Yep another case of water in the EVA Helmet,,,don't know much more than what has been on the news.
And In other news…
Guess Charlie is off to see Machu Picchu too!
Bolden To Visit Peru On Friday.
Peru This Week (2/25, Ojeda) reports that NASA Administrator Charles Bolden will travel to Lima, Peru on Friday "to express his support in Peru's development of scientific research and technological development," as well as discuss "the ambitious Solar System and Mars Exploration project."
Worden Announces Retirement as NASA Ames Center Director
Earlier today, Pete Worden notified Charlie of his decision to retire as Director of NASA's Ames Research Center. After more than four decades of dedicated public service, Pete said it was time to pursue other opportunities. He is an innovative leader, and a tireless advocate for change who has well-positioned Ames and its people for the future exploration opportunities facing this agency.
Aldrin: NASA Mars Mission Needs To Be One-Way Trip.
The Daily Mail (UK) (2/25, Gray, 4.78M) continues coverage of Tuesday's Senate Subcommittee on Space, Science, and Competitiveness hearing on NASA, with a focus on Apollo astronaut Buzz Aldrin's testimony. Aldrin advocated that the agency send astronauts on a one-way trip to Mars "to avoid the huge cost of bringing crews back home." According to the article, Aldrin stated that if US wants to regain its leadership, it must commit to create "a permanently manned Martian base" by 2019, thus avoiding the "flags and footprints" approach of the Apollo mission.
NASA and Human Spaceflight News
HEADLINES AND LEADS
Successful spacewalk ends with water leak
Astronauts Barry "Butch" Wilmore and Terry Virts floated outside the International Space Station Wednesday for the second of three spacewalks to help ready the lab complex for dockings by commercial crew capsules being built by Boeing and SpaceX. Back inside the station's airlock, Virts reported a small amount of water in his space helmet, but officials said he was never in any danger.
Astronaut Reports Minor Water Leak in Spacesuit Helmet After Spacewalk
An American astronaut found water inside his spacesuit helmet at the end of an otherwise flawless spacewalk outside the International Space Station today (Feb. 25), but he was never in any danger, NASA officials say.
Spacewalking Astronaut Safe After Water Leaks Into Helmet
Marcia Dunn – AP
The leak was scarily reminiscent of a near-drowning outside the orbiting complex nearly two years ago.
NASA Spending Panel Chairman Keeps Focus on China
Dan Leone - Space News
The new chairman of the House subcommittee that funds NASA served notice Feb. 25 that he shares his very vocal predecessor's concerns about Chinese efforts to siphon sensitive technical information from the civil space agency.
First Cruz Space Hearing Inquisitive, Not Confrontational
Sen. Ted Cruz's first hearing as chairman of the Senate subcommittee that oversees NASA and commercial space activities was politely inquisitive and not confrontational as some expected. Cruz (R-TX), a leading Tea Party activist, is a relative unknown quantity on space issues. The hearing exhibited that he is an advocate of U.S. leadership in space, ending U.S. reliance on Russia, and supporter of commercial space.
U.S. Senate Hearing: Video, Testimony on Human Exploration Goals, Commercial Space
Leonard David - Coalition for Space Exploration
U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas), chairman of the Subcommittee on Space, Science, and Competitiveness, convened a hearing on Tuesday, February 24, 2015.
Fly Me to the Moon: The Public and NASA
Kathleen Weldon - The Huffington Post
On March 3, 1915, the U.S. government established the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics, or NACA. In 1958, NACA became NASA. In polls the American public has shown pride in the country's accomplishments in space exploration, along with concern about the costs involved. A review of public attitudes about the space program, from the Roper Center for Public Opinion Research archives:
Russia — and Its Modules — To Part Ways with ISS in 2024
Peter B. de Selding – Space News
The Russian space agency, Roscosmos, on Feb. 24 announced that it will remain a part of the international space station until 2024 before detaching the Russian modules and forming its own outpost in low Earth orbit.
AF Secretary James Not Sure 2019 is Doable for RD-180 Replacement
Air Force Secretary Deborah Lee James added a dose of reality today to projections about when an American-made rocket engine could replace Russia's RD-180s for the Atlas V rocket. During testimony, she said that meeting the congressional mandate to have a new engine by 2019 may not be doable. Her experts tell her it will take 6-8 years to get a new engine and another 1-2 years to integrate it into a launch vehicle.
Giant Asteroid Collision May Have Radically Transformed Mars
An ancient, global-scale impact could explain the Red Planet's mysterious "two-faced" appearance
Robin Wylie – Scientific American
The planet Mars has been associated with its namesake god of war for millennia, but its own past may have been more violent than was previously imagined. A new study suggests that Mars was once hit by an asteroid so large that it melted nearly half of the planet's surface.
Ceres: Bright spot on dwarf planet is a twofer, NASA spacecraft finds
Amina Khan – Los Angeles Times
NASA's Dawn spacecraft has snapped even clearer views of Ceres, but its surface just keeps getting curiouser and curiouser. A strange bright spot on the dwarf planet now appears to have a companion spot shining right next to it.
COMPLETE STORIES
Successful spacewalk ends with water leak
Astronauts Barry "Butch" Wilmore and Terry Virts floated outside the International Space Station Wednesday for the second of three spacewalks to help ready the lab complex for dockings by commercial crew capsules being built by Boeing and SpaceX. Back inside the station's airlock, Virts reported a small amount of water in his space helmet, but officials said he was never in any danger.
Even so, given a near-catastrophic helmet leak in July 2013, engineers will need to troubleshoot the latest issue to make sure the suit's internal systems are healthy enough for Virts and Wilmore to carry out a third planned spacewalk Sunday.
The problem was not noticed until Wilmore and Virts had returned to the station's airlock at the end of a successful six-hour 43-minute excursion. Along with a small blob of cold water floating in his helmet, Virts reported a water absorption pad at the back of the helmet, one of several safety measures implemented in the wake of the 2013 incident, was wet.
"Terry was saying he's got some water in his helmet, he just noticed it a minute ago," European Space Agency astronaut Samantha Cristoforetti told flight controllers in Houston. "It's about 3 inches in diameter, it's kind of pooling on the front side of the helmet above his eye level, and he does feel a little bit of squishiness in the back of the HAP (helmet absorption pad)."
A few minutes later, she said the pad was moist, but not saturated, possibly indicating the water flow did not begin until very late in the spacewalk. The frightening 2013 water intrusion was caused by clogged pores in an internal filter, but it was not immediately known what might have caused the problem Wednesday.
"It's not drink bag water," Virts reported after his helmet was off. "The drink bag bite valve was dry the whole time, that whole area of the helmet was dry and if you taste the water, it has a chemical taste, not exactly like chlorine but something like that. So it's some type of technical water, it's not drink bag water."
Virt's suit, serial number 3005, experienced a similar water intrusion after a spacewalk in December 2013, one of two that followed the much more serious incident the previous July. The December incident occurred at about the same time as the one Wednesday, when the airlock's pressure was holding at 5 pounds per square inch for routine post-spacewalk leak checks. How that timing might play into the troubleshooting was not known.
"At first, I saw just a little bit of water pooled in my helmet and it seemed normal because I was face down and that's where water pools," Virts said. "Except for when there's no gravity, so that's not normal."
The issue will be reviewed during an already planned space station Mission Management Team meeting Friday.
