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Signed, Sealed and Delivered: New NASA Video Shows GPM’s Journey to Japan

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Pack it up, put it on a plane and fly it to Japan. It sounds simple enough, but a new video from NASA shows when your package is a satellite, it's anything but.

NASA's new video, "GPM's Journey to Japan," highlights the unique shipment of the Global Precipitation Measurement mission's Core Observatory by air, land and sea. Built at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md., the GPM spacecraft travelled roughly 7,300 miles (11,750 kilometers) to its launch site at Tanegashima Space Center on Tanegashima Island, Japan, where it is scheduled for liftoff on Feb. 27, 2014, at 1:07 p.m. EST.

GPM's Core Observatory is a joint mission between NASA and the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency to study rainfall and snowfall around the globe, including the type of weather and storms that the Core Observatory previewed on its trans-Pacific journey.

During the video, viewers will see that unlike missions launching from the United States that are trucked or flown to their launch site, GPM traveled by truck, plane and boat to get to the launch site in Japan. Its shipping container went through half-a-dozen transfers among the various modes of transportation. GPM's transportation was unique because of the complexity of the journey, said Art Azarbarzin, GPM's project manager at Goddard.

The logistics took more than two years to plan, with hundreds of details from customizing GPM's container and the truck that transferred it to the U.S. Air Force Super Galaxy C-5 cargo plane; arranging the flight, the cargo ship and cranes to move the container; lining up wide-load permits in the United States and Japan; and working with Japanese customs. Then there was the task of organizing people involved. The GPM mechanical team worked with the U.S. Air Force crew to load and unload the C-5, then worked with Japanese contractors who managed the cranes and transported the support equipment.

"It was above and beyond the mundane stuff," said Jean Manall, of Goddard's Logistics and Project Support Branch, who led the effort. "I can ship a spacecraft down to Kennedy [Space Center in Florida] with my eyes closed, you know, but this involved a lot more."

In its big white shipping container, the GPM spacecraft traveled by truck from Goddard to Joint Base Andrews in Maryland where it was loaded aboard a U.S. Air Force Super Galaxy C-5 cargo plane. On Nov. 21, 2013, the C-5 took off from Maryland, flying north. When strong headwinds prevented the originally planned in-flight refuel, the C-5 landed at Elmendorf Air Force Base in Anchorage, Alaska, to gas up. Then a winter storm swept in, and the two-hour stopover turned into two days.

The unexpected landing threw off GPM's timetable, and Manall was on the phone as soon as the plane landed, calling ahead to adjust the arrangements already in place in Japan. Two members of her team, Mike Miller and Neil Patel of Goddard, were busy setting up a different sort of refuel: diesel for the generator that ran the environmental control unit on the shipping container. Anchorage was at below-freezing temperatures, and despite the satellite being designed for space, the GPM engineering team wanted to avoid any condensation inside the shipping container.

"It's the relative humidity that's the driving concern," said Miller. He and Patel had customized the shipping container for GPM and were responsible for monitoring the spacecraft conditions 24/7 throughout the journey. Humidity and any subsequent condensation of water are bad for the electronics, so the air conditioners and heaters on the environmental control unit are programmed to keep the humidity below 60 percent and the temperature, which contributes to how much moisture the air can hold, between 60 F and 80 F.

Sensors inside the shipping container sent real-time data to a laptop that monitored conditions throughout the trip. They also recorded shock and vibration to see if the spacecraft was getting shaken up at all. It wasn't. In fact, said Miller, the readings were steady and within their specifications for the entire flight.

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Signed, Sealed and Delivered: New NASA Video Shows GPM's Journey to Japan

Astronaut visits Marshall Space Flight Center

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Chris Cassidy

NASA astronaut Chris Cassidy speaks at Marshall Space Flight Center Wednesday.

Posted: Wednesday, January 22, 2014 11:01 am

Astronaut visits Marshall Space Flight Center

HUNTSVILLE, Ala. (WAAY) - Chris Cassidy, an astronaut on Expedition 36 to the International Space Station, visited Marshall Space Flight Center Wednesday.

Cassidy toured Marshall and spoke with workers there about the 166 days he spent aboard the space station. Cassidy returned to Earth in September 2013.

Cassidy was part of the first expedited trip in the space station's 12-year history. The Soyuz spacecraft he was on docked at the station in six hours instead of the usual two days.

Cassidy also went to the International Space Station in 2009 on the STS-127 mission.

