Daily Archives: November 17, 2019

Vice President Mike Pence touted big plans for an American-led lunar landing by 2024 during a Thursday appearance at the NASA Ames Research Center, where he lauded the ingenuity of local engineers and researchers behind the effort.

Speaking to more than 100 NASA employees on Nov. 14, Pence heaped praise on current and former Ames staff that have championed modern aviation, space exploration and cutting-edge computing for 80 years. With renewed goals to conduct manned missions to the moon and a long-term goal of reaching Mars in the coming decades, Pence said NASA Ames will again be the center of innovation.

"We're about to make even more history, and it will pass right through NASA Ames," Pence said.

Casting a shadow over the visit, however, was recent news of a mass shooting at a Southern California school earlier that morning. A boy a male student shot and killed two students, a 16-year-old girl and a 14-year-old boy, and injured three others at Saugus High School in Santa Clarita. Pence led his planned remarks by extending condolences to the families affected, and said President Donald Trump asked him to convey his deepest sympathies for the families and the victims and the entire Santa Clarita community.

"The hearts of every American are with you today, our prayers are with you, and our prayers are with all the doctors and nurses and hospital staff," he said.

Pence commended the swift response of local law enforcement and school officials who "undoubtedly saved lives." The Trump administration, he said, will fight to prevent future mass shootings, but did not specify how.

"This president and this administration will remain resolved to bring the scourge of mass shootings to an end. And we will not rest or relent until we end this evil in our time and make our schools and communities safe again."

Trump floated the idea of supporting more aggressive background checks and "red flag" laws in the summer, but recent media reports indicate proposed gun-control legislation has not been a priority for the president.

Pence addressed NASA employees in front of the research center's Vertical Motion Simulator (VMS), a one-of-a-kind facility that can prepare astronauts to land on lunar and eventually martian surfaces. The VMS acts as a sort of flight simulator designed to mirror the feel, the controls and the visual cues needed to pilot a lander in an environment unlike Earth.

Though the VMS is primarily for refining the design of aircraft and spacecrafts, it also serves a valuable secondary role as a training simulator for pilots.

Pence's comments largely centered on the administration's renewed focus on manned missions to the moon. In 2017, Trump signed a directive prioritizing missions that will put the first woman, and the next man, on the moon. The directive also places a focus on "long-term exploration and utilization" ultimately culminating in a manned mission to Mars. At the time, Pence announced that he would be heading the National Space Council and act as a link between NASA and the White House.

Though the initial target was to have astronauts land on the moon in 2028, Pence announced during a National Space Council meeting last March that the new, accelerated timeline now calls for a touchdown by 2024. If reached, it would be the first time the United States has conducted a lunar landing in 52 years.

Pence told NASA employees on Thursday that things are already moving fast: In just a matter of months, strong efforts have been made to get America "back" in the business of launching its own spacecrafts, which he described as a languishing priority for the country.

"Before spring arrives next year, we're going to send American astronauts on American rockets from American soil," he said, adding that NASA would no longer have to hitch a ride with the Russians on the return trip.

Pence's visit to Moffett Field was the last leg of a two-day trip to California, which began with two events in support of Trump. He participated in a "Trump Victory" lunch in Huntington Beach Wednesday followed by a reception in Monterey. Both events were closed to the media.

In past comments to the media and on Twitter, Trump has signaled that he is eager to send astronauts to Mars and vented in June that the first leg of the mission returning to the moon wasn't breaking any new ground. A crewed flight to Mars is loosely planned to happen sometime in the 2030s.

Protesters stage die-in

While NASA employees at the event largely supported Pence's comments, often punctuated with cheering and applause, not everyone was thrilled with the vice president's visit. Several groups staged demonstrations outside of the research facility.

The protests included a presence from the groups Vigil for Democracy, calling out the vice president's opposition to abortion and LGBT rights, Resistance SF and Refuse Fascism Bay Area. The local chapter of the Raging Grannies traded their usual colorful garb for somber black and acted as mourners at a "die-in" of protesters dressed in white clothing stained with fake blood on their crotches, representing victims of back-alley abortions.

