychologically handle spending the rest of their lives with only each other on a planet no human has ever set foot upon.Then and now, the skeptics abound. Some say the technology to survive on Mars isn't nearly where it needs to be. Some doubt they can raise the funds to do it. Some are convinced it's all a scam. But no one can prove that the plan is impossible — and for thousands of people, that was enough to put their faith in it.Mars One is nearing the end of its nearly two-year selection process to narrow more than 200,000 applicants into 24. Those candidates, broken into six teams of four people, will spend eight years training and preparing, while competing against each other to determine which group will leave for Mars first. To help fund the estimated $6 billion trip, their experiences will be broadcast on television. Today, 660 candidates remain in the running.You might assume that these people must be some kind of crazy; that they must hate their lives or harbor a death wish. But interviews with 10 of them and application videos made by hundreds of others show a group of people who seem pretty normal. Incredibly ambitious, but sane. Sixty-three have PhDs, and 12 are physicians. They are lawyers, pilots, veterans and businessmen. They come from all over the world: Moscow, Madrid, Miami Beach. The youngest were 18 when they applied, and the oldest was 71.They are people who want to leave a mark on our planet — by leaving our planet.On Friday, they will learn if they have made the next cut, from 660 to 100.Until this week, the candidates have been able to wait and wonder with no immediate pressure to commit to leaving the planet.But if they make it through to 100, things start to get serious. They will have to look at their lives and declare if they really want to keep going, if they really want to make it into the cadre of 24 who will abandon it all. Grass. Beaches. Rain. The slobber of their dogs. The voices of their parents. The smiles of their children. All of it, to live on Mars.Derrick's mom can pinpoint when his life became focused on achievement. After his parents' divorce, and those years getting picked on because he was "not a roughy-toughy boy," she says, he switched schools in the seventh grade. As if a 13-year-old could sense the power of a fresh start, everything changed."I think I had the mind-set at that point that I wanted things to be different," he says now. "I knew there was so much more I could learn, so much further I can go, so much greater I could be, I wanted to push that bar as far as it would go."By high school, Derrick was one of the popular kids. He played soccer, ran track and became the drum major of the marching band. He was voted president of the student body. He told his mom he would make it into a four-year college far away from their home in Maryland, and he did. He told her he would become the drum major of the University of Florida marching band, and he did. When he graduated, he told her he would be mayor of D.C. one day."And if he wants to, he will," she said.But a few years out of college, Derrick had lost that focus. He was 27 and single, toiling away at a government contracting job. His office was in a run-down building in Arlington. The paperwork was boring. One day in April 2013, a co-worker called him into her office."You gotta see this," she said. It was a story about Mars One. Derrick had never been that interested in space or engineering. But back in his office, with a Florida Gators flag on the wall, he was convinced this was his next move.Within days, he wrote the essays. He picked out a gray vest and bow tie and filmed his application video — singing, to a tune of his own making: "Anything can happen if, you dream, and try then stick with it, I want to inspire young lives, to imagine dream and thrive!"He told his mom. She rolled her eyes. He told his co-workers. "What if you meet someone?" one of them asked."I just don't think that's gonna happen," he said.Daniel Carey met his wife in 1982 at Georgia Tech. He was president of the student theater. Anne was working the box office. He asked her out to a dessert place called The Dessert Place.Anne knew all about Dan's childhood dreams of going to space. How he watched the Apollo launches on TV. How he thought humans would have landed on Saturn by now. How he quickly found out how difficult it is to become a NASA astronaut.He grew up to become a data architect instead, and she an accountant. They had two kids, a dog named Joss and a house in Annandale. Their bedroom is space-themed. Anne let Dan decorate it. He chose yellow paint and a red comforter. He filled the bookshelves with "Mars Up Close" and "Red Mars" and "The Case For Mars." He pasted a giant "Star Trek" quote on the wall.When he sat down at dinner and told his family he was going to apply for Mars One, they weren't surprised or terribly worried. What would these Dutch scientists want with a 52-year-old tech guy with no real aerospace experience? It seemed like just another quirky dad thing.And then he made it to the next round.And then Anne was crying.Had he thought about all he would miss?"How do you ask someone who you love to give up something that is important to them?" she said. "And on the other hand, how can they love you if they are willing to leave you to go do this thing