Obama set to launch vision for NASA, USA Today

"President Obama will chart a course for NASA within weeks, based on the advice of a handful of key advisers in the administration and Congress. Obama, who met Dec. 16 with NASA Administrator Charles Bolden, hasn't said when or how he'll announce his new policy. The announcement likely will come by the time the president releases his fiscal 2011 budget in early February, because he must decide how much money the space agency should get."

Charles Bolden Speaks at AAS
NASA Town Hall at AAS

Keith's 23 Dec note: The audience at the AAS meeting will be composed of several thousand scientists with a large number of journalists and bloggers. The questions that the audience asks of Mr. Bolden (assuming that he takes questions) and other NASA officials should be interesting. Mars Science Lab overruns continue to drain funds from other things that SMD should be doing - with more to be announced. Webb Space Telescope overruns continue - leading to an additional drain. The inside scoop is that the NASA space science budget is flat lined in the FY 2011 budget. Also, SMD will likely be carved (back) into two entities - Earth Science and Space Science thus diminishing Ed Weiler's resources. ESMD will likely be downscoped into an exploration technology R&D group with launch vehicle development shifted to SOMD. Stay tuned.

NASA Industry?Education Forum, online at Paragon Space Development Corp.

"On December 3, 2009, the NASA Office of Education hosted the NASA Industry?Education Forum at NASA Headquarters in Washington, DC. The purpose of the NASA Industry Education Forum was to obtain ideas on how NASA and industry can make a demonstrable impact on student achievements in STEM and their desire to pursue careers in the aerospace industry. Aerospace companies who had demonstrated success in STEM workforce development were invited. Participants presented innovative ideas to increase our collective impact on the future aerospace workforce. The forum accomplished its intent: provide a mechanism to start a dialog, identify areas for collaboration and explore next steps. ... A full report as well as well as a strategy for moving forward will be provided to participants and others upon request. ... Pictures of the opening general session can be found at the following website: "

Keith's 28 Dec note: This event was not publicly announced in advance and attendance was by invitation only. Nothing has been posted on NASA's Education website or anywhere else at NASA.gov as to what was presented, discussed, or decided at this meeting. Only this summary posted on the website of one of the participating companies has emerged. Why should anyone need to "request" this information? Shouldn't it just be posted as a normal way of doing business? Not exactly "open" or "transparent"...

Keith's 30 Dec update: I sent an email to NASA's AA for Education, Joyce Winterton asking "Why are events like this not publicly announced? Why isn't the outcome of this event posted on NASA.gov?". She replied today "Thank you for your interest in the discussions NASA recently held with industry representatives who are working in the area of STEM education. The outcome of the discussions will be on the NASA education section of the website early in January." I still do not understand why NASA does not tell the public what it is doing or why it takes a month to post such things on a website.

Ground control to NASA TV: liven up, LA Times

"The man in charge of Washington, D.C.-based NASA Television, executive producer Fred Brown, acknowledges that the network is light-years from where it could be if it had the money and a mandate to properly entertain the masses. But that was never the point, he said. The network was launched in the early 1970s strictly to provide "real-time mission coverage" for NASA's own personnel, Brown said. "It wasn't designed as a television channel as most people would think of a television channel," he added. Over the years, its role has grown; it now offers educational programs and serves a public-relations function by keeping the media informed about space-related news."

Discovery Channel's Everest: Beyond The Limit Air Dates Announced

Schedule information, Discovery Channel

"Now in its third season, the Discovery Channel's Everest: Beyond The Limit is taking a new approach to filming this year and will feature both International Mountain Guides and Himalayan Experience in a five-part series. IMG climber Scott Parazynski returned to Everest this season after coming tantalizingly close last year. The former Nasa Astronaut was sidelined with a ruptured lumbar disc at 24,500' on his summit bid in 2008. This year Scott came back fit and ready to top out with Danuru Sherpa. Scott achieved his goal at dawn on May 20, 2009. A veteran of several space flights and spacewalks, Scott is the only person to both summit Mt. Everest and fly in space."

