West Long Branch, N.J. This week marks the 53rd anniversary of John Glenn's first manned orbital space flight. The Monmouth University Poll finds that most Americans feel the nation's 1960s space program gave us long-lasting benefits and many say increased spending on the space program today would be a good investment. However, less than half the public supports spending billions of dollars specifically to send astronauts back to the moon or to other planets a program that is currently in the works at NASA. Interestingly, this reluctance is similar to the public mood in the 1960s. A majority of Americans do support private space exploration, though.

A majority (56%) of Americans feel that the money and effort spent on the country's quest to land an astronaut on the moon in the 1960s left society with long-lasting benefits. Another 34% feel those benefits were short-lived. Young adults age 18 to 34 (60%) are somewhat more likely than older Americans age 55 and over (51%) i.e. those old enough to remember NASA's early space flights to feel that the program had long-lasting benefits. Fifty-five percent of those age 35 to 54 feel the same. A bare majority (51%) of the country feels that increased spending on the space program today would be a good investment, while 43% think it would not. Similar numbers of Democrats (54%), Republicans (51%) and independents (51%) see benefits in increased spending on space exploration. Men (57%) are more likely than women (45%) to see this as a good investment.

NASA launched the initial test spaceship for its new Orion program two months ago. This is designed to be the first step toward long-range human exploration of space including potential interplanetary travel. Just over 4-in-10 (42%) Americans are in favor of the U.S. government spending billions of dollars to send astronauts to places like the moon, Mars, and asteroids, while half (50%) oppose such an expenditure. There are no partisan differences in this opinion, although men (50%) are more supportive than women (36%) of funding this new program.

"Half a century after NASA's heyday, America is still fascinated by the prospects of space exploration, but balk at the price tag. However, they opposed the space program's cost in the 1960s as well," said Patrick Murray, director of the independent Monmouth University Polling Institute in West Long Branch, N.J.

A Harris Survey taken in July 1967 two years before the successful Apollo 11 moon landing found that only 34% of the public felt that the space program was worth its annual $4 billion price tag at the time while 54% said it wasn't worth it. Also, the same 1967 poll found the public to be divided 43% in favor to 46% opposed over NASA's drive to land an astronaut on the moon.

The future of space travel may now lie in private ventures, which most Americans do support. A number of entrepreneurs have already begun to sell seats on private space flights, although those efforts have been set back by the crash of a Virgin Galactic test run last October. Still, nearly 6-in-10 (58%) Americans say that private companies and individuals should be able to build their own rockets to take people into space. Another 37% feel that space travel should be restricted to national governments.

Just under half of the public believes that ordinary people traveling regularly into space is very (13%) or somewhat likely (31%) in the next twenty or thirty years. Most think regular passenger flights to space are either not too (28%) or not at all (27%) likely in the next few decades. It is worth noting that public opinion has not been a very good prognosticator of the pace of space exploration in the past. A Gallup Poll taken in 1954 found that just 38% of the public believed that "men in rockets will be able to reach the moon" by the end of the 20th century. When Gallup asked in 1965 whether a moon landing would occur within twenty years, 59% said yes but 31% said no just four years before the feat was actually accomplished.

Just over 1-in-4 (28%) Americans in the current Monmouth University Poll say they would like to take a free trip on a private spaceship if it was offered to them, including 38% of men and 17% of women. This is slightly higher than the number of people who felt brave enough to attempt a space flight in the early days of the space program. A Gallup Poll taken in 1966 found that 17% of Americans were interested in hitching a ride on the first moon shot, while 80% said they would give it a pass. The Monmouth University Poll was conducted by telephone from December 10 to 14, 2014 with 1,008 adults in the United States. This sample has a margin of error of + 3.1 percent. The poll was conducted by the Monmouth University Polling Institute in West Long Branch, New Jersey.

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Poll: Space Travel in the 21st Century: American Public Sees Benefits But Balks at Cost

Russia launches space flight to supply the ISS
A Russian Progress supply ship packed with food, fuel and supplies has blasted off from Kazakhstan headed for the International Space Station.

