Monthly Archives: July 2011

Official NASA Shuttle Talking Points

Posted on by

NASA Internal Memo: Official Overarching Messages Regarding Shuttle Retirement

"* The Bush Administration in 2004 made the decision to end the Space Shuttle program. President Obama extended the program's life by adding two Space Shuttle launches to the manifest: STS-134, which was funded in the President's FY 2010 Budget Request; and STS-135 which was funded as part of the agreement that the President reached with Congress for FY 2011 funding.

* An independent commission found that the previous Administration's plan for human spaceflight in the post-Shuttle era was not viable under any feasible budget scenario. Among other challenges, it would have left NASA without the ability to get to the International Space Station until after it was de-orbited in 2016, and weakened other important NASA priorities including science, aeronautics, and technology development."

Space Program Cutbacks – One View

Posted on by

American Astronautical Society Statement on Space Program Cutbacks

"The number one long-term issue facing our country's leaders is economic growth, including job creation, GDP growth and increasing the balance of trade. Without a growing economy that creates new high wage jobs, our future is grim. For the private sector to help steward this growth, it needs sustainable, reliable federal budgets and investments by the government in technology innovation across the board, including aerospace. We applaud the House Appropriations Committee for the pace at which it is moving forward with the appropriations bills to fund the fiscal year that begins on October 1. We understand the need to reduce the deficit. But we must not jeopardize our future by dramatic cuts to the central core of our nation's economic development - investments in science and technology, particularly those associated with the space program."

GAO on Space Research Coordination

Posted on by

Space Research: Content and Coordination of Space Science and Technology Strategy Need to Be More Robust, GAO

"... the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) together with the intelligence community, conduct a significant amount of space S&T. Although NASA and NOAA participation is not required, DOD may have missed an opportunity to leverage these agencies' activities and optimize its own S&T spending by involving them in strategy development. GAO was also required to evaluate the effectiveness of the coordination mechanisms planned to implement the strategy."

Mike Griffin was against the Space Shuttle before he was for it

Posted on by

Former NASA chief Griffin now wants to save the shuttle, Houston Chronicle

"In his e-mail, Griffin writes:

"At this point I'm in agreement with Dr. Kraft ... In a world of limited budgets, I was willing to retire the shuttle as the price of getting a follow-on system that could allow us to establish a manned lunar base. Not that my opinion matters, but I see no sense in retiring the shuttle in favor of nothing. That is beyond foolish."

It's a pretty stunning reversal from the man who, just a few years ago, couldn't get rid of the shuttle soon enough."

Keith's note: Mike Griffin and his self-described "band of brothers" often referred to the Space Shuttle as an "albatross" and was indeed in a big hurry for it to go away. He seemed to have little worry that the "gap" that he so despised grew rather healthily under his tenure. Now that his self-described "Apollo on Steroids" architecture collapsed under its own flawed engineering and program execution, he's suddenly a space shuttle advocate.

That's the problem with steroids, Mike: they affect both your memory and your judgement.

DC-Only Media Event for MSL Landing Site Announcement

Posted on by

NASA Announcing Landing Site For New Mars Rover

"NASA and the Smithsonian's National Air and Space Museum will host a news conference at 10 a.m. EDT, Friday, July 22 to announce the selected landing site for the agency's latest Mars rover. The event will be in the museum's Moving Beyond Earth Gallery. NASA Television and the agency's Web site will provide live coverage of the event."

Keith's note: As one rather prominent space/science to journalist just noted to me: "And in service to the media, there's no accessibility for off-site reporters. Brilliant!"

Force Draw Curve Plotter

Posted on by

I made this machine inspired by Clarence N Hickman's machine made in 1938.
It's used to plot the force/draw curve of bows, his machine used rack and pinion gearing. I don't have much in the way of metal working facilities so I made use of pulleys string and elastic .

Here's a link to a video

Would You Sign a Declaration of Independence?

Posted on by

A group called Unplugging and Reconnecting™ (U&R) led by clinical psychologist Dr. Joseph Geliebter urged people to disconnect from their iPhones and social media this Independence Day and instead spend more time outside and having face-to-face conversations. He said: "We urge students to

Fracking: A Major Threat to Drinking Water?

Posted on by

Lately, you've probably heard a lot about "fracking," which this CNN piece describes as "the controversial technique for extracting natural gas from shale rock." While fracking proponents promise huge new gas supplies, environmentalists and others worry about the potential impact on drinking water.

