SpacePolicyOnline.com News

Little Love for Asteroid Retrieval Mission; Squyres Deeply Worried about SLS Launch Rate

Thu, 23 May 2013 04:00:00 GMT

Only one of four witnesses at a congressional hearing Tuesday expressed enthusiasm for the Obama Administration’s new Asteroid Retrieval Mission (ARM). No consensus emerged on an alternative, but ARM clearly faces an uphill battle. Meanwhile, NASA Advisory Council Chair Steve Squyres expressed deep concern about the low expected launch rate of the Space Launch System (SLS) and implored Congress not to “pile more objectives onto NASA” unless it is prepared to provide adequate funding.

The May 21 hearing before the Space Subcommittee of the House Science, Space and Technology Committee featured four witnesses with different perspectives on the next steps in human spaceflight, even as they and the subcommittee members all seemed to agree on the eventual destination – Mars.

The debate is over the intermediate steps to get there.

Lou Friedman, Executive Director Emeritus of the Planetary Society and co-chair of the Keck Institute for Space Studies (KISS) report that proposed what morphed into ARM was the only advocate for that mission. ARM is included in NASA’s FY2014 budget request and envisions sending a robotic spacecraft to capture an asteroid, redirect it into lunar orbit, and send astronauts there to study it. Paul Spudis of the Lunar and Planetary Institute continued his quest for a human return to the surface of the Moon. Cornell’s Steve Squyres, principal investigator for the Mars rovers Spirit and Opportunity and chair of the NASA Advisory Council, agreed with two parts of the ARM proposal – searching for Near Earth Asteroids and sending astronauts to cis-lunar space (between the Earth and the Moon) – but eschewed the idea of capturing an asteroid and bringing it into lunar orbit for a visit by astronauts. Doug Cooke, a NASA veteran who retired in 2011 after heading NASA’s Exploration Systems Mission Directorate and is now a consultant, rued the lack of analysis and planning prior to announcing ARM and argued for development of a human exploration strategy that logically lays out the steps to Mars.

Subcommittee members on both sides of the aisle clearly are not convinced that ARM is the answer. Subcommittee chairman Steve Palazzo (R-MS) said he is “not convinced this mission is the right way to go and that it may actually prove a detour for a Mars mission.” Ranking member Donna Edwards (D-MD) avoided outright opposition to ARM, but stressed that she needs to understand how it, as opposed to alternatives like returning to the Moon, would contribute to the goal of sending humans to the surface of Mars.

Friedman made his case in favor of ARM primarily on the basis that it is a mission that can be done soon and exciting missions with near-term results are needed to keep the public interested in human spaceflight. Spudis disagreed. He thinks the point is to demonstrate there is value for the money spent and “an extensible, reusable system, a spacefaring system that allows us to do all the things we want to do at various spots in space” is the ticket. He would start with a return to the lunar surface and utilizing the resources there. “What we really seek is public support, not necessarily excitement,” he argued. Squyres insisted that what is needed to win public support is an “unwavering focus on Mars as the destination,” citing the thousands of people who witnessed the landing of the Curiosity rover at 2:00 am in Times Square as evidence of enthusiasm for exploring Mars.

NASA explains ARM as part of a strategy to unite its human spaceflight, space technology and science activities in a common undertaking. NASA Science Mission Directorate head John Grunsfeld stated flatly at the recent Humans to Mars Summit that ARM is not a science-driven mission, however. Friedman acknowledged that sentiment at the hearing, and emphasized that it is a human spaceflight mission, but there will be benefits in the areas of searching for Near Earth Asteroids and learning about asteroids for planetary protection purposes as well as for companies that want to mine them.

Cooke’s main point was that the United State needs a logical strategy for human exploration. Although steps are underway that support the long term goal of sending humans to Mars – such as development of SLS and Orion and robotic probes like Curiosity – an overarching “strategy does not exist today.” He listed several questions that need to be answered as part of creating that strategy, such as what geopolitical goals the United States wants to achieve, what is our long term vision for human space exploration, and how to collaborate with international partners. He said ARM does not have a “recognizable connection” to a long term strategy, does not appear to be based on consultation with stakeholders or international partners, and “appears to be a very complex mission with the potential for growing more complex and more costly.”

Squyres similarly finds no connection between ARM and Mars exploration, adding that he does not see the need for landing on any surface – the Moon, an asteroid or one of the moons of Mars – as preparation for landing on Mars. He believes the capabilities needed to go to Mars can be demonstrated in cis-lunar space and, given the performance capabilities of SLS and Orion, it is the “only significant destination beyond low Earth orbit that can be reached for the foreseeable future." He said that although there was no consensus among the witnesses as to all the steps to Mars, he believed they did agree that cis-lunar space should be next.

His emphatic message to the subcommittee was that Congress should not specify any other destination or timetable unless it is prepared to give NASA the needed funding. NASA is “being asked to do too much with too little” and the situation is “chronic, severe and getting worse,” he asserted. “I beg of you not to pile more objectives on NASA because they can’t even afford what they’re doing now.”

Another concern Squyres stressed is the low flight rate for the Space Launch System (SLS). “I’m deeply worried,” he told Edwards, because no other human spaceflight system has had such a low anticipated launch rate. The first SLS launch is expected in 2017, the second in 2021, and then once every two years thereafter. SLS and the Orion spacecraft need to be adequately funded “to be proven out on a pace that really supports … a safe pathway” to cis-lunar space, Squyres insisted. Cooke agreed. The flight rate is driven “totally” by funding, he said, and “they definitely need more funding … starting with inflation.” NASA’s budget is currently projected to be flat, with no adjustment for inflation, which erodes buying power as the years pass.

GOES-14 Activated to Replace Failed GOES-13

Thu, 23 May 2013 04:00:00 GMT

The NOAA Satellite and Information Service posted a notice on its Facebook page this morning announcing that the GOES-14 satellite is now online to replace GOES-13, which failed on Tuesday. Efforts continue to fix GOES-13.

GOES-13 failed last year and was temporarily replaced by GOES-14, an on-orbit spare that is in place for just such an eventuality. NOAA uses two geostationary satellites, dubbed GOES-East and GOES-West because of their geographical positions, as part of its weather satellite system that also includes polar orbiting satellites. NOAA posted imagery on Facebook of the May 20 devastating Oklahoma tornado taken by GOES-13 before the satellite failed.

NOAA strives to have spare satellites already in orbit ready to take over if one of its operational satellites fails. GOES-13 was launched in 2006 and was itself a spare until it was placed into the GOES-East position in 2010. GOES-14 was launched in 2009. GOES-15 is the operational GOES-West satellite. NOAA is developing a new generation of geostationary satellites, designated "GOES-R," with the first launch scheduled for 2015.

NOAA engineers were able to restore GOES-13 to service last year, and GOES-14 returned to its spare status. As of this morning, GOES-14 is back on duty while GOES-13 is in storage mode.

Obama Administration Releases Draft Rules to Ease Satellite Export Controls

Thu, 23 May 2013 04:00:00 GMT

The Satellite Industry Association (SIA) announced the news this afternoon that the Obama Administration has released the draft rules for easing export controls on satellites. It is another step in a process likely to last for many more months as the Administration implements export control changes agreed to in the FY2013 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA).

The satellite industry has been trying for more than a decade to move commercial satellites off the State Department's strict Munitions List and its International Traffic in Arms Regulations (ITAR) and over to the dual-use Commerce Control List at the Department of Commerce.

SIA provided links to the draft regulations issued by the Department of State and the Department of Commerce. Those websites state that the draft rules will be published in tomorrow's Federal Register (May 24), the official method by which the government publicizes regulatory proceedings.

Comments are due 45 days after publication in the Federal Register.

Hale: Logistics Key To Deep Space Human Exploration, and Commercial Space Is The Answer

Mon, 20 May 2013 04:00:00 GMT

Former NASA space shuttle program manager Wayne Hale told the Senate Commerce Subcommittee on Science and Space Thursday that it is difficult for his generation to change its “mental model” of the NASA-funded Apollo program as the way for humans to explore space. The reality today, he stressed, is that the government and the commercial sector must team together and leverage each other’s capabilities because taxpayers are only willing to spend half-a-percent of the federal budget on NASA, not the 3-4 percent in the Apollo era.

Hale, currently the Director of Human Spaceflight for Special Aerospace Services, was responding to a question from Senator Bill Nelson (D-FL) at a May 16 hearing on advancing partnerships in the business of space. As the hearing came to a close, Nelson wanted to know why it is so hard to get people to understand that commercial space activities will “collaborate, supplement, enhance” NASA’s program to send humans beyond low Earth orbit (LEO).

Patti Grace Smith, former FAA Associate Administrator for Commercial Space Transportation (AST) and now a consultant, agreed that people still associate space activities with NASA and not the private sector even though commercial space launches date back to the 1980s. “Where we sit is what we know,” she said, and because NASA holds the reputation as “the premier space agency,” it has been challenging to get people to accept that commercial space can succeed. That perception is changing, she added, with NASA’s new partnerships with the commercial sector and the successful flight of SpaceShipOne in 2004.

Whether the slowly changing paradigm will help win support for NASA’s FY2014 request of $831 million for the commercial crew program, however, is an open question as Nelson made clear. He said that he and Ranking Member Ted Cruz (R-TX) will be working on a new NASA authorization act this year and “in the past, it sure has been difficult to get people to recognize” the value and necessity of the commercial and government space sectors partnering together in human space exploration.

Many in Congress are determined to restore a U.S. capability for launching people into space by 2017, but have not provided NASA with the requested funds for its approach to achieving that goal – the commercial crew program. The $831 million request is more than $300 million above what Congress provided for FY2013. Finding that extra money will not be easy, especially since policy issues such as how many companies to support have not been settled and some influential Members remain highly skeptical of commercial crew overall. The alternative would be using the Space Launch System and Orion spacecraft, but that system is oversized (and thus expensive) for ferrying crews to and from the International Space Station (ISS).

More generally, Hale connected the dots between today’s commercial crew and cargo efforts to support the ISS and the longer term future of human space exploration. ISS itself is crucial for testing technologies needed for long duration spaceflight and ISS needs commercial cargo and commercial crew, he said. For missions to the Moon and Mars, the key will be logistics, he continued, quoting Gen. Norman Schwarzkopf as saying “armchair generals study tactics, real generals study logistics.” Lowering the cost of getting mass into LEO will be crucial to supplying logistics for long duration flights beyond LEO. “Getting mass to [LEO] is halfway to anywhere in the universe. And if we can supply equipment, fuel, even crews cheaply to [LEO] that has got to be a vital link in ensuring that whatever deep space” missions are mounted will be successful. “Low cost transportation enables all of that. That’s what we’re all about in the commercial space enterprises.”

Commercial Spaceflight Federation President Michael Lopez-Alegria was asked about the size of the market for suborbital and orbital commercial human space flight, or space tourism as it often is called. He cited a 2012 report by The Tauri Group that the suborbital market could be $600 million over the next decade, but said there is no equivalent study of the orbital market. He is convinced a sizeable market will develop, but could not say when: “It’s hard to predict markets that don’t exist yet, but … all I can say, like the famous movie quote … ‘build it and they will come.’”

Lopez-Alegria, a former astronaut who made four trips to space, including commanding the ISS, argued strongly in favor of the commercial crew program as well as extending ISS operations to 2028. Currently the United States and its ISS partners (Russia, Europe, Japan and Canada) have agreed to operate it only until 2020, though NASA believes it technically could remain operational through 2028, 30 years after the first module was launched.

Purdue University’s Steven Collicott testified about the research opportunities enabled by commercial suborbital vehicles, noting that Purdue has a down payment on a spot on a Virgin Galactic flight. The university does not plan to fly a person, but “200 pounds of automated payload to advance high-tech Indiana industry.” He also is building payloads to fly on suborbital systems offered by Armadillo, Blue Origin, Masten, and XCOR, as well as a high altitude balloon company, Near Space. He believes these types of flight opportunities will encourage students to study Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM).

Smith also argued for extending the FAA's authority to indemnify commercial space launch services companies against certain amounts of losses if there is an accident for at least 10 years, and for keeping AST within the FAA for the time being.

Prepared statements of the witnesses and a webcast of the hearing are on the committee's website.

Patti Grace Smith: Extend Indemnification for 10 Years, At least

Mon, 20 May 2013 04:00:00 GMT

Patti Grace Smith called on Congress last week to extend the FAA’s authority to provide third party indemnification for commercial launch services companies for 10 years or, better yet, permanently.

After lengthy debate last year, Congress extended the indemnification authority for only one year – through December 31, 2013 -- so the topic is back on the table for consideration this year.

Smith was a witness at a May 16 Senate Commerce subcommittee hearing on advancing partnerships in the business of space. Much of the hearing focused on the nexus between government and commercial space activities in future human space exploration, but she also raised narrower issues important to the commercial space launch industry.

A former head of the FAA’s Office of Commercial Space Transportation (AST), she is now a consultant to the commercial space industry and chairs the Commercial Space Committee of the NASA Advisory Council. She also advised the subcommittee that AST should remain a part of the FAA rather than reporting directly to the Secretary of Transportation as it did when it was created in 1984. She believes that by keeping the office within the FAA, aviation officials are forced to deal with questions about how to integrate commercial space launches into the National Airspace System (NAS) rather than ignoring them.

Eventually AST should “take its rightful, its logical place as another transportation mode” separate from the FAA, but in her view it is better situated within the FAA for now.

Prepared statements of the witnesses and a webcast of the hearing are available on the committee’s website.

White House, NASA Honor Sally Ride

Mon, 20 May 2013 04:00:00 GMT

NASA announced today that President Obama will posthumously award the Presidential Medal of Freedom to Sally Ride, the first American woman to make a spaceflight. Ride died on July 23, 2012 at the age of 61 from pancreatic cancer.

Ride is being honored tonight at the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts for serving as a role model for woman and girls and her service to the nation. She devoted much of her post-NASA career to Sally Ride Science, a company dedicated "to educate, engage and inspire all students," but especially girls. NASA also is creating a new internship program in her name to help students from underserved backgrounds and renaming the EarthKam camera aboard the International Space Station after her. Middle school students can obtain images of the Earth from EarthKam to support their studies. Ride was involved in a similar effort using a camera aboard the GRAIL spacecraft called MoonKam.

Ride became the first American woman to make a spaceflight, aboard STS-7 in 1983 (the first woman in space was the Soviet Union's Valentina Tereshkova in 1963). Ride made a second flight in 1984, STS-41G. In 1986, she served on the Rogers Commission that investigated the space shuttle Challenger (STS 51-L) tragedy and also served on the 2003 Columbia Accident Investigation Board (CAIB) that determined the cause of the space shuttle Columbia (STS-107) accident.

After leading a study on the future of NASA in 1987, Ride left the agency to become a physics professor at UC-San Diego and soon founded Sally Ride Science with her life partner Tam O'Shaughnessy, who remains as chair of the company's board. Ride was married to fellow astronaut Steven Hawley from 1982-1987.

Space Policy Events for the Week of May 20-24, 2013

Sun, 19 May 2013 04:00:00 GMT

The following space policy events may be of interest in the week ahead. The House and Senate are in session this week.

During the Week

Among the highlights of the coming week are congressional hearings on NASA and NOAA and House Armed Services Committee (HASC) subcommittee markups of the FY2014 National Defense Authorization Act.

A House Science, Space and Technology (SS&T) subcommittee will hold a hearing on Tuesday on Next Steps in Human Exploration of Space that seems focused on the new asteroid retrieval mission proposed in NASA's FY2014 budget request.

Another House SS&T subcommittee will hold a hearing on Thursday on how to restore U.S. leadership in weather forecasting, a NOAA responsibility, though it is hard to tell how much of that will focus on weather satellites rather than computer models. Later that morning the Senate Commerce committee will hold its nomination hearing for Penny Pritzker to be the new Secretary of Commerce. The Department of Commerce is NOAA's parent agency and it also is one of the two cabinet level departments responsible for export controls (State Department is the other), so is a critical participant in implementing the export control reforms required under last year's National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA). Rumors were rampant that the draft regulations for reforming satellite export controls would be published in the Federal Register last week, but that did not happen; perhaps they will be issued this week. That is just one step in the lengthy regulatory process that many hope will result in commercial satellites no longer being subject to the International Traffic in Arms Regulations (ITAR) under the State Department's Munitions List.

All of the House Armed Services Committee (HASC) subcommittees will markup their respective portions of the FY2014 NDAA this week. The Strategic Forces subcommittee, which is responsible for most military space programs, will hold its markup on Wednesday. Full committee markup is scheduled for June 5. (The Senate Armed Services Committee markups are scheduled for June 11-12.)

Monday, May 20

National Tribute to Sally Ride, Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, Washington, DC, 7:00-8:30 pm ET

Monday-Wednesday, May 20-22

International Space Arts Workshop, Moffett Field, CA

Monday-Friday, May 20-24

Lunabotics Mining Competition, Kennedy Space Center, FL

Tuesday, May 21

Secure World Foundation/Women in Aerospace-Europe Roundtable on Cooperation Versus Competition in Space Activities, Brussels, Belgium
House SS&T Sbcmte Hearing on Next Steps in Human Exploration, 2318 Rayburn, 2:00 pm ET

Wednesday, May 22

HASC Strategic Forces Sbcmte Markup FY2014 NDAA, 2212 Rayburn, 10:30 am ET

Thursday, May 23

House SS&T Sbcmte Hearing on Restoring U.S. Leadership in Weather Forecasting, 2318 Rayburn, 9:30 am ET
Senate Commerce Nomination Hearing for Penny Pritzker to be Secretary of Commerce, 253 Russell, 11:00 am ET

Thursday-Monday, May 23-27

International Space Development Conference (ISDC), San Diego, CA

Requiem for Many of the Rodents on Bion-M1

Sun, 19 May 2013 04:00:00 GMT

All of the gerbils and half the mice reportedly did not survive their spaceflight aboard Russia's Bion-M1 capsule, which returned to Earth last night after a month in space..

Anatoly Zak at RussianSpaceWeb.com cites Russia's Interfax news agency as reporting that all eight Mongolian gerbils died because of an equipment failure. Half of the 45 mice also did not survive, though no reason was given. The 15 geckos (lizards) as well as the snails and containers of microorganisms and plants apparently are OK, however.

NASA is participating with Russia in this mission by providing animal enclosure units and performing research with the rodents (mice and gerbils).

Russia's "Orbital Noah's Ark" Due to Land Tonight

Sat, 18 May 2013 04:00:00 GMT

A Russian spacecraft carrying a menagerie of animals that have been in orbit for a month is scheduled to land tonight, Saturday, May 18, Eastern Daylight Time (EDT).

The Bion-1M capsule was launched on April 19, the first of a new generation of Bion spacecraft. NASA and Russia's space agency collaborated on many of the earlier Bion flights, which ended in 1996 after U.S. animal rights groups protested the use of monkeys for such experiments. One of the two monkeys on the 1996 flight died after it returned to Earth.

This flight carries no monkeys, but mice, gerbils, geckos, snails, and containers with various microorganisms and plants. The flight has been dubbed an "orbital Noah's Ark" or a "space zoo" because of the variety of animals aboard. NASA is a partner in the fight, providing Animal Enclosure Units and participating in rodent research.

Landing is expected at 10:12 pm EDT (which will be May 19, 7:12 am Moscow Time, or May 19, 03:12 GMT) 82 kilometers north of Orenburg according to Anatoly Zak at RussianSpaceWeb.com and Bob Christy at zarya.info. Both have posted the ground track for the reentry.

Kepler Down But Not Out

Wed, 15 May 2013 04:00:00 GMT

NASA's Kepler Space Telescope has lost a second reaction wheel, but top officials with the project stressed today that they are not calling it quits yet.

The hastily called teleconference with reporters this afternoon suggested a dire situation, but Kepler principal investigator Bill Borucki and Deputy Project Manager Charlie Sobeck, both with NASA's Ames Research Center, insisted that while the news was not so good, it did not mean the Kepler mission is over.

They stressed two points. First, although Kepler cannot produce the type of scientific data on planets around other stars -- exoplanets -- for which it has become famous with only two of its four reaction wheels functioning, they have not given up on ultimately getting one of the two malfunctioning wheels to operate once again. Reaction wheel 2 was turned off last year when it showed signs of failure; reaction wheel 4 failed yesterday. Second, even if Kepler no longer can produce new exoplanet data, two years of archived data await investigation so new discoveries are likely anyway.