"They want to send women back into the Dark Ages," said Vara Ramakrishnan of Los Altos, a member of the group Vigil for Democracy, adding that Pence's record on women's and LGBT issues as governor of Indiana "speaks volumes."

The protesters referred to a bill signed by Pence while he was governor of Indiana requiring women to hold burial services for fetuses.

Nancy Martin of Palo Alto, a member of Raging Grannies, said that as a pro-choice advocate and Planned Parenthood volunteer, she opposed Pence's visit to the Bay Area.

"I'm here in solidarity with women, and also trans women, who are endangered by the sexist policies of Pence and Trump," said Alan Marling, a protester participating in the "die-in".

The "die-in" protesters lay down in crosswalks around Ames' main entrance, and marched across Moffett Boulevard with linked arms, followed by "Handmaids" dressed in red capes and white bonnets, followed by the Raging Grannies. The groups say they wanted to draw attention to the vice president's "misogyny and homophobia," and quoted comments made by Pence in opposition to Roe v. Wade, which legalized abortion, and his belief that homosexuality is a choice.

A group of eight protesters made it about one block onto the NASA Ames campus before security and police escorted them out.

Future space missions

Plans for a crewed landing on the moon has been dubbed the Artemis program, an American-led effort that has picked up support from several international partners since it was first announced. NASA is joined by the Canadian Space Agency, the European Space Agency and the Australian Space Agency.

Pence also emphasized the importance of "unleashing" the private sector and fostering strong public-private partnerships something Ames employees have been quick to embrace.

The program includes several ambitious and expensive components, notably the Lunar Orbital Platform (better known as the Lunar Gateway), a space station that would orbit around the moon and act as a "jumping-off" point for robots and astronauts to land on the moon's surface.

In the near term, NASA officials announced last month that it is developing a robot rover that could be sent to the moon to observe and sample frozen water concentrated at the south pole. The rover is equipped with a meter-long drill to take samples, which will assist researchers in creating a global map of resources on the moon that could be essential for lengthy stays on the lunar surface.

Throughout the address, Pence repeatedly described Trump's commitment to NASA as unwavering, noting that Trump signed into law the "largest budget ever" for the agency in the modern era. The administration also asked Congress to approve adding $1.6 billion to the budget, bringing the total planned spending to over $22.6 billion in fiscal year 2020.

And while much of the technology and equipment needed to carry out the Artemis program remains under development and almost like science fiction, Pence said the research center has a reputation of overcoming the odds.

"You made science fiction into science fact at NASA Ames, and you made history," he said.

Bay City News Service contributed to this report.

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VP Mike Pence tours NASA Ames, talks space exploration and mass shootings - The Almanac Online

LEE COUNTY

On Monday, a SpaceX rocket blasted off from Cape Canaveral loaded with tiny satellites to build a global internet network.

Friday, Lee County is looking at how it will play a role in the next golden age of space exploration.

Education and transportation are just a few ways Lee County can benefit when it comes to the aerospace industry.

Friday, members of Horizon Way and the Lee County Economic Development office hosted an informative meeting about the future of aerospace and the role Lee County and the state of Florida will play.

They say the industry has grown a lot since NASAs space shuttle program ended in 2011.

Instead of Florida being just a launching site, companies are now making those parts here. With more boots on the ground, that means areas here in Florida can get a piece of the pie too.

WINK News spoke with Dave Ketcham of Space Florida, who says local airports are just one of the ways we can help.

Its critical that Florida has a strong network of roads, air and seaports from here in a Europe and China and South America Africa and elsewhere, said Dale Ketcham, Vice President of Space Florida.

Thats where Wright Construction comes in. The company helped build the Skyplex property near RSW, a site that draws businesses in because of its proximity to the airport potentially those in aerospace.

Fred Edman, President of Wright Construction Group, says, Lee County with the north side of the airport being developed, especially with the new Skyplex Boulevard entrance, the port authority is really inviting new businesses to come and establish their headquarters right there on the north side of the airport.