An Astronaut Atop Everest, OnOrbit

Neil Hosenball NASA General Counsel, Washington Post

"S. Neil Hosenball, 84, the general counsel of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration from 1975 until his retirement in 1985, died Dec. 23 at his home in Arlington County. He had cancer. Mr. Hosenball was a 25-year veteran of the space agency, where he became the chief lawyer. He worked on treaties for the peaceful use of outer space, among other issues."

The creation of mission patches is one of those age-old NASA traditions. Ever since humans first started traveling to space in the 1960’s, patches have been designed for each mission. It all began with the two-man Gemini IV mission in 1965 where the American flag was worn on a spacesuit and the tradition lives on today. The design of the mission patch is usually reserved for the crew (with the help of a NASA artist), but with only five Space Shuttle flights remaining, all scheduled to launch next year, NASA wanted to do something uplifting to mark the end of the Shuttle program. From October 15 to December 1, the Program opened up the design process and engaged past and present program workers to submit an emblem to mark the end of the shuttle era. NASA received 85 entries from people across the nation.

All 85 patch designs will be posted to an internal NASA website for a vote among employees from Jan. 11 through Jan. 29. 15 out of the 85 patch designs will be picked and flown on one of the last shuttle flights. NASA’s graphic artists will assist by adapting the winning concept for production. All 85 patch designs can be viewed here along with a short description from the artist. (PDF download: ~3mb)

Related articles on collectspace.com (by @robertpearlman):

• Designing an uplifting end to NASA’s space shuttle program
• NASA launches in-house patch contest to mark shuttle era’s end
• More than Just a Merit Badge.”

"Like sugar plum fairies in "The Nutcracker," the moons of Saturn performed a celestial ballet before the eyes of NASA's Cassini spacecraft. New movies frame the moons' silent dance against the majestic sweep of the planet's rings and show as many as four moons gliding around one another." More videos

Marc's note: NASA Watch will be updating only on a limited basis until next Monday at which time we will resume our normal schedule until New Year's Eve.

From New Year's Eve until Monday, January 5th we will once again only be publishing on a limited basis.

We wish everyone the best during this holiday season and please do be careful during your travels!

Happy Holiday's

Predictions and Wishes, Wayne Hale's Blog

"Sir Arthur C. Clarke Law"

"When a distinguished but elderly scientist states that something is possible, he is almost certainly right. When he states that something is impossible, he is very probably wrong."

Passing of Stan Lebar, NASA Goddard

"Stan Lebar, who led the Westinghouse Electric Corporation team that developed the lunar camera that brought the televised news images of Neil Armstrong stepping onto the moon to more than 500 million people on earth, died on Tuesday, Dec. 22, 2009."

"During his long and distinguished career, other camera programs he managed for NASA included the Apollo Color TV Cameras, the Skylab series of TV cameras, and the TV cameras for the Apollo-Soyuz Test Program (ASTP)."

Keith's note: IV&V had an unexpected visit from NASA's Chief of Safety and Mission Assurance Officer Bryan O'Connor today. He relieved Butch Caffall immediately of his duties as Facility Director of NASA IV&V and re-assigned him to NASA HQ "to work some technical issues for NASA starting early in January" according to an internal memo. Greg Blaney is acting IV&V Program Manager and IV&V Facility Director. IV&V employees had been expecting something to happen but this action was more abrupt and sudden than had been expected.

According to a NASA IV&V engineer: "The immediate re-assignment of the NASA IV&V director represents the end of modeling of NASA projects as part of our IV&V analysis. We have endured four years of spending IV&V funds on, what has been from the onset, an R&D effort to create a new method of doing IV&V using an independently built system reference model (UML based) of a space vehicle design based on Project artifacts. Its been costly in dollars and in performance. This R&D has taken countless man-hours away from our directive to find issues/problems with S/C FSW development."

"Critics of NASA IV&V would argue that we have never been effective or productive to justify the $35M annual budget. The argument I make is that the intent of IV&V is not as a lead effort to debug and assure mission success but rather as a final step in assuring mission success. We receive documents not in draft but primarily first and later revisions after peer review, V&V and/or I&T have analyzed artifacts. This is the ideal circumstance. We do receive, in fact, drafts and documents lacking project V&V and under such circumstances we do find more issues.