The spacewalk began at 6:51 a.m. EST (GMT-5) and ended six hours and 43 minutes later, at 1:34 p.m., when the astronauts began repressurizing the station's Quest airlock.
During a six-hour 41 minute EVA Saturday, Wilmore and Virts laid out eight bundles of cables near the front of the space station that will supply power and data to new docking port mechanisms that will be launched and installed later this year.
During Wednesday's outing, they first removed a protective cover from a docking port extension on the front end of the space station that was once used by visiting space shuttles. The cover turned out to be fairly stiff, but the astronauts managed to stuff it in a stowage bag as planned.
"Hey Joe, please don't ask us how we did it," Virts joked with astronaut Joe Acaba in mission control.
"I tell you what, I wish I had a video of it," Wilmore said.
"That was the 'stuff your sleeping bag in the bag in the morning' technique," Virts quipped.
The spacewalkers then stowed no-longer-needed shuttle power cables that were disconnected Saturday before installing two final sets of power and data cables needed by the docking mechanisms.
During a brief lull in the work, Wilmore took a moment to marvel at the view as the station passed 257 miles above the northeast coast of South America.
"I'm enjoying this view," Wilmore said. "I haven't gotten to do this much."
"That is a good view," Virts agreed.
"I don't think I've seen blue that blue."
"It's a color of blue I've never seen before, that's for sure," Virts said.
Virts spent more than two hours lubricating the intricate capture mechanisms on the end of the station's Canadian-built robot arm. Using a long tool known as a BLT, for ball-screw lubricating tool, Virts applied the grease to internal components in a bid to reduce friction in the mechanism when the capture systems are activated.
Virts had no problems getting the grease into the capture mechanism, but he noted "this is definitely not a precision tool, I will say that."
"Nor a clean tool," observed Acaba, watching the slightly messy work through Virts' helmetcam.
"No, it's not," Virts replied.
While that work was going on, Wilmore worked on the left side of the station around the Tranquility module, making preparations for upcoming module relocations. He removed a protruding valve and a handrail to improve clearances for one of the module moves and released launch locks on Tranquility's forward and aft berthing ports.
The astronauts ran ahead of schedule throughout the spacewalk, leaving time at the end to accomplish a few additional tasks to get a head start on their third spacewalk Sunday, assuming it stays on schedule.
The goal of that excursion is to install antennas and associated cabling to permit communications with approaching and departing U.S. crew ferry capsules. Initial test flights are expected in 2017. By the end of their third EVA, Wilmore and Virts will have laid out and connected multiple cable bundles stretching some 670 feet.
At least four additional spacewalks are planned later this year to complete the most extensive space station reconfiguration since the end of the shuttle era in 2011. Nearly 900 hours of crew time will be required for the spacewalks, robotic activity and work inside the station to ready the lab for arrivals and departures of Boeing's CST-100 ferry craft and SpaceX's piloted Dragon capsule.
The new International Docking Adapters, or IDAs, are tentatively scheduled for launch aboard SpaceX Dragon cargo ships in June and December respectively. One will be attached to Pressurized Mating Adapter No. 2, the docking port extension on the front end of the forward Harmony module where Wilmore and Virts worked Wednesday to remove its protective cover.
Before the second IDA can be installed, the station's robot arm will be used to move a storage compartment known as the Permanent Multipurpose Module, or PMM, from the Earth-facing port of the central Unity module to the forward port of the nearby Tranquility compartment. The Unity port will then be available for use by unpiloted cargo ships. The PMM move is targeted for the June timeframe.
Pressurized Mating Adapter No. 3, the docking port extension needed by the second docking mechanism, is currently attached Tranquility's outboard port. It will be moved to the upper port of the Harmony module in October.
Around the same time, another SpaceX cargo ship will bring up an inflatable module built by Bigelow Aerospace that will be attached to Tranquility's aft-facing port. The Bigelow Expandable Activity Module, or BEAM, will remain in place for two years as a technology demonstration project.
During Wednesday's spacewalk, Wilmore's tasks included work to prepare common berthing mechanisms on Tranquility's forward and aft ports where the PMM and BEAM modules will be attached later.
After the PMM and PMA-3 relocations, the second International Docking Adapter will be launched in the December timeframe aboard another Dragon cargo ship. It will be robotically attached to the end of PMA-3 atop Harmony.
At that point, the International Space Station will have two ports for dockings by either Boeing or SpaceX crew capsules and two other ports for use by unpiloted cargo ships. All in all, some 880 hours of crew time will be needed to prepare for and carry out the seven planned NASA spacewalks, to install internal wiring and for the robot arm operations to install the docking adapters and relocate the PMM and PMA-3.
Wednesday's spacewalk was the 186th devoted to station assembly and maintenance since construction began in 1998, the second of nine planned for this year (including a Russian EVA), the third for Wilmore and the second for Virts. Going into today's EVA, 120 astronauts and cosmonauts had logged 1,165 hours and 51 minutes of station spacewalk time, or 48.6 days.
Astronaut Reports Minor Water Leak in Spacesuit Helmet After Spacewalk
An American astronaut found water inside his spacesuit helmet at the end of an otherwise flawless spacewalk outside the International Space Station today (Feb. 25), but he was never in any danger, NASA officials say.
NASA astronaut Terry Virts and his crewmate Barry "Butch" Wilmore had just completed a nearly seven-hour spacewalk to upgrade the space station and entered the airlock when Virts reported what appeared to be a minor water leak. Some water could be seen on Virts' helmet faceplate in video captured by his crewmates, with Virts able to make visible ripples by blowing on the water.
"There was no indication whatsoever of any water intrusion into the helmet during the spacewalk itself," said NASA spokesman Rob Navias during the agency's live coverage. Navias stressed that Virts was in no danger at any time during or after the spacewalk, and that he and Wilmore were in good spirits after their successful 6-hour, 43-minute excursion. [Amazing Space Photos by Astronaut Terry Virts] Water in spacesuit helmet
Virts reported that about 15 milliliters of water was removed from the helmet via a syringe. The water also appeared to come from inside the suit itself, and not from Virts' drink bag.
"It's not drink bag water," Virts radioed to Mission Control. "If you taste the water it has a chemical taste … It's some type of technical water."
NASA takes any water intrusion into the spacesuit helmets seriously because it poses a danger to astronauts working in weightlessness. In 2013, NASA cut short a spacewalk when Italian astronaut Luca Parmitano reported a substantial water leak in his spacesuit helmet. In that harrowing experience, water at times covered Parmitano's nose, mouth and ears.
Virts and Navias both stressed that only a small amount of water was involved in today's incident. A similar minor leak was reported in the same spacesuit by a different astronaut in a December 2013 spacewalk, Navias added.
Still, NASA engineers will study the water incident while reviewing plans for the next spacewalk planned for Virts and Wilmore. Today's spacewalk was the second of three excursions to upgrade the space station's docking ports to receive future commercial space taxis.
A successful spacewalk
During their work today, Wilmore (the station's commander) and Virts installed power lines on a station docking port as part of that space taxi preparation work. Virts also lubricated the station's Canadian-built Canadarm2 robotic arm, which had been "exhibiting some creakiness" according to NASA. The astronauts also worked on the station's hub-like Tranquility module, with Wilmore completing tasks related to the future installation of the Bigelow Expandable Activity Module (BEAM) — a new inflatable room for the station built by the private company Bigelow Aerospace that will arrive aboard a SpaceX Dragon capsule later this year.