And with the county already capitalizing on attracting students to aviation, were a step ahead.

At Bonita Springs High School, Michelle Guitierrez and her peers are learning how to build and fly aerospace machines. She says I would like to probably engineer rockets, satellites, things like that.

Making way for a brighter future for all mankind.

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Lee County exploring plans of what role they will play in future space exploration - Wink News

Are we alone? Humans have a lot of questions about alien life. But those beings, if they exist, likely have some questions of their own about humans, queries we may want to answer before we find any life beyond Earth.

That's because the answers we reach will shape how we respond to any such discovery in ways that have profound implications for us and that hypothetical life beyond Earth alike, according to Kathryn Denning, an anthropologist at York University in Canada who focuses on space exploration and extraterrestrial life. Some of those questions, the more anthropocentric ones, are already in the air, underlying conversations about the search for life.

But other questions would benefit from a shift in mindset that is uncommon in the field, Denning told Space.com. "We're still thinking [about a detection of extraterrestrial life] in terms of an intellectual problem about us and our place in the universe," she said. "[We] haven't thought through the consequences for that other life."

Related: The Most Fascinating Exoplanets of 2018

One key struggle may be the tendency to emphasize the question "Are we alone?" which Denning said speaks more to the recent history of science than to humanity in general. "A lot of people have already made that leap. They've already assumed that life is prevalent," she said.

It was only when science-minded people could get a very good look at neighbors like the moon and Mars that those assumptions began to change. "Thanks to astronomy, the universe kind of emptied out briefly in the mid-20th century," Denning said. "Up until that point, most people assumed it was full." And deciding for ourselves whether we are alone can't necessarily shape our response to a discovery beyond the degree of surprise with which we meet it.

Extending our interrogative and contemplative energy beyond that one question may turn out to be more helpful. Those questions could include how such a discovery will be announced. This has been discussed, but those conversations haven't kept up with the pace of change in society, Denning said. Chances are low that the sort of controlled, authority-laden announcement planned during previous decades would be pragmatic today.

"Any kind of scientific discovery now takes place in real time, in public view, and that involves all kinds of disagreements," Denning said. "You end up with different camps, and they're kind of fighting it out over Twitter or whatever. What is a nonspecialist audience supposed to think?"

Once we do have a new version of that conversation, it shouldn't stagnate again, since future decades will need to consider different circumstances once again, she added.

Denning said she also wants people to be more aware of how different communities may respond to the same new information and why. Because of different lived experiences, vulnerabilities and ways of seeing the world, a discovery that is exciting for some people may upset others. That variety of perspectives could be even more instructive in conversations about how humanity responds to the discovery of aliens: Approaches that some people see as maximizing humanity's opportunities could feel risky or threatening to other people, Denning said.

Figuring out how to respond to a discovery of life in a way that truly reflects all of humanity means finding a way to pull all those threads together into the same discussion. "We have to have, I think, better conversations about how do we talk about a discovery," Denning said. In particular, she said, those conversations need to include a much broader swath of humanity than they currently do.

And those discussions also need to recognize that societal confidence and credence are changing over time as well. Announcements or advice that may once have gone unquestioned because they came from an authority that no longer has such preeminence, Denning said. "All of this takes place against a backdrop where there is a crisis of scientific authority, particularly in America," she said. "There are just big problems with trust in expertise overall."

The conversations we have right now about potentially finding life lack another component that Denning said is vitally important: how we treat that life. "What we do with life on Earth? A lot of it is really awful," she said, pointing to millennia of consumption and captivity and disruption. "We control and contain and rework it culturally in absolutely every way that we can."

While the topic of planetary protection includes conversations about how to protect life both on Earth and beyond it, those discussions tend to view any extraterrestrial life as a scientific opportunity not as an ethical obligation, Denning said. That isn't good enough for her, she said, especially given what she called "the expansion of post-planetary capitalism."