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Spacewalking astronauts routed more than 300 feet of cable outside the International Space Station on Saturday to prepare for the arrival of new American-made crew capsules. It was the first of three spacewalks planned for NASA astronauts Butch Wilmore and Terry Virts over the coming week.

Altogether, Wilmore and Virts have 764 feet (233 meters) of cable to run outside the space station. They got off to a strong start Saturday, rigging eight power and data lines, or about 340 feet (105 meters). The longest single stretch was 43 feet (13 meters). "Broadening my resume," Virts observed.

NASA considers this the most complicated cable-routing job in the 16-year history of the space station. Equally difficult will be running cable on the inside of the complex.

The extensive rewiring is needed to prepare for NASA's next phase in spaceflight: the 2017 arrival of the first commercial spacecraft capable of transporting astronauts to the orbiting lab. NASA is paying the Boeing Co. and SpaceX to build the capsules and fly them from Cape Canaveral, Florida, which hasn't seen a manned launch since the shuttles retired in 2011. Instead, Russia is doing all the taxi work for upwards of $70 million a seat.

The first of two docking ports for the Boeing and SpaceX vessels still under development is due to arrive in June. Even more spacewalks will be needed to set everything up.

Spacesuit concerns stalled the work by a day. NASA wanted to make certain that the suits worn by Wilmore and Virts had reliable fan and pump assemblies. Two other fan-pump units failed aboard the space station in recent months and were returned to Earth earlier this month for analysis. Corrosion was discovered, the result of water intrusion from testing. The spacewalkers' suits seemed to work fine Saturday.

First published February 21 2015, 8:23 AM

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Spacewalking Astronauts Begin Prep for Space Taxis

Ukrainian among Mars Flight Volunteers: 24 astronauts will be chosen for 2025 space flight
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Israel anxious after shuttle tragedy

JERUSALEM -- Israel's first astronaut, Ilan Ramon, lifted the spirits of a troubled country when he blasted off last month on the space shuttle Columbia. The shuttle's disintegration just before landing Saturday brought back the numbness of sudden loss. "The state of Israel and its citizens are as one at this difficult time," Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's office said in a statement. Ronit Federman, a friend of Ramon's since high school 30 years ago, took comfort from e-mails she received from the astronaut during his flight. "I'm sure he was the most satisfied of people in his last moments," Federman told Israel's Channel 10 television. "He wrote about the divine happiness of looking at Earth. He wrote that he would like to keep floating for the rest of his life. That was the last sentence he wrote to us." Ramon, 48, was an air force colonel and the son of a Holocaust survivor. His military career included fighting in two wars and bombing an Iraqi nuclear reactor in 1981. But those missions were carried out anonymously. He became a national hero overnight as newspapers featured him on the front page. Israel television stations carried live broadcasts of the Jan. 16 liftoff from Cape Canaveral, Fla. Ramon's 79-year-old father, Eliezer Wolferman, was being interviewed live in Jerusalem on Channel Two shortly before the scheduled landing. "I last spoke to (Ramon) via a video conference when I was still in Houston," the smiling, silver-haired Wolferman said. "It was very emotional. Our family saw him, and the children asked their dad to do somersaults in the air." Wolferman went on to say, "We write via e-mail ..." At that moment, the interviewer cut him off as the station broke away to its correspondent in Florida, who explained that the ground controllers had lost contact with the shuttle. When the broadcast returned to the Jerusalem studio, Wolferman had left. A couple of hours later, he spoke again to the media. "I think of everything from the day he was born until now," he said. "I have no son, it is very sad and I don't know what else to say." High-school science student Adar Moritz, 17, helped prepare one of the experiments Ramon performed in space. "It's like going on a trip and getting to the door of your house and falling just as you go in," Moritz said of the accident. "It's very sad." Ramon's wife, Rona, and their four children, who have lived in Texas for several years while Ramon prepared for the flight, were at Cape Canaveral for the landing. NASA took the astronauts' families to a secluded place. Ramon was selected in 1997 to be a payload specialist. He spent much of Columbia's 16-day flight aiming cameras in an Israel Space Agency study of how desert dust and other contaminants in Earth's atmosphere affect rainfall and temperature. For a few days, Ramon's journey with six American crewmates diverted attention from the grinding conflict with the Palestinians, which has reached 28 months of nonstop fighting. Ramon was not particularly religious, but chose to eat kosher food in orbit. "I'm secular in my background, but I'm going to respect all kinds of Jews all over the world," Ramon said before his flight. "For Israel and for the Jewish community, it's a very symbolic event." President Bush called Sharon and said it was a "tragic day for the astronauts' families and a tragic day for science." Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat and the Palestinian Authority also offered "condolences to the six American families and to the Israeli family who lost their loved ones," said Palestinian Cabinet minister Saeb Erekat. Israel's enthusiasm for the shuttle flight stemmed partly from the fact that Ramon was one of the country's top air force pilots, considered among the nation's military elite. Ramon logged thousands of hours of flight time and was part of the first Israeli squad to pilot American-made F-16 fighter jets in 1980. He fought in the Yom Kippur War in 1973 and in the 1982 war in Lebanon. Ramon also was one of the fighter pilots who destroyed an unfinished, French-built nuclear reactor in Iraq in 1981, a senior Israeli government official said last month on condition of anonymity. Ramon, whose mother and grandmother survived the Auschwitz death camp in World War II, honored those who endured the Holocaust. During the flight, he carried a small pencil drawing titled "Moon Landscape" by Peter Ginz, a 14-year-old Jewish boy killed at Auschwitz and other mementos. Ramon's father gave him family photos to take into space and a brother had a letter stowed away in the shuttle that Ramon read in orbit.more...