Posted in Local, Nasa on Wednesday, January 22, 2014 11:01 am. | Tags: Human Spaceflight, Disaster_accident, Chris Cassidy, Soyuz, Marshall Space Flight Center, Manned Spacecraft, Sts-127, Soyuz Tma-9, Nikolai Budarin, Environment, Expedition 36, Nasa, Astronaut, Space Station, Cassidy, Alabama, Huntsville, Marshall Space, Christopher Cassidy, Sts-127 Mission

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Astronaut visits Marshall Space Flight Center

Florida: Kennedy Space Center’s Vehicle Assembly Building tour to end

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NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida is going to end behind-the-scenes tours of the huge Vehicle Assembly Building where space vehicles -- from the first Saturn V rocket in the 1960s to the last space shuttle Atlantis flight in 2011 -- were prepared for launch.

Tours stop Feb. 11 as the building is transformed into a working site for new Space Launch Systems vehicles in the future, the space center visitor complex in Titusville announced Tuesday.

For the next few weeks, the three-hour KSC Up-Close VAB Tour (which includes general admission to the visitor complex) costs $75 for adults, $59 for children 3 to 11. It features:

--A guided tour inside the VAB, as it's called, which covers eight acres; --A stop at the NASA Causeway to see to a view of all the launch pads; --The Kennedy Space Center Bus Tour; --Exhibits on the space shuttle Atlantis and the Shuttle Launch Experience; --The Angry Birds Space Encounter; --IMAX 3-D films; and more.

The VAB turned 50 last year. It has 456-foot-high bay doors to accommodate cranes and hoists needed to move, process and stack rocket stages. The Space Center has taken tourists inside the building since November 2011.

"Kennedy Space Center Visitor Complex has been honored to give our guests rare access to the VAB for the past two years, yet we knew that the day would come when preparations for the SLS would take precedent," Therrin Protze, chief operating officer for the complex, said in a statement.

Other Up-Close tours of the launch pad and the Launch Control Center will continue for now, but may be subject to change as the center prepares for its new role.

Info: Kennedy Space Center Visitor Complex, (866) 737-5235

Mary.Forgione@latimes.com Follow us on Twitter @latimestravel, like us on Facebook @Los Angeles Times Travel.

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Florida: Kennedy Space Center's Vehicle Assembly Building tour to end

NASA Pressing Towards Fall 2014 Orion Test Flight – Service Module Complete

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Engineers prepare Orions service module for installation of the fairings that will protect it during launch this fall when Orion launches on its first mission. The service module, along with its fairings, is now complete. Credit: NASA Story Updated

2014 is the Year of Orion.

Orion is NASAs next human spaceflight vehicle destined for astronaut voyages beyond Earth and will launch for the first time later this year on its inaugural test flight from Cape Canaveral, Florida.

The space agency is rapidly pressing forward with efforts to finish building the Orion crew module slated for lift off this Fall on the unmanned Exploration Flight Test 1 (EFT-1) mission.

NASA announced today that construction of the service module section is now complete.

NASA Administrator Charles Bolden and science chief Astronaut John Grunsfeld discuss NASAs human spaceflight initiatives backdropped by the service module for the Orion crew capsule being assembled at the Kennedy Space Center. Credit: Ken Kremer/kenkremer.com

The Orion module stack is comprised of three main elements the Launch Abort System (LAS) on top, the crew module (CM) in the middle and the service module (SM) on the bottom.

With the completion of the service module, two thirds of the Orion EFT-1 mission stack are now compete.

LAS assembly was finalized in December.

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NASA Pressing Towards Fall 2014 Orion Test Flight – Service Module Complete

Defense Association Honors NASA Marshall Center’s Dr. Daniel M. Schumacher

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Dr. Daniel M. Schumacher, manager of the Science and Technology Office at NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Ala., has been honored with an award for exceptional technical achievement by the Air, Space and Missile Defense Association, or ASMDA.

The 2013 Space and Missile Service Excellence Award-Government was presented to Schumacher Jan. 7, during the association's annual luncheon. Founded in Huntsville in 1995, the ASMDA is a non-profit, educational and scientific organization which promotes the importance to national security of air, space and missile defense systems.

"I'm honored and very grateful to be recognized by the community with this important award," Schumacher said. "We achieve unprecedented things at Marshall by leveraging relationships with our partners, thereby maximizing everyone's potential for success."

The honor recognizes Schumacher for the broad range of ground-breaking space science and technology work he has managed at the Marshall Center since assuming leadership of the Science and Technology Office in 2010. Among the highlights: oversight of the Chandra X-ray Observatory, flown to space in 1999 and still the world's most powerful X-ray telescope; cryogenic testing for NASA's next-generation James Webb Space Telescope, set to launch in 2018 to study some of the oldest formations in the cosmos; Earth-monitoring systems that private critical environmental data and intelligence to stakeholders around the world, from the U.S. National Weather Service to far-flung third-world communities; and NASA's Centennial Challenges program, providing prize money to non-government entrepreneurs and inventors competing to deliver revolutionary aviation and spaceflight technologies that could rewrite the way Americans travel and explore in the 21st century.