Borucki said repeatedly that Kepler was designed to operate for four years, and it has operated for four years. It has done what it was designed to do -- search for Earth-size planets around other stars within the star's habitable zone (and thus candidates for harboring life) and determine whether such planets are frequent or rare. Kepler uses the transit method to detect planets by searching for a dimming of a star as the planet passes in front of it. Borucki said that few astronomers believed it was possible to detect exoplanets in this manner and he had to submit his idea for funding again and again and again. Ultimately he succeeded. When asked what he is feeling today, with two malfunctioning reaction wheels that could mean the end of new data acquisition, he said he was "elated with how much we've accomplished." While it would be "frosting on the cake" if it lasted another four years, "we have an excellent cake" already, he exclaimed.

Sobeck said that Kepler has cost about $600 million to date, and the current spend rate is $20 million per year. Kepler has completed its primary mission and now is an extended mission phase for an additional two years. NASA holds "senior reviews" every two years where experts decide which missions to continue funding, since there is a finite amount of money for mission operations. NASA astrophysics division director Paul Hertz said at today's teleconference that the next senior review for Kepler is in 2014 where a decision will be made as to whether the spacecraft continues to return scientific data that warrants continued funding. The agency will be conducting studies over the next several months to determine what science can be obtained from Kepler if the two reaction wheels remain out of commission as well as alternative methods for pointing the telescope with the extreme precision required to obtain the exoplanet data. The spacecraft has thrusters, but all of that fuel would be quickly consumed if it was used to maintain pointing accuracy instead of using the reaction wheels.

Hertz stressed that this is NASA's "first, not our last, exoplanet mission." Next is the recently-approved Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS), scheduled for launch in 2017, which will search for the exoplanets that are closest to our solar system. Then the James Webb Space Telescope, to be launched in late 2018, will study the atmospheres of selected exoplanets to determine if life might exist there. Both will build on the data from Kepler.

Sobeck conceded that the Kepler team is "saddened" by the news that a second reaction wheel failed, imperiling the telescope's mission, but the mood of the teleconference was upbeat. He said Kepler is "not down and out," though they do not know yet what its performance level will be in the future. Borucki agreed: "I wouldn't be a pessimist here. I wouldn't write it off at this point."

If the spacecraft's precision pointing capability cannot be regained, they stressed repeatedly that there are two years worth of data yet to be mined and more exoplanets to be discovered.

As Hadfield Returns to Earth, Three of Our Fav ISS Videos

Mon, 13 May 2013 04:00:00 GMT

Canadian astronaut Chris Hadfield has become quite the media star during his tour of duty aboard the International Space Station (ISS), which comes to a close tonight. He and two crew mates are scheduled to land at 10:31 pm Eastern Daylight Time (EDT). He made some nifty videos up there -- here are two of our favorites, plus one other all-time-great.

Hadfield, who was the first Canadian ISS Commander, brought his guitar with him and recorded his version of David Bowie's Space Oddiity ("Major Tom"). Watch at: http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=KaOC9danxNo#

He also did a number of videos to show what life is like on the ISS. Our favorite shows what happens when you wring a wet washcloth in microgravity. Might surprise you! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lMtXfwk7PXg

And in case anyone missed it, NASA astronaut and ISS Commander Suni Williams gave a terrific tour of the ISS on her final day in space last year. The ISS really isn't very big in terms of living space -- the comparison to being the size of a football field includes the solar arrays. The interior is the size of a 5-bedroom house, but on her tour, it looks a lot roomier. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=doN4t5NKW-k

Meanwhile, NASA TV will cover the undocking and landing of Hadfield, Russian cosmonaut Roman Romanenko and NASA astronaut Tom Marshburn tonight in their Soyuz TMA-07M spacecraft. Undocking is at 7:08 pm EDT; landing at 10:31 pm EDT.

Space Policy Events for the Week of May 13-17, 2013

Sun, 12 May 2013 04:00:00 GMT

The following events may be of interest in the week ahead. The House and Senate are in session this week.

During the Week

Perhaps the most intriguing event this week is Thursday's House Science, Space and Technology (SS&T) Committee's Oversight Subcommittee hearing on "Espionage Threats at Federal Laboratories: Balancing Scientific Cooperation While Protecting Critical Information." No NASA witnesses are on the list, but it would be surprising if the agency is not a subject of discussion.

Rep. Frank Wolf (R-VA) made headlines earlier this year with allegations that a Chinese national, Bo Jiang, was stealing secrets from NASA's Langely Research Center. Jiang was arrested, but later exonerated of a felony charge of lying to federal investigators. Wolf has raised concerns for some time about alleged improprieties regarding ITAR-controlled information at NASA's Ames Research Center. Wolf chairs the appropriations subcommittee that funds NASA and works closely with House SS&T Committee chairman Lamar Smith (R-TX) on this issue. They jointly sent a letter to the FBI and to the Department of Justice Inspector General about their concerns about NASA-Ames this spring (links to the letters are on Rep. Wolf's website). Witnesses on Thursday are Chuck Vest, President of the National Academy of Engineering (and President Emeritus of MIT); Larry Wortzel, chairman of the U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission (and former Asian Studies Center director at the Heritage Foundation); Michelle Van Cleave, Senior Research Fellow at George Washington University's Homeland Security Policy Institute (she was the National Counterintelligence Executive in the George W. Bush Administration and once was a staffer on the House SS&T Committee); and David Major of the Centre for Counterintelligence and Security Studies (a retired FBI agent, his company trains people in counterintelligence and related topics). Should be interesting!

Monday, May 13

NASA Celebrates the 40th Anniversary of Skylab, NASA HQ, Washington, DC, 2:30 pm ET
Soyuz TMA-07M Return with three ISS Crewmembers: undocking 7:08 pm ET; landing, 10:31 pm ET

Tuesday, May 14

The Planetary Society luncheon on Future of Solar System Exploration, 2325 Rayburn House Office Building, 11:30 am - 1:30 pm ET
ISU-DC Space Cafe Featuring NASA's Dan Dumbacher, The Science Club, 1136 19th Street, N.W., Washington, DC, 7:00 pm ET

Tuesday-Wednesday, May 14-15

FAA Commercial Space Transportation Advisory Committee (COMSTAC), National Housing Center, 1201 15th St., N.W., Washington, DC

Thursday, May 16

Secure World Foundation Symposium on Legal and Policy Aspects of Space Cooperation Between Europe and the BRICS Countries, Leiden University, Leiden, The Netherlands
Senate Commerce Subcommittee Hearing on Partnerships to Advance the Business of Space, 253 Russell Senate Office Building. 10:00 am ET
Washington Space Business Roundtable Luncheon Featuring Conrad Lautenbacher, University Club, 1135 16th St., N.W., Washington, DC, 11:30 am - 1:30 pm
NASA History Office Lunchtime Discussion Featuring Asif Siddiqi, NASA HQ, Washington, DC, 12:00 noon ET
House SS&T Subcommitee Hearing on Espionage Threats at Federal Labs, 2318 Rayburn House Office Building, 2:00 pm ET

Jeff Bingham to Leave Senate Commerce Committee

Sun, 12 May 2013 04:00:00 GMT

Jeff Bingham, a key staffer in congressional decisions about the future of NASA's program for the past eight years, has announced that he is leaving the Senate Commerce, Science and Transportation Committee.

Bingham will continue to work with the committee over the next several weeks transitioning his responsibilities to a new team led by Bailey Edwards. He plans to remain deeply involved in space issues, but his specific plans were not announced.

Bingham was chief of staff to then-Senator Jake Garn (R-UT) from 1974-1990. Garn, a former Navy pilot, served as chair of the Senate Appropriations Committee's subcommittee that funded NASA (at that time the VA-HUD subcommittee) and became the first politician to fly on a space shuttle mission (STS-51D in 1985).

Bingham left the Senate in 1990, and after three years at SAIC, moved to NASA where, among other assignments, he began writing a history of the space station program from a political perspective. In 2005, he returned to the Senate and became a staffer for Senator Kay Bailey Hutchison (R-TX), a very influential Senator who helped craft recent NASA authorization acts, including the 2010 NASA authorization act that created a compromise between Congress and the Obama Administration on the future of the human spaceflight program (i.e., proceeding with the Obama Administration's proposal for commercial crew while also directing NASA to build its own new large space launch vehicle, the Space Launch System, and the Orion spacecraft to take astronauts beyond low Earth orbit).

Hutchison retired from the Senate at the end of the 112th Congress and Bingham has now decided to follow suit, though he stresses that he is not retiring from being an advocate for the space program. For those of us still anxious to read his history of the space station program, we can only hope he now will have time to finish it.

Spacewalkers Replace Pump, But Not Sure If Leak is Fixed

Sat, 11 May 2013 04:00:00 GMT

Two International Space Station (ISS) crew members successfully replaced a coolant pump in the ISS electrical system today, but there was no sign of the leak that led to this unprecedented ISS spacewalk.

Tom Marshburn and Chris Cassidy completed their tasks about an hour ahead of schedule today, finishing the spacewalk in 5.5 hours. One objective of the spacewalk, successfully executed, was replacing an ammonia pump used to cool a solar array channel that provides electricity for the ISS. There are eight channels, one for each solar array. ISS crew members noticed "snowflakes" emanating from one of them on Thursday, signalling an ammonia leak. That channel had shown signs of leaks in the past, origin unknown, but this time the amount was much greater.

NASA decided to conduct an emergency spacewalk not because the leak posed a threat to the space station or the astronauts, but because they hoped to spot the source of the leak while ammonia was still being released. That part of the assignment was unrealized. When Marshburn and Cassidy arrived at the site, there was no sign of an ammonia leak. They replaced the pump because it was one obvious source of the problem, and when the new pump was activated, no leak was observed. That might be a cause for celebration, but NASA officials stressed at a post-spacewalk news conference that it will be many weeks before they feel they are certain the new pump resolves the issue.

"We are happy. We are very happy," said ISS Deputy Program Manager Joel Montalbano about the overall success of the spacewalk. This is the first time in the "increment" ISS missions that a spacewalk has been planned and executed in such a short period of time. The desire to view the leak as it was occurring, and the experience of Marshburn and Cassidy -- who conducted two spacewalks together on a 2009 space shuttle mission, including working in this area of the ISS -- drove the decision to move quickly. Marshburn will be returning to Earth on Monday after almost 5 months on the space station, so today was a unique opportunity.

NASA to Hold News Briefing on Space Station Leak Today at 4:00 pm ET

Fri, 10 May 2013 04:00:00 GMT

NASA will hold a press briefing at 4:00 pm ET (3:00 pm CT) today about the ammonia leak on the International Space Station (ISS).

The briefing will be broadcast on NASA TV. ISS Program Manager Mike Suffredini and NASA Chief Flight Director Norm Knight will discuss plans for assessing and fixing the leak, which ISS crew members noticed yesterday. A final decision on whether to conduct a spacewalk on Saturday is expected later today.

Unprecedented ISS Spacewalk Set for Saturday Morning

Fri, 10 May 2013 04:00:00 GMT

In a spacewalk characterized as unprecedented for the International Space Station (ISS), two U.S. astronauts will venture outside their home in space Saturday morning to see if they can find and fix a vexing ammonia leak in the ISS electrical power system.

Tom Marshburn has been preparing for his return to Earth on Monday after nearly 5 months in space. NASA officials stressed today that there is no change to the plan for Marshburn and two other ISS crewmembers to come home on Monday, but first he gets another chance to do a spacewalk.

Marshburn and Chris Cassidy, who is part of a different set of ISS crewmembers that is remaining onboard the station, have already done two spacewalks together (on STS-127 in 2009) and worked in the area where they need to go tomorrow. Their experience helped NASA officials decide that it was OK to go ahead with this spacewalk with less than 48 hours notice. NASA chief flight director Norm Knight said that performing a spacewalk with so little advance planning is "precedent setting" for ISS missions (called "increments"), though perhaps not for space shuttle flights.

ISS crewmembers observed "snowflakes" coming off one of the ISS solar array trusses yesterday that was quickly determined to be an ammonia leak in one of the eight power channels that provide electricity. There is one power channel for each solar array. Ammonia is used as a coolant.

This leak is in the vicinity of a previous leak that NASA was never able to identify so it is not known if something happened to increase that leak or if this is something unrelated. ISS program manager Mike Suffredini stressed the difficulty of finding leaks, which may come from very tiny holes, perhaps caused by a Micrometeoroid Orbital Debris (MMOD) hit. Or the leak may be from a seal in the pump. They simply don't know. Marshburn and Cassidy will do a visual inspection and replace the pump.

The decision to do a spacewalk quickly was driven largely by the desire to observe the leak when a lot of ammonia is being released precisely so that the source can be identified. The ammonia in the system is expected to be depleted in a day or so.

The opportunity to discover the source of the leak coupled with the experience of these two ISS crew members were major factors in the decision to go ahead with the spacewalk tomorrow, Suffredini said. It is not a matter of an emergency situation aboard the station. The crew is in no danger from the leak and the ISS can operate with minimal impact using the other seven channels. If the astronauts cannot identify the source of the leak and replacing the pump does not remedy the situation, the ISS can continue operating almost normally at least in the short term. For the long term, operating with only seven instead of eight electrical channels could reduce the amount of research that can be conducted. This is "not critical from a safety standpoint," Suffredini said, but "if we have to live with this channel down for a long period of time" it will have an impact on research. The main purpose of the ISS is to serve as a scientific research laboratory for experiments that need to be conducted in microgravity.

Marshburn and Cassidy are scheduled to open the hatch to exit the ISS at 8:15 am Eastern Daylight Time (EDT) tomorrow morning (7:15 am Central Daylight Time). During the 6 hour 15 minute spacewalk, they will inspect the area of the leak and replace the pump. They then will inspect each other's spacesuits for signs of ammonia contamination since NASA knows there is a lot of leaked ammonia in the area. A 30-45 minute "bake out" period will ensue as a precaution to allow any unnoticed ammonia to evaporate. They will then reenter the airlock and pressurize it to 5 pounds per square inch (psi) where another test will be conducted to ensure they are not bringing any ammonia into the station before full repressurization.

Marshburn, Russian cosmonaut Roman Romanenko and Canadian astronaut Chris Hadfield remain on schedule to return to Earth on Monday, May 13, in their Soyuz TMA-07M spacecraft. Undocking is scheduled for 7:08 pm EDT, with landing at 10:31 pm EDT (8:31 am May 14 local time at the landing site in Kazakhstan). They were launched on December 19, 2012.

NASA TV will cover tomorrow's spacewalk beginning at 7:00 am EDT (6:00 am CDT). It also will cover the landing on Monday, as detailed in NASA's press release.

What is "Life" Asks Rep. Bucshon

Thu, 09 May 2013 04:00:00 GMT

In a relatively short, but wide-ranging hearing this morning, two House subcommittees learned not only about the ongoing search for other planets around other stars -- exoplanets -- but about current thinking on how "life" is defined.

NASA and the National Science Foundation (NSF) both fund research into exoplanets. NASA's Kepler Space Telescope is spurring headlines today with its findings about hundreds of such planets, but it was an NSF-funded effort in the 1990s that is credited with finding the first certifiable exoplanet. NASA's John Grunsfeld and NSF's Jim Ulvestad assured members of the Space Subcommittee and Research Subcommittee of the House Science, Space and Technology Committee that the two agencies work closely with each other, with the Department of Energy, which also funds astrophysics research, as well as with international partners in exoplanet studies.

The search for "other Earths" is part of the search for other life, perhaps intelligent life. Laurance Doyle of the SETI Institute, which focuses on the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence (SETI), explained the factors in the Drake Equation, of which the number of planets capable of supporting life is third (after the number of stars that might have planets in their habitable zone, and the fraction of those stars that actually have planets).

A key question, however, was asked by Rep. Larry Bucshon (R-IN), chairman of the Research Subcommittee. Noting that NASA's Mars Curiosity mission is looking for water and carbon-based life, he said "that's our definition of life...are there other people who have other definitions of life that we also might be exploring for?"

Doyle's answer was that some astrobiologists "are looking at the definition of life as anything that can store information." He added that "silicon-based information storage and crystals and so on has not been out of the realm of consideration."

The National Research Council (NRC) published a study in 2007, often referred to as the "weird life" study, that hypothesizes on life forms that might be based on elements other than carbon. Bucshon was satisfied with Doyle's necessarily brief explanation today, however.

The only mildly controversial issues that arose were the potential use of the Space Launch System (SLS) for launching future space telescopes that could be used for exoplanet research, and whether the Obama Administration's proposed reorganization of science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) programs might negatively impact dissemination of exoplanet findings from NASA missions.

Space subcommittee chairman Steven Palazzo's (R-MS) first question clearly was intended to get Grunsfeld to say that SLS would be very useful for launching much larger space telescopes that might be able to detect oxygen, for example, in an exoplanet's atmosphere, which could signal the existence of life there. Grunsfeld complied. Rep. Dana Rohrabacher (R-CA), a strong supporter of commercial space activities, was the last questioner of the hearing and had the opposite intent. He wanted Grunsfeld to acknowledge that SLS was not necessary for future telescopes that are being planned and existing Evolved Expendable Launch Vehicles (EELVs) could be used instead. Grunsfeld agreed. Rohrabacher semi-seriously asked if Grunsfeld would be willing to pay for the development of SLS out of his budget and Grunsfeld, obviously, said no. (Rohrabacher also joked that "we've been engaged in a search for intelligent life for a long time -- over in the Senate, however.")

As for the proposed changes to STEM programs, where NASA's Science Mission Directorate funding for Education and Public Outreach (EPO) efforts associated with its various projects would be transferred to other agencies, Grunsfeld said only that the details of that plan are still being developed.

Using the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST), currently scheduled for launch in 2018, for exoplanet research was discussed several times. In response to a question about whether the lifespan of JWST could be extended beyond its 5-year design life, Grunsfeld said it cannot be repaired or upgraded like the Hubble Space Telescope since it will be located a million miles from Earth, but that the determining factor in the telescope's lifetime is fuel. "We hope, and actually engineering says, we should get 11 years of life ... in an actual operational mode we will use."

Prepared statements and a webcast of the hearing are on the committee's Republican and Democratic sites.

Space Station Springs a Leak

Thu, 09 May 2013 04:00:00 GMT

NASA reports that astronauts aboard the International Space Station (ISS) noticed a significant exterior ammonia leak beginning about 11:30 am Eastern Daylight Time (EDT) today. The agency stresses that the astronauts are in no danger.

The crew noticed small white flakes floating away from a portion of one of the solar arrays where part of the cooling system is located. Ammonia is used as a coolant for the power channels that provide electricity generated by the solar arrays. Crew observations and images obtained from exterior cameras operated by ground controllers confirmed that it is in the same area where a leak was investigated during a November 2012 spacewalk.

NASA said it is making plans to reroute other power channels to ensure full operation of the space station. The leak rate is so high that a complete shutdown of that cooling loop might be required in the next 48 hours.

Orbital Sets August/September for Antares Test Flight to ISS

Mon, 06 May 2013 04:00:00 GMT

Orbital Sciences Corporation announced today that it is targeting the August/September time frame for its next test flight of the Antares rocket as part of NASA's Commercial Orbital Transportation Services (COTS) program. The test flight will take a Cygnus spacecraft to the International Space Station (ISS).

That is a slip of about a month from the previously announced late June/early July schedule to allow the company time to replace one of the rocket's AJ-26 engines. Then it must wait its turn to visit the ISS. A Japanese HTV flight is already scheduled for August and if it goes as planned, Antares/Cygnus will have to wait until September. If HTV is delayed, however, Orbital said it would be ready in August. Like Cygnus, HTV is an automated cargo spacecraft.

Orbital said detailed analysis of data from the first Antares test flight on April 21 confirmed that "the inaugural ... flight really was as good as it looked." However, the company is exchanging one of the AJ26 engines on the next Antares rocket's first stage for one that "is already tested in order to further inspect and confirm a seal is functioning properly."

Space Policy Events for the Week of May 6-10, 2013 - update

Sun, 05 May 2013 04:00:00 GMT

UPDATE: Adds another hearing on the FY2014 Air Force budget request; this one by Senate Appropriations Defense Subcommittee on Wednesday.

The following events may be of interest in the week ahead. The House and Senate are in session this week.