The astronauts began their spacewalk about 6:50 a.m. EST (1300 GMT), ahead of schedule. They safely re-entered the station about 1:35 p.m. EST (1835 GMT).
At the end of the spacewalk Wilmore extended a "thank you" to Jeff Hanley, a former flight director who now heads up the EVA, or spacewalk office, at the Johnson Space Center.
"As we say in the Navy, fair wind and following seas," Wilmore said.
Virts and Wilmore completed a series of precision tasks, which proved challenging in the changing light conditions. As the space station orbits the Earth, the astronauts experience about 15 sunrises and sunsets every day. As a result, Wilmore and Virts found themselves occasionally working in full sunlight, and occasionally working in darkness, using artificial lights to guide their way.
This is the second of three spacewalks that Virts and Wilmore are scheduled to complete in less than two weeks to help upgrade the station. The first spacewalk took place Saturday (Feb. 21). The final spacewalk is scheduled for Sunday (March 1). The spacewalks are being undertaken to prepare the station for the installation of two international docking adapters, which can receive commercial spacecraft that will carry new crew members from Earth to the station.
Last year, NASA granted contracts to Boeing and SpaceX to build commercial crew capsules to bring crew members to the orbiting laboratory. Linking up these future space taxis with the orbiting station will require the installation of the new docking adapters. The IDAs will be launched to the station on two different SpaceX Dragon cargo spacecraft later this year.
The commercial space taxis will allow the station's onboard crew to grow from six to seven.
During today's and last Saturday's spacewalks, Virts and Wilmore routed cables that will connect the station with the new international docking adapters. On Sunday's spacewalk, Wilmore and Virts are expected to install over 400 feet (122 meters) of new cable for a communications system between the station and the docking adapters. This large amount of cable work has earned the two astronauts the nickname "The Cable Guys."
Today's excursion was the third career spacewalk for Wilmore, who participated in his first spacewalk in October 2014. This was the second spacewalk for Virts.
The two NASA astronauts were assisted from inside the station by European Space Agency astronaut Samantha Cristoforetti, who helped the two spacewalkers get into and out of their spacesuits. Cristoforetti also assisted Virts by operating the robotic arm while he applied the lubrication.
Wilmore, Virts and Cristoforetti are joined by three cosmonauts on the station: Alexander Samokutyaev, Elena Serova and Anton Shkaplerov. Wilmore, Samokutyaev and Serova are scheduled to return to Earth in March. Virts, Shkaplerov and Cristoforetti are scheduled to return in May.
Spacewalking Astronaut Safe After Water Leaks Into Helmet
Marcia Dunn – AP
The leak was scarily reminiscent of a near-drowning outside the orbiting complex nearly two years ago.
This time, the amount of water was relatively small — essentially a big blob of water floating inside Terry Virts' helmet. In the summer of 2013, another spacewalking astronaut's helmet actually flooded. He barely made it back inside.
Virts was never in any danger, Mission Control stressed, and he never reported any water during his 6½ hours outside.
This was the second spacewalk in five days for NASA astronauts Virts and Butch Wilmore, who encountered no trouble while routing cables for future American crew capsules, due to arrive in a couple years. Three spacewalks had been planned, with the next one Sunday, but its status was uncertain given Wednesday's mishap. Managers will meet Friday, as planned, to discuss the situation.
Wednesday's spacewalk had just ended and the two astronauts were inside the air lock, with the hatches closed, when the incident occurred. The air lock was being repressurized when Virts first noticed the water. He said he reported it about a minute later.
The absorbent pad inside the back of Virts' helmet was damp, but not saturated, said Italian astronaut Samantha Cristoforetti, one of the station's six crew members. The pad became standard procedure after the 2013 emergency.
Cristoforetti removed Virts' helmet and wiped his face with a towel once he was out of the air lock and reunited with his colleagues. She noted that his neck was wet and cold.
The water — cold to the touch with a chemical taste — most likely came from the suit's cooling system, the source of the leak in 2013. Mission Control described the amount of water as "minor," at least compared with 2013.
Virts, a 47-year-old Air Force colonel, spent about half of Wednesday's spacewalk lubricating screws, brackets and tracks on the end of the space station's giant robot arm. The snares had gotten a bit creaky over the past year, increasing the motor current, and engineers hoped the grease would make operations smoother.
"We're the cable guys. Now we're the grease monkeys — or I am," Virts radioed.
"Yep, you guys have a life after NASA," replied Mission Control. "That's good work."
That's when the spacewalk ended — and Virts noticed the water. A camera zoomed in on a big bubble floating near his left eye.
"Yeah, Terry, we can see it. Thanks for making it ripple,." Mission Control said.
The same suit ended up with some water in the helmet during a Christmas Eve spacewalk in 2013, according to Mission Control. That also occurred while the air lock was being repressurized.
NASA spent months investigating the July 2013 close call experienced by Italian astronaut Luca Parmitano, and zeroed in on clogged holes in the fan and pump assembly.
A corrosion problem with the same type of fan and pump assembly — believed unrelated to the original leak — had to be cleared before the latest spacewalks could get underway last weekend. The analysis held up the spacewalks by a day.
NASA considers this the most complicated cable job ever at the 16-year-old orbiting outpost.
So far, Virts and Wilmore have routed 364 feet of power and data cables, with another 400 feet to be strung outside the space station on the next spacewalk, whenever it happens.
NASA had hoped to complete this series of spacewalks before Wilmore returns to Earth in mid-March.
The extensive rewiring is needed before this year's arrival of a pair of docking ports, designed to accommodate commercial crew capsules still in development. NASA expects the first port to arrive in June and the second in December.
SpaceX and Boeing are designing new capsules that should start ferrying station astronauts from Cape Canaveral in 2017. Manned flights have been on hold at the cape since NASA's shuttles retired in 2011. SpaceX already is launching station cargo.
NASA has contracted out space station deliveries so it can concentrate on getting astronauts farther afield in the decades ahead, namely to Mars.
NASA Spending Panel Chairman Keeps Focus on China
Dan Leone - Space News
The new chairman of the House subcommittee that funds NASA served notice Feb. 25 that he shares his very vocal predecessor's concerns about Chinese efforts to siphon sensitive technical information from the civil space agency.
Amid a back-and-forth with NASA Inspector General Paul Martin about China, restrictions on foreign visitors at NASA's field centers and cybersecurity, Rep. John Culberson (R-Texas), chairman of the House Appropriations commerce, justice, science subcommittee, produced a virtual echo of the retired Rep. Frank Wolf (R-Va.), who held the gavel last year.
Culberson, who in the hearing called Wolf "a hero of mine," pledged to continue the ban on bilateral cooperation between NASA and China that Wolf tacked on to every federal spending bill passed since 2011.
"The Chinese space program is owned lock, stock and barrel by the People's Liberation Army," Culberson said. "It's really important that we keep the Red Chinese out of our space program."
Wolf's language forbids NASA from spending appropriated funds on bilateral arrangements with China or Chinese companies, and from hosting Chinese officials or industry heads at agency facilities.
Culberson asked Martin whether NASA has been complying with the prohibitions Wolf "quite correctly" put in place.
"NASA has complied when it had any kind of communication or any travel related to China," Martin responded.