But the bottom line is that we cannot be expected to find numerous high severity issues or many issues overall. On this basis, the NASA IV&V funding level is well spent. NASA IV&V has delivered high severity issues to many projects that have saved development time and/or prevented serious events from unfolding during a mission's operation. Additionally, IV&V has functioned also as a watchdog and has kept Project developers, V&V and I&T more on their toes. This latter point is a hard to measure return on investment but it is significant.  One other question that arises is whether, IV&V needs to reside off-site, as presently, and remote from all Projects. It is not necessary to be remotely situated to maintain independence of the V&V.

However, I strongly disagree that NASA IV&V should be disbanded, removed from WV and distributed to NASA centers. The present IV&V facility has acquired an excellent group of analysts who, if given a proper directive, method and also cooperation from the Projects they support, will deliver the analysis and issues that cost-effectively raises the mission assurance of every project they review. Our existence is the result of the efforts of our Senator and Congressman to bring technology jobs to West Virginia. The nation's capital metropolitan area, FL, TX, CA, AL, MS, OH have benefited greatly from the presence of NASA Centers.

NASA IV&V remains a critical core group in the Technology Park developing in Fairmont and it is a very small price to pay to assist the West Virginia economy. Given the proper support from HQ and from the Projects we assist, the existing IV&V personnel in Fairmont can function effectively and fulfill the directive and fill the needs that have were found lacking after review of the Challenger and Columbia disasters and the string of Mars mission losses in the 1990s. As with the question of continued funding of major NASA Centers that have been on the chopping block over the years, politics is a major factor. The whole NASA budget is only ~1.4% of the Federal Budget.

NASA IV&V is 2/10ths of 1% of the NASA budget - a small sum expended on added assurance. Added expenditures and over-runs due to poor project management and design errors amounts to on the order of 100 times more than the cost of the IV&V budget. Our divulges involving modeling do not represent a catastrophic event or loss of mission. We argue that our mission be righted and our funding maintained. The engineers in Fairmont very eager to make needed changes."

Engage the x drive: Ten ways to traverse deep space, New Scientist

"Apart from the mundane problems of budgets and political will, the major roadblock is that our dominant space-flight technology - chemically fuelled rockets - just isn't up to the distances involved. We can send robot probes to the outer planets, but they take years to get there. And as for visiting other stars, forget it. As an example of why, the Apollo 10 moon probe is currently listed as the fastest manned vehicle in history, having reached a maximum speed of 39,895 kilometres per hour. At this speed, it would take 120,000 years to cover the 4 light years to Alpha Centauri, the nearest star system."

House Democrat announces switch to GOP, MSNBC

"Rep. Parker Griffith of Alabama, who hails from a heavily conservative congressional district, announced Tuesday that he will join the GOP."

Solid future seen at NASA, Huntsville Times

"The future of America's space program is solid and safe, even as the White House ponders missions and rocket programs that could be led by Marshall Space Flight Center, U.S. Rep. Parker Griffith, D-Huntsville, said here Friday."

GAO Report: International Space Station: Significant Challenges May Limit Onboard Research

"The ISS has been continuously staffed since 2000 and now has a six-member crew. The primary objective for the ISS through 2010 is construction, so research utilization has not been the priority. Some research has been and is being conducted as time and resources permit while the crew on board performs assembly tasks, but research will is expected to begin in earnest in 2010. NASA projects that it will utilize approximately 50 percent of the U.S. ISS research facilities for its own research, including the Human Research Program, opening the remaining facilities to U.S. ISS National Laboratory researchers."

The Apollo 11 Telemetry Data Recordings: A Final Report, NASA

"Perhaps there are no clear answers. All that can be said with any certainty is that NASA and the Goddard Space Flight Center followed all procedures in storing the Apollo telemetry tapes, the search team has concluded. After reviewing their content and determining that Apollo program managers no longer needed the data, Goddard personnel shipped the telemetry tapes to WNRC for storage. Over the ensuing years, Goddard recalled them and either reused the one-inch tapes to meet a network shortage in the early 1980s or disposed of them because of the high cost of storing them. At no time did anyone recognize the unique content on roughly 45 tapes containing the actual moonwalk video. At no time did anyone ever consider what could be possible nearly 40 years into the future with the advent of new technology."