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WALTERBORO, S.C. (WCIV) -- Four Walterboro middle school girls wanted to find a way to keep astronauts healthy while in space -- and their experiment made it all the way to the International Space Station.

Through a science competition called the Students Space Flight Experiments Program they were able to test how long it takes for milk to spoil in space compared to Earth.

We tested whole milk, skim milk and one percent milk ultra-pasteurized, said Amber Avant, a seventh grader in the group. We did it because those types of milks are most common. We tested the two milks for a month.

The students got the milk back from space on Thursday. Over the past 24 hours they've been studying the difference between the two.

We found out that the milk in space lasts longer, said Avant. So far our theory is because there is less bacteria in space and it's more sanitary, and one of the necessities for milk to spoil is bacteria.

The girls started the project because they say astronauts have to drink powdered milk while in orbit.

They hope their experiment changes that.

"Astronauts in space have less bone density and the proteins in milk help strengthen your bones, said Megan Dewitt, another seventh grader in the group. So since they have less bone density, the milk will help them get stronger bones. That's why we sent it, because they have to have powdered milk up there which has no proteins in it and doesn't help them as much as the milk would."

As the group of Colleton County Middle School students continue their project, they hope to go to Washington, D.C. this summer to present their work.

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This image shows an artist concept of NASA's Mars Atmosphere and Volatile Evolution (MAVEN) mission. (Credit: NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center)

Provided by Nancy Neal Jones, NASAs Goddard Space Flight Center

NASAS Mars Atmosphere and Volatile Evolution has completed the first of five deep-dip maneuvers designed to gather measurements closer to the lower end of the Martian upper atmosphere.

During normal science mapping, we make measurements between an altitude of about 150 km and 6,200 km (93 miles and 3,853 miles) above the surface, said Bruce Jakosky, MAVEN principal investigator at the University of Colorados Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics in Boulder. During the deep-dip campaigns, we lower the lowest altitude in the orbit, known as periapsis, to about 125 km (78 miles) which allows us to take measurements throughout the entire upper atmosphere.

The 25 km (16 miles) altitude difference may not seem like much, but it allows scientists to make measurements down to the top of the lower atmosphere. At these lower altitudes, the atmospheric densities are more than ten times what they are at 150 km (93 miles).

We are interested in the connections that run from the lower atmosphere to the upper atmosphere and then to escape to space, said Jakosky. We are measuring all of the relevant regions and the connections between them.