During the Week

Sending people to Mars is one theme of the upcoming week. A three-day "summit" sponsored by ExploreMars and George Washington University's (GWU) Space Policy Institute will be held at GWU's Lisner Auditorum on Monday-Wednesday. This is also the week that Apollo 11 astronaut Buzz Aldrin releases his new book, Mission to Mars, written with veteran space journalist Leonard David. There are events throughout the week related to release of the book. In Washington, there are events on Wednesday and Thursday nights at the National Geographic, and on Friday at the National Press Club.

The search for other Earths -- exoplanets -- will be the topic of a hearing by two subcommittees of the House Science, Space and Technology Committee on Thursday. On a more prosaic level, two hearings on the Air Force's FY2014 budget request will be held on Tuesday and Thursday.

Monday-Wednesday, May 6-8

Humans to Mars (H2M) Summit, George Washington University, Washington, DC

Tuesday, May 7

Comparative Planetology: New Approaches to Climate Research, NASA HQ, Washington, DC, 9:00 am - 5:00 pm ET
SASC Hearing on FY2014 Air Force Budget Request, 216 Hart Senate Office Building, 9:30 am ET

Tuesday-Wednesday, May 7-8

National Space-Based PNT Advisory Committee, Washington, DC

Wednesday, May 8

Senate Appropriations Defense Sbcmte hearing on FY2014 Air Force Budget Request, 192 Dirksen Senate Office Building, 10:00 am ET
AIAA Spotlight Gala Awards Dinner, Ronald Reagan Building, Washington, DC, 6:30 pm ET

Wednesday and Thursday, May 8 and May 9

Buzz Aldrin Book Release "Mission to Mars" at the National Geographic , Washington, DC, at 7:30 pm ET each of the two nights

Thursday, May 9

House Approps Defense Subcommittee on FY2014 Air Force Budget Request, H-140 Capitol, 9:30 am ET
House SS&TJoint Subcommittee Hearing on Exoplanet Discoveries, 2318 Rayburn House Office Building, 10:00 am ET

Friday, May 10

Buzz Aldrin Book Release "Mission to Mars" at the National Press Club, Washington, DC., 6:30 pm ET

House Committee to Hear About Exoplanet Discoveries Next Week

Fri, 03 May 2013 04:00:00 GMT

Two subcommittees of the House Science, Space and Technology Committee will hold a hearing next week to learn about exoplanet discoveries, with witnesses from NASA, NSF, and the SETI Institute.

The Subcommittee on Space and the Subcommittee on Research have scheduled the following witnesses to speak about "Exoplanet Discoveries: Have We Found Other Earths?":

Laurance Doyle, principal investigator, SETI Institute Center for the Study of Life in the Universe
John Grunsfeld, NASA Associate Administrator for Science Mission Directorate
James Ulvestad, Director, National Science Foundation (NSF) Division of Astronomical Sciences

NASA and NSF share responsibility for most government-funded astronomy and astrophysics research, with NASA primarily responsible for space-based systems and NSF primarily responsible for ground-based systems. Although NASA is closely identified with the findings from its Kepler Space Telescope, researchers may be funded by either agency. Last month, for example, an NSF-funded University of Washington associate professor, Eric Agol, discovered a small "super Earth" using data from Kepler. The Department of Energy (DOE) also supports high energy astrophysics research. The Astronomy and Astrophysics Advisory Committee (AAAC) provides advice to all three agencies and created an Exoplanet Task Force in 2005.

The SETI Institute focuses on the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence (SETI) and its Carl Sagan Center for the Study of Life in the Universe is part of that effort. Doyle, an expert on the formation and detection of exoplanets, is a Participating Scientist on NASA's Kepler science team. His webpage includes an interview about his current research using Kepler.

The hearing is on Thursday, May 9, at 10:00 am ET in 2318 Rayburn House Office Building.

NASA Signs New Contract with Roscosmos For ISS Crew Launches

Tue, 30 Apr 2013 04:00:00 GMT

NASA and its Russian counterpart, Roscosmos, signed an extension of the contract under which Russia transports crews to and from the International Space Station (ISS). The extension provides for launches through 2016 and return and rescue services through 2017.

The $424 million contract provides for transporting six astronauts, who could be American, European, Japanese or Canadian. The Intergovernmental Agreement (IGA) that governs ISS operations requires the United States to provide transportation for astronauts from all of those countries. When the IGA was signed in 1998, the U.S. space shuttle was intended to be available throughout the space station's operational lifetime and those astronauts were to travel back and forth on the shuttle. The United States decided to terminate the space shuttle, but remains obligated for providing those services for its non-Russian partners.

Since the end of the shuttle program, Russia's Soyuz spacecraft is the only way to get to and from the ISS. It also serves as the "lifeboat" for the ISS, providing escape in case of an emergency. There is always one or two Soyuz spacecraft docked at the station depending on how many crew members are aboard so each person has a seat.

in a blog post, NASA Administrator Charlie Bolden used the occasion to stress the need for Congress to approve the $821 million requested in FY2014 for the commercial crew program to ensure that no further contract extensions are needed. NASA is determined to have U.S. astronauts launched from U.S. soil on U.S.-built systems as soon possible, hopefully by 2017. Congress has provided roughly half the money NASA has requested in prior years for the commercial crew program, however, giving priority instead to the Space Launch System (SLS) and Orion spacecraft that Congress directed NASA to build in the 2010 NASA Authorization Act.

SLS/Orion is intended to take astronauts beyond low Earth orbit (LEO), where ISS is located. By law, however, it must also serve as a backup to commercial crew in case the commercial systems do not materialize. NASA officials have said that SLS/Orion, once operational, could indeed transport astronauts to the ISS, but it would not be cost effective. SLS is scheduled to have its first test flight in 2017, and the first flight with a crew-capable Orion is expected in 2021. The ISS partners have agreed to operate ISS until 2020, so that would be after the end of the space station's operational period. NASA is talking about continuing to operate ISS until 2028, but no agreement has been reached domestically or internationally.

The $424 million contract extension to transport six astronauts means each "seat" costs approximately $71 million. This is higher than the $63 million figure often quoted for today's cost, but the NASA press release says it includes additional launch site support that was previously included in a different contract, so may not be an apples-to-apples comparison.

Virgin Galactic Fires SS2 Rocket Engine, Reaches New Milestone

Mon, 29 Apr 2013 04:00:00 GMT

Virgin Galactic's SpaceShipTwo (SS2) fired its rocket engines in flight for the first time today, bringing the company a step closer to flying commercial passengers on suborbital space voyages.

Nine years ago, SpaceShipOne entered the history books by winning the Ansari X Prize as the first non-government piloted vehicle to reach an altitude of 100 kilometers -- an internationally recognized altitude of where space begins (there is no legal definition), return to Earth, and repeat the feat within seven days. The rocket powered vehicle is dropped from an aircraft called WhiteKnight and was developed by Burt Rutan's Scaled Composites in Mojave, CA in partnership with Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen.

Sir Richard Branson, head of the Virgin Group, licensed the technology to create a commercial venture called Virgin Galactic, which now includes Abu Dhabi's aabar Investments PJC. Suborbital flights on Virgin Galactic's SpaceShipTwo were expected to begin years ago. Branson said today's success "opens the way for a rapid expansion of the spaceship's powered flight envelope, with a very realistic goal of full space flight by the year's end."

In today's test, the mother aircraft, WhiteKnightTwo, carried SS2 to 47,000 feet, where it was released and the SS2 pilots, Mark Stucky and Mike Alsbury, fired the rocket engine. The engine firing itself lasted for 16 seconds, allowing 10 minutes of rocket-powered flight during which SS2 broke the sound barrier, reaching Mach 1.2 and an altitude of 55,000 feet before returning to Earth for landing. A video of the release and rocket firing is on YouTube.

Virgin Galactic President and CEO George Whitesides said a "handful" of similar tests will be conducted before the first test flight to space.

Editor's Note: The original video that was posted on YouTube was replaced by a corrected one later in the day. The link above is to the corrected video.

GAO's Chaplain -- Disaggregation May Have Merit, But Challenges, Too

Sun, 28 Apr 2013 04:00:00 GMT

Christina Chaplain of the Government Accountability Office (GAO) was asked for GAO's assessment of disaggregation at a Senate hearing last week. GAO has several studies underway, she replied, and it appears the concept has merit in theory, but there are reasons to be cautious, too.

Chaplain is director, acquisition and sourcing management at GAO, and leads the group that conducts most of GAO's studies about military space issues. She testifies to the Senate Armed Services Committee's (SASC's) Subcommittee on Strategic Forces annually providing a synopsis of GAO's recent assessments of how the Department of Defense (DOD) is managing its space programs. Last year and this year GAO gave DOD high marks for improving its management and acquisition of space systems overall while highlighting remaining areas of concern. Like last year, Chaplain stressed the need for DOD to ensure that the ground segments for its satellite systems are ready by the time the satellites are launched, for example.

One topic that was discussed at length at Wednesday's (April 24) hearing on military space programs was DOD's efforts to field more resilient space-based capabilities and the role that disaggregation might play. Disaggregation is a concept where instead of relying on a few, large satellites, military space needs might better be met by a system of many smaller satellites, including hosted payloads on commercial satellites, which could reduce vulnerability and lower costs.

In one sense, the idea of disaggregation builds on DOD's Operationally Responsive Space (ORS) effort that focused on building small satellites that could be launched relatively quickly to meet requirements of operational commanders. The ORS-1 satellite is widely considered a success, but DOD proposed terminating the ORS program office last year. Instead, it said it would integrate ORS lessons learned into the broader Air Force satellite acquisition process. Congress emphatically said no, but DOD is proposing to abolish the ORS program office again this year even while it is touting the potential benefits of disaggregation. DOD Deputy Assistant Secretary for Space Policy Doug Loverro assured SASC that the department got the message, but choices must be made about where to cut the budget and that is why the proposal is being made again.

Disaggregation and resiliency were major topics at the SASC hearing as well as at a companion hearing before the House Armed Services Committee (HASC) the next day. Air Force Space Command Commander Gen. William Shelton told SASC that no decision has been made about whether to adopt the disaggregation approach yet, but he will know more this summer. He added that from what he has seen so far, "there is no reason not to be confident " of its value.

Chaplain was asked by Sen. Deb Fischer (R-NB) for GAO's views on disaggregation. She replied that GAO has studies underway about it that will be completed later this year, but that theoretically it has value. However, there are a number of challenges that DOD will have to bear in mind, including the following:

disaggregation might lower costs in the long term, but costs might rise in the short term while there is an overlap with the current acquisition approach and start-up costs are needed for a new infrastructure to support the new architecture;
data fusion may be more challenging because more satellites will have to work together since the sensors no longer will be on the same platform;
control systems will need to be modernized with common interfaces and standards; and
leadership fragmentation could be an issue, as evidenced already by the disconnect between getting ground systems and satellites ready at the same time.

Other witnesses at the SASC hearing were Navy Deputy Assistant Secretary John Zangardi and Army Space and Missile Defense Commander Lt. Gen. Richard Formica. A broad range of military space issues were discussed including the impacts of sequestration, the ongoing debate about acquisition of space launch services (EELVs and new entrants), counter-space capabilities, the status of discussions about an international code of conduct for space activities, and the Navy's MUOS communications satellite program.

The HASC hearing the next day covered several of the same topics and also revealed that DOD is leasing communications capacity on a Chinese satellite, which was a bit of a surprise considering the opposition to U.S.-China space cooperation in the civil space realm.

HASC Asks About DOD Use of Chinese Satellite

Sat, 27 Apr 2013 04:00:00 GMT

A House Armed Services Committee (HASC) subcommittee asked a Defense of Department (DOD) official on Thursday if he knew of DOD leasing any commercial satellite services from companies with significant ownership by the People's Republic of China. The somewhat surprising answer was "yes."

The question came as part of a hearing by the HASC Strategic Forces subcommittee on the FY2014 budget request for national security space activities. Witnesses were DOD's new Deputy Assistant Secretary for Space Policy, Doug Loverro; DOD Deputy Assistant Secretary, Space and Intelligence Office, Gil Klinger; Air Force Space Command Commander Gen. William Shelton; and Director of the National Reconnaissance Office, Betty Sapp.

Most of the hearing discussed familiar issues such as DOD's launch services procurement strategy and the role of Evolved Expendable Launch Vehicles (EELVs) -- Delta IV and Atlas V, offered by the United Launch Alliance (ULA) -- versus "new entrants" like SpaceX. Shelton reiterated what he has said in other venues that DOD is procuring 50 new core launch vehicles, 36 of which will be assigned to ULA while the other 14 are open for competition to certified providers including ULA. New entrants like SpaceX are still working on becoming certified under DOD's criteria.

The launch vehicle debate has been ongoing for several years. What was new at Thursday's hearing was the revelation that DOD is leasing commercial satellite communications services from a company partially owned by China. Many House Republicans are opposed to civilian space cooperation with China and the law prohibits NASA and the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP) from spending any money in connection with China unless certain conditions are met. No similar restrictions have been placed on DOD, however.

Loverro told the subcommittee that he became aware of the leases when he assumed his new job about a month ago. He did not specify what satellite it is, but explained that an operational commander needed services in a particular area of operations and that was the only satellite with the necessary bandwidth. All the correct procedures were followed, including a security review, in putting the lease together, he insisted. The operational commander understood the situation and the encryption that would be required, but the bottom line is that warfighters need support and "sometimes we must go to ... the only place we can get it from." The Defense Information Services Agency (DISA), which is responsible for procuring communications services for DOD, went out to its suppliers and "only one provider had the bandwidth" to meet the need and it was "on a Chinese satellite," Loverro explained.

The larger issue, he said, is that there is no clear DOD policy on how to make such decisions. He is working with DISA and the Joint Chiefs of Staff now to develop a process, but could not provide details because "we just decided to do this literally a week-and-a-half ago."

Gen. Shelton Warns About "Chaos" Caused by Sequestration

Sat, 27 Apr 2013 04:00:00 GMT

At two congressional hearings last week, Air Force Space Command (AFSC) Commander Gen. William Shelton warned about the "chaos" created in his command because of sequestration, saying its effects "cannot be overstated."

Shelton testified to the Strategic Forces subcommittees of the Senate Armed Services Committee (SASC) and House Armed Services Committee (HASC) on Wednesday (April 24) and Thursday (April 25) respectively.

Among the many topics discussed at the two hearings, Shelton stressed the impacts of sequestration saying that he had to find $508 million in reductions for the rest of this fiscal year (FY2013) within the AFSC budget. "The chaos created by operations and maintenance account reductions this large in this short time period cannot be overstated" he said to both subcommittees.

Furloughs for his civilian staff were at the top of his list of specific impacts, which also included operational changes for radars for missile defense and the "space fence" that tracks objects in orbit. "In one case we are operating at a lower power" and in the other "we are operating for a reduced number of hours per day," he testified. The radar that is needed for missile defense continues to operate at full power because of the threat from North Korea, he continued, but if he has to sustain that for the rest of the fiscal year "that's another $5 million I need to find in my budgets somewhere." He added that he has taken down "one third of the space fence receiver sites," reduced the level of sustainment funds for the Defense Satellite Communication System (DSCS) of communications satellites, and "hosts of other things."

In an exchange with Rep. Jim Cooper (D-TN), the top Democrat on the HASC subcommittee, Shelton agreed that while no one likes the amount of the budget cuts, the real problem is the "rigidity in the law that requires every line item to be cut so it gives you no flexiblity to make smart trades." Cooper and subcommittee chairman Mike Rogers (R-AL) agreed to see if Congress could do anything in the short term to improve the situation rather than waiting for passage of the FY2014 National Defense Authorization Act, which will take many months.

Progress Successfully Docks Despite Antenna Failure

Fri, 26 Apr 2013 04:00:00 GMT

Russia's Progress M-19M robotic cargo spacecraft successfully docked with the International Space Station (ISS) on schedule this morning even though one of the navigation antennas did not deploy.

Russian ground controllers sent a software patch to tell the spacecraft's automated KURS docking system to ignore the lack of data that ordinarily would be provided by the ASF2 antenna. It provides data on relative roll of the spacecraft when it is within 20 meters of the ISS.

The ISS crew was ready to use the manual TORU docking system if KURS failed, but it was not needed. After Progress soft-docked with the ISS, ground controllers very slowly withdrew the docking probe, a process that enables the closing of latches that secure the spacecraft to the ISS -- a hard dock. During that process, ground controllers continually asked the ISS crew if they heard anything unusual that would indicate that the undeployed antenna was interfering with the docking mechanism. The crew assured them that nothing sounded awry, but offered to go out on a spacewalk to visually inspect the area. In the end, however, all was well.

NASA calls this Progress 51 because this is the 51st Progress cargo spacecraft to dock with the ISS. The Progress program dates back to 1978, however, and there were many, many Progress flights to Soviet space stations before the ISS was built. The Soviet Union launched six successful Salyut space stations beginning in 1971 followed by the modular Mir space station, which operated from 1986-2001.

The Progress spacecraft itself has been upgraded several times over the decades. This is the 19th flight of the current version, hence its Russian designation of Progress M-19M.

Although Progress dockings have long since become routine, there are always risks. A Progress spacecraft collided with the Mir space station in 1997 during a manual docking procedure. It punctured one of Mir's modules, creating an emergency situation when the space station began to depressurize. Quick work by the Mir crew saved the space station, although that module (Spektr) was unusable for the remainder of Mir's lifetime. The accident occurred during a period of U.S.-Russian space cooperation where Russians flew on the U.S. space shuttle and American astronauts were included in Mir crews. NASA astronaut Michael Foale was aboard Mir at the time. A brief and compelling account of the accident is available on NASA's history office website with links to additional material.

Bolden Says Furloughs Likely if Sequester Continues Into FY2014

Thu, 25 Apr 2013 04:00:00 GMT

In an abbreviated hearing on NASA's FY2014 budget request this morning, Senate appropriators ploughed little new ground, but one message that came through loud and clear is that if the sequester continues past the current fiscal year "all bets are off" in terms of what will happen to NASA.

That is the phrase used by NASA Administrator Charlie Bolden today as well as at yesterday's hearing on the House side. Today he went into slightly more detail about the potential consequences at the request of Sen. Barbara Mikulski (D-MD). Mikulski chairs the full Senate Appropriations Committee as well as the Commerce-Justice-Science (CJS) subcommittee that took testimony from Bolden today. Mikulski was late to the 9:30 am ET hearing, apologizing that it took her two hours to get to Capitol Hill from her home in Baltimore this morning. She joked that she needed one of Bolden's rockets. She thanked committee vice-chairman Sen. Richard Shelby (R-AL) for starting the hearing without her and said it was a sign of the committee's bipartisanship. The hearing was limited in its duration because a special briefing for Senators was scheduled for 10:30 on North Korea and Syria, Mikulski explained. NASA Inspector General Paul Martin was scheduled to testify, but his statement was submitted for the record instead.

Mikulski, Shelby, and Sen. Thad Cochran (R-MS) were the only Senators present and the questions fell along familiar lines. Shelby made clear that he wants NASA to spend money on the Space Launch System (SLS), which is being built at Marshall Space Flight Center in his state, and not the commercial crew program. Cochran wanted to ensure that the interests of Stennis Space Center in his state were represented. Mikulski wanted assurances that the James Webb Space Telescope, being built at Goddard Space Flight Center in her state, remains on cost and schedule. She brought up last week's GAO report that says the telescope is overweight and two instruments will be 11 months late. Bolden was surprised by a similar question at yesterday's House hearing, but was ready today. He referenced the 14 month schedule reserve that the program has and said instrument delivery was adjusted to compensate for the 11- month slip and the project overall remains on cost and schedule for launch in 2018.

Mikulski pressed Bolden on what will happen if the sequester remains in place as it will under current law. Although attention has been focused on the impact of the sequester on FY2013, under the 2011 Budget Control Act, it actually remains in place through FY2021. The Administration's budget requests for NASA and other departments and agencies assume that agreement will be reached to replace the sequester with another method of deficit reduction.

If it remains in place, however, Bolden said that NASA's budget would drop from its $16.8 billion sequestered level for FY2013 to $16.2 billion. Such a cut would impact JWST and SLS/Orion and "devastate" commercial cargo and commercial crew, he said. He added that he also would have to furlough civil servants when the FY2014 budget becomes effective. NASA was funded at $17.8 billion in FY2012 and the request for FY2014 is $17.7 billion.