There's reason to worry about the exploitation of alien life, given the precedent we have on Earth for what extraterrestrial life could look like: tiny so-called extremophilic organisms that can live in bitter cold, extreme heat, high saltiness and other difficult conditions. Those organisms, their genetic material and the compounds they can produce are highly sought after by companies looking to commercialize medicines and other valuable compounds. Denning said the same factors would affect any extraterrestrial extremophile life as well.

"When you see considerable private interest now in looking for life in the solar system, is that purely a scientific intellectual question with no hope of actual return?" Denning said. "Or is there something that either is at work now or would inevitably be at work at some point in terms of recruiting that life into some form of financial gain?"

Denning's concerns about these issues are strongly rooted in her background as an anthropologist, she said. She pointed to the likelihood of primates, "the creatures that are most like us," being made extinct in the wild within decades because of human activities.

"Those are the realities that anthropologists live with every day. That this is the truth of who we are and what we do," Denning said. "It's not all that we are, and it's not all that we could do, but left to our own devices, when we don't engage our higher reasoning and engage in protective actions, then some people have to protect life-forms from other people."

Email Meghan Bartels at mbartels@space.com or follow her @meghanbartels. Follow us on Twitter @Spacedotcom and on Facebook.

Need more space? Subscribe to our sister title "All About Space" Magazine for the latest amazing news from the final frontier!

(Image credit: All About Space)

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Before We Find Aliens, Humans Need to Figure Ourselves Out - Space.com

Want to see the sun in a whole new way?

Now you can do just that by looking through a host of science data newly made available to the public. That information was gathered by NASA's Parker Solar Probe during its first two close passes of the sun. The flybys brought the spacecraft closer to the sun than any previous vehicle had gone, offering scientists an incredible opportunity to learn more about our star.

"Parker Solar Probe is crossing new frontiers of space exploration, giving us so much new information about the sun," Nour E. Raouafi, Parker Solar Probe project scientist at the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory, said in a statement. "Releasing this data to the public will allow them not only to contribute to the success of the mission along with the scientific community, but also to raise the opportunity for new discoveries to the next level."

Related: NASA's Parker Solar Probe Mission to the Sun in Pictures

Parker Solar Probe launched in August 2018 for a seven-year mission that is targeting the constant stream of highly charged plasma leaving the sun, called the solar wind, and the star's outer atmosphere, called the corona. Studying these phenomena requires getting incredibly close to the sun; the spacecraft primarily gathers data while within about 23 million miles (37 million kilometers) of our star.

Onboard are four science experiments: Fields Experiment, which studies electric and magnetic fields; Integrated Science Investigation of the Sun, which measures high-energy charged particles in the solar wind and corona; Wide-Field Imager for Solar Probe, which images the solar wind and other structures; and Solar Wind Electrons Alphas and Protons Investigation, which measures different types of particles in the solar wind.

Data gathered by a Parker Solar Probe instrument, the Wide-Field Imager for Solar Probe, in November 2018, during the spacecraft's first solar flyby.

(Image credit: NASA/Naval Research Laboratory/Parker Solar Probe)

And now, you too can pore through data gathered by those instruments during the first two flybys: Oct. 31-Nov. 12, 2018, and March 30-April 19, 2019. During the second flyby, mission engineers were able to increase the amount of data the spacecraft sent home, thanks to better data-return rates than expected. There is no central hub for the data, but NASA has provided a list of websites to explore.

According to the same NASA statement, the first full-fledged science results from the mission should be published later this year.

Parker Solar Probe has also already made its third flyby of the sun; the spacecraft's next closest approach is on Jan. 29, 2020.

Email Meghan Bartels at mbartels@space.com or follow her @meghanbartels. Follow us on Twitter @Spacedotcom and on Facebook.

Need more space? Subscribe to our sister title "All About Space" Magazine for the latest amazing news from the final frontier!

(Image credit: All About Space)

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The 1st Sun Details from NASA's Parker Solar Probe Are Out. And They're Hot! - Space.com

FRAMINGHAM A major symposium titled Sustainable Space, Sustainable Earth: From Ideas to Action, will be held at Framingham State University on Friday, Dec. 6, and feature an interdisciplinary group of scholars from Harvard University, MIT, Boston College, the U.S. Naval War College, Framingham State University and more.