they are dreaming about?"His 20-year-old son Jack thought about how quiet the dinner table would be.His 22-year-old daughter Wendy thought about the time her father had dressed as Santa Claus for the whole neighborhood, so dedicated to making the children believe that he dyed his eyebrows white. She had imagined him doing that for her own children one day.Dan thought about those things, too. And he thought about Mars. He believed it was mankind's destiny to explore the universe, that their mission would inspire generations to come. If Mars One decided that out of more than 200,000 people, he, Daniel Carey, has what it takes — the dedication to a team and capability for isolation, the smarts and skills and sensibility to survive on Mars — didn't he have an obligation to go?From: Ron ZuckerSubject: I don't WANT you to. . .but I'd feel like a lousy husband if I knew about this and didn't at least send you a link.Leila Zucker clicked, and there was her future in an NBC News headline: "Wanted: Astronauts for one-way trip to Mars."She knew why her husband had sent this to her. She wouldn't have to explain it to him like she would to so many others."People ask, 'Why would you want to go?' But I see the reverse. Why wouldn't I want to go?" she says. "People ask, 'Well, what if you die?' Well, I could die getting hit by a car tomorrow. I could die of old age. Or, I could die trying to be the first human to set foot on Mars. Why wouldn't I want that?"But of course, there are reasons not to want that.Her job: She told her father at age 3 that she wanted to be a doctor. She applied to medical school three times before she was accepted into Georgetown at 35. Now, she is an emergency room physician at Howard University Hospital, where she gets to play the hero every day. She has, she says, the perfect job.Her house: She loves this house. It is gray on the outside and sky blue on the inside. It has hardwood floors and a kitchen for Ron to make soup and an impressive collection of tabletop board games. It has no room for kids, and they plan on keeping it that way.And her husband: A man who once quit his dream job in D.C. so she could move to California to care for her mother. Who moved back to D.C. so she could become a physician. Who sent her the Mars One application because he knew that her perfect job and her perfect house are just stuff. That's what makes him the perfect husband.The day her video interview with Mars One was scheduled, she thought about her answer to "Why would you want to go?" Norbert Kraft, the chief medical officer of the organization who was conducting the interviews, was bound to ask something like that.She looked into the camera, and he popped up on the screen."Hello, Leila!" he said.She smiled back at him. For her, perfect wouldn't ever be as good as setting foot on another planet."Hello, Dr. Kraft!"For an overachiever, interviews are like a sport. Derrick Johnson chose a yellow paisley tie with a lemon-yellow shirt. He had practiced his slightly gap-toothed smile. And now Kraft was looking at him through the screen, asking him the first of eight questions each candidate would answer. Four were personality questions, to prove they were dedicated team players. Four were knowledge questions, to prove they were intelligent enough to study the assigned technical materials."Tell me about the day when you decided to settle on Mars with no return to Earth, and why?"That day seemed so long ago. Derrick was 29 now, and had long since quit his government contracting job. He was working for the Young Presidents Organization, a network of young executives and business leaders, achievers like himself.And now he had Jonathan. They met in November. Derrick loved the way Jonathan's hair stuck out of his slouchy hats, the way he was always Googling the answers to their silly arguments. He loved the selfie of them together on the home screen of his phone.Maybe it was Jonathan, or the new job, or just being two years older that made Derrick finally grasp the significance of committing to Mars before he even turned 30. He would never be mayor of D.C. Or own a house with a yard. Or have a wedding. He would never have the two kids he had always envisioned, one genetically his and one his husband's.Jonathan didn't need to know any of this yet. Derrick planned to wait until he found out if he was one of the 100 candidates moving on before he said anything about Mars.And then, two days before Derrick's interview with Kraft, they were at Shaw's Tavern and the bartender was asking, "Hey Derrick, how's that Mars thing going?"Finally, they had to talk, and it confirmed his fears: Jonathan had no intention of staying with someone who was going to leave. But they made a pact. There were five weeks until he would learn if he made the cut. Until that day, they wouldn't bring it up again.In his space-themed bedroom, Dan excitedly answered every question of the video interview, trying to project the personality traits Mars One is looking for: curiosity, adaptability, resilience.Tell me about the day when you decided to settle on Mars with no return to Earth, and why?Tell me a story from your life that shows what unique, valuable qualities you bring to a team. Give me some examples what your family and friends say about you wanting to settle on Mars and never come back.And