Shelby has not been shy about expressing his lack of enthusiasm for the commercial crew program, today calling privately funded vehicles a "fiction" that diverts funding from NASA developing human spaceflight capabilities with SLS. Asserting that he is a long time supporter of public-private partnerships to leverage private resource, but in this case, he said, NASA is giving the companies $1.5 billion without knowing how much the companies themselves are investing. He objects to the use of Space Act Agreements (SAAs) instead of traditional contracts under Federal Acquisition Regulations (FARs). Bolden said that the amount of money the companies are investing is competition-sensitive proprietary information and that the SAAs provide "satisfactory insight and oversight."

Bolden repeated what he said yesterday that if the agency does not receive the full $822 million request for commercial crew in FY2014, "it will be my unfortunate duty" to tell Congress and the White House that the United States probably will not be able to launch astronauts by 2017. He added that he will need to ask for new authority to contract with the Russians for additional launches. It is "not my desire" to come back and ask for more money to pay the Russians, he stressed.

No questions were asked about NASA's new asteroid retrieval strategy. In his opening statement, Shelby said he was concerned that the budget request is an example of "chasing the next great idea while sacrificing current investments," but did not mention the asteroid mission specifically.

A webcast of the hearing is available on the committee's website.

Russia Says Progress Docking Will Proceed Friday Morning EDT

Thu, 25 Apr 2013 04:00:00 GMT

Russia's RIA Novosti is quoting Russian space officials as saying that the docking of Progress M-19M will proceed on schedule tomorrow morning Eastern Daylight Time (EDT) even though its navigation antenna did not deploy.

The robotic cargo spacecraft was launched yesterday from the Baikonur Cosmodrome. Once on orbit, one of the antennas for its KURS navigation system used to bring it in for docking with the International Space Station (ISS) failed to deploy, however. The spacecraft is continuing on its 2-day rendezvous course to meet up with ISS tomorrow morning, Friday, April 26. The nominal schedule calls for docking at 8:26 am EDT. NASA TV will provide live coverage beginning at 6:30 am EDT.

RIA Novosti reported that ground controllers will continue to try to get the antenna to deploy, but quoted a spokesman for the Russian space enterprise Energia as saying "Even if we fail, the problem with the antenna should not hamper the docking." The ISS crew will be instructed to conduct a manual docking instead of an automated docking if the antenna remains undeployed.

Squyres, Pace, Not Convinced of Asteroid Return Strategy

Wed, 24 Apr 2013 04:00:00 GMT

NASA’s new asteroid retrieval mission has not won over two influential voices in space policy debates. Cornell University’s Steve Squyres and George Washington University’s Scott Pace told the National Research Council (NRC) on Monday that it is not necessarily the best next step for the U.S. human spaceflight program.

The NRC’s Committee on Human Spaceflight met Monday and Tuesday in Washington, DC. The committee is tasked with describing the value proposition of the human spaceflight program – what do taxpayers see as its value for the money spent – and providing advice on future planning for that program. Among the topics discussed was NASA's new asteroid retrieval strategy to capture an asteroid, redirect it into a retrograde lunar orbit, and send astronauts to retrieve a sample.

Squyres chairs the NASA Advisory Council (NAC) and is perhaps best known as the principal investigator for the twin Mars rovers Spirit and Opportunity. He also chaired the NRC's 2011 Decadal Survey for planetary science. In addition to talking about NAC’s view of NASA's human exploration program, he shared his personal views on topics NAC had not yet considered, including the new asteroid retrieval strategy.

His personal recommendation is that NASA not attempt to sell the asteroid retrieval mission either on the basis of exploring asteroids or that it is a more effective way to satisfy President Obama’s goal of using an asteroid mission as a step towards Mars. Quoting the President's April 15, 2010 speech at Kennedy Space Center, Squyres reminded the committee that the President's goal was to build "new spacecraft designed for long journeys ... beyond the Moon into deep space," which is not what the new strategy entails. He agrees that understanding asteroids is an important scientific goal, but not one that requires humans on-site. Humans and robots work effectively together in exploring complex environments like Mars where Earth-bound scientists cannot anticipate the many surprises that lie ahead. Comparatively straightforward environments like that of an asteroid can be effectively explored with robotic spacecraft alone, he believes.

Squyres does, however, support the idea of sending astronauts into cis-lunar space for longer periods of time than during the Apollo era, such as the 22-day mission envisioned for the asteroid retrieval mission. In his view, that is worth doing whether or not an asteroid has been redirected there. His major concern personally, which he said also has been expressed by NAC, is that "NASA needs a compelling and clearly articulated goal for future human spaceflight that is consistent with its budget."

Pace strongly supported a robust U.S. human spaceflight program, but not the asteroid mission as a step towards Mars. He said he is “hard pressed to run into anybody who thinks that going to an asteroid is the right way primarily to go to Mars.” He believes that the Obama Administration made a decision “not to do anything the prior Administration was doing” in space, and that is how the asteroid idea emerged despite broad bipartisan and international support for returning to the Moon as laid out in President George W. Bush’s Vision for Space Exploration. Pace was a high ranking NASA official in the Bush Administration.

Asked what would happen if the United States abandoned human spaceflight entirely, Pace said it would diminish U.S. influence on the global stage in discussions about space issues such as orbital debris and sustainability. "We will have made ourselves irrelevant to a lot of discussions," adding that he sees some of that reduced influence already with the U.S. decision to withdraw from cooperation with Europe in the robotic ExoMars missions. "Countries are not upset at us. They simply think we're irrelevant....I can't think of [anything] that is ... more dangerous or serious for a great power than to be considered irrelevant.”

House Subcommittee Members Skeptical, Worried

Wed, 24 Apr 2013 04:00:00 GMT

Members of a House subcommittee expressed concern on a bipartisan basis today about NASA's new asteroid retrieval mission as well as whether NASA will get the resources needed to fund responsibilities transferred from other agencies if the FY2014 budget request is approved.

The Space Subcommittee of the House Science, Space and Technology Committee heard from NASA Administrator Charlie Bolden about the FY2014 NASA budget request. Questions focused on four major areas of concern.

Asteroid Retrieval Strategy. Several members, including subcommittee chairman Rep. Steve Palazzo (R-MS), full committee chairman Rep. Lamar Smith (R-TX), and ranking subcommittee Democrat Rep. Donna Edwards (D-MD), expressed concern about NASA's request for $105 million to move forward on its new asteroid retrieval strategy. That strategy involves capturing an asteroid, directing it into a lunar orbit, and sending astronauts to retrieve a sample.
- One question was how much such a mission would cost. Bolden reiterated what he and other agency officials have been saying that although they have yet to complete a mission concept study, they think it will be less than the $2.6 billion estimated by the 2012 Keck Institute of Space Studies (KISS) report where the idea originated. NASA's thinking is that the KISS study did not take into account work ongoing at NASA on the Space Launch System (SLS), the Orion capsule, development of solar electric propulsion (SEP), and searches for Near Earth Objects (NEOs - asteroids and comets). The KISS study also envisioned retrieving a particular type of asteroid of scientific interest that would take longer to reach than a more generic asteroid NASA hopes to find one that is closer and already on a path towards the Earth-Moon system.
- Several Republicans also pressed Bolden on whether sending people to an asteroid or putting them on the lunar surface is better in terms of the ultimate goal of sending astronauts to Mars. Bolden said neither is better, but the reality is that he does not have the money for a lunar surface mission. He said that he had been told the cost of the Altair lunar lander planned for the Constellation program under the George W. Bush Administration was $8-10 billion, while the cost for this asteroid mission is $2.6 billion or less. (That estimate is on top of the existing spending on SLS, Orion, SEP, and NEO searches).
SLS/Orion versus Commercial Crew. Several members also questioned why the request for SLS is less than what Congress authorized while funding would increase dramatically (in percentage terms) for commercial crew. Those questions continue the debate over the uneasy compromise Congress and the Obama Administration reached in the 2010 NASA Authorization Act. The President wanted to turn human spaceflight to low Earth orbit (LEO) over to the private sector by providing partial funding to companies to develop systems to take astronauts to the International Space Station (ISS). Congress, however, wanted NASA to develop a new "heavy lift" launch vehicle (SLS) and a spacecraft (Orion) to take astronauts beyond LEO as was planned in the Bush Administration's Constellation program. The compromise was to do both, a major challenge in a budget-constrained reality. Some members want NASA to narrow the number of companies it is supporting in the commercial crew program, but NASA wants at least two so there is competition. Bolden also stressed that SLS is funded in three different parts of NASA's budget so while there may appear to be a reduction, in fact there is not. NASA is stressing firmly that if it does not get the $821 million requested for commercial crew in FY2014, the availability of a U.S. space transportation system to launch American astronauts from American soil will not be possible by 2017. NASA has not been able to launch astronauts since the space shuttle was discontinued in 2011. It pays Russia to ferry astronauts to the ISS at a price of $63 million each.
New Responsibilities Without Sufficient New Resources. The FY2014 budget request proposes transferring climate sensors that were to be funded by NOAA, and responsibility for the facilities that produce plutonium-238 for some of NASA's planetary probes that was to be paid for by the Department of Energy, to NASA. In addition, NASA would be assigned responsibility for building future Landsat land remote sensing satellites; the Obama Administration had hoped to assign that to the U.S. Geological Survey, which operates the Landsat satellites, but Congress said no. Small increases are included in the FY2014 request to cover the costs of the climate sensors and Pu-238 production, but whether they will be sustained in future years is the concern. The budget for NASA's Science Mission Directorate is already stretched thin, especially for planetary science.
Restructuring of STEM Programs. Reps. Joe Kennedy III (D-MA) and Frederica Wilson (D-FL) are worried about the White House's proposal to consolidate Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) education programs from 13 agencies to three (National Science Foundation, Department of Education, and Smithsonian), dramatically reducing NASA's role in these programs. Bolden defended the move, saying that when he asked his Office of Education staff to provide metrics on the effectiveness of NASA's education programs, they did not have an answer. The new structure is intended to make the STEM programs more effective in terms of cost and value to the students, he said.

At one point, Smith asked Bolden about new problems in the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) program. Bolden insisted at first that he is briefed on JWST weekly and the program is on track. Smith then read from a Government Accountability Office (GAO) report released last week that identified 11 month delays in two JWST instruments and other issues. Bolden clearly was taken by surprise. GAO says "JWST is currently experiencing technical issues" including the spacecraft being overweight and "two instruments will be delivered at least 11 months late." NASA officials in other forums have emphasized that the re-baselined program has sufficient schedule and funding reserves to cope with any problems that arise and still maintain the 2018 launch schedule. It is surprising, however, that Bolden apparently had not been briefed on the GAO report.

NASA's budget request, like that of the other Executive Branch agencies, assumes that sequestration will be replaced by another method of deficit reduction. Edwards asked Bolden what will happen if that does not happen and sequestration continues. Bolden replied: "to be candid, all bets are off" if sequestration remains the law of the land.

Russia's Progress Cargo Craft Experiences Antenna Glitch

Wed, 24 Apr 2013 04:00:00 GMT

Russia launched the Progress M-19M cargo spacecraft to the International Space Station (ISS) today, April 24, but a navigational antenna failed to deploy once it reached orbit.

The robotic spacecraft is on a two-day rendezvous course to the ISS and ground controllers are continuing to try to resolve the problem. It is carrying 2.5 tons of cargo for the ISS crew.

Russia's RIA Novosti quotes a Russian mission control spokesman as saying that "We have failed so far to deploy the antenna (after two attempts), but we consider this a secondary issue at this point." The antenna is part of the Kurs navigation system that guides the spacecraft to its docking port.

The only word from NASA appears to be a tweet this morning that said: "Update: Once in orbit, an antenna used as a navigational aid on the Progress did not deploy. Russian ground controllers are assessing a fix."

Stafford Argues for Moon as Next Human Spaceflight Destination

Tue, 23 Apr 2013 04:00:00 GMT

Lt. Gen. Thomas Stafford (Ret.) told a Senate subcommittee today that a human mission to an asteroid should not be a central element of any "sensible" human spaceflight program. Instead, a return to the Moon is a prerequisite to the ultimate goal of sending people to Mars and should be the next step.

Stafford is an iconic presence in the space community. A former astronaut who flew four space missions -- including commanding the 1975 U.S.-Soviet Apollo-Soyuz Test Project (ASTP) -- he has remained closely involved in the civil space program even as his career took him back to the Air Force and ultimately into retirement.

In his written statement today to the Subcommittee on Science and Space of the Senate Commerce, Science and Transportation Committee, he noted that a number of studies conducted over many decades are "remarkably consistent" that "[l]eadership in space is, for any society that can aspire to attain it, a key to leadership on Earth and in human society, for all the generations to come." He led one of those studies during the George H.W. Bush Administration entitled America at the Threshold: America's Space Exploration Initiative.

He asserted that the "choice of destinations has ... already been made for us. The surface of the Moon is ... our proper next frontier." He acknowledged that the concept of sending astronauts to an asteroid, whether the original plan announced by President Obama in 2010 or the new idea of directing an asteroid into cis-lunar space, has "inherent scientific interest." However, it "should not be the central theme of any sensible long-term human spaceflight program. Such missions are an interesting adjunct to the far more interesting theme of human presence on the Moon" and then Mars.

Stafford also highlighted the importance of international cooperation in pursuing future human spaceflight goals. He has been deeply involved with U.S.-Soviet/Russian space cooperation since ASTP and chairs NASA's International Space Station (ISS) Advisory Committee. That committee and its Russian counterpart meet regularly to review and identify major issues for the ISS. At a meeting last year, he told the Senate committee, the Russians shared their long term plan for human spaceflight. It is based on international cooperation modeled on the ISS partnership, he reported. "I have said that we should make it the nation's business to lead in space. We should. But I have also noted that leaders need partners and allies."

Bill Gerstenmaier, NASA's Associate Administrator for Human Exploration and Operations, and Steve Cook, Director, Space Technologies, at Dynetics, also testified. Gerstenmaier was very upbeat about the state of the human spaceflight program today and the road ahead, including the asteroid retrieval mission announced in the FY2014 budget request. Cook represented the commercial space industry and emphasized the need for "stable, long-term space policy and supporting programs" in order for the "commercial space sector to flourish." In response to a question from subcommittee chairman Sen. Bill Nelson (D-FL), Cook said the key is to have a long term plan with associated dates that the private sector can leverage in order to develop business plans and look for ways to be profitable.

A webcast of the hearing and the prepared statements of the witnesses are on the committee's website.

Antares Launch Weather 80 Percent Go For Sunday

Sun, 21 Apr 2013 04:00:00 GMT

Will the third time be the charm? Orbital Sciences Corporation will make a third attempt to launch its new Antares rocket this afternoon, Sunday, April 21. The weather forecast is 80 percent favorable.

Yesterday's launch attempt was scrubbed because upper level winds exceeded limits. An earlier attempt, on April 17, was scrubbed because of a technical glitch. The potential weather issue today is surface level winds.

Once again, the launch window opens at 5:00 pm ET and NASA TV will begin coverage at 4:30 pm ET. Keep up to date by following @OrbitalSciences and @NASA_Wallops on Twitter.

Antares will launch from the Mid-Atlantic Regional Spaceport (MARS) at NASA's Wallops Flight Facility on Wallops Island, VA. Orbital released a map showing the large part of the East Coast that might be able to see the launch, weather permitting.

This is a test launch, the first for Antares, which is being developed by Orbital as part of NASA's Commercial Orbital Transportation Services (COTS) program.

Antares Successfully Launched on Third Try

Sun, 21 Apr 2013 04:00:00 GMT

The third time WAS the charm for Orbital Sciences Corporation. The test launch of its Antares rocket lifted off on schedule at 5:00 pm ET today from Wallops Island, VA. A post-launch press conference is scheduled for 6:30 pm ET.

Two previous attempts were scrubbed -- one for technical reasons, the other for weather -- but all went well today as Antares inaugurated use of the new Mid-Atlantic Regional Spaceport (MARS) at NASA's Wallops Flight Facility, Wallops Island, VA.

An engineering model of Orbital's Cygnus spacecraft and several small satellites -- called Phonesats -- that hitched a ride on this launch were successfully deployed.

Presidential Science Adviser John Holdren applauded the launch.

Orbital plans the next test launch at the end of June or early July. An actual Cygnus spacecraft will be aboard that launch and will test the rest of the sequence of rendezvous and berthing with the International Space Station (ISS). Antares and Cygnus are part of NASA's Commercial Orbital Transportation Services (COTS) program to develop commercial space transportation systems to take cargo to the ISS.

SpaceX is Orbital's competitor in the COTS program, although NASA already has signed contracts with both companies for operational "Commercial Resupply Services" (CRS) missions to the ISS -- 12 for SpaceX and eight for Orbital.

Outlook Good for Antares Launch Tonight - UPDATE

Sat, 20 Apr 2013 04:00:00 GMT

UPDATE, 4:20 pm ET: The launch is now targeted for 6:10 pm ET, with NASA TV coverage beginning at 5:30 pm ET. Upper level winds remain a concern.

ORIGINAL STORY: The chances of favorable weather for the rescheduled launch of Orbital Sciences Corporation's Antares rocket tonight, Saturday, April 20, is 90 percent. The launch window is open from 5:00 - 7:00 pm ET. NASA TV will begin coverage at 4:30 pm ET.

The launch will take place from the Mid-Atlantic Regional Spaceport (MARS) at NASA"s Wallops Flight Facility on Wallops Island, VA. Weather permitting, a large part of the East Coast may be able to see it as illustrated on this map, courtesy of Orbital.

The first launch attempt was scrubbed on Wednesday when an umbilical detached prematurely.

This is a test launch of Orbital's new rocket, developed as part of NASA's Commercial Orbital Transportation Services (COTS) program to facilitate commercial development of space transportation systems to take cargo to the International Space Station (ISS). If this test is successful, a second test carrying Orbital's Cygnus spacecraft will take place in about three months to demonstrate the rest of the mission profile to rendezvous and be berthed with the ISS.

Orbital is tweeting updates @OrbitalSciences. Late this morning, a tweet said that "upper level winds are marginal based on earlier balloon data," but otherwise the weather looks good.

Gerstenmaier Elucidates Asteroid Return Strategy

Sat, 20 Apr 2013 04:00:00 GMT

Bill Gerstenmaier, the head of NASA's human spaceflight program, explained the thinking behind the agency's new plan to bring an asteroid into lunar orbit at two meetings this week. Three clear messages came through about what it is and what it is not.

Fundamentally, the idea is to send a solar electric-powered robotic spacecraft to capture a 5-7 meter diameter, 500-1,000 metric ton asteroid and put it on a course that will place it in a retrograde orbit around the Moon. Using the Space Launch System (SLS) and Orion spacecraft, astronauts would then embark on a 20-22 day mission to visit the asteroid and bring a sample back to Earth. It is all part of the longer term goal to send astronauts to Mars. A number of media sources refer to it as NASA's plan to lasso an asteroid.

Speaking first at a meeting of the Space Transportation Association (STA) and later in the week to a joint meeting of two NASA Advisory Council committees, Gerstenmaier, NASA's Associate Administrator for Human Exploration and Operations, stressed that this is not just a mission or an initiative, but a strategy to align NASA's space science, space technology and human spaceflight activities. Other Administration officials refer to it as an Asteroid Return Mission and/or an Asteroid Return Initiative (or "retrieval" instead of "return"). In response to a question at the STA meeting, Gerstenmaier agreed that it is a mission that is part of an initiative that, in turn, is part of a broader agency strategy with an emphasis on the strategy.

Second, he made clear that he is making no promises to actually capture an asteroid. The agency has a concept of how to accomplish that, but until the robotic spacecraft arrives at whatever target is selected, not enough will be known about the asteroid to ensure capture will succeed. The only way to improve the chances would be to send a precursor mission to study the asteroid in advance, which would add cost and time, undermining the rationale for the project. He suggested that the mission should be considered a success even if no capture is possible because it will have demonstrated, at a minimum, high power (40 kilowatt) solar electric propulsion.