This Build Cost $880K?

Posted on by

We've all gotten in over our heads on projects before and ended up blowing more money than we thought we would. But how do you spend close to a million dollars dressing up a 13-year-old motorcoach to look a little better than it did when it was new?

Where did the money go? Well, the seller

King of the Cotton Pickers

Posted on by

From Gizmodo:

You're probably wearing something cotton-y right now. Cotton is fairly annoying to harvest. Mechanization was a quantum leap for the cotton industry, moving it away from archaic methods used since the days of slavery. This machine is the next step forward.

Read the who

Volvo City Safety Cuts Accidents by 27%

Posted on by

From Extremetech:

Here's proof that technology really does make driving safer: Volvos equipped with the automaker's City Safety collision avoidance system are in 27% fewer accidents than comparable vehicles. That's a huge reduction, says the Highway Loss Data Institute (HLDI). City Safet

Smart Grid Security

Posted on by

Just like building a house that can withstand storms, building a smart grid device requires a secure operating system as the foundation. Starting with a proven, secure operating system deployed in thousands of critical applications forms the groundwork on which security for an intelligent gr

Could a contracting change jeopardize commercial crew?

Posted on by

NASA’s Commercial Crew Development, or CCDev, program has so far been using a relatively unusual contracting mechanism that has provided both the agency and participating companies with greater flexibility to make progress on those systems. However, NASA officials indicated Wednesday that in future CCDev rounds they may shift to a somewhat more traditional contract, a move that has alarmed industry.

The first and second rounds of CCDev, as well as the earlier Commercial Orbital Transportation Services (COTS) cargo program, have been run as Space Act Agreements (SAA), a form of contracting known in bureaucratic lingo as other transactional authority (OTA). SAAs do not have the same contracting overhead as a traditional contract, be it fixed-price or cost-plus. The COTS and CCDev SAAs have been milestone-based, meaning that NASA provides payments to participating companies based on the progress they make—which also means that NASA doesn’t pay up if companies don’t achieve their stated milestones, and can cancel those agreements if necessary, as happened with Rocketplane Kistler in the original COTS round.

At a commercial crew forum held by NASA at the Kennedy Space Center yesterday, CCDev program officials talked about their plans for the next phase of the program, which would come next year. The “Integrated Design” phase would last two years and bring participating companies up through the critical design review on their systems, the last step before starting actual construction. This two-year phase would be followed by a Development, Test, Evaluation, and Certification (DTEC) phase, which would also include the initial flights to the International Space Station.

NASA’s original intent, according to Brent Jett, a former astronaut serving as deputy program manager for NASA’s commercial crew program, was to use an SAA again for the Integrated Design phase. “As the team dug a little bit further into the Space Act Agreement, we did find several key limitations,” he said. The biggest one, he said, is that NASA cannot mandate requirements under an SAA, including for crew safety, but only provide them as a reference for industry. “Even if industry chose to design to those requirements, NASA is not allowed to tie any of the milestones in an SAA to compliance with those requirements,” he said. “That means NASA cannot accept the verification of those requirements and certify the system the way we need to for commercial crew under a Space Act Agreement.”

Jett noted that, under COTS, NASA was able to exploit something of a loophole in those rules, which allow the agency to levy safety requirements when a NASA facility—the ISS—was involved. NASA could do the same for CCDev, but only for operations at the ISS. “We would not be able to levy any requirements concerning ascent, entry” or any other portions of the flight not directly dealing with approaching and docking with the ISS.

NASA’s proposed approach for the next CCDev round, according to commercial crew program manager Ed Mango, “combines the best elements of an SAA with the features of a contract that wil allow NASA to approve the tailoring of requirements and the certification of a vehicle.” This “non-traditional contract” would continue to use milestone-based payments and also exempt companies from the cost accounting standards of the Federal Acquisition Regulations (FAR). “We believe that we are much closer to an SAA in our approach than we are to a traditional contract,” he said.

Representatives of industry present at the forum strongly objected to this proposed approach, though, largely out of concerns that, even with the cost accounting exception, adhering to the FAR would be very expensive. “Instead of taking an American flag to the station, we should have taken the FAR to the station and left it up there,” said Mike Gold of Bigelow Aerospace, referring to an American flag flown on the first shuttle mission that was left behind by the last shuttle crew, to be retrieved by the first commercial crew vehicle to visit the station. “You can’t take a traditional approach and expect anything but the traditional results, which has been broken budgets and not fielding any flight hardware.”