[Related story: NASA's MAVEN now is Mars' orbit]

The first deep dip campaign ran from Feb. 10 to 18. The first three days of this campaign were used to lower the periapsis. Each of the five campaigns lasts for five days allowing the spacecraft to observe for roughly 20 orbits. Since the planet rotates under the spacecraft, the 20 orbits allow sampling of different longitudes spaced around the planet, providing close to global coverage.

This months deep dip maneuvers began when team engineers fired the rocket motors in three separate burns to lower the periapsis. The engineers did not want to do one big burn, to ensure that they didnt end up too deep in the atmosphere. So, they walked the spacecraft down gently in several smaller steps.

Although we changed the altitude of the spacecraft, we actually aimed at a certain atmospheric density, said Jakosky. We wanted to go as deep as we can without putting the spacecraft or instruments at risk.

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MAVEN spacecraft completes first Martian deep dip campaign

Newly 3-D printed wrenches, data to improve cooling systems, protein crystals and seedling samples returned Feb. 10 aboard SpaceX's fifth contracted resupply mission to the International Space Station. Researchers will use samples and data returned to improve scientific studies on Earth and build on research that will enable space exploration.

Printed parts and hardware returned from the first phase of operations for the 3-D Printing In Zero-G technology demonstration aboard the station. A study team from Made in Space and NASA demonstrated the first ever 3-D printer in space using relatively low-temperature plastic feedstock on the space station. To conclude the test phase, a ratchet wrench was printed using a design file transmitted from the ground to the printer.

"For the printer's final test in this phase of operations, NASA wanted to validate the process for printing on demand, which will be critical on longer journeys to Mars," explained Niki Werkheiser, the space station 3-D printer program manager at NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama. Insight from demonstrations in microgravity also may help improve 3-D printing technology on Earth.

Many physical science investigations take place aboard the space station. Hardware and data from the recent Device for the study of Critical Liquids and Crystallization Alice Like Insert (DECLIC-ALI) returned aboard Dragon.

On the orbital laboratory, researchers examined liquids at the verge of boiling to understand how the flow of heat in liquids behaves in microgravity. This is important to the development of cooling systems for space exploration with additional applications to waste disposal and recycling processes on Earth.

Samples, hardware and data from several biology and biotechnology studies returned with completion of this SpaceX contracted resupply mission. The Advancing Membrane Protein Crystallization by Using Microgravity (CASIS PCG HDPCG-2) investigation targeted producing high-quality crystals of the cystic fibrosis protein and other closely related proteins.

Since many medically relevant proteins are difficult to crystalize on Earth, researchers attempt to grow them in space to help determine their shape and structure for drug development. Scientists hope to improve drug therapies for cystic fibrosis, a genetic disorder that causes severe damage to the lungs and digestive system.

The model plant Arabidopsis thaliana, or thale cress, seedlings feature heavily in these next three studies of which samples returned with the SpaceX Dragon. Growing model organisms like these to study plant biology in space may enable future space exploration by serving as a source of food and helping to create breathable air for astronauts.

Samples from the Advanced Plant Experiments 03-1 (APEX-03-1) were returned to help scientists better understand the effects of microgravity on the development of roots and cells on plant seedlings.

Researchers will conduct a detailed analysis on the returned plant samples to scrutinize the molecular and genetic mechanisms that control plant development. With this knowledge, scientists may be able to improve agricultural and bioenergy research on Earth, leading to crops that use resources more efficiently.

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Space Station 3-D Printed Items, Seedlings Return in the Belly of a Dragon

A Space Flight Asleep
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Space Race, Back To The Moon For Good - Space Documentary
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Webb Telescope #39;s NIRSpec Instruments Cover Is Removed at NASA Goddard Space Flight Center
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The Fliight of Apollo 7 - The First Manned Apollo Space Flight by NASA
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Strike Suit Zero Episode 2 with Pike
Strike Suit Zero is a space flight combat game where you have an epic space ship and get to blow stuff up.

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The huge advancements made by commercial space companies, which now fly cargo to the International Space Station and should soon send astronauts there, appear to be winning the trust of the country, according to a new poll.

Even though space flight has long been the sole province of governments, nearly 6in 10saythat private companies should be able to build and fly their own rockets, according to the poll, conducted by Monmouth University.