Third, he cautioned that the relationship between this activity and planetary defense (or what he called planetary protection) -- defending Earth from Potentially Hazardous Asteroids (PHAs) that could cause catastrophic damage -- is tangential. Gerstenmaier was directly asked at the STA meeting why NASA is not selling this to the public on the basis that it is "to save your kids" instead of as a step to Mars. He replied: "Because it's not 100% applicable to saving your kids." It will provide relevant information, he said, but may not be "the most efficient and most effective way to get planetary protection" because there is "lots of stuff that we're going to have to understand for planetary protection that is different from this. This will help us. ... It's got a clear piece of planetary protection, but I think it's a little disingenuous to say its sole purpose is planetary protection." PHAs are much larger than the 5-7 meter diameter asteroid envisioned for this activity, which poses no threat to Earth.

President Obama announced three years ago that sending astronauts to an asteroid by 2025 is the next goal for NASA's human spaceflight program. The announcement was very controversial and a December 2012 National Research Council report concluded that it was not widely accepted inside or outside of NASA. At a hearing before the House Science, Space and Technology Committee on Wednesday, the President's science adviser, John Holdren, credited NASA with devising this new "ingenious" method to accomplish President Obama's goal, which he believes is more attractive.

NASA selected a sample asteroid as a test case to demonstrate the concept was feasible from an orbital dynamics perspective. That particular asteroid would reach the retrograde lunar orbit in 2024, but Gerstenmaier stressed that was not the asteroid NASA actually plans to capture. NASA is requesting increased funding to accelerate ongoing effects to search for Near Earth Objects (NEOs, asteroids and comets). To date, that search has been for NEOs 140 meters or more in diameter. The new funding would expand the search to include much smaller asteroids, which will be more difficult to find.

The concept originated in a study by the Keck Institute for Space Studies (KISS) released in 2012. Nonetheless, its inclusion in NASA's FY2014 budget was a bit of a surprise and there is a lot of confusion about what it entails. NASA and other Administration officials use varying terminology to discuss it, which complicates efforts to explain it to stakeholders. For example, Holdren repeatedly referred to "towing" the asteroid into lunar orbit, while Gerstenmaier stressed that it would not be towed at all. That would require significant amounts of propellant. Instead, he explained, they need to find a suitable asteroid in terms of size, spin rate, and composition that is already on a course toward the Earth-moon system. The robotic spacecraft will nudge it, using hydrazine thrusters, over a period of several years into a retrograde lunar orbit.

The way the concept is presented in the President's FY2014 budget request adds more confusion. The Office of Management and Budget (OMB) states that the request includes $78 million for this activity, but NASA usually says it is requesting $105 million. The $105 million includes:

an additional $20 million for searching for NEOs in the Science Mission Directorate (SMD),
$45 million (an additional $38 million for development of high power solar electric propulsion and $7 million for a broader effort to look at hazard mitigation technologies) in the Space Technology Mission Directorate (STMD), and
$40 million for concept studies in the Human Exploration and Operations Mission Directorate (HEOMD).

As explained by NASA Chief Financial Officer Beth Robinson at an April 10 budget briefing, the $27 million difference is because the additional $20 million in SMD and the $7 million in STMD for broader hazard mitigation technologies are not part of the "mission," but of the "initiative." The distinction between those terms and the implications of money being in one category or the other are bewildering.

Skeptics point out that, apart from technical challenges, there is no explanation of where the money will come from to execute the mission in future years. It does take advantage of spending already planned for SLS/Orion and solar electric propulsion, but the increase for NEO searches is only for one year and no development funds are identified in future year budgets for the robotic spacecraft. NASA assumes the agency will be flat-funded for the next five years at about $17.7 billion. Finding funds for a new robotic spacecraft equipped with a capture device in a zero-sum budget environment will be difficult. The KISS study estimated the cost of this type of mission at $2.6 billion. NASA said it thinks it might be able to do it for less because some of the work is already underway, but the basis for that optimism is obscure since the agency will not even complete a mission concept study until the end of this summer.

One reason President Obama's plan to send humans to an asteroid by 2025 has not won acceptance is that the target asteroid has not been identified so there is no sense of where the astronauts will be going. Another is that funds are not included in future-year budget projections to pay for additional hardware, like a habitability module for the astronauts, required for the mission. This new concept suffers the same drawbacks.

Gerstenmaier said he wants to launch the robotic spacecraft in 2017, just four years from now. It will be designed and developed in parallel with the search for the target asteroid, so engineers will not know its specific destination. Notionally, it will take about a year and a half to reach the asteroid, three years to nudge it onto the right trajectory to enter a retrograde lunar orbit, and another year to get it into the precise orbit desired, Gerstenmaier told the NAC committees. Also notionally, it would be in place for a visit by astronauts on their first launch aboard SLS/Orion in 2021.

At both meetings, he said that it would almost be better if they could not find an asteroid to be in place by 2021 since that would be "pretty aggressive" to do on the first flight of a new spacecraft. He added that the idea is for the astronauts to make two spacewalks to the asteroid, but they will not be "sophisticated" spacewalks, just an opportunity for the astronauts to "reach out and grab something" wearing slightly modified launch and reentry spacesuits.

One point Gerstenmaier stressed, however, is that this mission would change the paradigm of human spaceflight because once launched the crew would not be able to return to Earth for nine days, breaking the tie with the planet. "That's a different posture for us," he told the NAC committees. With the International Space Station (ISS) and even the Apollo missions, it was possible to return to Earth in relatively short order if an emergency developed, but not in this case. He considers that a vital step to take before committing to missions even further from Earth, like Mars.

Gerstenmaier seemed enthusiastic about the way the strategy aligns NASA's various space activities, as well as the paradigm-changing aspect of testing how astronauts react to breaking the bond with Earth.

All in all, however, the White House and NASA may be exacerbating the challenge of winning support from Congress and other stakeholders. Some officials are using imprecise terminology, there is confusion over the relationship of this mission to protecting Earth from asteroids as well as why about humans are needed to bring back a sample of an asteroid when NASA already is building a robotic probe (OSIRIS-REx) to do that (not to mention that Japan already has done so and is planning a second mission), and the budget is murky in the short term and lacks credibility for the long term.

Rep. Lamar Smith (R-TX), chair of the House Science, Space and Technology Committee, said it seemed to him that the mission was "an afterthought" when the original mission did not win support. NASA and the White House will have their hands full trying to dispel that characterization, but Gerstenmaier's presentations may be a step in the right direction.

Antares Launch Scrubbed Due to Upper Level Winds

Sat, 20 Apr 2013 04:00:00 GMT

The Antares launch has been scrubbed again, this time because of upper level winds.

The next launch attempt will be tomorrow, Sunday, April 21, 2013, at 5:00 pm ET. The weather is forecast to be favorable except possibly for surface level winds.

Big Week Coming Up for Hearings on NASA, NOAA, DOD Space

Fri, 19 Apr 2013 04:00:00 GMT

NASA, NOAA and national security space programs will be in the spotlight on Capitol Hill next week.

Here is a list of the hearings we know about as of this morning. All times are Eastern. More details -- including location and witnesses (where announced) -- are available by clicking on the links. Remember that times, dates and witnesses for congressional hearings are subject to change; check the relevant committee's website for the most up to date information. Most committees webcast their hearings.

NASA

Tuesday, Apr. 23: Senate Commerce Subcommittee Hearing on Challenges and Opportunities in Human Space Exploration, 2:30 pm
Wednesday, Apr. 24, House SS&T Committee on NASA's FY2014 Budget Request, 2:00 pm
Thursday, Apr. 25: Senate Appropriations CJS Subcommittee on NASA's FY2014 Budget Request, 10:00 am

NOAA

Tuesday, Apr. 23: Senate Commerce Subcommittee Hearing on NOAA (and Coast Guard) FY2014 Budget Requests, 10:00 am

National Security Space

Wednesday April 24: Senate Armed Services Committee on Miltiary Space Programs and Views on DOD Usage of the Electromagnetic Spectrum, 2:30 pm C0RRECTION: This hearing is on April 24, not April 23 as shown in an earlier version of this article
Thursday, Apr. 25: House Armed Services Committee on National Security Space Activities, 3:30 pm

Russia Launches Orbital "Noah's Ark"

Fri, 19 Apr 2013 04:00:00 GMT

Russia launched its Bion-1M spacecraft today carrying an array of critters that will spend 30 days in orbit and then return to Earth.

Russia has a long history of launching animals into space on both orbital and suborbital missions. While almost everyone remembers the first Soviet launch, Sputnik, on October 4, 1957, that began the Space Age, few recall that the very next flight, a month later, took the dog Laika (Barker) into space. It was, unfortunately, a one-way mission since recoverable spacecraft had not yet been invented.

Laika, the first animal in space, before her one-way trip to space on November 3, 1957

The Soviets continued launching biological flights throughout the decades, many in cooperation with NASA. Some carried monkeys and became very controversial in the United States as animal rights groups objected. When one of the two monkeys on a 1996 mision, Bion 11, died after returning to Earth, the program ended.

The Bion program was resurrected in the mid-2000s and the launch today was the first of the new series, Bion-M. No monkeys are involved this time. Aboard the spacecraft are:

45 mice
8 Mongolian gerbils
15 geckos (lizards)
snails
containers with various microorganisms and plants

NASA is a partner on this mission as it was in the past, providing four Animal Enclosure Units and collaborating with Russian scientists on rodent research.

The spacecraft and its cargo will be recovered after 30 days. Russia's RIA Novosti says that more than 70 experiments with be conducted "in support of long-duration interplanetary flights including Mars missions."

Several Russian and non-Russian microsatellites are attached to the spacecraft and will be released over the next two days.

Top Three "Why Space Matters" Videos Good Weekend Pick-Me-Up

Fri, 19 Apr 2013 04:00:00 GMT

After the dreadful events in Boston and terrible explosion in Texas, we all need something to lift our spirits. Anyone who's a fan of the space program may find the winning entries in the "Why Space Matters" video contest to be just the ticket.

The three winning videos are very different from each other. We won't ruin the surprise by telling you what they say, but all three are well worth watching. They are posted on the VisitNASA.com website.

The winner gets a VIP trip for one to the Kennedy Space Center Visitor Center, Space Center Houston, or the U.S. Space and Rocket Center in Huntsville, AL.

House SS&T Chairman Smith Wants Vision for Space Program

Thu, 18 Apr 2013 04:00:00 GMT

Rep. Lamar Smith (R-TX), chairman of the House Science, Space and Technology (SS&T) Committee, made clear at a hearing yesterday and in an op-ed today that he is not convinced the space program is on the right track.

Presidential Science Adviser John Holdren testified to the committee yesterday about the FY2014 budget request for federal research and development (R&D). The hearing covered all federal R&D agencies, but the first agency Smith talked about in his opening statement was NASA. Saying that he looks at federal investments in R&D through the prism of ensuring American leadership, he asked a series of questions about NASA's program, including whether sending humans to an asteroid is the right goal for human spaceflight or should it be the Moon.

Later in the hearing, Smith asked Holdren why the Obama Administration is not following the advice of the scientific community to return to the Moon instead of going to an asteroid. He referenced a December 2012 National Research Council (NRC) report that concluded there was a lack of enthusiasm for the asteroid mission initiated by the President in 2010. Holdren acknowledged that there was "lack of excitement among some" about the asteroid mission at that time, but insisted that much has changed since December. NASA has developed an "extraordinarily ingenious and cost effective new approach" to the mission, he said, and "I'm now seeing a lot of enthusiasm." Smith countered that it was not in any set of recommended missions from the NRC or other panels and it seems like "an afterthought when the first mission didn't get supported by the international or by the scientific community." He did not reject the idea, however, saying "we can weigh it as we go forward."

Smith also asked why NASA is involved in earth science when there are 13 federal agencies doing climate change research. He wondered why NASA should not focus on its space mission and let the other 12 study climate change. Holdren defended NASA's broadly-based program, asserting that NASA needs to continue applying its unique capabilities to space, earth science, and aeronautics as it has historically.

In today's op-ed in the Houston Chronicle, Smith focused on NASA's space exploration mission and called for President Obama to "work with Congress to provide a vision for the agency" adding that for NASA to succeed it needs "continuity of vision and consistency in its budget." Conceding that NASA cannot "defy budget gravity" and get a budget increase when others are getting cut, he argued that "we need to play smarter and squeeze as much productivity as we can out the money we have."

Smith offered no specifics of his own on what to do. Arguably, the President laid out a vision three years ago -- sending astronauts to an asteroid as a steppingstone to Mars -- so "continuity of vision" would mean continuing on that path even though a strong contingent wants a return to President George W. Bush's 2004 vision of sending humans back to the Moon. That includes eight Members of Congress who reintroduced legislation (H.R. 1446) to direct NASA to develop a plan for landing humans on the Moon and establishing a human presence there. Smith is not a co-sponsor of that bill.

NASA Administrator Charlie Bolden has warned about changing directions again, telling the NRC last month that NASA is not planning for a human lunar mission and if a future decision is made to do that, it would probably mean that Americans would not be on the Moon, an asteroid, Mars or anywhere in the lifetimes of the people in the room. "We cannot continue to change the course of human exploration," he emphasized.

DOD Should Improve Its Satellite Control Operations Says GAO

Thu, 18 Apr 2013 04:00:00 GMT

The Department of Defense (DOD) needs to improve its satellite control operations according to a new report from the Government Accountability Office (GAO). DOD currently uses stand-alone control facilities for each satellite system, but instead should have shared systems that take advantage of commercial practices, the report concludes.

The study was conducted in response to a request from the House Armed Services Committee (HASC). GAO calculates that the nation's defense satellites, which are controlled by the ground stations at issue in the report, are worth "at least $13.7 billion." The ground stations, located around the world, however, are operated in a "fragmented and possibly duplicative" manner. Furthermore, DOD has not incorporated recommendations from "[n]umerous studies by DOD and other government groups" to incorporate commercial practices that could improve efficiency and reduce cost.

DOD plans to spend $400 million over the next 5 years to modernize the Air Force Satellite Control Network (AFSCN), its primary shared satellite control network, but that will not increase its capabilities, GAO continues. Those efforts instead focus on sustaining its current capabilities and "do not apply a decade of research recommending more significant improvements."

GAO identified the following commercial practices it believes DOD should adopt:

interoperability between satellite control operations networks;
automation of routine satellite control operations functions;
use of commercial off-the-shelf products instead of custom ones; and
a "hybrid" network approach which allows a satellite operator to augment its network through another operator's complementary network.

The key recommendations in the report are that the Secretary of Defense --

direct future satellite acquisition programs to determine a business case for proceeding with either a dedicated or a shared network, and
develop a long-term plan to modernize the AFSCN and any future shared networks and implementing commercial practices to improve DOD satellite control networks.

GAO reported that DOD concurred with those recommendations.

Orbital Will Wait Till Satuday for Next Antares Launch Attempt

Thu, 18 Apr 2013 04:00:00 GMT

A very poor weather forecast for tomorrow afternoon means that Orbital Sciences Corporation will wait until Saturday, April 20, before attempting to launch its new Antares rocket again. The launch window opens at 5:00 pm ET on Saturday.

The first attempt last night was scrubbed 12 minutes before launch when an umbilical providing data between the Transporter Erector Launcher (TEL) and the rocket's upper stage separated prematurely. Orbital determined that a "slight hydraulic movement" of the TEL coupled with insufficient slack in the cable caused the cable to pull out. The company was hoping to resolve the problem and launch tomorrow, but the forecast prevents that.

Weather Underground's forecast for Wallops Island, VA, where Antares will be launched, calls for 15-25 mile per hour (mph) winds, gusting to 30 mph, and a 90 percent chance of rain and thunderstorms tomorrow night.

This is the first test launch of Antares as part of NASA's Commercial Orbital Transportation Services (COTS) program to develop commercial space transportation systems to take cargo to the International Space Station (ISS). Orbital is hoping for a second test launch to send its Cygnus spacecraft to the ISS this summer and for operations to commence soon thereafter.

Will You Be Able to See the Antares Launch from Where You Are?

Wed, 17 Apr 2013 04:00:00 GMT

The Antares launch may be viewable along the East Coast and inland as far west as West Virginia. The map below, courtesy of Orbital, shows where it might be visible -- weather permiitting -- and the elevation angle above the horizon.

Antares Launch Scrubbed - update

Wed, 17 Apr 2013 04:00:00 GMT

This article was updated in its entirety at 6:40 pm ET.

The test launch of Orbital Sciences Corporation's Antares rocket was scrubbed today because of premature separation of an umbilical from the rocket's second stage.

The launch was scheduled for 5:00 pm ET and the main concern was weather at the launch site at Wallops Island, VA. As launch time neared, the weather was improving, but at T-12 minutes an umbilical separated from the second stage prematurely. Orbital says it is gathering data and the mission management team will meet at 8:00 am ET tomorrow morning to review the situation. One @orbitalsciences tweet said the next most likely attempt would be on Friday, but at a press conference yesterday, officials said Friday was a very poor launch day in terms of weather.

Antares Countdown Proceeding, Weather Still a Concern - UPDATE

Wed, 17 Apr 2013 04:00:00 GMT

UPDATE, 2:20 pm ET: Weather has improved to 55 percent favorable. NASA-Wallops has a Ustream video up now. NASA TV will begin coverage at 4:00 pm ET.

ORIGINAL STORY: The countdown to today's first test launch of Orbital Sciences Corporation's Antares rocket is underway, but the weather forecast remains iffy.

The launch from the Mid-Atlantic Regional Spaceport (MARS) at NASA's Wallops Flight Facility, Wallops Island, VA, is scheduled for 5:00 pm ET today. The launch window is open through 8:00 pm. Low clouds are still forecast, however, so whether the launch must be delayed or not is an open question.

It is difficult to follow the action other than through social media. Orbital is tweeting occasionally @orbitalsciences and NASA is tweeting occasionally @NASASocial. Perhaps they will pick up the pace and be more informative as the day progresses.

Briefing charts about the launch are available on Orbital's website as well as a series of illustrations of where people on the East Coast from New York City to Richmond, VA should look to see it (weather permitting).

Antares Ready for Launch Tomorrow, But Weather May Not Cooperate

Tue, 16 Apr 2013 04:00:00 GMT

Orbital Sciences Corporation's Antares rocket is ready for its first test launch tomorrow, but the weather forecast is only 45 percent favorable.

Low clouds and possible showers could force a postponement. Additional launch opportunities are available April 18-21, but decisions on when to reschedule would be dependent on a number of factors. At a press conference today, Mike Pinkston, Orbital's Antares program manager, said he anticipated a "dynamic decision process" if they need to reschedule. He expects that they would "almost definitely" try again on April 18, but whether they would slip from the 18th to the 19th is less certain. Not only is the forecast for April 19 especially poor, but the launch crew needs sufficient time to rest.

Assuming a successful test launch, the next flight would be a demonstration mission to the International Space Station (ISS) in about three months. That would carry the Cygnus cargo spacecraft; the launch tomorrow will carry only a 3,800 kilogram mass simulator. Antares and Cygnus were developed through NASA's Commercial Orbital Transportation Services (COTS) program where the agency provided some of the funding for Orbital to develop the system on a commercial basis.

NASA already signed a $1.9 billion contract with Orbital for eight operational launches. Frank Culbertson, Orbital's Executive Vice President and General Manager of the Advanced Programs Group, said they expect to launch the operational missions every 3-6 months after the test program is completed. Under the contract, NASA and Orbital will jointly agree on when the eight missions take place, but he expects they will be completed around 2016.

Culbertson stressed that this is a test launch. Designated the A-One mission, the objectives are to successfully achieve launch and ascent events and collect launch vehicle and payload data. The target orbit is 250 kilometers by 303 kilometers inclined at 51.64 degrees. The 3-hour launch window opens at 5:00 pm ET tomorrow.

Mikulski Will Support Asteroid Initiative, Not Sure About Orion, Planetary Requests

Mon, 15 Apr 2013 04:00:00 GMT

Speaking to the Maryland Space Business Roundtable today, Senator Barbara Mikulski (D-MD), chair of the Senate Appropriations Committee, said that she will support President Obama's new asteroid retrieval initiative, but expressed concern about the request for the Orion spacecraft and planetary exploration.

Applauding the FY2014 request of $17.7 billion for NASA overall, which she said was a "$200 million increase over last year ...we're going to keep that," she went on to note the President's proposal to capture an asteroid and said "we support him on that." She quickly added, however, that she is concerned about the proposed cut to Orion and stressed the reality that, with Sen. Richard Shelby (R-AL) as vice chairman of the full committee, it was not politically possible to cut that program. Throughout her talk she praised Shelby for working with her in a bipartisan manner to get the final FY2013 Continuing Resolution (CR) passed and their effective working relationship over many years.