That included NASA Administrator Charles Bolden's November visit to China, which although not publicized ahead of time was indeed made known to Congress prior to Bolden's arrival in the People's Republic.
Culberson also asked whether NASA was properly controlling access by foreign nationals to technology and data at NASA field centers. That issue came to a head in 2013 after Wolf, citing whistle blower reports from within NASA, raised alarms about security breaches at two of the agency's field centers.
The allegations of espionage at the Langley Research Center in Hampton, Virginia, and export-control violations at the Ames Research Center in Mountain View, California, were investigated by the Martin's office, which ultimately found no evidence any such transgressions occurred.
In the Langley case, however, a former NASA contractor from China was deported for storing pirated videos and pornography on a government laptop he illegally took home with him to China.
The furor prompted Bolden to request an independent review of the agency's security protocols by the National Academy for Public Administration. That group eventually produced 27 recommendations for standardizing NASA's security procedures.
"I think they [NASA officials] take the recommendations quite seriously," Martin said before shifting gears to what he sees as a bigger security threat.
"Frankly, I think the larger concern is the penetration of NASA's IT network and IT security by Chinese, other foreign, and domestic hackers," Martin said, without any prompting from Culberson.
Martin blamed NASA's network vulnerability on the agency's decentralized IT management structure. Fixing the problem, Martin said, would require giving Larry Sweet, NASA's chief information officer, more control over the agency's IT budget.
The majority of NASA's IT spending is nested in budgets for specific programs and missions, Martin said. Most of what remains goes straight to NASA centers, he said.
In other words, Sweet's office has little real power because it "doesn't control the checkbook."
Martin was the only NASA witness during the hearing, which was called not to consider the agency's budget request — the subcommittee will do that March 5 — but to confer with inspectors general from the three major agencies in the subcommittee's jurisdiction.
Rep. Derek Kilmer (D-Wash.), a second-term House member who is new to the Appropriations Committee, asked Todd Zinsor, the Commerce Department IG, whether the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration is capable of fending off cyberattacks like the one last fall that disrupted the flow of weather satellite data to the National Weather Service. NOAA, division of the Commerce Department, operates U.S. weather satellites.
"I believe they do, but I think it requires much greater attention and vigilance than has been applied," Zinsor said.
Turning to a slightly different subject, Culberson asked both Martin and Zinsor whether U.S. weather data has ever been vetted for accuracy. Culberson told the two — both said they never investigated national weather and climate records — he was interested in "making sure we have accurate temperature data," especially if NOAA and NASA records are are going to be used "to push a carbon tax on us, for example."
First Cruz Space Hearing Inquisitive, Not Confrontation
Sen. Ted Cruz's first hearing as chairman of the Senate subcommittee that oversees NASA and commercial space activities was politely inquisitive and not confrontational as some expected. Cruz (R-TX), a leading Tea Party activist, is a relative unknown quantity on space issues. The hearing exhibited that he is an advocate of U.S. leadership in space, ending U.S. reliance on Russia, and supporter of commercial space.
As is typical, few Senators attended yesterday's hearing before the Subcommittee on Space, Science and Competitiveness of the Senate Commerce, Science and Transportation Committee. Sen. Tom Udall (D-NM), the top Democrat (Ranking Member) on the subcommittee, and Sen. Cory Gardner (R-CO), were there only briefly because they also serve on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee where Secretary of State John Kerry was testifying at the same time. (Ironically, Gardner unseated Udall's cousin, Mark Udall, for that Colorado Senate seat in last year's election.)
Cruz chaired the hearing for the full duration and was joined for most of it by Sen. Bill Nelson (D-FL), who was the chairman of this subcommittee in the last Congress when Democrats controlled the Senate. Nelson is now Ranking Member of the full committee. Cruz was the Ranking Member on the subcommittee in the last Congress, so the two have worked together on these topics in the past as well as on other committees and rarely see eye to eye. In this case, however, Cruz's opening statement was a pep talk about the space program full of familiar themes about the need for U.S. leadership in space and ending U.S. dependence on Russia. Nelson noted the similarities in their views on those subjects, at least, and the two bantered about how the fact that they agreed on something could be used against them in future political campaigns.
The hearing broke little new ground, but sparked interesting dialogue. One panel of former astronauts offered the usual hopes of human trips to Mars coupled with familiar warnings that NASA's budget needs to grow to accomplish such a goal. A second panel of industry and academic experts offered perspectives on commercial space, U.S. leadership, future human spaceflight destinations, and preferences in reauthorizing the Commercial Space Launch Act (CSLA)The first panel was comprised of three former astronauts: Apollo 7's Walter Cunningham, Apollo 11's Buzz Aldrin (the second man to walk on the Moon), and space shuttle astronaut Mike Massimino. The second panel was Boeing's John Elbon, George Washington University's Scott Pace, and the Commercial Spaceflight Federation's Eric Stallmer.
Cruz is a vocal climate change skeptic and concerns were widely expressed in the space community when he became chairman of this subcommittee that he would use his position to try to restrict funding for NASA's earth science research. Cunningham is also a climate change skeptic and his inclusion on the panel fueled expectations that the hearing would focus on that topic. In fact, however, climate change barely arose and only in response to a question from Udall to Massimino about whether he agreed that NASA should remain a multi-mission agency including funding programs for earth observation. Massimino discoursed about how the International Space Station is a great "perch" for viewing Earth and his belief that if NASA can help with any of the problems facing the country and the world, it should.
Except for his opening statement, Cruz kept his own views to himself and asked thought provoking questions that allowed the witnesses an opportunity to share their perspectives.
Cruz's key messages in that statement were: NASA needs to get back to its "core priorities" of exploring space; the United States should be the leader in space; SLS and Orion are critical to exploring space "whether it is Moon, Mars or beyond" (omitting mention of asteroids); U.S. dependence on Russia for access to ISS is "unacceptable" and it is "imperative" that we be able to get to the ISS without the Russians; the commercial crew program is "critical" to ending U.S. dependence on Russia; and the United States should be able to launch national security satellites without Russian engines. He said he is encouraged by progress on commercial cargo and crew, but "maximum efficiency and expedition" are needed, and he will be an "enthusiastic advocate of competition and the enabling of the private sector to compete and innovate." He ended by saying "There is no limit to human imagination or desire for exploration …. America has always led the way in space exploration and we need to reclaim that leadership."
Interesting tidbits from the hearing include the following:
- Gardner, the freshman Senator from Colorado, wrote to NASA when he was 9 (in 1983) because he wanted to be an astronaut. He brought along with him to the hearing the letter that NASA wrote in response encouraging him to study hard and so forth. He noted that since then he has lived through the space shuttle program and, seeing it end, wondered if NASA is still capturing the imagination of today's youth.
- The first panel was asked for their thoughts about the Asteroid Redirect Mission (ARM). Massimino said that an incremental approach to future human spaceflight is needed and, whatever it is, the key is to be consistent, keep options open, and keep momentum going. Cunningham said that whatever we do will be expensive and unless Congress decides to increase NASA's budget "this is just talk." Aldrin said "you can fly it the way it is, you can cancel it, or you can do something smart in between" and offered an alternative where a robotic probe as well as a crew would travel to an asteroid in its native orbit. The crew, including scientists and asteroid mining and robotic experts, would spend 60 days there (as part of a one-year trip).