Meanwhile, 42 percent say they support the U.S. spending billions on programs destined for the moon, Mars and asteroids. But a large share of the public 50 percent oppose spending that much money on space, which was similar to American sentiment in 1967, two years before Neil Armstrong walked on the moon.Still, most respondents in the poll said the U.S. space program has provided long-lasting benefits to society and 51 percent said increased spending would be a good investment.

Half a century after NASAs heyday, America is still fascinated by the prospects of space exploration but balk at the price tag. However, they opposed the space programs cost in the 1960s as well, said Patrick Murray, director of the independent Monmouth University Polling Institute in West Long Branch, N.J.

The poll comes as there has been something of a renaissance in the American space program, much of it driven by daring companies, led by rich men with big dreams.

Along with Boeing, Elon Musks SpaceX won a contract to fly astronauts to the International Space Station, ending a years-long reliance on Russia. Richard Branson's Virgin Galactic has been pushing the envelope of private space travel and tourism. And Jeffrey Bezoss Blue Origin recently announced it would be teaming up with the United Launch Alliance to build a rocket engine to launch national security satellites. (Bezos also owns The Washington Post.)

And John Elbon, the head of Boeing's space division, predicted that in 100 years sales of space ships would equal the $70 billion business of its commercial aircraft division today.

Late last year, NASA announced a new era of American spaceflight after its Orion space capsule flew farther than any ship designed for human space travel had gone in 40 years.

But there have been setbacks both in the government and the private sector.

In October, an unmanned Orbital Sciences rocket blew up on a mission to resupply the space station. Then a few days later a Virgin Galactic spacecraft intended to carry tourists crashed in the Mojave Desert, killing one of the pilots.

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Americans want rich guys like Elon Musk to pay for space travel not taxpayers

Falsion - The First Space Flight [Level 1] // NSFPlay Synthesia Visualizer
[Track 01-10] ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Composer: Shinya Sakamoto, Shigehiro Takenouchi Atsushi Fujio Platform: Family Computer Disk System [FDS] Publish...

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When Rebecca Espina was a kid in Summit County, she wanted nothing more than to leave the ski slopes far, far behind and become an astronaut.

Since the dawn of the space program, millions of students have shared that dream, and like those science-minded youngsters, Espina was endlessly fascinated by the mysteries of outer space. In the 1980s and early 90s, space stations were all the rage and Espina then Rebecca Hage saw an opportunity to delve into the nitty-gritty mechanics of space exploration.

I was very interested in becoming an astronaut, says Espina, whose family moved to Summit County when she was in the fifth grade. There were a lot of concepts out there about building space stations, and at that point, even with Hubble, the idea was that astronauts were going out and building things. I wanted to be a construction worker in space.

Espina never made a trip to low-Earth orbit, home of the International Space Station and the majority of satellites, but she found a way to be part of the select group perfecting NASAs next big thing: the James Webb Space Telescope, a massive, 14,300-pound instrument that will replace the 25-year-old Hubble Space Telescope.

On Tuesday, Espina will give a presentation to the Rotary Club of Summit County about JWST, the intricacies of space exploration and her life after leaving Summit County. In 1992, she won scholarships through the Rotary Club and several other local organizations that helped her go from Summit High School valedictorian to the University of Colorado-Boulders aerospace engineering program and, finally, to her current home at Goddard Space Flight Center in Maryland.

At Goddard, Espina is one of more than 1,000 scientists from 17 countries working on JWST, the newest and most complex satellite NASA has ever built. And it has to be: Once its launched in 2018, it will sit in whats called an L2 orbit, roughly 1.5 million kilometers above Earth. Thats past the moon, which will make JWST the remotest telescope ever launched.

The distance also makes it difficult to maintain. For most of its life, Hubble was regularly repaired and updated by teams of two to three astronauts on space shuttle missions Espinas dream as a child. But when the shuttle program was discontinued in 2011, NASA engineers no longer had a way to maintain the aging telescope.

The solution for JWST is to over-engineer every component. Since astronauts can no longer replace and repair parts on a regular basis, the telescope is built to survive at least 10 years in J2 orbit, operating in temperatures of less than 50 degrees above absolute zero, or roughly negative-370 Fahrenheit.