She is pleased that the request for earth science is an increase of $80 million, but complained about what she characterized as a reduction for planetary exploration and said "we have to look at that." According to her calculations, "planetary science" was reduced $283 million in the FY2014 request and "I know that went into Mars robotics." The robotics Mars program is part of planetary exploration, so her meaning was not clear.

Semi-seriously, she said she always asks three questions about budget requests: "what do we need to do for the nation, what do we need to do for Maryland, and ... what did you say we were going to do for Maryland?"

Mikulski restated her opposition to the sequester, which remains in place through FY2021 based on the Budget Control Act of 2011. The final FY2013 CR that she sheparded included the sequester, however -- a 5 percent cut to NASA that cost the agency over $1 billion, though NASA seems to be ignoring it in discussions of its FY2014 request. NASA has not released figures showing what the agency actually got in FY2013, the current fiscal year, making Mikulski's comparisons of what the agency got last year versus its request for FY2014 all the more obscure. The upshot is that she is concerned about the amount of funding requested for planetary science and is warning NASA not to cut the Orion program.

Mikulski ascended to chairmanship of the full Senate Appropriations Committee in December following the death of Senator Daniel Inouye (D-HI). In addition to chairing the full committee, she continues to chair the Commerce-Justice-Science (CJS) subcommittee, which funds not only NASA, but NOAA. Today she stressed the need to find a replacement for Jane Lubchenco as head of NOAA. Lubchenco left in February. Mikulski also emphasized that the National Weather Service (part of NOAA) "must be the best in the world" and create a computer model that will make Europe's look "wimpy." It was the European weather model that correctly forecast Hurricane Sandy making a right turn into New Jersey and New York.

Space Policy Events for the Week of April 14-19, 2013

Sun, 14 Apr 2013 04:00:00 GMT

The following events may be of interest in the coming week. The House and Senate both are in session.

During the Week

The big event this week is the scheduled first launch of Orbital Sciences Corporation's Antares rocket from Wallops Island, VA. Orbital is the competitor to SpaceX for commercial cargo launches to the International Space Station (ISS). It was chosen for NASA's Commercial Orbital Transportation Services (COTS) program a year and a half after SpaceX (replacing RocketPlane-Kistler, which failed to meet its milestones) so is just now getting to the flight test stage. NASA continues to hope that Orbital's services will begin this year. It has signed a contract for eight Orbital launches in addition to the 12 with SpaceX.

The launch of Antares, with a mass simulator of Orbital's Cygnus spacecraft, is scheduled for Wednesday between 5:00 pm and 8:00 pm ET. Launch delays, especially with new rockets, are not uncommon. Additional launch opportunities exist through April 21. Orbital is launching from the Mid-Atlantic Regional Spaceport (MARS) at NASA's Wallops Flight Faclity on the coast of Virginia near the southern tip of the Delmarva (Delaware-Maryland-Virginia) peninsula, about 3-4 hours driving time east of Washington, D.C. If the weather conditions are just right, and especially if the launch takes place in the latter part of the launch window when the skies are darker, it may be visible from the DC area.

Sunday, April 14

Special session of the Planetary Defense Conference focused on the Chelyabinsk meteor, Flagstaff, AZ, 7:00-9:30 pm MT (9:00-11:30 pm ET)

Monday-Friday, April 15-19

IAA Planetary Defense Conference, Flagstaff, AZ

Monday-Tuesday, April 15-16

NASA Advisory Council (NAC) Heliophysics Subcommittee, NASA HQ, Washington, DC

Tuesday, April 16

House Appropriations Defense Subcommittee on FY2014 DOD budget request, 2359 Rayburn, 10:00 am ET
FAA Commercial Space Transportation Advisory Committee (COMSTAC) Systems Working Group, telecon, 1:00 pm ET

Tuesday-Wednesday, April 16-17

NAC Astrophysics Subcommittee, Holiday Inn Capitol, 550 C Street, NW, Washington, DC

Wednesday, April 17

Senate Armed Services Committee (SASC) Hearing on FY2014 DOD budget request, 216 Hart, 9:30 am ET
House Science, Space and Technology (HSS&T) Committee Hearing on FY2014 Budget Request for Science Agencies, 2318 Rayburn, 10:00 am ET
NAC Human Exploration and Operations (HEO) Research Subcommittee, telecon, 10:00 am - 1:00 pm ET
Scheduled first launch of Orbital's Antares rocket, Wallops Island, VA, launch window is 5:00-8:00 pm ET

Thursday, April 18

NAC Technology and Innovation Committee, NASA HQ, Washington, DC, 8:00 am - 3:15 pm ET
NAC HEO committee, NASA HQ, Washington, DC, 9:30 am - 12:00 pm and 1:15 pm - 6:00 pm ET
- Session from 9:30-11:00 am is joint with the NAC Science Committee

Thursday-Friday, April 18-19

NAC Science Committee, NASA HQ, Washington, DC
- Session on April 18, 9:30-11:00 am ET, is joint with NAC Human Exploration and Operations Committee

Antares Launch on Schedule Despite Anomaly

Sun, 14 Apr 2013 04:00:00 GMT

Orbital Sciences Corporation still hopes to conduct its first test launch of the new Antares rocket on Wednesday despite an anomaly during a wet dress rehearsal yesterday.

Orbital said in a press statement that yesterday's test was halted at about T-16 minutes. The company determined "a secondary pyro valve aboard one of the two first-stage engines" malfunctioned and it plans to replace the valve within 24 hours to keep the April 17 launch date.

Antares and its Cygnus spacecraft are competitors to SpaceX for cargo flights to the International Space Station through NASA's Commercial Orbital Transportation Services (COTS) program. This test launch will not carry a Cygnus, which has yet to fly in space. Instead it will carry a mass simulator. Unlike SpaceX's Dragon spacecraft, Cygnus is not designed to return to Earth. Orbital is not competing in the effort to develop a system to transport people to and from space. Cygnus is a one-way cargo spacecraft only, like Europe's ATV, Japan's HTV, and Russia's Progress.

Antares will be launched from Wallops Island, VA. The launch window on April 17 is 5:00-8:00 pm ET. If the launch is delayed, additional opportunities are available April 18-21.

Putin Pledges Space Program Support on Cosmonautics Day, Cosmonauts May Make Ocean Landings in Future

Fri, 12 Apr 2013 04:00:00 GMT

As the world celebrates Cosmonautics Day -- or Yuri's Night -- in honor of Soviet cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin making the first human trip into space 52 years ago today, Russian President Vladimir Putin pledged support for Russia's space program. The amount of money he is willing to commit to space activities between now and 2020 is less than what was announced a few months ago, however.

In December, Russian Prime Minister Dmitri Medvedev said Russia would spend 2.1 trillion rubles (about $70 billion) on the space program between 2013 and 2020. Today, Putin said it would be 1.6 trillion rubles (about $51.5 billion) during that same time period. No explanation for the reduction was provided.

Russia's Itar-Tass news agency cited Putin as calling out in particular continued work on a new launch site in far eastern Siberia, called Vostochny. Russia has been talking about building a launch site there for many years with the goal of moving launches that now take place at the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan within Russia's own borders. Kazakhstan was part of the Soviet Union, but gained its independence with the breakup of the USSR in 1991. Russia leases Baikonur from Kazakhstan for $115 million a year. The estimated cost of building Vostochny is $20 billion according to Russia Today, which adds that Putin proposed that the town being built to support Vostochny be named Tsiolkovsky after Konstantin Tsiolkovsky, the father of the Soviet/Russian space program.

Putin said today that the first launches from Vostochny will take place in 2015 and it will be fully commissioned by 2020 and thereafter be used to launch space station missions as well as robotic lunar and planetary exploration spacecraft. National Public Radio (NPR) reports that Putin also said that once crews are launched from Vostochny, they will "probably" land in the ocean rather than enduring the bumpy landings on the steppes of Kazakhstan. Russian space crews have always landed on land instead of water, so that would be a significant change. It would be another step towards removing Russia's dependence on Kazakhstan, but Putin also said that Russia would not entirely abandon Baikonur, which is also used for military and commercial launches.

NPR and Russia Today both report that Putin complained that human spaceflight consumes a large share -- 58 percent -- of the space budget, limiting what is available for other activities. He said Russia must "keep the leader's experience of the manned flights and catch up in other space exploration programs."

Russia Today also reports that Putin authorized the government to consider making Russia's space agency, Roscosmos, into a Ministry. Putin, Medveyev and other top Russian officials have been debating what changes are needed to fix the space program in the wake of an unusual number of launch failures since December 2010.

NOAA Reduces JPSS Costs by $1.6 Billion - How Did They Do It?

Fri, 12 Apr 2013 04:00:00 GMT

Acting Secretary of Commerce Rebecca Blank told congressional appropriators on Thursday that the lifecycle cost of the Joint Polar Satellite System (JPSS) is now $11.3 billion instead of the $12.9 billion the Department told Congress last year. That's a remarkable change and in the opposite direction of most space program estimates, begging the question of how they did it.

Blank testified to the Senate Commerce-Justice-Science (CJS) appropriations subcommittee chaired by Sen. Barbara Mikulski (D-MD) in the morning, and its House counterpart, chaired by Rep. Frank Wolf (R-VA), in the afternoon.

At the time of its FY2013 budget request in February 2012, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), which is part of the Department of Commerce (DOC), said the life-cycle cost through 2028 was $12.9 billion, up from $11.9 billion the previous year because it added four more years of operations. The increase was sharply criticized by Mikulski, who continues to chair the subcommittee in this Congress and also has ascended to chair the full appropriations committee.

Exasperated by cost growth in NOAA satellite programs, Mikulski recommended last year that the programs be transferred to NASA. She said at Thursday's hearing on the FY2014 budget request for DOC, however, that she has backed off that stance because Blank convinced her that recent management changes would fix the problems. Still, Mikulski said, NOAA's satellite programs are "on probation" in terms of which agency manages them, especially since Blank will not be there to ensure the management changes are implemented. Blank is leaving the Obama Administration at the end of May.

In the final Continuing Resolution for FY2013, enacted last month, appropriators made clear that $11.9 billion was the maximum amount they would approve for JPSS. Blank's new estimate of $11.3 billion fits within that envelope, but opens the question of how the program was able to drop the cost so quickly. She said she is confident the program can be executed for that cost as long as it receives the requested funding. For FY2014, NOAA is requesting $824 million.

DOC's budget documentation does not provide explicit details on how the cost reduction was achieved, but one change is apparent and another can be surmised. First, NOAA transferred responsibility for three climate sensors to NASA. Second, it created a new budget line item for a free-flyer that had been included in the JPSS estimate and presumably no longer is included the estimate.

JPSS is NOAA's part of the restructured National Polar-orbiting Operational Environmental Satellite System (NPOESS) program. Last year, the $12.9 billion estimate included four satellites. Two are mid-sized satellites with several sensors each, but they are not large enough to accommodate all the sensors envisioned for NOAA's part of NPOESS. Therefore NOAA decided it needed another two small "free flyers" for the remaining sensors. The four spacecraft, including launch and operation, were in the $12.9 lifecycle cost estimate along with NOAA's roughly $4 billion sunk costs in NPOESS.

Now NASA will be responsible for funding three climate sensors. NASA and NOAA share responsibility for climate measurements and monitoring, but NOAA's primary mission in this area is weather forecasting as the congressional appropriators reminded NOAA in the final FY2013 CR. Transferring the sensors to NASA allows NOAA to focus on weather and reduces its financial load, but that burden is simply shifted to NASA.

Mike Freilich, Director of NASA's Earth Science Division, told the NASA Advisory Council's Earth Science Subcommittee on Thursday that the FY2014 budget request for his office includes a one-time $40 million increase to pay for them. They are the Clouds and Earth Radiant Energy System (CERES), the Ozone Mapping and Profiler Suite-Limb (OMPS-Limb) and the Total Solar Irradiance Sensor (TSIS). NASA discusses them in the "Decadal Survey Missions" section of its Earth Science budget request, but a breakout of how much of that budget line item is for the climate sensors is not provided. The climate sensors are one of three new responsibilities assigned to NASA and Freilich expressed concern about the long term impact of adding so much content to his program if adequate resources are not provided over the long term. The FY2014 budget request calls for NASA to also pay more for refurbishing the Deep Space Climate Observatory space weather satellite and take the lead in designing and developing a follow-on to Landsat 8, which at one time was envisioned for the U.S. Geological Survey, which operates the Landsat satellites).

As for the two free-flyers NOAA was planning, its budget now provides only for one and it now has its own budget line, called Polar Free Flyer, separate from JPSS and ostensibly no longer included in the JPSS life cycle cost estimate.

Blank told Wolf's subcommittee that $11.3 billion is the "revised and final" estimate in her verbal testimony (at minute 01:15:30), but her written statement says "We are currently in the process of completing an Independent Cost Estimate (ICE) for JPSS with options to reduce scope, risk, and lifecycle cost."

Soviet Mars-3 Lander Possibly Discovered in MRO Data

Thu, 11 Apr 2013 04:00:00 GMT

The Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) announced today that analysis of imagery from NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO) may have revealed the Soviet Mars 3 spacecraft that landed on Mars in 1971. For unknown reasons, contact with the lander was lost seconds after it touched down.

The Soviet Union was jinxed in its robotic Mars exploration program with no complete mission successes to claim. Some of its probes were partial successes, however, and Mars 3 is in that category. Mars 2 and Mars 3 were orbiter/lander combinations launched in 1971. Both orbiters returned data. The Mars 2 lander crashed. The Mars 3 lander successfully reached the surface and returned data for a few seconds before contact was lost.

Russian individuals with an interest in NASA's current Mars program as well as earlier efforts by the Soviet Union and Russia to study the Red Planet took it upon themselves -- with the help of crowdsourcing -- to scrutinize imagery from the High REsolution Imaging Spectrometer Science Experiment (HiRISE) on MRO looking for the Mars 3 lander. They knew the predicted coordinates of where it landed.

MRO has been in orbit around Mars since March 2006. The original images they looked at were taken in 2007 and objects resembling the parachute, heat shield, descent module, and lander eventually were identified. They requested that MRO take another image of the area, which was accomplished on March 13, 2013. That image is in color and provides different illumination angles and supports, in particular, what they believe is discovery of the parachute.

HiRISE principal investigator Alfred McEwen of the University of Arizona, Tucson, said "this set of features and their layout ... provide a remarkable match to what is expected from the Mars 3 landing, but alternative explanations for the features cannot be ruled out."

The image is posted on the HiRISE website and JPL's website.

NASA's FY2014 Budget Request Includes Asteroid Retrieval Mission; Earth Science and STEM Changes

Wed, 10 Apr 2013 04:00:00 GMT

President Obama sent his FY2014 budget request to Congress today, nine-and-a-half weeks late. The $1.058 trillion request includes $17.7 billion for NASA. Highlights will be discussed during a NASA media telecon at 3:00 pm ET this afternoon. An earlier media briefing, at 1:30 pm ET, will discuss the overall budget request for federal research and development, including NASA, NOAA, NIH and NSF.

The President continues to oppose sequestration and his FY2014 budget does not take it into account. Consequently, NASA's FY2014 budget request is about the same as its FY2013 request following the flat-line spending plan it assumed last year.

NASA's documentation accompanying the FY2014 request does not allow comparisons to what Congress appropriated for FY2013 -- the current fiscal year -- because the request was formulated prior to Congress completing action on the FY2013 budget. The numbers in the tables accompanying NASA's request are based on the first Continuing Resolution (CR) that passed Congress last September, not the second CR that became law in March and ultimately set government spending levels for this year. That law cut NASA's FY2013 funding from the $17.771 billion requested to something in the neighborhood of $16.6 billion. NASA has not publicly stated even the total that it received for FY2013. That and details of how it will be spent at the account and program, project and activity (PPA) level apparently will not be revealed until NASA submits a congressionally-required operating plan to Congress on May 10.

Leaving aside questions about current year spending, the FY2014 request includes three major changes.

A new Asteroid Retrieval Initiative, with $105 million requested for FY2014, to study the feasibility of capturing a 7-10 meter diameter, 500 ton asteroid, bringing it to the Earth-Moon system using a robotic probe powered by solar electric propulsion, and sending astronauts to explore it perhaps as early as 2021. The $105 million is split among three tasks:
- Identify: additional $20 million (on top of existing $20 million) for the Science Mission Directorate (SMD) to augment ground-based efforts to identify and characterize asteroids with the goal of identifying a candidate asteroid for this mission by 2016;
- Redirect: $45 million for the new Space Technology Mission Directorate (STMD) to accelerate development of high-power solar electric propulsion;
- Explore: $40 million for the Human Exploration and Operations Mission Directorate (HEOMD) to study how the Orion spacecraft could rendezvous with the asteroid and how astronauts could interact with it.
Two significant changes to the Earth Science portfolio
- NASA will assume responsibility for climate sensors that were to be incorporated onto NOAA's Joint Polar Satellite System (JPSS). Congress has strongly encouraged NOAA to focus on its weather forecasting mission.
- NASA will take the lead on determining how to ensure the continuity of the satellite land remote sensing data set tht began with the first Landsat satellite in 1972. Landsat 8 (also called the Landsat Data Continuity Mission, or LDCM) was launched earlier this year and planning must begin for the next in the series to avoid any gaps in data acquisition. The Obama Administration wanted to transfer the program to the U.S Geological Survey (USGS), which operates the Landsat satellites and is knowledgable about the user community for that data. Congress rejected the idea because of concern that the cost would overwhelm over USGS priorities.
Impacts on NASA's education portfolio due a government-wide restructuring of Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) education programs. The White House is consolidating most of the government's STEM projects that are currently in 13 agencies into three agencies: the Department of Education (K-12 programs), the National Science Foundation (undergraduate and graduate programs), and the Smithsonian (informal and in-situ education). NASA's FY2014 education request of $94 million will fund NASA-specific efforts such as Space Grant, EPSCoR, MUREP and GLOBE. The $94 million includes "$67.5 million for high-performing existing programs, and an additional $26.8 million previously distributed throughout the agency's mission directorates" according to the Office of Management and Budget (OMB). OMB also says that $47.5 million of NASA's education programs were "redirected" to the other agencies. NASA's "education" budget request last year was $100 million, but it is difficult to compare that with the $94 million requested this year since that budget did not include the funding in the mission directorate accounts.

The Asteroid Retrieval Initiative is likely to be the focus of attention, although NASA officials stress that the agency must first complete a feasibility study before offering details. A Mission Concept Review is expected to be completed this summer. The concept was outlined in a 2012 Keck Institute for Space Studies (KISS) report that estimated the total cost of such a mission at $2.6 billion. NASA officials caution against using that as a cost estimate for what the agency might do, arguing the cost might be lower because much of the work is already underway for other purposes. The total request for this initiative in FY2014 is $105 million, but NASA categorizes only $78 million of that as "mission" funding.

The overall President's budget request for the U.S. Government for FY2014 was officially released at 12:30 pm ET today.

Details of NASA's FY2014 budget request will be posted on the agency's website at 1:00 pm ET.

NASA Administrator Bolden will be one of the participants in a press conference at 1:30 pm ET. The press conference is led by the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP) and will be webcast by the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) on its website. The other participants are the heads of NOAA, NIH and NSF, all of whom will join the President's Science Adviser and Director of OSTP John Holdren.

A House Science, Space and Technology Committee hearing on the threat to Earth posed by asteroids and meteors whose orbits bring them close to Earth, called Near Earth Objects (NEOs), is scheduled to begin at 2:00 pm. One of the witnesses, Don Yeomans, is from the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, but it is not clear how much information he will provide about the Asteroid Retrieval Initiative in NASA's budget request. He is the manager of NASA's ongoing effort to track and catalogue NEOs. The hearing will be webcast on the committee's website.

NASA Administrator Charlie Bolden will hold a media teleconference on the FY2014 budget request at 3:00 pm. It will be broadcast on the agency's news audio website.

Posey Reintroduces REAL Space Act to Return Astronauts to Moon

Wed, 10 Apr 2013 04:00:00 GMT

On a day already chock full of space news -- release of the FY2014 budget request and a hearing on the threat to Earth posed by asteroids -- Rep. Bill Posey (R-FL) decided to reintroduce his RE-asserting American Leadership in Space Act, or REAL Space Act.