Others challenged the NASA conclusion that an SAA could not be used for commercial crew. Bobby Block of SpaceX noted that his company had an option on its COTS award—not exercised by NASA—to develop a crew capability as part of an SAA. Brett Alexander, former president of the Commercial Spaceflight Federation, said NASA should provide more documentation to support its conclusion that an SAA would not work for CCDev, given that past analyses, by both NASA’s Inspector General and the Government Accountability Office, have concluded that SAAs are suitable for this. “[NASA's Office of the] General Counsel has not divulged what its legal reasoning is,” he said, “and I think they need to do that—not a couple charts, not things that you brief, but a legal brief that says, ‘here’s why,’ so that we can have that discussion.”

Mango and Jett said they were open to suggestions and feedback from industry on their proposed strategy for the next CCDev round. At the same time, NASA released yesterday a “Sources Sought Synopsis”, required under the FAR as the first step in the next phase of the CCDev program if they proceed under their proposed contract strategy. “I don’t want people to think that we’re locked in to this idea of a contract,” he said, but “we need to work in parallel so that we can continue to move forward.”

MAVEN Mission Completes Major Milestone

Posted on by

The Mars Atmosphere and Volatile EvolutioN (MAVEN) mission reached a major milestone last week when it successfully completed its Mission Critical Design Review (CDR).

MAVEN, scheduled for launch in late 2013, will be the first mission devoted to understanding the Martian upper atmosphere. The goal of MAVEN is to determine the history of the loss of atmospheric gases to space through time, providing answers about Mars climate evolution. It will accomplish this by measuring the current rate of escape to space and gathering enough information about the relevant processes to allow extrapolation backward in time.

Noting this milestone, Michael Meyer, Lead Scientist for NASA's Mars Exploration Program at NASA Headquarters said. "It is a real pleasure to see the MAVEN team is doing an exemplary job on this important mission, which was identified as a top priority mission in the 2002 National Research Council Decadal Survey and addresses high-priority goals of two Divisions—Planetary Sciences and Heliophysics."

"Understanding how and why the atmosphere changed through time is an important scientific objective for Mars," said Bruce Jakosky, MAVEN Principal Investigator from the Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics at the University of Colorado (CU/LASP) at Boulder. "MAVEN will make the right measurements to allow us to answer this question. We’re in the middle of the hard work right now—building the instruments and spacecraft—and we’re incredibly excited about the science results we’re going to get from the mission."

From July 11 – 15, 2011, the MAVEN Critical Design Review was held at NASA Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md. An independent review board, comprised of reviewers from NASA and several external organizations, met to validate the system design. Critical Design Reviews are one-time programmatic events that bridge the design and manufacturing stages of a project. A successful review means that the design is validated and will meet its requirements, is backed up with solid analysis and documentation, and has been proven to be safe. MAVEN's CDR completion grants permission to the mission team to begin manufacturing hardware.

"This team continues to nail every major milestone like clockwork, as laid out three years ago when the mission was proposed," said Dave Mitchell, MAVEN Project Manager at NASA Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md. "CDR success is very important because it validates that the team is ready for fabrication, assembly, and test of all mission elements. It also enables us to stay on plan for launch in November 2013."

MAVEN will carry three instrument suites. The Particles and Fields Package, built by the University of California at Berkeley with support from CU/LASP and NASA Goddard, contains six instruments that will characterize the solar wind and the ionosphere of the planet. The Remote Sensing Package, built by CU/LASP, will determine global characteristics of the upper atmosphere and ionosphere. The Neutral Gas and Ion Mass Spectrometer, provided by NASA Goddard, will measure the composition and isotopes of neutral ions.

MAVEN's principal investigator is based at the University of Colorado at Boulder's Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics. The university will provide science operations, build instruments, and lead Education/Public Outreach. Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, will manage the MAVEN mission. Lockheed Martin of Littleton, Colo., will build the spacecraft and perform mission operations. The University of California-Berkeley Space Sciences Laboratory will build instruments for the mission. NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif., will provide Program management via the Mars Program Office, as well as navigation support, the Deep Space Network, and the Electra telecommunications relay hardware and operations.

For more information visit http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/maven/news/maven-cdr.html

Landsat Satellites Track Continued Missouri River Flooding

Posted on by

Flooding along the Missouri River continues as shown in recent Landsat satellite images of the Nebraska and Iowa border. Heavy rains and snowmelt have caused the river to remain above flood stage for an extended period.