then, the knowledge questions.How much general protection shielding against radiation will the crew receive from the structure of the Mars transit vehicle? How many hours will the reserve of water during normal water usage last? How many square meters of power generating surface area will the first settlement install?And last, the question he didn't see coming.After three years on Mars, given the opportunity that a return flight will be possible, will you take the trip?Dan paused. If he could go to Mars, and then come back, would he? Would they choose him if he said yes?His answer was long. He talked about the psychological effects, the readjustment to gravity, the importance of each team member's skill set."I'm going with the idea that I'm going to stay. So, no," he said, nodding to the screen. "I'm here to stay."The interview ended. He got up, shut his computer and walked out of his bedroom, closing the door on the "Star Trek" quote on the wall:"To boldly go where no man has gone before."Falcon 9 Launches DSCOVR on Third AttemptJeff Foust – Space NewsA SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket successfully launched a space and Earth sciences satellite Feb. 11 after two previous attempts were scrubbed by weather and technical problems, but high seas prevented SpaceX from attempting to land the rocket's first stage on a ship.The Falcon 9 v1.1 rocket lifted off from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station at 6:03 p.m. EST carrying the Deep Space Climate Observatory (DSCOVR) spacecraft. The rocket's upper stage released the spacecraft about 35 minutes after launch, after placing it on a trajectory to the Earth-sun Lagrange point 1 about 1.5 million kilometers from the Earth in the direction of the sun.The launch took place after problems scrubbed two previous attempts. Controllers postponed a Feb. 8 launch attempt because of a problem with a U.S. Air Force tracking radar. A second attempt two days later was scrubbed because of strong upper level winds.Earlier in the day, SpaceX called off plans to attempt to land the Falcon 9 first stage on an "autonomous spaceport drone ship" located about 600 kilometers downrange from the launch site as part of the company's efforts to develop a reusable version of the Falcon 9. The company said heavy seas at the ship's location, along with a problem with one of the ship's four engines, led them to cancel a landing attempt."The drone ship was designed to operate in all but the most extreme weather," SpaceX said in a statement. "We are experiencing just such weather in the Atlantic with waves reaching up to three stories in height crashing over the decks."The company said it would instead attempt a "landing" of the stage on the ocean surface. It warned, though, that "survival [of the stage] is highly unlikely." SpaceX made similar ocean landing attempts during launches in April and July of 2014, and in neither case was able to recover the stage.In a statement issued after the launch, SpaceX said the stage landed within 10 meters of the targeted spot in the ocean. "The vehicle was nicely vertical and the data captured during this test suggests a high probability of being able to land the stage on the drone ship in better weather," the company said in its statement.After Plenty Of Starts And Stops, Satellite DSCOVR Starts Its Million-Mile JourneyEyder Peralta - National Public RadioAfter a 17-year back story that involved politics and agency peacemaking, the Deep Space Climate Observatory, or DSCOVR, has now begun a million-mile journey that will take it to a place where the gravitational forces between the sun and Earth are balanced.Riding a SpaceX Falcon rocket, DSCOVR took off at 6:03 p.m. ET from Cape Canaveral, Fla.This launch is important for SpaceX because it is its first deep-space launch. And it's fascinating because the project emerged from an idea proposed by Al Gore in 1998.As NPR's Joe Palca explained, Gore had been fascinated by the stunning pictures of Earth from space, and he wondered if the U.S. could launch a satellite that would beam pictures of the Earth on a daily basis.Politics became involved as the White House shifted parties and the satellite was thrown into a hangar.But 17 years later — after NOAA and the Air Force found they could use a satellite that measures sun storms — DSCOVR got a new life.And this afternoon, it's finally in space.(A post script: With this launch, SpaceX was going to try to recover the first stage of the Falcon 9 rocket by trying to land it on a platform in the middle of the ocean. Space X tried and failed to do this back in January. Unfortunately, the company said, they had to call off the attempt today because the waves in the Atlantic are "reaching up to three stories in height.")Let's send a private mission to Europa, expert saysTomasz Nowakowski - Spaceflight InsiderJupiter's icy moon Europa puzzles astrobiologists and sparks the imagination of those interested in extraterrestrial life. It is believed that the moon has a subsurface ocean of liquid water, where life could possibly be similar to microbial life forms on Earth. The likely presence of liquid water has ignited persisting calls to send a probe there. Currently NASA and the European Space Agency (ESA) are planning to conduct their own missions to the Jovian moon.The