The bill was introduced in the last Congress. No action was taken, but that clearly did not dissuade Posey and eight other Republican and Democratic House members from trying again this year. Co-sponsors include Rep. Frank Wolf (R-VA), chairman of the House appropriations subcommittee that funds NASA. The legislation would direct NASA to develop a plan for returning to the Moon and establishing a human presence there.

Posey argues that a "moon presence offers us the ability to develop and test technologies to cope with the realities of operating on an extraterrestrial surface."

As reported by Jeff Foust at SpacePolitics.com last week, NASA Administrator Charlie Bolden continues to stress that NASA has no plans to return humans to the Moon. Foust quotes Bolden as saying "I don't know how to say it any more plainly...NASA does not have a human lunar mission in its portfolio and we are not planning for one" and if the next administration tries to change course again "in the lifetime of everyone sitting in this room, we are probably never again going to see Americans on the Moon, or Mars, near an asteroid, or anywhere. We cannot continue to change the course of human exploration."

FY2014 Budget Request to be Released Wednesday as House Holds Hearing on NEOs

Tue, 09 Apr 2013 04:00:00 GMT

President Obama will submit his FY2014 budget request to Congress tomorrow, Wednesday, April 10.

Word is that the White House Office of Management and Budget (OMB) will hold a press conference at 12:30 pm ET to formally release the budget request. NASA Administrator Charlie Bolden will hold a media teleconference at 3:00 pm ET that will be available on NASA's news audio website.

NASA will post details of its request on the NASA budget website at 1:00 pm ET.

Unless it's a short hearing, the House Science, Space and Technology Committee will be in the middle of part two of its hearings on the threat to Earth posed by asteroids and comets whose orbits bring them close to Earth (collectively called Near Earth Objects or NEOs), at that time. The hearing is set to begin at 2:00 pm ET. The budget request reportedly will include funds to further studies of the idea of sending a robotic probe to capture an asteroid, bring it to the Earth-Moon system, and send astronauts to study it. Hopefully the hearing will elucidate what NASA has in mind. JPL's Don Yeomans is one of the witnesses.

GAO Details Cost Growth in DOD Space Programs

Mon, 08 Apr 2013 04:00:00 GMT

In its annual assessment of major defense acquisition programs, the Government Accountability Office (GAO) laid out the cost growth affecting many of those programs, including space programs. The Space-Based Infrared System High Component (SBIRS-High) leads the pack for space programs with a nearly 300 percent cost growth, with Wideband Global Satcom not far behind.

A table at the end of the report shows the cost changes for each of the Department of Defense's (DOD's) major defense acquisition programs (MDAPs) in 2012. The table compares the "current estimated total acquisition cost" to the "first full estimated acquisition cost" in three ways: the change since that first estimate was made, the change over just the past year, and the change over the past five years. Focusing only on the change since the first estimate was made, GAO reports the percent change for each space program in its list as follows:

Advanced Extremely High Frequency (AEHF) communications satellite program: 119.2 percent (from $6.556 billion to $14.372 billion)
Global Broadcast Service: 104.9 percent (from $593 million to $1.215 billion)
Global Positioning System (GPS) III: 4.5 percent (from $4.056 billion to $4.239 billion)
Mobile User Objective System (MUOS): 4.6 percent (from $6.917 billion to $7.234 billion)
Navstar Global Positioning System (GPS): 27.9 percent (from $7.415 billion to $9.483 billion)
Navstar GPS Space & Control: 23.8 percent (from $6.397 billion to $7.917 billion)
Navstar GPS User Equipment: 54 percent (from $1.018 billion to $1.567 billion)
Space-Based Infrared System High Component (SBRIS-High): 298.8 percent (from $4.731 billion to $18.868 billion)
Wideband Global SATCOM (WGS): 235 percent (from $1.229 billion to $4.116 billion)

The table also lists the canceled National Polar-orbiting Operational Environmental Satellite System (NPOESS) that, not surprisingly, shows a cost reduction since it was, in fact, terminated.

The cost growth in those space programs are not the highest of all the MDAPs. The MQ-9 Unmanned Aircraft System (UAS) Reaper's cost increased 359.8 percent (from $2.714 billion to $12.476 billion); the MQ-1C Unmanned Aircraft System (UAS) Gray Eagle grew 354.2 percent (from $1.045 billion to $4.745 billion); the DDG 51 Arleigh Burke Class Guided Missile Destroyer's cost is up 335.7 percent (from $15.629 billion to $103.166 billion); and the Tactical Tomahawk Block IV grew 239.9 percent (from $2.178 billion to $7.402 billion). None of those begins to compare, however, with the 1581.1 percent increase of the C-130J Hercules military transport aircraft program (from $977 million to $16.418 billion).

GAO picked 64 programs for a more detailed review. They included programs in development or early production, future programs, and recently canceled programs. Not all are included in the list at the end of its report.

Those 64 include the Evolved Expendable Launch Vehicle (EELV) program; Space Fence, a set of ground-based radars that will be used to track space objects (replacing the Air Force's Space Surveillance System), the Ballistic Missile Defense Organization's Precision Tracking Space System (PTSS) for space-based persistent tracking of ballistic missiles, and the Enhanced Polar System (EPS) of extremely high frequency (EHF) communications payloads on classified polar orbiting satellites.

GAO said that the EELV program's cost is estimated at $69.6 billion for 150 launches through 2030. That is $34.6 billion more than what DOD reported in its March 2012 Selected Acquisition Report, which estimated costs for 91 launches through 2020. EELV program officials reportedly told GAO that the reasons for the cost growth included the extra 10 years and 59 launches, as well as "the inherently unstable nature of the demand for launch services, and industrial base instability." A new acquisition baseline for the program was approved in early 2013, GAO states.

The report contains no recommendations. Instead, GAO makes nine observations about DOD's acquisition of major weapons systems generally, not specific programs. Among the observations is that, overall, the performance of DOD's major acquisition portfolio has improved since last year.

Bolden to Hold Media Telecon on FY2014 Budget Request on Wednesday

Mon, 08 Apr 2013 04:00:00 GMT

NASA Administrator Charlie Bolden will hold a media teleconference to discuss the agency's FY2014 budget request on Wednesday, April 10.

The telecon will be held at 3:00 pm ET and anyone who wishes may listen in at NASA's news audio website. NASA's budget materials will be posted on the agency's budget website at 1:00 pm ET that day.

Word that the budget request includes about $100 million for work on the concept of robotically capturing an asteroid and bringing it to the Earth-Moon system for study by astronauts has heightened interest in this year's request.

Bolden's media teleconference will take place while the House Science, Space and Technology Committee is holding its second hearing on the threat to Earth posed by asteroids. That hearing begins at 2:00 pm ET. The hearing should be available via webcast on the committee's website.

Space Policy Events for the Week of April 8-12, 2013

Sun, 07 Apr 2013 04:00:00 GMT

The following events may be of interest in the coming week. The House and Senate both are in session, returning from their Easter/Passover break.

During the Week

The big event this week is the release -- at last -- of President Obama's FY2014 budget request. It will be sent to Capitol Hill on Wednesday, the same day the House Science, Space and Technology Committee has scheduled Part II of the committee's hearings on Near Earth Objects (NEOs). Those are asteroids and comets that come close to, and may threaten, Earth. The President's budget request reportedly includes funds for NASA to begin work on the idea of capturing an asteroid, moving it into the Earth-Moon system, and sending astronauts to study it. Such a mission would respond to scientific interest in asteroids, human exploration goals, planetary defense (defending Earth from asteroids or comets that could cause significant destruction), and the plans of a couple of entrepreneurial companies that want to mine asteroids for their raw materials. A study by the Keck Institute of Space Studies last year estimated it would cost $2.6 billion in FY12 dollars. The request for FY2014 is said to be about $100 million.

Several congressional hearings are scheduled this week on the budget requests for the Department of Defense (DOD) and, separately, the Department of Commerce (DOC), which manages weather satellites. The budget request usually is sent to Congress by the President in February and by this time of the year, most of the budget hearings are completed. Everything is behind schedule this year, though, because of the extended debate over the sequester and funding for the current fiscal year (FY2013).

Monday, April 8

IISL/ECSL Space Law Symposium, Vienna, Austria

Monday-Thursday, April 8-11

Space Foundation's National Space Symposium, Colorado Springs, CO

Tuesday, April 9

Georgetown Law School Space Law Panel, Hotung Building, Georgetown Law School, 4:00-5:00 pm ET

Wednesday, April 10

President Obama Submits FY2014 Budget Request to Congress
House SS&T Hearing on Near Earth Objects: Part II, 2318 Rayburn, 2:00 pm ET

Thursday, April 11

HASC Hearing on FY2014 DOD Budget Request, 2118 Rayburn, 10:00 am ET
Senate Approps CJS Sbcmte Hearing on FY2014 Dept of Commerce Budget Request, 192 Dirksen, 10:00 am ET
NASA Advisory Council Earth Science Subcommittee Meeting, telecon, 12:30-3:00 pm ET
House Approps CJS Sbcmte Hearing on FY2014 Dept of Commerce Budget Request, 2359 Rayburn, 1:30 pm ET

Friday, April 12

HASC Hrg on FY2014 Air Force Budget Request, 2118 Rayburn, 10:00 am ET

Note: The text of this article has been changed to reflect the fact that Wednesday's hearing on NEOs has been upgraded from a subcommittee hearing to a full committee hearing.

Third Congressional Hearing on Asteroid Threat Coming Up Next Week

Thu, 04 Apr 2013 04:00:00 GMT

A House subcommittee will hold a third congressional hearing on the threat to Earth posed by asteroids and comets on April 10, the same day President Obama will submit his FY2014 budget request to Congress. The hearings were catalyzed by the meteor that exploded over Chelyabinsk, Russia in February.

Asteroids and comets that come close to Earth collectively are known as Near Earth Objects (NEOs). The April 10 hearing, before the Space Subcommittee of the House Science, Space and Technology (HSS&T) Committee, will feature Ed Lu, former astronaut and current head of the B612 Foundation; Don Yeomans, manager of NASA's NEO Program Office at the Jet Propulsion Lab; and Mike A'Hearn of the University of Maryland who co-chaired a 2009 National Research Council study on the NEO threat.

Lu testified to a Senate Commerce subcommittee in March. His B612 Foundation is trying to raise funds, primarily from philanthropists, to build a space-based inrfared telescope that would be placed in a special orbit around the Sun that affords a better view of NEOs in Earth's vicinity. Ground-based telescopes and those in Earth orbit can only see sections of the sky and B612 wants to create a more complete catalog of Potentially Hazardous Asteroids (PHAs). Yeomans is one of the world's leading authorities on identifying, tracking and cataloging NEOs as part of a NASA program that was mandated by Congress beginning in the 1990s. The NRC study that A'Hearn co-chaired was requested by Congress in the 2008 NASA Authorization Act. It looked at tracking and cataloging NEOs as well as how to mitigate the threat they pose to Earth.

The full HSS&T committee, which has led the charge over the past two deades in directing NASA to study NEOs, held the first of the three post-Chelyabinsk hearings on March 19. Witnesses were Presidential Science Adviser John Holdren. Air Force Space Command Commander Gen. William Shelton, and NASA Administrator Charlie Bolden. The next day, the Senate Commerce, Science, and Transportation Committee's Subcommittee on Science and Space held a hearing on space "threats" where Lu and Jim Green, Director of NASA's Planetary Science Division, testified about the threat from NEOs. The April 10 hearing, back on the House side, will continue the discussion.

The House and Senate committees hope to pass a new NASA authorization bill this year that may well address NEOs again. While congressional interest in NEOs has been rather limited in the past to certain members of the House committee, the meteor that exploded over Chelyabinsk on February 15 stimulated much broader concern. Over 1,000 people were injured, mostly from flying glass as windows broke from the shock wave created by the meteor passing through the atmosphere. Asteroids are rocks in space. When they enter Earth's atmosphere, they are called meteors. Any pieces that reach the ground are called meteorites.

In addition to tracking and cataloguing NEOs, NASA has sent robotic probes to study them. The next U.S. probe, OSIRIS-Rex, is planned for launch in 2016. President Obama also directed NASA to send humans to an asteroid by 2025. A concept currently being promoted by a diverse array of groups as an alternative or adjunct is to capture an asteroid using a robotic spacecraft and tow it to a location close to Earth (perhaps placing it in orbit around the Moon) and send astronauts to study it there. Aviation Week reports that the President's FY2014 budget request includes $100 million to continue studies of such a mission.

The asteroid hearing is at 2:00 pm ET on April 10 in 2318 Rayburn House Office Buildkng. The committee usually webcasts its hearings.

Video of Yvonne Brill's 2009 Gardner Lecture

Wed, 03 Apr 2013 04:00:00 GMT

Editor's Note: One silver lining of the imbroglio over the New York Times's bungling of Yvonne Brill's obituary is that it has piqued people's curiosity about her. There's no better way to learn more about her amazing career than to hear it in her own words.

On April 2, 2009, Yvonne gave the 32nd Astronautics and Aeronautics Department Lester D. Gardner Lecture at MIT, another one of the honors bestowed upon her. The video is available on the Internet. It is a technical presentation, mostly about communications satellites and their propulsion systems, but I think you'll feel like you've met Yvonne if you watch it. She was 84 when she gave this lecture.

Results from Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer to Be Announced April 3

Tue, 02 Apr 2013 04:00:00 GMT

Sam Ting's Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer (AMS) instrument was attached to the International Space Station (ISS) in 2011 and scientists have been eagerly awaiting results ever since. Tomorrow, April 3, Ting and others will announce their findings to date at a NASA press conference.

AMS actually is not a NASA instrument. It was primarily funded by a consortium of institutes in 16 countries brought together by Ting, a 1976 Nobel Prize winning physicist. The U.S. portion of the project was funded through the Department of Energy (DOE). NASA's role was to get it into space and give it home as part of the ISS complex.

AMS is a particle physics instrument that is being used to search for antimatter in the universe, as well as study dark matter and other cosmological mysteries.

Joining Ting at the press conference at NASA Headquarters tomorrow at 1:30 pm ET will be NASA Associate Administrator for Human Exploration and Operations Bill Gerstenmaier, DOE's program manager for AMS Michael Salamon, and NASA's AMS program manager Mark Sistilli. The briefing will be broadcast on NASA TV.

NYT Reacts to Tempest Over Its Obituary on Yvonne Brill

Mon, 01 Apr 2013 04:00:00 GMT

Margaret Sullivan, public editor of the New York Times, commented in her blog today about the tempest created by the newspaper's obituary of Yvonne Brill this weekend. In response to a slew of negative comments from readers, the Times changed the opening line of the obituary to note that she was a brilliant scientist rather than praising her cooking skills.

The original obituary's opening line, recounted in Sullivan's story, was "She made a mean beef stroganoff, followed her husband from job to job and took eight years off from work to raise her three children."

The new opening sentence changes only the beef stroganoff remark. It now begins "She was a brilliant rocket scientist" but following her husband and taking eight years off from work are still there. As pointed out later in the obituary, that last statement is incorrect since Brill worked as a consultant during those years.

Sullivan interviewed her colleagues who wrote and approved -- and continue to defend -- the original version. She also posts some of the reaction the paper received. Her bottom line is that "The emphasis on her domesticity ... had the effect of undervaluing what really landed Mrs. Brill on the Times obituaries page: her groundbreaking scientific work."

Editor's Note: As I mentioned in my own post about Yvonne's passing, she was a dear friend and I think it's sad that the Times was, in my opinion, initially so demeaning about her scientific accomplishments. I must say, however, that Yvonne was every bit as proud of her three children -- and their children -- as she was of her professional achievements. I can't help but wonder if she would be dismayed that this has created such a ruckus. She was one of the most unassuming people I have ever known. I fault the Times for turning her passing into a news story about clueless obituary writers and can only recommend that they "stop digging," as the saying goes.

New NRC Panel on Public Opinion About Human Spaceflight to Meet April 5

Sun, 31 Mar 2013 04:00:00 GMT

The National Research Council's (NRC's) Committee on Human Spaceflight and one of its two supporting panels have had several meetings already, but on Friday, April 5, the second supporting panel will meet for the first time. This panel is focused on the topic of public and stakeholder opinions about human spaceflight.

One of the tasks of the NRC committee is to examine and articulate the "value proposition" of the human spaceflight program -- essentially what do the taxpayers who pay for NASA's human spaceflight activities get in return. In fact, according to the drafters of the legislative language that led to the study, that is its primary purpose. Ann Zulkosky and Jeff Bingham, on the Democratic and Republican staff, respectively, of the Senate Commerce, Science and Transportation committee, said in February that they, at least, are not looking for a new plan for the nation's human spaceflight program, but an understanding of its value proposition.

About one-third of the members of the NRC committee have backgrounds in public opinion polling, sociology and related fields. The NRC also created a specific panel with additional expertise to assist the committee, similar to the Technical Feasibility panel that held its second meeting last week.

This Public and Stakeholder Opinions panel is chaired by Roger Tourangeau of Westat, Inc., a survey firm. Six of the other seven panel members are from universities. The seventh -- and likely the only familiar name in space policy circles -- is space historian Roger Launius of the Smithsonian's National Air and Space Museum and former NASA chief historian.

The panel's meeting on April 5 is closed except for one hour when NASA Deputy Associate Administrator for Public Outreach, Alan Ladwig, will speak. That will be from 9:15 - 10:15 am at the NRC's Keck Center, 500 5th Street, N.W., Washington, DC.

The panel's full roster is the following eight individuals. Presser is also a member of the full committee.

Roger Tourangeau, Vice President and Associate Director, Westat, Inc. (chair)
Molly Andolina, Associate Professor of Political Science, DePaul University
Jennifer Hochschild, Henry LaBarre Hayne Professor of Government, Professor of African and African American Studies, and Harvard College Professor, Harvard University
James Jackson, Director and Research Professor of the Institute for Social Research, University of Michigan
Roger Launius, Senior Curator, Division of Space History, Smithsonian Institution's National Air and Space Museum
Jon Miller, Research Scientist and Director of the International Center for the Advancement of Scientific Literacy, Institute for Social Research, University of Michigan
Stanley Presser, Distinguished University Professor, University of Maryland where he teaches in the Sociology Department and the Joint Program in Survey Methodology
Cliff Zukin, Professor of Public Policy and Political Science, Rutgers University's Edward J. Bloustein School of Planning and Policy and the Eagleton Institute of Politics

Space Policy Events of Interest: April 1-5, 2013 - UPDATE

Sat, 30 Mar 2013 04:00:00 GMT

UPDATE: The first meeting of the Panel on Public and Stakeholder Opinions of the NRC's Human Spaceflight Committee on Friday has been added.

The following events may of interest in the coming week. The House and Senate are not in session as they continue their 2-week Easter/Passover recess.

During the Week

At last, a relatively quiet week, but there are a couple of space policy-related events that should be interesting. Here are the ones we know about as of today.

Wednesday, April 3

NASA Aerospace Safety Advisory Panel (ASAP), Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, MD, 11:00 am - 12:00 pm ET
National Research Council (NRC) Aeronautics and Space Engineering Board (ASEB), Keck Center, 500 5th Street, NW, Washington DC. Open sessions are 10:00 am - 3:45 pm ET

Thursday, April 4

Joint meeting of the NRC's ASEB and Space Studies Board, Keck Center, 500 5th Street, N.W., Washington, DC. Open sessions are 10:15 am - 5:00 pm ET

Thursday-Friday, April 4-5

NASA Advisory Counci (NAC)l Planetary Science Subcommittee, NASA HQ, Washington, DC
- April 4, 8:30 am - 5:30 pm ET
- April 5, 8:30 am - 12:00 pm ET

Friday, April 5

NRC Space Studies Board, Keck Center, 500 5th Street, N.W., Washington, DC. Open sessions are 8:30 am - 3:30 pm ET
Panel on Public and Stakeholders Opinions (of the NRC's Committee on Human Spaceflight), Keck Center, 500 5th St., NW, Washington, DC, open session 9:15-10:15 am ET

White House To Submit FY2014 Budget on April 10

Thu, 28 Mar 2013 04:00:00 GMT

At long last, the White House has announced a firm date for sending the FY2014 budget request to Congress: April 10.