The symposium is the concluding event for the 18-month Moon Landing in Context series organized by FSUs Christa McAuliffe Center for Integrated Science Learning to celebrate the 50th Anniversary of the Moon Landing.

Whether you are concerned about Earths sustainability or you are galvanized by the prospective technological and economic advancements from space exploration, you should care about space sustainability, said Dr. Irene Porro, director of the Moon Landing in Context project. We define space sustainability as the secure, sustainable, and peaceful use of space for the benefit of planet earth and all its people. During this symposium, some of the top experts in their fields will consider how we can maximize the effectiveness of using space for addressing global challenges.

The keynote speaker is Dr. Danielle Wood, from MITs Media Lab and the Space Enabled Research Group. She will give a presentation titled The Role of Space Technology to Support Sustainable Development.

Other presentations include a talk by Dr. Alissa Haddaji from Harvard University on How to Protect the Earth from an Asteroid Impact, an Introduction to Planetary Defense, and a talk from Dr. David Burbach from the U.S. Navy War College on seeking a sustainable space politics.

At the end of the Moon Landing in Contexts 18-month exploration of the historical, social, cultural, political, and policy contexts of the Apollo era, this one-day symposium brings together a multidisciplinary group of renowned scholars to illustrate the urgency to focus on space sustainability, said. Porro.

The symposium will run from 8:30 to 4 p.m. and include breakfast and lunch. Registration is required and there is a $25 fee for those who are not members of the FSU community.

Registration is open at: https://space_sustainability.eventbrite.com.

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Symposium at Framingham State To Explore the Intersection Between Space Exploration and Earth Sustainability - framinghamsource.com

November 14, 2019

Contacts:Todd Cannon, Marshall Space Flight Center, Huntsville, AlabamaMichael Tullier, APR, Tuskegee University Office of Communications, Public Relations and Marketing

For the first time in its history, Tuskegee University is the recipient of the Small Business Subcontractor of the Year Award from NASAs Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama. The award was presented for exemplary research support the university has provided NASA in partnership with the Huntsville-based Jacobs Space Exploration Group.

I was my pleasure to nominate Tuskegee University for the NASA Marshall Space Flight Center Subcontractor of the Year Award, said Randy Lycans, Jacobs vice president and program manager. Tuskegee has performed extremely well in support of Jacobs on our Engineering Services and Science Capability Augmentation contract. During the course of our partnership, several students have spent the spring and summer terms with us under our intern program providing valuable technical contributions to the Space Launch System program.

The Jacobs-Tuskegee relationship began in 2009 when Jacobs established a Mentor Protg Agreement with the university to provide Jacobs with professional engineering subcontracting support. The Engineering Services and Science Capability Augmentation contract, awarded by NASA in August 2017, has included design, analysis, development and testing services and skills across a broad spectrum of engineering and science disciplines. These have supported the Marshall Engineering Directorate as well as other current and future programs and projects across the center. The partnership has also benefited NASA activities and other projects for which Marshall has responsibility, including support to the Department of Defense, and other government, commercial or educational activities.

According to Dr. Heshmat Aglan, dean of the College of Engineering, Tuskegees team comprises nine full-time employees including one Tuskegee graduate who formerly interned for Jacobs. Students periodically rotate through the research team as part of their semester-long internships.

Tuskegees College of Engineering provides key support to the Jacobs Space Exploration Group and NASA Marshall Space Flight Center, Aglan explained. Our teams strengths and contributions lie in the areas of software development and testing support, propulsion design and fluid dynamics, contamination control, polymers and composites, and systems engineering for the proposed Lunar Orbital Platform-Gateway space station.

In addition, these partnerships have included hosting NASA-related outreach events such as hosting the agencys Historically Black College and University/Minority-Serving Institution Technology Infusion Road Tour in April 2019, and participating in the Manufacturing and Fabrication Joint Counseling Initiative Meeting in June 2019.