With Hubble, we could replace batteries, replace solar panels, change and fix parts, Espina says. But this telescope (JWST) will be so far out to do its work that we cant reach it for service. It will be much larger and much more complicated than Hubble.

BUILDING A BETTER TELESCOPE

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To infinity and beyond! Summit woman working on telescope to replace Hubble

Public Service Broadcasting's new album, The Race For Space, comes out Feb. 23. Courtesy of the artist hide caption

Public Service Broadcasting's new album, The Race For Space, comes out Feb. 23.

In 2015, it's easy to take for granted how important and far-reaching the space race was. But imagine yourself in 1957: News breaks that there's something in the sky in space and if you tune your shortwave radio to an especially high frequency, you can hear its signal chirping back to you as it circles the Earth. It's called Sputnik, the first man-made satellite launched into orbit. The Soviet Union's groundbreaking success ushered in a new era, and nothing has been the same since.

Five years later, John F. Kennedy's "We choose to go to the moon" speech persuaded the American public that space was a frontier beckoning to be pioneered. Ascending to the stars would be the next step in mankind's evolution. To many, that idea of space and the awe of discovery permeated practically every aspect of American culture with a sense of possibility and excitement but also deeply felt dread as we pondered life's meaning in the cosmos.

These themes lie at the core of Public Service Broadcasting's new album, The Race For Space, a song cycle that retells the American and Soviet tentpole events between 1957 and 1972 roughly from Sputnik to Apollo 17 and lets us hear that historical arc the way many experienced it at the time.

Part musical group, part performance-art outfit, Public Service Broadcasting is the innovative and geeky work of Londoners J. Willgoose, Esq. and Wrigglesworth. The two earned their reputation for marrying looped dance beats and electronics with spoken-word passages culled from old public-service messages, synced to meticulously edited film footage projected while they perform. With The Race For Space, Willgoose and Wrigglesworth incorporate original news broadcasts and communications between the astronauts and NASA's master control. From song to song, this tapestry of source material narrates each chapter chronologically, placing the listener inside the drama of the moment propelled by futuristic Kraftwerk-meets-Aphex Twin-meets-Daft Punk sounds suitable for a laser show at the local planetarium.

The Race For Space opens with a mood-altering choral overture and JFK's inspirational speech as a haunting invocation. "Space is there, and we're going to climb it. And the moon and the planets are there, and new hopes for knowledge and peace are there," Kennedy says, as a soaring choir gives every line extra resonance.

The duo crafts tiny instrumental flourishes that illuminate the story. "Sputnik" includes the distant yet unmistakable bleeping of a satellite. In "Valentina," chiming wordless voices from folk duo Smoke Fairies honor cosmonaut Valentina Vladimirovna Tereshkova, the first woman to fly in space. And the somber celestial silence in "Fire In The Cockpit" recounts the deaths of Apollo 1's three crew members.

Yet The Race For Space's biggest showstoppers use sound to build cinematic excitement as in the exuberant "Gagarin," which bursts with slinky disco riffs and funked-up horn blasts while playing reports about cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin, the first human in space. Meanwhile, "Go!" channels fiery, motorik beats, intricate guitar licks and TRON-era synths as the Apollo 11 team counts down before landing on the moon a moment punctuated by Neil Armstrong's famous line, "The Eagle has landed."

The most stirring moment of all comes in "The Other Side," about Apollo 8 slingshotting itself around the dark side of the moon. Public Service Broadcasting demonstrates its masterful touch for storytelling when the dusty drum machines momentarily drop out just as the astronauts lose contact with NASA ground control. The song builds anxiety and tension as we sit nervously for what feels like an eternity and then swells to a joyful release when the voices from space finally reconnect.

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First Listen: Public Service Broadcasting, 'The Race For Space'

World View Enterprises/AP Photo This artist rendering provided by World View Enterprises shows the World View Voyager pressurized space capsule that will be transported to the edge of space. The Arizona company says it has successfully completed the first scale test flight of a high-altitude balloon and capsule being developed to take tourists to the edge of space. World View Enterprises of Tucson said Tuesday June 24, 2014 that it launched the flight last week from Roswell, N.M. CEO Jane Poynter says the system broke the world record for highest parafoil flight, lifting a payload one-tenth of what is planned for passenger flight to 120,000 feet.