- Aldrin explained in great detail his plan for human exploration of Mars using "cyclers" (described in his written statement). He and students at Purdue are studying some of the details and he expects the report to be completed in April. He proposes that "most" crews remain on Mars building a permanent settlement, with only some returning to Earth.
- Aldrin offered his view that the United States and China should cooperate in space and noted that this summer is the 40th anniversary of the Apollo Soyuz Test Project (ASTP) and just as the United States and Soviet Union found a way to cooperate on that mission during the Cold War, we should be able to find a way to work with China today.
- There was disagreement on whether the United States should send astronauts back to the lunar surface. Aldrin thinks other countries should do that, not the United States because we already have and we should not get "bogged down" there. Instead the United States should focus on Mars. Cunningham said he used to believe there was no need to return to the lunar surface, but has changed his mind and now thinks lunar surface missions are needed as an intermediate step to Mars. When the second panel had its turn, Pace made it clear that he still believes a return to the lunar surface is needed (he was a top NASA official during the George W. Bush Administration when the Constellation program was underway). Pace wants Congress to direct NASA to develop concepts for returning to the lunar surface with commercial partners. He also stressed the need to align U.S. plans with international interests, and potential international partners want to land on the Moon. However, he emphasized, international cooperation "is a means, not an end." His overall argument is that "rules on a frontier are made by the people who show up, not the ones who stay behind" so the United States needs to be there.
- Stallmer argued for extension of third party liability indemnification and of the "learning period" for commercial human spaceflight (where the FAA cannot impose new regulations for a certain period of time) when reauthorizing CSLA.
- Cruz asked about impediments to expansion of commercial space. Stallmer cited regulatory uncertainty and that any disruption of the commercial crew schedule would be a significant setback. Elbon and Pace both said that extending the life of ISS is important for the commercial cargo and commercial crew markets. Pace stressed the need for a predictable environment for investment and the need to plan for what will come after ISS – "if you're not planning today what you're going to do next, you're planning to go out of business." He foresees commercial cargo and crew expanding to serve lunar surface missions.
- Cruz asked how quickly we could end our reliance on Russia for crew access to the ISS and the RD-180 rocket engine used on the Atlas V. Elbon said that Boeing's CST-100 commercial crew spacecraft is on schedule to be ready by 2017 and is paced by internal work, not dollars – "we need to apply the level of money we proposed in our contract." The implication is that more money would not accelerate the program. Elbon praised the RD-180 and argued for a "thoughtful" process in shifting to a new U.S.-built engine to replace it. Pressed by Cruz to define a thoughtful approach, Elbon said the "pipeline" of RD-180s should be kept open as long as possible rather than setting a hard date for ending the contract (as is done in the FY2015 National Defense Authorization Act). Boeing and Lockheed Martin jointly own the United Launch Alliance, which builds and launches Atlas V, and Boeing plans to use Atlas V to launch CST-100.
The written statements of the witnesses and an archived webcast are available on the committee's website.
U.S. Senate Hearing: Video, Testimony on Human Exploration Goals, Commercial Space
Leonard David - Coalition for Space Exploration
U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas), chairman of the Subcommittee on Space, Science, and Competitiveness, convened a hearing on Tuesday, February 24, 2015.
The hearing was entitled "U.S. Human Exploration Goals and Commercial Space Competitiveness."
Former NASA astronauts that testified were Walt Cunningham, Buzz Aldrin, Mike Massimino, joining leaders in space industry.
The hearing was called to provide the Space, Science, and Competitiveness Subcommittee and the American people "a great opportunity to reflect on the past, analyze the present, and examine the future of space travel in the United States," said Cruz in calling the hearing.
"We will look to ensure that NASA and commercial space have clear and consistent mission objectives and can continue to work alongside our international partners, but not be dependent on them. America should once again lead the way for the world in space exploration," Cruz said in a pre-hearing statement.
The hearing examined the United States' goals in human space exploration, including the role of the commercial space industry and its contributions to U.S. global competitiveness.
Among other issues, the hearing was called to discuss the importance of a sound exploration strategy that involves NASA, partnerships with international allies, and innovation and competitiveness in the U.S. commercial space sector.
The hearing examined whether updates are needed to the Commercial Space Launch Act.
Check out this C-Span video link of the hearing at:
To read the prepared testimony of each witness, go to these links:
Witness Panel 1
Witness Panel 2
Fly Me to the Moon: The Public and NASA
Kathleen Weldon - The Huffington Post
On March 3, 1915, the U.S. government established the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics, or NACA. In 1958, NACA became NASA. In polls the American public has shown pride in the country's accomplishments in space exploration, along with concern about the costs involved. A review of public attitudes about the space program, from the Roper Center for Public Opinion Research archives:
Satellite of love (mostly)
There's no question that Americans take pride in the country's space ventures. When asked to say in their own words what America's greatest achievement was in the 20th century, 17 percent of respondents in a 2006 Research!America poll said the space program, the highest percentage of all answers. The public also recognizes the importance of specific accomplishments, like the landing of the Mars rover, seen as a major achievement by 72 percent of the public in a 2012 CNN/ORC poll.
But the public was not so certain about the value of the space program in its early days. In a 1967 Harris poll, 54 percent said the $4 billion price tag on putting a man on the moon and exploring other planets wasn't worth it; only a third thought it was. Fifty-seven percent in a 1965 Harris poll thought this money would be better spent on developing systems for the desalinization of water. The public in 1967 was split on the specific key goal of landing a man on the moon: 46 percent in the Harris poll opposed the project, and 43 percent supported it.
Support for spending on the space program was low during the recession years of the 1970s, but increased in the eighties, possibly spurred by Reagan's interest in the potential national defense capabilities in space, and never hit such lows again. Currently, a majority say the country spends too little or about the right amount.
Opinions about the moon landing also changed by the eighties, with majorities since then seeing the signature accomplishment of the early space program as worth the cost and effort. Similarly, most Americans believed the space shuttle program to have been worth the investment. Setbacks that might have been expected to sour public attitudes appear to have had no such effect: the proportion saying that the space shuttle program was worth it reached peaks immediately following both the Challenger and Columbia disasters.
But how much does it cost, exactly?Specific reminders of the costs and economic tradeoffs of space exploration elicit lower levels of approval, particularly when the price tag is linked to specific missions. In 1996, even the otherwise popular lunar missions were supported by less than half the country when they were reminded that the money might have been spent on other programs.
In general, the public likes manned space missions. In a 2014 Pew poll, 59 percent said manned programs are essential to the future of the space program. In a 2003 Gallup/CNN/USA Today poll, 52 percent said NASA should focus on manned space programs like the space shuttle, while just 37 percent thought the focus should be on unmanned missions.
However, reminders of costs can outweigh the public's fondness for putting people in space. For example, when asked in 1996 if they supported a manned mission to Mars, without any mention of costs, 67 percent favored. But when asked if they preferred relatively inexpensive unmanned missions to Mars or significantly more expensive manned missions, 68 percent of respondents in a 1997 Time/CNN/Yankelovich survey preferred the budget option.
Astronauts and cosmonauts
Between Sputnik and Yuri Gagarin, Americans of the 1950s and 1960s had good reason to see the Russian space program as more advanced than that of the States. Competition with the Russians clearly built initial support for the space program. Sixty percent of Americans in a 1967 Harris poll said that if the Russians were not in space, they would oppose continuing the space program at the current rate. Most did not, however, see the specific goal of being the first country to land a man on the moon as particularly important. Concerns about Russian technical superiority re-emerged in the 1980s, along with, not coincidentally, support for increased NASA spending. In a 1981 Harris poll, 68 percent said that developing a military capacity in space beyond that of the Russians was a very important use of the space shuttle.