A Landsat 5 image of the area from May 5, 2011 shows normal flow. In contrast, a Landsat 7 image from July 17 depicts flood conditions in the same location.

A national overview map of streamflow provided by U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) WaterWatch graphically portrays the immense geographic extent of flooding in the Missouri River basin.

Monitoring both floods and droughts, the USGS WaterWatch internet site displays maps, graphs, and tables that describe current and past streamflow conditions for the United States. The real-time streamflow data is generally updated on an hourly basis.

The Landsat Program is a series of Earth-observing satellite missions jointly managed by NASA and the U.S. Geological Survey. Landsat satellites have been consistently gathering data about our planet since 1972. They continue to improve and expand this unparalleled record of Earth’s changing landscapes, for the benefit of all. The next Landsat satellite is scheduled to launch in December 2012.

For more information visit http://www.nasa.gov/topics/earth/features/landsat-missouri.html

NASA Taps Into Students’ Water Recycling Design

Posted on by

Fifteen-hundred hours, 62 days, nine weeks, or two months -- any way you look at it, a group of Wisconsin middle school students spent a lot of time working on a winning project for NASA's 2011 Waste Limitation, Management and Recycling (WLMR) Design Challenge.

From October 2010 to May 2011, Katelyn, Brianna, Amy, Julia and Maeve, along with their mentor, Christopher Deleon, worked through lunch and after school to develop a highly advanced water recycling system.

They were all good students, but I think they went to a whole other level with this project," Deleon said of the five girls.

WLMR challenged fifth- through eighth-grade students nationwide to design and test a water recycling system that could be used in space. The reason: It's really expensive to transport critical supplies to destinations beyond Earth's atmosphere, so sustainability is the key to affordability for NASA's future expeditions.

Twenty-five teams submitted a final design, tested their systems on a simulated wastewater stream and reported results to a NASA panel comprised of three subject matter experts and three professional educators. Team QNA's Michael Roberts, a lead for Sustainable Systems Research at Kennedy, said the panel was looking for an innovative design that could function in space for long periods of time without the need for a lot of energy or re-supply.

Called "Aqua De Vida," which means "water of life" or "the fountain of youth," the winning team concocted a closed-loop water recycling system design that uses multi-stage filtration, biological treatment and distillation to mimic water recovery on Earth. Their design uses gravity to sieve wastewater through a sand and gravel filter, then through an activated charcoal filter. Filtered water then flows into a biofiltration pond containing bacteria to break down ammonia and Spirulina, a carbon-absorbing and protein-rich, edible cyanobacteria, formerly called blue-green algae. From there, the water trickles into a distillation chamber, where it vaporizes and condenses into drinkable water.

"We all had our own ideas and bringing those together was a challenge," Brianna said. "We really learned to work as a team."

Julia said this solution-seeking project has helped her realize that she would like to be a doctor someday. This solution involved more than just quantity, though; the teammates also had to test the quality of their finished product. To do so, they used a pH test kit, ammonia tester and conductivity meter to determine the number of impurities and nutrients in their filtered water.

"They spent a lot of time researching, building and testing,"Deleon said. "I think this was a great learning experience for them to acknowledge that if they put their minds to something, anything is possible."

Part of their kudos for a job well-done included a trip to Kennedy Space Center, where they toured the Space Station Processing Facility, the Vehicle Assembly Building, Orbiter Processing Facility-2, Launch Pad 39A, where space shuttle Atlantis awaits its STS-135 launch, and the Space Life Sciences Lab. They also toured the Indian River Lagoon on a boat and met with NASA scientists and engineers to discuss their design and learn about other sustainability challenges the agency is working to conquer.

"I think our design can help outside of the space industry, too," said Amy after meeting with Kennedy employees, "Maybe in disaster-stricken areas, like Japan where a tsunami just hit."

Even though Aqua De Vida's system seems complex and is quite bulky, taking up about 8 feet of real estate on the ground, the team says its design can be scaled down for easier transport.

The possibilities don't end there. The system eventually could help boost the immune systems of astronauts on long-duration missions. That's something that could benefit Maeve years from now if she decides to transition from her chosen career path of a member of the Marine Corps to the Astronaut Corps.

"Some of the algae that we used really helps with preventing radiation sickness, or treating it," said Katelyn, who now is considering a career in engineering.