The private space industry believes there's a booming future in space tourismand students at MIT's Sloan School of Management want to make sure they, too, can get in on the action. A group of MBA students launched an aeronautics and space industry club in the fall, saying they hope it will help peers take advantage of growing career opportunities for business-minded space enthusiasts.

As Bloomberg Business reported last week, private spending on space travel has grown sixfold since 2010 and is projected to reach $10 billion by the end of this year. Space club students expect that jobs will follow. They swear it's not just an excuse to host Star Trek marathons.

"We're seeing technological capacities that are beyond anything I could ever have imagined," says Chris Holland, a second-year MBA student at Sloan who founded the space industry club. "I want to get in on the ground floor."

Sloan's aeronautics and space industry club, which currently counts about 97 student members, wants to bring industry recruiters to campus for networking events, plan social events (one proposed theme: "satellite reentry parties"), and hold interview boot camps to prepare MBAs for careers in space. It's also taking time to geek out a little, too. Last fall, the club held an event with astrophysicists who explained the science behind Interstellar, the 2014 science fiction film. It was a Friday night. The room reached capacity.

Being a space nerd, while a common avocation at MIT, didn't always translate to understanding the career potential of intergalactic travel. When Holland first started pitching the idea of the club with fellow Sloan student Rowland Graus, he said his peers weren't really aware people could get jobs in the space industry. "We got feedback like, 'I love Neil deGrasse Tyson,' or 'I've watched Cosmos,'" he says. Makes sense, given MIT's rich history of astronauts (the school has produced more astronauts than any other nonmilitary school, according to a university website).

Of course, as far as business school careers go, the private space industry is still a fairly unusual choice. Among Sloan's Class of 2014, the companies that hired the most students were McKinsey, Bain & Co., Amazon.com, Boston Consulting Group, and Apple, a Sloan report showsnone of which are exactly known for their extraterrestrial activities. Yet there are space companies out there that are hiring, online job postings show. They're not just looking for engineers; they also want MBAs with the business finesse to advise them on the best way to mine an asteroid, or source all the parts for a new rocket. "The new space industry has developed some pretty amazing rockets, and now they need people to help them manufacture and fly them," Holland says. "Companies need people with financial planning and analysis skills, people who can conduct a cost-benefit analysis for what parts to buy."

Holland's dream job is astronautan aspiration shared by 7- year-olds worldwide, but one Holland may have a much better shot at. He interned last summer at Blue Origin, the aerospace company founded by Amazon Chief Executive Jeff Bezos, and, when interviewed, told his recruiter about his ultimate career goal. She said the company could make it happen.

"It's the ultimate company perk," Holland says.

To contact the author on this story: Akane Otani at aotani1@bloomberg.net To contact the editor on this story: Francesca Levy at flevy6@bloomberg.net

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How to get a job in space

A new mission to monitor solar activity is now making its way to an orbit one million miles from Earth.

DSCOVR, a partnership among the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), NASA and the U.S. Air Force, will provide NOAA space weather forecasters more reliable measurements of solar wind conditions, improving their ability to monitor potentially harmful solar activity.

NASA received funding from NOAA to refurbish the DSCOVR spacecraft and its solar wind instruments for this mission. The work was completed at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, MD, where a team developed the command and control portion of the spacecraft's ground segment, and manages the launch and activation of the satellite.

Following successful activation of the satellite and check-out approximately 150 days after launch, NASA will hand over operations of DSCOVR to NOAA.

"DSCOVR is the latest example of how NASA and NOAA work together to leverage the vantage point of space to both understand the science of space weather and provide direct practical benefits to us here on Earth," said John Grunsfeld, associate administrator of NASA's Science Mission Directorate in Washington.