The award was among those presented by the center during its Industry and Advocate Awards for fiscal year 2019 part of the Marshall Small Business Alliance meeting Sept. 19 at the U.S. Space & Rocket Center. Tuskegees selection places it in contention for the Agency Small Business Subcontractor of the Year Award, which will be announced at a later date by NASAs Office of Small Business Programs.

The Small Business Subcontractor of the Year Award is the second award stemming from Tuskegees ongoing research relationship with Jacobs. In March 2019, Jacobs awarded Tuskegee one of its 2018 Supplier Excellence Awards, which it presents to its partners for outstanding support and dedication to excellence in service.

These award winners represent the best of our supplier team, and we could not perform our mission of providing superior engineering and science support to MSFC without them, Lycans said at the time of the awards presentation.

2019, Tuskegee University

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Tuskegee among recent NASA Marshall Space Flight Center research award winners - Tuskegee University

WASHINGTON NASAs inspector general warned in a new report that, because of commercial crew delays, utilization of the International Space Station will drop sharply in 2020 and that NASA runs the risk of losing access entirely by next fall.

The Nov. 14 report by the Office of Inspector General (OIG) concluded that, because of continuing delays by both Boeing and SpaceX, neither company is likely to be certified by NASA for regular flights to the station before the summer of 2020.

Official commercial crew program (CCP) schedules reviewed by the OIG state that SpaceX will have its final certification review for its Crew Dragon spacecraft in January 2020, while that review for Boeings CST-100 Starliner is scheduled for February. Those reviews, though, would take place only after the successfully completion of both companies crewed test flights, which are unlikely to take place before then.

The reviews also require the closure of hundreds of specific items on each spacecraft, leading the report to conclude that final vehicle certification for both contractors will likely be delayed at least until summer 2020 based on the number of ISS and CCP certification requirements that remain to be verified and validated.

The top issues for both companies vehicles, the report stated, involved launch abort systems and parachutes. Boeing has completed qualification of its parachutes but still has to complete three of six reliability tests for the system. SpaceX has started qualification of the new Mark 3 parachutes for Crew Dragon, including 13 successful tests in a row after two initial failures.

Both companies have experienced problems with parachutes as well. An April 2019 parachute test failure by SpaceX contributed to at least a 3-month delay in SpaceXs crewed test flight, the report stated, while failures of two main parachutes on a cargo Dragon spacecraft in August 2018 required additional work to improve load balancing on the planned crewed parachute system. One of three parachutes on Boeings Starliner failed to open during the Nov. 4 pad abort test, although the company said days later it identified the cause of the anomaly and inspected other parachutes.

Boeing and SpaceX suffered delays because of problems with launch abort systems on their spacecraft. The Starliner issue, discovered during ground testing in June 2018, led to a one-year delay in the pad abort test. SpaceX performed Nov. 13 a static-fire test of its launch escape thrusters, nearly seven months after a similar test resulted in an explosion that destroyed another Crew Dragon spacecraft.

Those delays will adversely affect NASAs use of the ISS starting next spring, when the stations crew drops from six to three, including just one NASA astronaut, Chris Cassidy. That would sharply reduce the ability of NASA and its non-Russian partners to carry out work on whats formally known as the U.S. On-Orbit Segment, or USOS, part of the station.

Any reduction in the number of crew aboard the USOS would limit astronaut tasks primarily to operations and maintenance, leaving little time for scientific research, the OIG report concluded. With three USOS astronauts, the report stated, each can carry out an average of 11.67 hours of research per week per person. A single astronaut, though, would have time for only 5.5 hours of research a week. Such a reduction may hinder NASAs ability to address astronaut health risks and develop capabilities needed for deep space exploration missions.

Moreover, NASA has yet to secure any Soyuz seats after the end of Cassidys mission in October 2020. Ken Bowersox, NASAs acting associate administrator for human exploration and operations, confirmed in a response to the report included in the final document that NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine formally requested two additional seats, one on a Soyuz in the fall of 2020 and the second on a Soyuz in the spring of 2021, in an Oct. 24 letter to the Russian state space corporation Roscosmos, which has yet to act on the request.