Europa Clipper mission was just approved to receive $30 million in the 2016 NASA budget request and ESA's Jupiter Icy Moon Explorer (JUICE) is scheduled for launch in 2022. But an astrobiology expert, Christopher Impey of the University of Arizona, thinks that the private sector could also take part in the race to Europa."I think the private sector could step in. If Google or Amazon wanted to fund a more ambitious mission and 'brand' what would potentially be the first detection of life beyond Earth, it would be an enormous coup," Impey told astrowatch.net. He is the author of popular books about astrobiology: 'The Living Cosmos: Our Search for Life in the Universe', 'Talking About Life: Conversations on Astrobiology', and 'Frontiers of Astrobiology'.A private mission to Europa is not a new idea. In 2013, an international team of volunteers headed up by Kristian von Bengtson, the founder of Copenhagen Suborbitals, an open source DIY space program based in Denmark, announced the plan of sending a crewed mission to the icy moon. But before they launch any spacecraft, they're launching a crowd-researching campaign. At the moment, they are soliciting ideas and crowdsourcing research to look into the feasibility of a manned mission decades from now. The only catch is that the trip is one-way with no hope of return at the end of the mission. However, they haven't ruled out a robotic mission."The idea was not to be just three nerds meeting once in a while trying to pull this project off because that's completely unrealistic," von Bengtson said in 2013 about the Objective Europa project. "The second option would a government-funded project with a big priority and that's never going to happen. But I think it's possible to do this if you just find everybody who finds this project appealing and interesting. That's how you can do this, at least the research phase."To fully inspect the possible subsurface ocean it is needed to drill through the ice layer on Europa. Astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson said in a 2007 lecture: "I want to go to Europa and go ice fishing. Cut through the ice, lower a submersible, look around and see what's there, see what swims up to the camera lens and licks it." So what stops us from going ice fishing on the Jovian moon?Impey believes that money is the main obstacle. "A mission like this has been on the drawing board for two decades and there are no technical showstoppers to doing it. The issue is money. The Clipper concept will orbit Jupiter and do rapid fly-bys, which keep it fairly cheap. A true orbiter is a billion dollars or more. And a lander and a means to drill or melt through the ice and release a hydrobot would cost $2-3 billion. That's not going to happen for decades," he said.Needless to say, the vision of human exploration of the potentially habitable moon, proposed by Objective Europa team is far more unrealistic for Impey. "That would be great, but is a real stretch. Manned missions to Mars are $10-20 billion and unlikely to happen for 10-15 years, despite what Mars One web site says. The far greater time and energy cost and requirements for life support to Jupiter make that extremely expensive. I doubt it will happen until we have a Moon base and a Mars base and are regularly traveling within the Solar System."While the human space exploration is still in its infancy as we haven't been able to get further than the Moon, Impey proposes to focus on what we have now. "The [Clipper] mission very recently got approved for $30 million in the 2016 budget, which will allow it to proceed, while several other planetary missions may be cut or cancelled. The mission costs much less than a full orbiter so is likely to stay within NASA's budget constraints."He noticed that the proposed NASA mission would teach us a lot about the intriguing Jovian moon: "The Clipper may do a splash-off experiment, dropping a projectile onto the ice and 'sniffing' the composition of the material that flies off, and that would reveal whether or not the ice is mixed with organic materials and life ingredients. The modern instrumentation of an orbiter would do sensitive remote sensing and if not detect life, at least show that the condition are right. It will measure the ice thickness very accurately and so show the best place to eventually drill. It will monitor changes in the ice and so show how much energy exists in the ocean underneath. A lot will be learned."In general, scientists' consensus is that a layer of liquid water exists beneath Europa's surface, and that heat from tidal flexing allows the subsurface ocean to remain liquid. But the opinions are split on the presence of life on the icy moon. "Astrobiologists are moderately confident. The big unknown is the salinity and chemical balance in the ocean under that ice pack. But there is modest heating from the interior, so even though it is a cold environment for life, terrestrial extremophiles handle that with no problem," Impey said.Opportunity Rover on Mars to Hit Marathon Milestone SoonMike Wall - Space.comNASA's long-lived Opportunity Mars rover is about to run a marathon on the Red Planet.Opportunity has now covered 26.094 miles (41.994 kilometers) since touching down on Mars in January 2004, leaving the rover just 660 feet (200 meters) shy of the marathon