"This NASA middle school opportunity meets science, technology, engineering and mathematics content standards while challenging students to participate in the real-world integrated, multidisciplinary environment critical to the next generation of scientists and engineers," said Cheryl Johnson Thornton, lead of Kennedy's Informal Education.

Other upcoming educational challenges, initiatives and opportunities include an art contest, Student Launch Initiative, One Stop Shopping Initiative, DIME Microgravity Challenge, HAM Radio for International Space Station and a MooonBuggy race.

For more information visit http://www.nasa.gov/offices/education/centers/kennedy/home/WLMR.html

Yeast Rising to the Space Station

Posted on by

Chefs across the globe may not know it yet, but their baker's yeast just left the kitchen and blasted off into low Earth orbit. Hitching a ride on the space shuttle Atlantis on July 8, 2011, the samples will be grown on the International Space Station as part of the Genotypic and Phenotypic Changes in Yeast Related to Selective Growth Pressures Unique to Microgravity or Micro-4 investigation. Capable of raising more than just breads, this useful organism will help researchers better understand the impact of the space environment on live cells in humans.

This yeast -- S. cerevisiae -- has been of use since the ancient Egyptians first figured out how to harness it for wine and bread making. In modern times it is still used for baking and was the first organism to have its genome fully sequenced. Scientists hope that by studying the changes of yeast in microgravity, they will better understand the changes human cells may experience during long-duration spaceflight. Gaining better knowledge of genetic alterations by studying yeast growth during this microgravity research may also help in understanding how these changes could manifest in human disease here on Earth.

This investigation is a collaboration with BioServe Space Technologies, Durham Veterans Affairs Medical Center, and the University of Toronto. According to Michael Costanzo, Ph.D. and one of the co-investigators for Micro-4 at the University of Toronto, the similarities between human cells and the yeast's genetic makeup makes it ideal for study in space. "We are examining which genes are important for cell growth and survival in a zero gravity environment. The results of our 'yeastnaut' experiments may provide insight into which set of human genes are important and how these genes work together to help organisms/humans deal with extreme environments associated with space travel -- such as zero-gravity and elevated radiation."

Two different sets of experiments will take place as part this study. The first will grow yeast cells in petri dishes using temperature-controlled chambers. On July 12, scientists on the ground remotely changed the temperature from 4° C to 30° C -- the optimal temperature for yeast cell growth -- to activate the on-orbit samples. The cells continue to grow for 48 hours before the temperature is cooled again and the samples are stowed for return to Earth for analysis. The second experiment includes the use of a liquid media to grow the yeast. During the mission, astronauts will transfer the samples to fresh liquid media twice before stowing them, as well.

Both studies will look at how cells adapt to the space environment using the yeast deletion series -- a collection of ? 5000 yeast strains, each of which has been deleted for a different gene. In other words, a collection of yeast cells that have been genetically engineered to help scientists to figure out what genes are important for specific responses to microgravity. The goal is to see which strain is best suited to spaceflight, showing researchers which genetic traits are capable of survival in microgravity.

The convenience of yeast as a test subject also provides an important avenue to understanding how living things adapt to space. Due to the small number of humans who have traveled in space, as well as the short duration of their exposure, little is known about the effects of long-term zero gravity on biological systems. "In contrast," said Corey Nislow, Ph.D. and co-investigator from the University of Toronto, "in both our experiments, we have huge sample sizes -- millions of cells -- and they will be monitored for 20 generations, the equivalent of 400 human years."

Control studies will take place on the ground at Kennedy Space Center, Fla. The space shuttle will also carry an identical set of samples to those that will transfer to the space station. These duplicate samples, however, will remain on the shuttle to be "flown, not grown," explained Nislow. Returning to Earth with Atlantis, these duplicate samples will be activated on the ground to investigate growth in tandem timing to those aboard the station.

While the STS-135 mission is the final shuttle flight for NASA, scientists for this study will not have to wait for the certification of new flight vehicles to continue their research. The hardware designed and used for Micro-4 is not limited to the harsh environment of space, but may also find use in Earth-based extremes for future yeast experiments. "It is important to remember that it's fun to fantasize about life in other parts of the solar system, yet we sometimes overlook the fact that life thrives at incredible extremes here on Earth," commented Nislow. "Such as in boiling water around ocean vents, in the polar ice caps, and even in environments so acidic that they would melt metal!"

For more information visit http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/station/research/news/Micro_4.html