However important competition may have been to creating support for the space program, cooperation with the Soviets has been valued by Americans in poll after poll since the 1970s. One exception came, again, in the early eighties, at a time when 41 percent of Americans in an ABC/WP poll said the Soviets were ahead of the US militarily. In a 1981 NBC News/AP poll, a majority wanted the US space program to be kept separate from that of the Soviet Union. But only three years later, a strong majority told Harris they favored negotiations to develop a joint US/Soviet mission. A 2011 CNN/ORC poll found only 38 percent of the country believing it was very important to be ahead of Russia and other countries in space exploration. The question remains whether this decrease in competitive drive, combined with an increase in cooperative missions and ongoing concerns about costs, will ultimately lower support for NASA spending.
Russia — and Its Modules — To Part Ways with ISS in 2024
Peter B. de Selding – Space News
The Russian space agency, Roscosmos, on Feb. 24 announced that it will remain a part of the international space station until 2024 before detaching the Russian modules and forming its own outpost in low Earth orbit.
The statement followed a meeting the Scientific and Technical Council, under the chairmanship of Yuri N. Koptev, Roscosmos' head of manned space flight and the agency's former chief in the 1990s.
The statement gave no precise motive for Russia's wanting to create an all-Russian space station beyond an ambition to provide "secure access to space for Russia."
NASA is the international space station's general contractor, the facility's lead conductor, with Russia as first violin, providing not only its own habitable modules but furnishing what for now is the only means of transporting crew to and from the facility, which orbits at an altitude of about 400 kilometers.
U.S. and Russian officials have said the space station's daily operations have continued in the past year unhindered by the Western sanctions against Russia over the war in Ukraine. But officials from NASA and Roscosmos have said discussions about future station strategy have been all but shut down.
NASA and Roscosmos have tentatively concluded that the current station could remain in service until 2028 or thereabouts, after which date hardware obsolescence and high maintenance would argue for its de-orbiting.
Whether operations to 2028 are feasible if Russia removes its component modules is unclear.
NASA has said it wants to continue station operations at least until 2024. For the moment, none of the other partners – Europe, Japan and Canada – have made similar decisions, and until its Feb. 24 statement Roscosmos hadn't either.
The statement said Russia's space strategy to 2030, in addition to forming an all-Russian station, includes preparing a manned lunar landing by 2030.
Koptev said in the statement that the strategy has found a wide consensus in Russia, but that it leaves room for modifications based on available funding and other issues that may arise in the next decade.
"The concept involves the use of the ISSU until 2024, and then the plan is to create a Russian space complex based on the modules separated from the ISS," the statement said. "Russia targets studying the Moon with unmanned spacecraft, both in lunar orbit and on the surface of Earth's natural satellite, with manned missions to the Moon around 2030."
Germany is Europe's biggest supporter of the international space station. Johann-Dietrich Woerner, chairman of the German Aerospace Center, DLR – who will become director-general of the 21-nation European Space Agency in July – said Feb. 25 that he welcomed the Roscosmos commitment to 2024.
"I am very happy about the Russian statement and hope Europe will take the opportunity of using ISS beyond 2020," Woerner said in an email exchange. "Space can be, and is, a bridge to cooperate even in difficult political situations."
Woerner said Russia's plan to create its own space station by detaching its modules from the current station could be seen in several ways.
"Is the glass half full or half empty? The last Roscosmos announcement said they would stop in 2020. The current statement goes further, and is in agreement with NASA's plans. In any case we will have to start discuss post-ISS scenarios."
One European government official with long experience working with Russia said the space station partners should not read too much into the Russian announcement.
"Given the state of the Russian economy, with the Western sanctions and the price of oil less than half where Russia needs it to be to maintain budget equilibrium, Russia cannot afford to quit the station now and strike out on its own. The money isn't there.
"But it nonetheless wants to make a statement of independence in the face of Western sanctions," this official said. "This is one way to do it. We're talking about plans for 10 years from now. There's no reason to assume the current bad relations won't have improved by then."
AF Secretary James Not Sure 2019 is Doable for RD-180 Replacement
Air Force Secretary Deborah Lee James added a dose of reality today to projections about when an American-made rocket engine could replace Russia's RD-180s for the Atlas V rocket. During testimony, she said that meeting the congressional mandate to have a new engine by 2019 may not be doable. Her experts tell her it will take 6-8 years to get a new engine and another 1-2 years to integrate it into a launch vehicle.
James spoke before the Senate Appropriations Committee's Defense Subcommittee (SAC-D) on the Air Force FY2016 budget request along with Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. Mark Welsh III. The two are scheduled to testify to the House counterpart subcommittee (HAC-D) on Friday.
The issue really is about developing a new propulsion system, of which an engine is a part, but "engine" is commonly used as shorthand.
The deterioration in U.S.-Russian relationships beginning last year because of Russia's action in Ukraine highlighted how dependent the United States is on Russian technology to launch U.S. national security satellites. The United Launch Alliance's (ULA's) Atlas V and Delta IV rockets -- referred to as Evolved Expendable Launch Vehicles (EELVs ) -- launch almost all of them, and the Atlas V is powered by Russia's RD-180 engine. The issue figured prominently in a number of hearings last year and Air Force officials, including Gen. William Shelton, then head of Air Force Space Command, rued the prospect of losing those engines. Still, Shelton and others eventually accepted that the time had come for the United States to develop its own comparable liquid rocket engine.
The FY2015 National Defense Authorization Act (P.L. 113-291) and its accompanying explanatory statement direct DOD to develop a new U.S. propulsion system by 2019 "using full and open competition." The law authorizes $220 million and notes it "is not an authorization of funds for development of a new launch vehicle." Section 608 of the law prohibits the Secretary of Defense (SecDef) from "awarding or renewing a contract for the procurement of property or services" under the EELV program if the contract involves "rocket engines designed or manufactured in the Russian Federation." The only exceptions are the EELV contract awarded to ULA on December 18, 2013 or unless the SecDef certifies that the offeror can demonstrate that it fully paid for or entered into a legally binding contract for such engines prior to February 1, 2014.
The FY2015 Defense Appropriations Act (Division C of P.L. 113-235) followed suit, appropriating the same $220 million as was authorized "to accelerate rocket propulsion system development with a target demonstration date of fiscal year 2019." It directs the Air Force, in consultation with NASA, "to develop an affordable, innovative, and competitive strategy ... that includes an assessment of the potential benefits and challenges of using public-private partnerships, innovative teaming arrangements, and small business considerations."
Sen. Richard Shelby (R-AL) and James engaged in two exchanges about the RD-180 today. Shelby noted that the President's FY2016 request is only for $84 million. "It's also my understanding that developing an RD-180 replacement engine and the associated launch vehicle and launch pad can cost anywhere from $1 billion to more than $3 billion and take perhaps 7 to 10 years to develop," Shelby said. James replied that technical experts have advised her that "It's 6 to 8 years ... for a newly designed engine and then an additional 1 to 2 years on top of that to be able to integrate the engine into the launch vehicle." As for cost, "I've seen $2 billion," James said.