Schumacher also was honored for creating and enhancing valuable partnerships within and outside NASA, incorporating industry, academia and government to maximize opportunities for shared advances in creation of new technologies or advanced scientific research.

More About Schumacher

As manager of the Marshall Center's Science & Technology Office and its previous incarnation, the Science & Mission Systems Office, Schumacher has primary management responsibility for day-to-day operations of the vital organization and its portfolio of more than 50 programs and projects. Under his leadership, the office develops, operates and executes NASA science and technology projects and activities to expand scientific understanding of Earth and the universe, and to create the innovative new space technologies that will drive exploration, science and our nation's economic future.

He was appointed in 2008 to the Senior Executive Service, the personnel system covering top managerial positions in federal agencies. From 2008 to 2010, he was director of Marshall's Office of Strategic Analysis & Communications, leading the centers organization for strategic decision-making and internal and external communications.

From 2007 to 2008, Schumacher was deputy project manager of the Lunar Lander Project Office at Marshall. He managed the Exploration Flight Projects Office from 2006 to 2007, leading work on the Orion crew exploration vehicle. He accepted a one-year assignment to NASA Headquarters in Washington in 2005, serving as the NASA chief engineer's representative on the Nunn-McCurdy congressional review of the National Polar-Orbiting Operational Environmental Satellite System. His NASA career began in 2001 in Marshall's Second Generation Launch Vehicle Program Office.

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Defense Association Honors NASA Marshall Center's Dr. Daniel M. Schumacher

Expedition 36 Space Station Astronaut Chris Cassidy to Visit NASA’s Marshall Center on Jan. 22; Media Invited

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What & Who: Astronaut Chris Cassidy, who lived and worked five months as an Expedition 36 flight engineer aboard the International Space Station, will visit NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Ala., Jan. 22. Cassidy will share highlights from his 166-day mission in space -- from March 29, 2013, through Sept. 10, 2013 -- as part of the Expedition 35 and 36 crews. His launch was the first expedited trip in the 12-year history of the space station. The Soyuz spacecraft carrying him and his crew members docked to the orbiting laboratory in just six hours instead of the usual two days.

During his time aboard the station, Cassidy worked on hundreds of research experiments and science investigations that will have benefits for future human spaceflight and life on Earth. He also saw the arrival of the European Automated Transfer Vehicle-4 cargo spacecraft, the Japanese H-II Transfer Vehicle-4 cargo spacecraft and two Russian Progress resupply spacecraft.

When & Where: Wednesday, Jan. 22

10-10:30 a.m. CST -- Astronaut Chris Cassidy will be available for a brief question-and-answer session with news media in Building 4663, in the Payload Operations Integration Center viewing room.

10:30-11 a.m. -- Cassidy will hang his mission plaque in a ceremony in the Payload Operations Integration Center control room.

1-2 p.m. -- Cassidy to present mission highlights to the Marshall team in Building 4200, Morris Auditorium.

To attend: News media interested in covering the event should contact the Marshall Public & Employee Communications Office at 256-544-0034 no later than 4 p.m., Tuesday, Jan. 21. Media must report to the Redstone Arsenal Joint Visitor Control Center at Gate 9, Interstate 565 interchange at Rideout Road/Research Park Boulevard. Vehicles are subject to a security search at the gate. News media will need two photo identifications and proof of car insurance.

Cassidy's biography is available at:

http://www.jsc.nasa.gov/Bios/htmlbios/cassidy-cj.html

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Expedition 36 Space Station Astronaut Chris Cassidy to Visit NASA's Marshall Center on Jan. 22; Media Invited

8 November Comet ISON C 2012 S1,Earthquake Earthquake And SpaceWeather Update! 2 – Video

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8 November Comet ISON C 2012 S1,Earthquake Earthquake And SpaceWeather Update! 2
NASA Organization,Solar And Heliospheric Observatory Orbit,Solar Dynamics Observatory Satellite,Solar Active Region,Solar Cycle,Solar Flare,Solar Radiation,S...

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8 November Comet ISON C 2012 S1,Earthquake Earthquake And SpaceWeather Update! 2 - Video

The United States Air Force Story Part 34 (1950-1960 Space Flight) – Educational Film – S88TV1 – Video

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The United States Air Force Story Part 34 (1950-1960 Space Flight) - Educational Film - S88TV1
Air force story, volume 2, chapter 8 -- human factors in space flight, 1950-1960 Examines 10 years of Air Force research to determine man #39;s physical and phys...

By: Tomorrow Always Comes

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The United States Air Force Story Part 34 (1950-1960 Space Flight) - Educational Film - S88TV1 - Video


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