milestone, NASA officials said today (Feb. 10). An Olympic marathon is 26.219 miles (42.195 km) long.Opportunity should surpass the milestone when it reaches its next destination along the western rim of the 14-mile-wide (22 km) Endeavour Crater. That destination, aptly named "Marathon Valley," appears to harbor several different types of clay minerals — a sign of long-ago exposure to neutral (rather than acidic) liquid water. [Opportunity's Latest Mars Photos]"When Opportunity was in its prime mission 11 years ago, no one imagined this vehicle surviving a Martian winter, let alone completing a marathon on Mars," Opportunity project manager John Callas, of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, said in a statement."Now, that achievement is within reach as Opportunity approaches a strategic science destination," Callas added. "What's most important about the longevity and driving distance the mission keeps extending are not numerical thresholds, but the wealth of scientific information returned about Mars, made possible by these feats."Opportunity holds the record for the longest distance driven on the surface of another world. Second place belongs to the former Soviet Union's Lunokhod 2 moon rover, which traveled 24.2 miles (39 km) in 1973.Opportunity and its twin, Spirit, landed three weeks apart in 2004, and were tasked with searching for evidence of past water activity on Mars. The two golf-cart-size robots found plenty of such evidence, and then kept on exploring the Red Planet, far outlasting their original three-month-long prime missions.Spirit stopped communicating with Earth in 2010 and was declared dead a year later. Opportunity remains active and has been exploring Endeavour's rim since August 2011.But Opportunity is showing some signs of its advanced age. The rover's robotic arm has been arthritic for quite some time now, and recently, Opportunity began experiencing problems with its flash memory, which can store data when the power is off.Therefore, the Opportunity team has been beaming the six-wheeled robot's data back to Earth every day (via NASA's Mars Odyssey and Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter spacecraft) before the rover powers down for the night. They plan to upload new software in the next few weeks, in an attempt to fix the flash-memory issue.However, funding issues, rather than health problems, may ultimately bring the rover to a halt: The White House's proposed budget for fiscal year 2016, which was released last week, allocates no money to Opportunity's mission.That's not a death sentence for the rover, however. NASA officials said they'll review the mission in the future and evaluate whether funding should be sourced to keep Opportunity going. (That's just what happened last year, in fact; the rover was also shut out of the White House's 2015 budget request.)It costs about $14 million per year to operate Opportunity.NASA panel: Commercial crew program more openJames Dean – Florida TodayNASA is sharing more information needed to evaluate the safety of private rockets and spacecraft being developed to launch astronauts from Florida to the International Space Station, a panel of safety advisers said Wednesday at Kennedy Space Center.NASA's Aerospace Safety Advisory Panel held its first quarterly meeting of the year at KSC, which leads the agency's Commercial Crew Program, two weeks after releasing a report that criticized the program for a potentially dangerous lack of transparency."The (NASA) administrator, Charlie Bolden, committed to correcting the situation, and indeed we are seeing significant improvement in the openness and transparency associated with Commercial Crew," said retired Navy Vice Admiral Joe Dyer, the panel's chairman.NASA last fall awarded Boeing and SpaceX contracts worth up to $6.8 billion combined to develop systems that could fly crews to the ISS by late 2017, ending U.S. reliance on Russia for that service.In its 2014 annual report, the nine-member ASAP called the Commercial Crew Program "an exception to the culture of open communication."Given the limited information it was provided, the panel said it was "unable to offer any informed opinion" about plans to certify the commercial systems' safety or progress made toward that end.Panel member George Nield, the Federal Aviation Administration's associate administrator for Commercial Space Transportation, said program briefings this week at KSC were "a lot more thorough and focused on some of our concerns, so we're pleased to see that."The panel credited NASA with selecting two commercial partners with different approaches and philosophies, and reiterated its belief that continued competition between them will ultimately ensure the safest and lowest-cost systems."There's still an awful lot that we don't understand yet about commercial space, but ... I'm confident that as this year goes on we'll have deeper and deeper insight," said Dyer. "These two companies together I'm confident will provide a real path forward."Boeing revamps defense, space unit to tighten programsAndrea Shalal - ReutersBoeing Co on Wednesday announced a major restructuring of its defense and space business to tighten oversight of the troubled $52 billion KC-46A aerial tanker and other key development programs, cut costs and keep programs on schedule.Chris