Other steps to mitigate commercial crew delays include plans to extend Boeings crewed flight test to a long-duration ISS mission. Bowersox confirmed in the letter that the agency is also considering extending SpaceXs crewed test flight, Demo-2.

The OIG report highlighted another issue for buying any additional Soyuz seats: that NASAs waiver to sanctions against Russia under the Iran, North Korea and Syria Nonproliferation Act, or INKSNA, expires at the end of 2020. The report recommended that waiver be extended and that NASA consider prepaying Soyuz seats in full prior to the waivers current expiration at the end of 2020.

Bowersox responded that NASA was seeking an INKSNA waiver extension, but that prepayment of Soyuz seats was determined not to be in the best interest of the U.S. Government. The Senate version of a NASA authorization bill, approved by the Senate Commerce Committee Nov. 13, would extend NASAs INKSNA waiver through the end of 2030.

Bowersox also used the response to criticize what he considered to be an overly negative assessment of the state of the commercial crew program and the ISS. The OIG, he wrote, has described a worst-case scenario that does not reflect NASAs consistent efforts during the life of the program to mitigate those risks. The scenario presented in the report assumes that CCP systems will be significantly delayed and that NASA will not take any future action to mitigate the impacts on the ISS of that delay.

He cited as examples of that previous steps the agency took on five separate occasions to deal with commercial crew delays, steps that won the approval of the Aerospace Safety Advisory Panel at a meeting earlier this year. That includes, he said, ongoing discussions with Roscosmos about acquiring additional Soyuz seats. While these discussions have not concluded yet, NASA believes that the Agency will be able to support continuous U.S. crew on the ISS and that most if not all of the impacts cited in the OIG report will either be avoided altogether or will only be temporary.

Vice President Mike Pence, speaking Nov. 14 at NASAs Ames Research Center, offered his own optimistic assessment of the commercial crew program. Before spring arrives next year, were going to send American astronauts on American rockets from American soil, back into space, he said. Were going to have our own platforms to take us back, and we dont need to hitch a ride with the Russians any more.

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Inspector general report says NASA risks losing access to the ISS in 2020 - SpaceNews

Missouri S&Ts Mars Rover Design Team will host a week filled with guest speakers, observatory viewings and a movie screening this November.

Space Week 2019 is a week of programs designed to educate the public and Missouri S&T campus about the wonders of space exploration. A series of events will be held Monday, Nov. 18 through Saturday, Nov. 23. All events are free and open to the public.

Space Week events include:

Dr. Marco Cavagli, Missouri S&T professor of physics, will review his research into gravitational waves and their importance at 5 p.m. Monday, Nov. 18, in Room 103 Engineering Management Building at S&T.

Dr. Philip Knocke, former NASA Jet Propulsion Lab scientist, will reflect on his time at NASA as an approach, entry and descent engineer at 5 p.m. Tuesday, Nov. 19, in Room 103 Engineering Management Building.

Dr. John Story, Missouri S&T associate professor of physics, will discuss stellar clusters deep in the galactic neighborhood at 5 p.m. Wednesday, Nov. 20, in Room 125 Butler-Carlton Civil Engineering Building at S&T.

A screening of Interstellar (2014) will take place by the Student Union Board at 7 p.m. Thursday, Nov. 21, in St. Pats Ballroom of the Havener Center at S&T.

The S&T Observatory will host a viewing of the Pegasus Cluster at 8 p.m. Friday, Nov. 22, at the observatory, located at 1550 N. Bishop Ave. (Highway 63), adjacent to the universitys Stonehenge replica.

A Tour of the Planets will be held with hands-on, space-related activities like crafts, science projects and more for elementary school-aged students from 1 to 4 p.m. Saturday, Nov. 23, in Room 101 Butler-Carlton Civil Engineering Hall.

For more information about Space Week, visit the Mars Rover Design Teams Facebook page at https://www.facebook.com/MissouriMRDT/.

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Missouri S&T to host Space Week events Nov. 18-23 - Missouri S&T News and Research