James asked that Congress clarify what it wants, because the 2019 deadline is "pretty aggressive" and "I'm not sure 2019 is doable." She also stressed that they want "at least two" domestic engines "because we want competition of course."
Shelby also revealed that DOD's General Counsel "may" interpret the Section 608 language contrary to congressional intent resulting in a "capability gap for certain launches" and eliminating "real competition." James explained that the General Counsel is trying to interpret several different provisions of law that may or may not have had the same intent, but said the point she wanted to stress is that "virtually everybody" agrees that the United States should be less reliant on Russia. The question is how to accomplish that: "We don't want to cut off our nose to spite our face."
The two also discussed certification of "new entrants." a reference to SpaceX, which has been attempting to obtain certification from the Air Force so it can compete against ULA for these types of national security launches.
ULA manufactures the Atlas V and Delta IV in Decatur, Alabama, Shelby's home state. Shelby talked about the virtues of competition, but, without mentioning SpaceX by name, said "some of these so-called companies that are planning to compete, and we'd like for them to compete, they have had several mishaps" compared to ULA. James replied that every developmental program has mishaps and "I'm quite sure they're going to get there from here."
ULA is jointly owned by Lockheed Martin and Boeing. At yesterday's hearing before the Space, Science and Competitiveness subcommittee of the Senate Commerce Committee, Boeing's John Elbon also urged a "thoughtful" approach to the transition from the RD-180 to a U.S. engine and keeping the pipeline of engines open as long as possible rather setting a hard cut-off date.
Meanwhile, ULA announced last fall that it is partnering with Blue Origin to develop the BE-4 rocket engine as an RD-180 replacement. ULA and Blue Origin said at the time that the project is fully paid for and not in need of government funding.
Giant Asteroid Collision May Have Radically Transformed Mars
An ancient, global-scale impact could explain the Red Planet's mysterious "two-faced" appearance
Robin Wylie – Scientific American
The planet Mars has been associated with its namesake god of war for millennia, but its own past may have been more violent than was previously imagined. A new study suggests that Mars was once hit by an asteroid so large that it melted nearly half of the planet's surface.
Researchers came to this conclusion while studying a strange feature known as the Martian hemispheric dichotomy—a dramatic drop in surface elevation and crustal thickness that occurs near Mars' equator. In the northern hemisphere the land's elevation is on average about 5.5 kilometers lower and the crust is around 26 kilometers thinner.
The dichotomy was discovered in the early 1970s when NASA's Mariner 9 probe made the first detailed map of the Martian surface. The feature has perplexed astronomers ever since. Previous studies hinted that the dichotomy was formed by a glancing asteroid strike near the Martian north pole. But the new work, published in Geophysical Research Letters in December, suggests that a far more violent impact, at the opposite end of the planet, may have been the actual cause.
In the study astronomers at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (E.T.H. Zurich) used an advanced 3-D computer model to simulate the effect of an asteroid impact on Mars 4.5 billion years ago, when experts think the dichotomy formed. They tested a rival hypothesis for its origin—that it had been formed by an impact at Mars's south pole.
When the team simulated a collision with an asteroid about 4,000 kilometers across (slightly larger than Earth's moon) they found that it caused the crust of the "virtual" Mars to reform into two distinct zones: a thicker one in the southern hemisphere and a thinner one in the north, similar to what we see on the real planet. What's more, the predicted thicknesses of the two crustal segments matched the real values observed on Mars almost exactly. Taken together these predictions provide compelling evidence that a south polar impact was the cause of the dichotomy. "This study advances an alternate impact origin for the Martian dichotomy," says Craig Agnor, an astronomer at Queen Mary, University of London, who was not involved in the work.
The simulation predicted that the impact would have generated so much heat that large swathes of Mars's crust would have melted, forming a "magma ocean" across most of the planet's southern hemisphere. It also predicted that, as the molten rock subsequently cooled and solidified, it would leave a thicker, higher-elevation crust over part of that hemisphere.
These findings do not conclusively solve the mystery of the dichotomy's origin. The Swiss team's model is not perfect; for example, it cannot explain the dichotomy's exact size. And in any case, it is not possible to prove a hypothesis using only a computer model. But there is another reason to think that the southern impact hypothesis might be right: It sheds light on another oddity of Mars's surface—the locations of its volcanoes.
When large asteroids hit rocky planets they tend to induce volcanic activity by causing "plumes" of hot rock to rise up within the planet's mantle, many years later. A drawback of the previous, "northern" impact scenario was that the high northern latitudes of Mars contain relatively few volcanoes, which occur mostly in equatorial and southern latitudes. But the southern impact simulation predicted that a few million years after the asteroid struck, volcanic plumes would slowly begin to rise toward the surface, at first near the equator and then gradually migrating toward the south pole. This prediction agrees well with the actual locations of the Red Planet's volcanoes.
Asteroid impacts of the scope suggested by this study are extremely unlikely to happen today. They were probably more common in the early days of the solar system, when it was still littered with the rocky debris left over from planet-building. But even then such events would have been extremely uncommon. "This result has the potential to significantly change our understanding of Mars's past," says Giovanni Leone, a planetary scientist at E.T.H. Zurich and the study's lead author. "A rare event may have occurred early in its history that shaped the planet as we see it today."
Ceres: Bright spot on dwarf planet is a twofer, NASA spacecraft finds
Amina Khan – Los Angeles Times
NASA's Dawn spacecraft has snapped even clearer views of Ceres, but its surface just keeps getting curiouser and curiouser. A strange bright spot on the dwarf planet now appears to have a companion spot shining right next to it.
Bright spots are often thought to have icy origins, though a Dawn project member has said that the readings from Ceres don't appear consistent with pure water ice. However, the mission's lead scientist has now floated another possible explanation.
"This may be pointing to a volcano-like origin of the spots, but we will have to wait for better resolution before we can make such geologic interpretations," Dawn principal investigator Christopher Russell of UCLA said in a statement.
Mysterious Ceres is one of five dwarf planets (which include Pluto) and the largest member of the asteroid belt stretching between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter. Because asteroids are rocky leftover building blocks of planetary formation, studying these space fossils could help reveal what the early solar system looked like.
Ceres is also in a unique position in the asteroid belt, said Carol Raymond, Dawn's deputy principal investigator and a geophysicist at Jet Propulsion Laboratory.
"The really neat thing about Ceres is that it's kind of straddling a lot of boundaries between ... the rockier asteroids in the inner part of the asteroid belt and the wetter asteroids in the outer part of the belt," Raymond said in an earlier article.
But little has been known about this dwarf planet -- the best images, until Dawn came along, had been grainy shots taken by NASA's Hubble Space Telescope in 2003 and 2004. Back then, scientists thought the dwarf planet would have a smooth, icy surface.
But Dawn's newer images -- getting clearer as the spacecraft approaches its target -- show bright spots and darker areas that reveal that the surface is much rougher than may have been expected. The most recent shots show that the brightest spot actually has a little companion, in the very same basin.
"What we expect at Ceres is to be surprised, so it's getting off to a good start," Raymond noted in an earlier article. As Dawn approaches Ceres and enters orbit March 6, increasingly high-resolution images will offer an unprecedented look at the dwarf planet.
Ceres is one of a few icy "water worlds" in our solar system (including Saturn's moon Enceladus and Jupiter's moon Europa) that could potentially harbor a subsurface ocean and some potential for microbial life.