Chadwick, president and chief executive officer of Boeing's $31 billion Defense, Space & Security business, or BDS, said a new organization would oversee six key development programs, just as Boeing has a separate group to oversee development of new commercial airplanes."This BDS Development organization is the next step in breaking the cost curve on our programs," Chadwick said in a statement. He said the move would allow Boeing to "more effectively apply engineering expertise, development program best practices, and program management and integration from across Boeing to our most important development activities."Boeing said Jim O'Neill, head of the defense division's Global Services & Support unit, will run the new organization. Leanne Caret, chief financial officer of Boeing defense, will take over O'Neill's job, and she will be succeeded by Jim Zrust, Boeing's top tax official."This is a major structural change, but it's also a major philosophical change," said Boeing spokesman Todd Blecher.He said the restructuring would help Boeing's defense and space business focus on four core missions: creating new opportunities, executing development of key programs, producing weapons, and supporting them once fielded.Creating a new group focused on development would allow Boeing to lower risks on key new programs, and rapidly shift engineers to look at potential issues.The move comes amid growing concern about Boeing's ability to meet the August 2017 target for delivering 18 new KC-46A refueling planes to the U.S. Air Force after a series of technical and integration challenges.In addition to the tanker program, BDS Development will oversee the Air Force's program to build a new presidential aircraft; Boeing's work on a commercial crew vehicle to ferry astronauts to the International Space Station; NASA's Space Lauch System rocket; Boeing's 502 small satellite effort; and the defense unit's work on the rudder, folding wing tips and other components of the 777X commercial airliner.Byron Callan, defense analyst with Capital Alpah Securities, said the move signalled Boeing's determination to get a grip on the tanker program, where higher costs have dampened the defense unit's performance."It suggests that problems with tanker were a bigger issue than a lot of the Street had recognized," he said.European space plane flies around the world on test flightStephen Clark – Spaceflight NowEurope launched a sleek new space plane more than 250 miles above Earth on Wednesday, testing its maneuverability, on-board guidance systems, and a next-generation heat shield as the experimental vehicle glided through the atmosphere toward a pinpoint splashdown in the Pacific Ocean.The test flight marked new territory for Europe and in hypersonic research, laying the foundation for plans to develop a robotic mini-shuttle and reusable launcher stages in the future.The flight lasted about 100 minutes from liftoff to landing, beginning with a fiery blastoff aboard a Vega launcher at 1340 GMT (8:40 a.m. EST) from the European-run Guiana Space Center on the northern coast of South America.The four-stage rocket flew east from its launch pad, spanning the Atlantic Ocean as it shed its powerful P80 solid-fueled composite motor and two smaller upper stage motors. A Ukrainian-made liquid-fueled engine accelerated the Intermediate Experimental Vehicle to nearly the speed required to achieve orbit, then released the spacecraft more than 200 miles above Earth.The IXV passed above ground stations in Africa, radioing its status back to engineers as it reached the top of an arcing suborbital trajectory at an altitude of about 256 miles (413 kilometers).Steered by four hydrazine rocket thrusters and two aerodynamic flaps, the IXV dropped into the atmosphere, withstood temperatures near 3,000 degrees Fahrenheit, deployed parachutes and splashed down on target in the Pacific Ocean west of the Galapagos Islands."It couldn't have been better, but the mission itself is not yet over," said Jean-Jacques Dordain, director general of the European Space Agency. "Now it's going to be necessary to analyze all the data that was collected throughout the flight."Giorgio Tumino, ESA's IXV program manager, called out status reports on the space plane's descent. The re-entry demonstrator flew out of range of ground communications antennas about a half-hour after liftoff, and the build-up of plasma around the craft during re-entry blocked radio signals.The IXV was programmed to fire thrusters and move its flaps for a series of S-turn banking maneuvers during re-entry, similar to roll reversals executed by space shuttles returning from orbit.Tumino announced the acquisition of signals from the IXV at 1502 GMT (10:02 a.m. EST) after the spacecraft was out of the most stressful phase of re-entry.A supersonic parachute deployed a few minutes later as the IXV flew at Mach 1.5, then a drogue stabilizing chute ejected before the ship's 100-foot (30-meter) diameter main parachute unfurled to slow its speed to about 15 mph.Officials declared splashdown at 1519 GMT (10:19 a.m. EST), wrapping up a 20,000-mile around-the-world journey.More than 300 sensors — strain gauges, pressure and temperature instruments, accelerometers, and an infrared camera — were aboard the IXV to record data on the space plane's test flight. The