With DSCOVR in its distant orbit, it will become the nation's first operational satellite in deep space, orbiting between Earth and the sun at a location called the first Lagrange point, or L1. DSCOVR will join at this orbit NASA's Advanced Composition Explorer (ACE) research satellite, and replace the 17-year-old satellite as America's primary warning system for solar magnetic storms. ACE will continue its important role in space weather research.

NOAA management of DSCOVR includes spacecraft operation and distribution of the mission's space weather data. These data, coupled with a new forecast model scheduled to come online later this year, will enable NOAA forecasters to predict geomagnetic storm magnitude on a regional basis.

Geomagnetic storms occur when plasma and magnetic fields streaming from the sun impact Earth's magnetic field. Large magnetic eruptions from the sun have the potential to bring major disruptions to power grids, aviation, telecommunications, and GPS systems.

In addition to the mission's primary space weather-monitoring instruments, DSCOVR carries two NASA Earth-observing instruments that will gather a range of measurements from the ozone and aerosols in the atmosphere, to changes in Earth's radiation budget. A NASA solar-science instrument, the Electron Spectrometer, will measure electrons in the solar wind.

The National Institute of Standards and Technology Advanced Radiometer (NISTAR) measures the reflected and emitted energy from the entire sunlit face of Earth. This measurement is intended to improve understanding of the effects of changes in Earth's radiation budget caused by human activities and natural phenomena.

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NOAA's new deep space solar monitoring satellite launched

Kate Rubins will go where no Napan has gone before 268 miles above the Earth.

The biochemist-turned-astronaut, who joined the NASA ranks in 2009, has been chosen for a mission to the International Space Station set to begin in May 2016. On Monday, the U.S. space agency formally announced the mission, which had begun to emerge in news reports last year.

A Russian Soyuz spacecraft will boost Rubins, the Russian cosmonaut Anatoly Ivanishin, and Takuya Onishi of Japan from the Baikonur Cosmodrome, in the remote steppes of Kazakhstan, to the space station, where Rubins will oversee more than 100 scientific experiments during her six months in microgravity.

For the 36-year-old Napa native, the journey will be the fulfillment of a dream born in childhood, in a bedroom patterned with glow-in-the-dark stars on the ceiling. More than a year before her first space flight, Rubins already was hoping simply to latch on to as many memories as possible amid the hectic rounds of training and preparation.

People have said even though its only six months, it goes by incredibly quickly, so pay attention to all the small things, she said Thursday by telephone from Friendswood, Texas, where she and her husband, Michael, Magnani live outside NASAs Johnson Space Center in Houston. You can have so much work to do and you can get absorbed in it, so you have to stop every now and then and realize where you are.

Space and the stars held an early fascination for Rubins, through an upbringing that included stargazing events and a weeklong trip as a seventh-grader to the NASA Space Camp in Huntsville, Alabama. However, another scientific initiation would set her onto her early path: a visit at age 16 to a conference on recombinant DNA at the Exploratorium in San Francisco, which inspired her to study molecular biology at UC San Diego, after graduating from Vintage High School in 1996.

A career studying the genetics of viruses followed, starting with undergraduate work on finding HIV inhibitors for potential anti-AIDS treatments, and later studying the smallpox and Ebola viruses for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. She earned a doctorate at Stanford University in 2005, then spent the next four years with the Whitehead Medical Institute for Biomedical Research in Cambridge, Massachusetts, leading a 14-member infectious disease laboratory in the Democratic Republic of the Congo.

Still, when NASA began recruiting another group of space travelers in 2008 more than 3,500 candidates pursuing nine slots Rubins, almost on a lark, gave her original dream one more chance, though with no real expectations. Despite feeling I didnt think I had a shot at all, she made the cut in 2009 after a year of evaluation and interviews.

It was one of those childhood dreams I couldnt let go of, she told Nature magazine in March 2013. I thought that NASA didnt take biologists and so nothing would come of it, but I knew I would regret it if I did not apply.

I really thought that was her career trajectory and knew she loved her work as a research virologist, Rubins mother L. Ann Hallisey, an Episcopal minister in Davis, said in an email. It seems, however, that the space bug never left her ... I think the message here is, hold on to your dreams.

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Napa astronauts journey leads to International Space Station