The dwarf planet is actually Dawn's second stop -- the spacecraft first visited giant asteroid Vesta from 2011 to 2012. Where Vesta is dry and lumpy, Ceres is icy and round -- and their divergent life histories could help scientists understand the evolution of the early solar system.
END
| | JSC TODAY CATEGORIES - Headlines
- Joint Leadership Team Web Poll
- Tonight: ISS Expedition Special Event at SCH
- For the NACA Centennial—Cake and Camaraderie
- EVA 50th Anniversary: Safety in Space
- News and Space--Like Peanut Butter and Jelly - Organizations/Social
- Starport Boot Camp: Early Registration Ends Friday
- Starport's Spring Break Camp - Jobs and Training
- Art of Project Management - March 24 to 26 - Community
- Applications Being Accepted for Scholarship
- Yuri's Night Houston 5K - Volunteer Edition |  |
| Headlines - Joint Leadership Team Web Poll
You correctly surmised that Peggy Whitson was the first female space station commander, not the second. Glad you got that one right. This week we just posted the four top center 2.0 goals for 2015. I was wondering which one you thought was the most critical? Is it International Space Station payloads? Workforce reviews? Space Act Agreement improvements? You would have a lot of fun with Will Ferrell accompanying you to your high school reunion. Kristin Wiig would be a hilarious date also. This weekend I watched the Oscars, and it got me to thinking ... what senior leaders at JSC would do well in what famous movie roles? The second question lets you pick the senior leader that you think would have the best chance at winning a "JSC Oscar." Is it Suff? Laurie? BK? John your Travolta on over to get this week's poll. - Tonight: ISS Expedition Special Event at SCH
An International Space Station (ISS) Expedition Special Event featuring Steve Swanson, Expedition 39 flight engineer and Expedition 40 commander; Alexander Skvortsov, Expedition 39/40 flight engineer; Oleg Artemiev, Expedition 39/40 flight engineer; Maxim Suraev, Expedition 40 flight engineer and Expedition 41 commander; Reid Wiseman, Expedition 40/41 flight engineer; and Alexander Gerst, Expedition 40/41 flight engineer, will be held tonight at 6:30 p.m. in the Space Center Houston (SCH) theater. The event will consist of awards, slides and video presentation, and a question-and-answer session. This event is free and open to JSC employees, contractors, friends, family members and public guests. For more information, contact Samantha Nehls at x27804. Event Date: Thursday, February 26, 2015 Event Start Time:6:30 PM Event End Time:8:00 PM
Event Location: Space Center Houston
Add to Calendar
Samantha Nehls 281-792-7804
[top] - For the NACA Centennial—Cake and Camaraderie
Join employees centerwide as the NACA Centennial is commemorated at JSC next week from March 2 to 6. As a tribute to past, present and future worldwide interest in space exploration, four panels from the "Astronomical Quilts!" challenge will be in display in the Teague Auditorium lobby. NASA astronaut Karen Nyberg—who is also a quilter—made a star quilt block while in space aboard the International Space Station, and challenged quilters worldwide to send in their own. The annual Houston International Quilt Festival organizers and volunteers then combined that block, with more than 2,200 other star blocks received from around the world, into panels that hung at the 2014 show last October. Nyberg herself made an appearance and gave presentations about her journey through space and quilting. The panels are now slated to begin touring around the country, but before they go, we have four of the panels here at JSC for you to admire. Read more about the story behind the quilts here. Don't forget the free cake being served exactly 100 years after the creation of the NACA in the Building 3 Collaboration Center on Tuesday, March 3. Members of the NASA Alumni League will join with current employees for great cake and good conversation reflecting on the NACA and NASA's history here at JSC. JSC External Relations, Office of Communications and Public Affairs x35111
[top] - EVA 50th Anniversary: Safety in Space
Safety is paramount for extravehicular activity (EVA) success. Safety drives the culture and the design of the suit and all EVA tools. Last month we defined EVA. Next, we'll showcase how safety is the cornerstone of successful EVAs. EVA has learned, by experience, that testing and training on the ground is the key to minimizing surprises on orbit. For the month of February, the EVA 50th Anniversary will feature "Safety in Space." Visit us to see why safety is so important for EVA. We will demonstrate if Hollywood truly reflects how we live, or if life on Earth fuels the drive to produce Hollywood films. Also, from an EVA safety prospective, we'll show that learning from our failures has raised the "stabilizer bar" for future EVAs; thus, lessons learned play a vital role in the success of all EVAs. Safety is the driving force for EVA success. - News and Space--Like Peanut Butter and Jelly
Interested in NASA in the news? We'd like to point you to some resources just clicks away. Many external sources also provide email distribution and/or website collection of stories, including: Subscribe, bookmark … and be in the know. JSC External Relations, Office of Communications and Public Affairs x35111
[top] Organizations/Social - Starport Boot Camp: Early Registration Ends Friday
Starport's boot camp is back, and registration is open and filling fast. Don't miss a chance to be part of Starport's incredibly popular program. The class will fill up, so register now! Early registration (ends Friday, Feb. 27) - $90 per person (just $5 per class)
Regular registration (Feb. 28 to March 2): - $110 per person
The workout begins on Monday, March 2. Are you ready for 18 hours of intense workouts with an amazing personal trainer to get you to your fitness goal? Don't wait—sign up today! Register now online or at the Gilruth Center information desk. - Starport's Spring Break Camp
Can you believe that spring break is just around the corner? If you're looking for a fun, convenient and familiar place for your children to go for the school break, look no further. NASA Starport camps at the Gilruth Center are the perfect place. We plan to keep your children active and entertained with games, crafts, sports and all types of fun activities! Register your child before spaces fill up. Dates: March 16 to 20 Time: 7:30 a.m. to 5:30 p.m. Ages: 6 to 12 Cost: $140 all week | $40 per day Jobs and Training - Art of Project Management - March 24 to 26
The Art of Project Management introduces the five basic functions of project management: - Planning
- Organizing and staffing
- Directing and leading
- Controlling
- Reporting
Real-world examples are presented to emphasize the importance of each element and how the presence and lack of these functions has affected leading organizations. This course is designed to equip new and experienced project managers and their team members with the tools, techniques and people skills needed in projects. This course is available for self-registration in SATERN and is open to civil servants and contractors. Dates: Tuesday to Thursday, March 24 to 26 Location: Building 12, Room 134 Community - Applications Being Accepted for Scholarship
The NASA College Scholarship Program will award multiple scholarships agencywide to qualified dependents of NASA civil servant employees. The scholarship recipients must pursue a course of study leading to an undergraduate degree in science or engineering from an accredited college or university in the United States. Applications are available online. The application deadline is March 31. - Yuri's Night Houston 5K - Volunteer Edition
Hosted by the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics (AIAA) Houston, the 2015 event will be held Saturday, April 18, along the same course that was introduced in 2013 through the streets of Nassau Bay, past former homes of many early-era astronauts. Volunteers are invaluable to the success of this event, and we need approximately 80 people to help out, both on and before race day. To view volunteer positions, click here. Also, please note that registration increases this Sat at midnight. | |
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| JSC Today is compiled periodically as a service to JSC employees on an as-submitted basis. Any JSC organization or employee may submit articles. Disclaimer: Accuracy and content of these notes are the responsibility of the submitters. |
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