IXV transmitted the data to engineers before it splashed down.The spacecraft's belly is covered in black ceramic matrix thermal protection panels — made of a mixture of carbon fiber and silicon carbide — bolted to the IXV's structure. Cork-based and silicon-based ablative light-colored materials blanket the space plane's upper surfaces.Once recovery teams retrieve the spacecraft — which measures about the size of a family car — it will be returned to Europe for inspections."It will be hard work, but it will move the frontiers of knowledge further back concerning aerodynamics, thermal issues, and guidance and navigation of such a vehicle — this lifting body," Dordain said. "Thanks to such analysis, it will be possible to prepare for the next step."European engineers are in the early stages of developing a follow-on automated space plane — called the Program for Reusable In-orbit Demonstrator for Europe, or PRIDE — that would launch on a Vega rocket into orbit, perform research and deploy or retrieve satellites, and return to Earth for landing on a runway.The PRIDE program won funding from ESA member states in 2012 and 2014 for initial studies, but the new space plane needs more money to fly by 2020, as hoped by its backers.Officials said lessons learned from Wednesday's IXV test flight will also aid work on other projects."This mission will teach us a lot about the technologies we need to apply in new launch systems, in particular when we think about reusable systems," said Gaele Winters, director of ESA's launcher directorate.The IXV program — with a cost of about 150 million euros ($170 million) — also has applications in space science and human spaceflight, officials said.Future probes to collect and return samples from other worlds will need an advanced heat shield beyond Europe's current capabilities, and although Europe has no plans for its own human spaceflight program, such a vehicle would require technologies tested by the IXV.Wednesday's test mission was the first European re-entry testbed to fly since 1998, when ESA launched a blunt Apollo-like capsule on a ballistic flight around Earth on an Ariane 5 rocket. Development of the IXV began in 2002 with ESA-funded studies, and industrial activities started in 2005."Europe has leadership in going to orbit," Tumino said in an interview before Wednesday's launch. "We have the long history of the Ariane family up to the Ariane 5, and we have also the success of the new Vega launcher. We believe the European know-how in getting to orbit is quite good. We also believe that European competencies in operating advanced systems in space is among the best worldwide, with the ATV (space station supply ship) and the Rosetta mission (to comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko)."We believe the return capability is running behind," Tumino said. "We never closed the loop on the capability to go to orbit, operate in orbit and come back from orbit. The first objective of the IXV mission is we need to gain experience on these types of missions — the capability to return from orbit."The IXV's shape is a lifting body — blend between capsules like Apollo and winged re-entry vehicles such as the space shuttle."What we have decided is to avoid these two extremes, and we came up what we believe is an optimal solution, which is a lifting body," Tumino said, adding such a design "puts together the simplicity of the capsule and the controllability and maneuverability of a winged vehicle."Wingless lifting body vehicles have only been tested in the atmosphere before IXV, officials said."The novel part of this — and this is the first time worldwide — is we are going to test, in flight for a full re-entry, a lifting body," Tumino said in a pre-flight interview.Italy is the prime financial supporter for the IXV and the Vega launcher.Roberto Battiston, president of the Italian Space Agency, said Italy will push for a more defined re-entry program within Europe's space program."What to do next is not easy," Battiston said in remarks after Wednesday's mission. "Defining the future takes vision, risk and not being afraid of making a mistake. But clearly, in order to develop re-entry technology, we have to have a re-entry program."Somewhere in the future, we should know what to do and what to re-enter — people, samples, space planes, whatever," Battiston said. "We have to have an idea how to proceed. The step we did today is a tremendously important one, but it's just one step of a long journey."Officials said representatives from ESA member states would meet later this year to discuss the prospects for the PRIDE space plane program, and attempt to identify more concrete objectives for the new spaceship.The current concept for PRIDE is for the space plane to be a smaller, civilian-run counterpart to the U.S. Air Force's X-37B spacecraft, which flies on classified missions and lands on a runway like the space shuttle."PRIDE is exactly a program designed to figure out first what to do next, and then concentrate initial resources on the first phase," Battiston said. "This is a long journey and has to be part of a grander project of getting to space and re-entry from the European side — maybe on another planet, maybe on Earth."ENDMore at www.spacetoday.net
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