Moon mission gets help in Congress, Houston Chronicle

"Fearful that the White House might scale back manned space exploration, a bipartisan group of lawmakers slipped a provision into a massive government spending package last week that would force President Barack Obama to seek congressional approval for any changes to the ambitious Bush-era, back-to-the-moon program. The little-noticed legislative maneuver could yield massive payoffs for the Houston area, which has tens of thousands of jobs tied to manned space exploration. The congressional action hands NASA supporters additional leverage in their behind-the-scenes campaign to persuade Obama to budget an extra $3 billion a year to finance the return of astronauts to the moon by 2020 rather than revamping -- and cutting -- the manned space effort."

New Course for Space Exploration Promotes Private Firms, WS Journal

"While no firm decisions have been made and budget numbers remain in flux, there appears to be broad agreement inside the administration over using private rockets and capsules to access the orbiting space station. "There is clearly a recognition that if you want to do that, it should be done seriously and with enough funding" to succeed, according to one senior administration official involved in the deliberations."

Keith's note: Earlier this month the LOIRP - Lunar Orbiter Image Recovery Project did a live webcast from Building 596 at NASA Ames Research Park. The project's co-lead Dennis Wingo and myself were the prime participants. NASA ARC PAO put a terse web page online about the webcast at the last minute. In so doing they used a Lunar Orbiter image. The LOIRP is all about the retrieval and reprocessing of these images in higher resolution than was possible in the 1960s. So, what image (low res and hi res) did ARC PAO use on their webpage? They used a 40 year old blurry, muddy original image - not one of our new crisp ones. It has been two weeks. Either ARC APO is clueless as to what the LOIRP is doing just outside their gates or they are just lazy and do not care to get it right. Go figure.

Keith's update: ARC PAO has now added one of the restored images to this webpage.

Marc's note: From NASA's Constellation program comes today's video: Constellation Year in Review 2009. It's the holidays and year end so why not a feel good video that showcases all of Constellations achievements with all the centers contributing.

After watching the video what do you think of Constellation's progress this past year? Video after the jump.

Marc's Update:

One of our readers was quick to point out that along with the video a new Constellation blog post was posted today stating that they have finalized the thrust oscillation issue fix.

Constellation Finalizes Thrust Oscillation Fix, NASA Constellation Blog

"When we discover an engineering risk, like thrust oscillation, we tackle it with full rigor," said Jeff Hanley, Constellation Program manager. "That's what this team has done with thrust oscillation. We assumed the worst when the problem was first discovered. The good news is there is no empirical evidence of problematic oscillations from our ground test of the first stage development motor or during the Ares I-X first test flight."

Snowstorm Hits the U.S. East Coast, NASA Earth Observatory

"A powerful nor'easter ensured that the Mid-Atlantic and Northeastern United States were cloaked in white on the first day of Northern Hemisphere winter in 2009. This image from the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) on NASA's Terra satellite shows the Chesapeake Bay area on December 21."

Marc's note: A great image from the Terra satellite. Normally Keith would be somewhere in that picture but alas he too has fallen victim to this storm as he tried to return from Denver to his home in Virginia yesterday. And none too please he was with United Airlines. Last word was that he had made it to Fayetteville, Arkansas and they might be sending him onward to Chicago then perhaps back to Dulles today. But you never know...

Marc's update: Keith made it to Chicago and should be headed to DCA sometime today.

Marc's update: Keith made it back.

Communicating Climate Change, NASA Blog, Patrick Lynch - NASA's Earth Science News Team

"Rigor. Not rigor mortis.

Those are two basic tenets of talking to the public about global warming, offered by Mark Serreze, director of the National Snow and Ice Data Center. He spoke at a Thursday morning session on "communicating climate" at the American Geophysical Union's fall meeting in San Francisco."