It is unusual to have a budget request released on a Wednesday -- typically it is a Monday -- but there is nothing usual about this budget season in Washington. Congress was nearly six months late completing action on the FY2013 budget. The White House is about two-and-a-half months late submitting the FY2014 request -- it should have been sent to the Hill on February 4. And the budget request will arrive after instead of before the House and Senate passed their budget resolutions, which are blueprints for FY2014-2023.

Strictly speaking Congress has until the end of FY2013 on September 30 to complete work on the FY2014 budget request. It has been many years since it has met that deadline and considering how late the request is, the outlook is no better this year.

All things considered, however, everyone seems to be working together slightly better in the sense that legislation is being passed rather than stuck in political gridlock.

Here is where fiscal matters stand at the moment:

Fiscal Cliff. The fiscal cliff that combined deep budget cuts and stiff tax increases was avoided as 2012 turned into 2013 by agreement to raise taxes, but delaying decisions on spending.
Debt Limit. The issue of raising the debt limit was postponed when Congress agreed to suspend the debt limit until May 18. That is the new date by which Congress must make a decision. Time will tell if this becomes an edge-of-your-seat political drama.
FY2013 Budget and Sequester. Congress completed action on the FY2013 budget last week, avoiding a government shutdown. However, the agreement kept the much-feared sequester in place at least for the rest of FY2013. Attention has been focused on the sequester's impact in FY2013, but the deep cuts will last through 2021 under the 2011 Budget Control Act.
FY2014 Budget Resolutions. The House and Senate have each passed their FY2014 budget resolutions. The Senate has been unable to pass a budget since 2009 so merely passing the bill is an achievement. The two chambers now are supposed to reconcile their differences and pass a single budget resolution that governs their budget decisions, but the two versions could hardly be more different. The budget targets in the House version are lower than those under the sequester; using spending cuts alone, the budget would balance in 10 years. The Senate version does away with the sequester and through a combination of tax increases and spending cuts would reduce, but not eliminate, the deficit in those10 years. The budget resolutions passed each chamber by very close, almost party-line, votes. Little hope is seen for compromise.

New Crew Launching to Space Station Today on Direct Ascent Approach - UPDATE

Thu, 28 Mar 2013 04:00:00 GMT

UPDATE 2, March 28, 10:30 pm ET: Contact and capture confirmed at 10:28 pm ET. Soyuz TMA-08M has arrived at the ISS.

UPDATE, March 28, 4:45 pm ET: Launch was on time at 4:43 pm ET (2:23 am March 29 local time at the launch site in Kazakhstan).

ORIGINAL STORY: The Soyuz TMA-08M spacecraft is on schedule for launch at 4:43 pm ET this afternoon, March 28, 2013. The three-man crew will be the first to make a direct-ascent approach to the International Space Station (ISS), docking just 6 hours instead of 2 days after launch.

NASA astronaut Chris Cassidy and Russian cosmonauts Pavel Vinogradov and Alexander Misurkin are aboard the spacecraft and awaiting launch in less than 15 minutes. Docking is scheduled for 10:32 pm ET with the hatches between the ISS and Soyuz opening at 12:10 am ET tomorrow.

Check back here for updates as the day progresses. NASA TV will air coverage of the events.

Yvonne Brill, Distinguished Aerospace Engineer, Passes Away

Wed, 27 Mar 2013 04:00:00 GMT

Yvonne Brill, one of the nation's top aerospace engineering laureates, died this afternoon from a staph infection. She was 88.

Brill distinguished herself not only as an innovative engineer who spent most of her career in the communications satellite industry, but as a tireless advocate for attracting young people into the field of engineering. She also was committed to ensuring that aerospace and engineering professionals -- women and men, especially women -- received recognition for their accomplishments.

In 2011, Brill was awarded the National Medal of Technology and Innovation by President Barack Obama. A video of the presentation ceremony is on YouTube.

Yvonne Brill receives 2010 National Medal of Technology and Innovation from President Barack Obama at the
White House, October 21, 2011. White House photo.

Brill received that and other tributes, including induction into the National Inventors Hall of Fame, for inventing the hydrazine/hydrazine resistojet propulsion system (U.S. Patent #3,807,657) for communications satellites when she worked for RCA AstroElectronics in the 1960s. She left RCA to serve as director of the space shuttle solid rocket motor program at NASA Headquarters from 1981-1983, then returned to RCA for three years before accepting the position of Space Segment Engineer for INMARSAT in London. She became a consultant when she returned to the United States and served as a member of NASA's Aerospace Safety Advisory Panel (ASAP) for several years.

Among her many honors was election to the National Academy of Engineering in 1987 and she was only the second woman to become an Honorary Fellow of the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics (AIAA) in 2008. She had been an AIAA Fellow since 1986. She was very active in the Society of Women Engineers (SWE), was elected as an SWE Fellow in 1985, and received its Resnik Challenger Medal in 1993 for her "innovative concepts for satellite propulsion systems which have designated her as a pioneer in expanding space horizons." She also received the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) Resnik Award in 2002 "for innovation in rocket propulsion systems for geosynchronous and low earth orbit communications satellites and the foresight to champion the hybrid electric mono-propellant rocket engine." She was a member of the Space Studies Board of the National Research Council and had been planning to attend its meeting in Washington, D.C. next week.

Brill is survived by her three children, Naomi, Matt and Joe, their spouses and children. At her request, there will be no funeral or public ceremony. The family requests that "you say a prayer for our mom, and reach out and explain the wonders of engineering careers to at least one young person ... that's what mom would want."

Editor's Note: Yvonne was a very dear friend who always offered wise counsel, encouragement, optimism, and stories of what it was like to be a woman engineer in an earlier era. She loved to talk about her very supportive and wonderful husband, Bill, who passed away two years ago, and her amazing children and grandchildren. It may be trite to say that she will be missed, but she really will be. She was one of a kind.

SpaceX's Dragon Safely Returns to Earth, Orbital Ready to Test Antares Rocket

Tue, 26 Mar 2013 04:00:00 GMT

SpaceX's Dragon spacecraft successfully returned to Earth today. This was the second of 12 contracted Commercial Resupply Services (CRS) flights for SpaceX to take cargo to and from the International Space Station (ISS). Its competitor for providing these services, Orbital Sciences Corp., is getting ready for the first test flight of its Antares rocket next month.

Dragon was released from ISS this morning Eastern Daylight Time (EDT) and splashed down in the Pacific Ocean west of Baja, CA as planned at 12:36 pm EDT (9:36 am PDT). The spacecraft was launched on March 1 and after overcoming initial problems with its thrusters, was berthed to the ISS two days later by ISS astronauts. This second ISS cargo flight is designated SpaceX CRS-2.

CRS is the follow-on to NASA's Commercial Orbital Transportation Services (COTS) or "commercial cargo" development program through which NASA provided funding to two companies to build rockets and spacecraft to resupply the ISS. COTS was initiated in 2006 after President George W. Bush decided to terminate the space shuttle program once ISS construction was completed and NASA needed another way to take cargo back and forth. It also has a "commercial crew" program under which companies are competing to develop space systems to take crews back and forth. Space X is one of the commercial crew competitors as well.

Orbital Sciences Corp. is the other company competing to deliver (but not return) cargo to the ISS using its Antares rocket and Cygnus spacecraft. It is not competing in the commercial crew effort.

Orbital has scheduled the first Antares test flight for the April 16-18, 2013 time period, Antares will launch from the Mid-Atlantic Regional Spaceport (MARS) at NASA's Wallops Flight Facility (WFF), Wallops Island, VA. Orbital replaced a company (Rocketplane-Kistler) that did not meet its milestones under the COTS program a year and a half after the program started. Consequently it is only now reaching the test phase. NASA hopes Orbital will begin operational flights to ISS later this year.

Correction: An earlier version of this article inadvertently misstated the dates for the Antares launch. The correct dates are April 16-18. Also, NASA's press release about Dragon's splash down states that it occurred at 12:36 pm EDT, not 12:34 as earlier reported. SpaceX tweeted that it was "9:34 PDT," or 12:34 EDT, but we have substituted NASA's time in this article as it is a more official source.

Composition, Age of Universe Refined by Planck Observations

Mon, 25 Mar 2013 04:00:00 GMT

Data from the European Space Agency's (ESA's) Planck space telescope reveals that the universe is slightly older than previously thought, and the ratio of normal matter to dark matter and dark energy is somewhat different.

Observations of the Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) by two U.S. spacecraft, the Cosmic Background Explorer (COBE) and the Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe (WMAP), profoundly changed scientists' understanding of the composition of the universe, especially dark energy and dark matter. NASA astrophysicist John Mather and George Smoot of Lawrence Berkeley National Lab won the 2006 Nobel Prize in Physics for COBE's ground breaking cosmological findings, which were continued by WMAP. The Hubble Space Telescope resolved long held disputes about the age of the universe. ESA's Planck space telescope, to which NASA provided "mission enabling technology for both of [its] science instruments," is refining all those measurements.

Data from Hubble determined that the universe is 13.7 billion years old. The new data from Planck increases the age to 13.82 billion years.

Dark energy and dark matter together comprise more than 90 percent of the universe. Neither can be seen and scientists are still trying to determine exactly what they are. The existence of dark matter is inferred by gravitational effects and was first postulated in the 1930s. Dark energy is theorized to be a force that is accelerating the rate of expansion of the universe.

After the most recent analysis of WMAP data, the mass-energy content of the universe was calculated as 4.5 percent normal matter, 22.7 percent dark matter, and 72.8 percent dark energy. Planck's data refines that to 4.9 percent normal matter, 26.8 percent dark matter and 68.3 percent dark energy.

Image credit: European Space Agency

Data from Planck were used to create this image of the universe when it was just 380,000 years old and "shows tiny temperature fluctuations that correspond to regions of slightly different densities, representing the seeds of all future strcutures: the stars and galaxies of today," according to ESA.

Image credit: European Space Agency

Soyuz TMA-08M to Make First Direct Ascent to ISS

Sun, 24 Mar 2013 04:00:00 GMT

The next International Space Station (ISS) crew is scheduled to launch in their Soyuz TMA-08M spacecraft in the afternoon of March 28, 2013 Eastern Daylight Time (EDT). This will be the first ISS crew to make a direct ascent to the ISS, docking hours after launch instead of the usual 2-day rendezvous.

The three person crew includes NASA astronaut Chris Cassidy and Russian cosmonauts Pavel Vinogradov and Alexander Misurkin. Launch is scheduled for 4:43 pm EDT (3:43 pm Central Time in Houston) or 2:43 am March 29 at the Soyuz launch site at Baikonur Cosmodrome, Kazakhstan.

Docking is scheduled for 10:32 pm EDT (9:32 pm Central), about 6 hours later. Hatches between the ISS and Soyuz are expected to open at 12:10 am March 29 EDT (11:10 pm March 28 Central Time).

The same-day docking has been sucessfully demonstrated on three robotic Progress resupply flights. The advantage of letting the crew dock the same day as launch is they can spend less time in the extremely cozy confines of the Soyuz spacecraft. The disadvatange is that it will be a long day for the crew, who must arise, dress in their spacesuits and enter the Soyuz well in advance of launch and then spend six hours after launch in their seats, still in their spacesuits. During a typical 2-day rendezvous, once they are in orbit they can get out of their seats and move around, change into more comfortable garb, and use the facilities.

Soyuz TMA-08 spacecraft just prior to being moved to its launch site.
Photo credit: NASA/Victor Zelentsov

The question is whether being confined to their spacesuits and their seats for so many hours is an improvement over spending two days in the Soyuz when they are able to get out of their seats and spacesuits. The comfort issues, which can affect crew performance, are expected to play a role in decisions on how often to use this method of docking with the ISS.

NASA will cover the launch, docking and hatch opening on NASA TV.

Space Policy Events for the Week of March 25-29, 2013

Sun, 24 Mar 2013 04:00:00 GMT

The following events may be of interest in the week ahead. The House and Senate are in recess for two weeks.

During the Week

The next two weeks are bound to be calmer than the last two, with Congress in recess for the Easter/Passover holidays. Before leaving, they compromised on a Continuing Resolution (CR) to fund government agencies for the rest of this fiscal year (FY2013), and each chamber passed its own budget resolution for the next 10 years (FY2014-2023). Fiscal issues are far from resolved, but at least agencies know what they need to do for the next several months.

Space policy will continue perking along, however, while members of Congress reconnect with their constituents back home. Among the events is a talk by Howard McCurdy tomorrow afternoon (Monday) on Low-Cost Innovation in Spacecraft Projects: Boon or Bust? The university professor is the author of several books about NASA organization and management, including one on the "faster-better-cheaper" philosophy popular during part of NASA Administrator Dan Goldin's tenure. McCurdy will speak at the Johns Hopkins University's Applied Physics Lab (APL) in Laurel, MD, home to some of those faster-better-cheaper missions.

The Technical Feasibility panel of the National Research Council's Committee on Human Spaceflight will meet on Wednesday and Thursday in Washington, DC with presentations from NASA as well as entrepreneurial companies like Golden Spike, Planetary Resources, and Bigelow Aerospace, along with the X-Prize Foundation. Paul Dimotakis and Lou Friedman will brief the panel on the asteroid retrieval study that was done under the auspices of the Keck Institute for Space Studies.

The ISS will continue to be a busy place. SpaceX's Dragon will depart from the space station on Tuesday, while the next crew arrives on Thursday. This will be the first time a crew makes a direct ascent to ISS, docking just six hours after launch instead of the usual two days.

Monday, March 25

Space Policy & History Forum Featuring Howard McCurdy, Applied Physics Lab (APL), Laurel, MD, 4:00-5:00 pm ET

Tuesday, March 26

SpaceX's Dragon spacecraft returns from ISS, splashdown in the Pacific Ocean, 12:36 pm ET (9:36 am local time)

Wednesday-Thursday, March 27-28

NRC Technical Feasibility Panel of the Committee on Human Spaceflight, NRC Keck Center, 500 5th St, NW, Washington, DC

Thursday, March 28

Soyuz TMA-08M launch (first crew to make direct ascent to ISS), Baikonur Cosmodrome, Kazakhstan,
- launch: 4:43 pm ET (3:43 pm Central Time) or 2:43 am March 29 local time at the launch site
- docking: 10:32 pm ET (9:32 pm CT)
- hatch opening: 12:10 am March 29 ET (11:10 pm March 28 CT)

Senate Pulls All Nighter, Passes Budget

Sat, 23 Mar 2013 04:00:00 GMT

For the first time since 2009, the Senate passed a budget after a marathon session that lasted until about 5:00 am ET this morning. The vote was a squeaker: 50-49.

All 45 Republicans and four Democrats voted against the $3.7 trillion 10-year plan (FY2014-2023). The four Democrats were Mark Pryor (Arkansas), Kay Hagan (North Carolina), Mark Begich (Alaska) and Max Baucus (Montana). A fifth Democrat, New Jersey's Frank Lautenberg, did not vote.

The Senate budget plan would reduce, but not eliminate, the deficit over the next 10 years by a combination of spending cuts and tax increases. The spending cuts do not include the sequester. Although attention has focused on the effects of the sequester for this year (FY2013) -- for which it remains in place -- pursuant to the Budget Control Act of 2011 it lasts until FY2021.

The House version of the budget resolution, which passed two days ago, is completely different from the Senate's version. It balances the budget over 10 years through spending cuts alone. Many agency budgets would be reduced even below the level required by the sequester. It also passed by a close margin, 221-207, with 211 Republicans in favor, 197 Democrats and 10 Republicans against, and three Democrats and one Republican not voting.

In theory, the two chambers would now negotiate a single compromise version to govern spending decisions on both sides of Capitol Hill. Because the two are so different, however, few expect it to happen and each will adhere to its own version. Budget resolutions set top-line spending levels for the government divided into about 20 different categories of federal spending called budget functions (e.g., "national defense" or "general science, space, and technology") rather than on an agency-by-agency basis. The funding figures in the budget resolutions are then allocated to the 12 appropriations subcommittees based on their jurisdiction, and those subcommittees recommend more specifically how the money should be spent.

The vote is a victory for Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid who was been strongly criticized by Republicans for his inability to pass a budget in four years. Pundits are saying that several vulnerable Democrats who are up for reelection in 2014 may be hurt by their votes in favor of the package, especially since it does not balance the budget. Senator Patty Murray (D-Washington), chair of the Senate Budget Committee that produced the budget resolution, argues that it is balanced in a different way -- between spending cuts and tax increases, instead of using only cuts to reduce the deficit like the House.

Bolden: No Lack of Consensus on NASA's Strategic Direction

Fri, 22 Mar 2013 04:00:00 GMT

During the question and answer period following his keynote address at the American Astronautical Society’s (AAS) Goddard Memorial Symposium, NASA Administrator Charlie Bolden expressed strong disagreement with the main finding of a congressionally-mandated study of NASA’s strategic direction that there is a lack of national consensus on the agency’s plans and objectives.

The National Research Council’s NASA’s Strategic Direction and the Need for a National Consensus report concluded that there is an absence of a national consensus and a lack of evidence that a human mission to an asteroid “has been widely accepted as a compelling destination by NASA’s own workforce, by the nation as a whole, or by the international community.”

But, following Wednesday’s speech – which Bolden joked had been written particularly long to reduce time for questions --- the Administrator responded with a quick and resounding “No” to the question of whether he agreed or not with the committee’s conclusion.

“All we can do is to present to people over and over and over again what the President and Congress have told us to do,” he said, naming the NASA 2010 Authorization bill as evidence of that consensus. Yet the bill does not actually include mention of a human spaceflight mission to an asteroid. The goal to send humans to an asteroid by 2025, before heading to Mars in the 2030s, was instead announced by President Obama during a speech in Florida in April 2010.

Bolden was steadfast, however: “that’s what the President told us to do…what the Congress told us to do.” He added that “it is the right thing to do” and that he was excited about it.

In response to a criticism that has been made since the goal was announced that the specific destination asteroid has not been named, Bolden said that when President Kennedy announced men would land on the Moon before the end of the decade, he did not say they would land on the Sea of Tranquility. “I can’t tell you which asteroid, but there will be one in 2025,” Bolden asserted.

CR Clears Congress, Funds Government for Remainder of FY2013

Thu, 21 Mar 2013 04:00:00 GMT

The House agreed to the Senate version of the new FY2013 Continuing Resolution (CR) this morning, clearing the measure for the President. He is expected to sign it, funding the government for the remainder of FY2013.

The good news is that agencies now know how much money they have to spend this year. The fiscal year began on October 1 and agencies have been operating under a 6-month CR at their previous year's funding levels since then. The new CR, H.R. 933, funds the government for the rest of the year (through September 30) and agencies included in five of the regular appropriations bills actually get completely new FY2013 appropriations bills instead of being constrained by what passed last year. DOD, NASA and NOAA are among the agencies getting new appropriations bills. (The five regular appropriations bills incorporated into the CR are Defense, Military Construction/Veterans Affairs, Commerce-Justice-Science, Agriculture, and Homeland Security).

The other good news is that passage of the CR avoids the possibility of a government shutdown, which could have occurred if Congress did not agree on a new CR by March 27 when the current law expires.

How much good news is contained in the bill in terms of funding levels and flexibility is a mixed bag. Although precise numbers will have to await calculations by the respective agencies, NASA will get about $16.65 billion for FY2013, a reduction of more than $1 billion from its FY2013 request of $17.77 billion or its FY2012 appropriated level of $17.8 billion. NOAA's funding for satellite procurement will be about $1.68 billion compared to its request of $1.8 billion, which included a significant increase from FY2012 in order to begin procurement of launch vehicles for its next generation geostationary weather satellites (the GOES-R series).

The numbers can be difficult to discern looking at the language in the bill and the accompanying explanatory statement. One must factor in provisions at the very end (sections 3001 and 3002) that make clear everything is still subject to the sequester (5 percent for non-defense agencies, 7.8 percent for defense) as well as across-the-board rescissions (1.877 percent for agencies in Division B, the part of the bill that pertains to NASA and NOAA). The funding figures shown in the bill and explanatory statement for NASA and NOAA therefore must be reduced by 6.877 percent, and for DOD, generally by 7.8 percent (funding for military construction/veterans affairs is subject to an additional 2.513 percent rescission, but not the rest of DOD).

The total amount of funding provided in the bill is $984 billion after the $1.043 trillion is adjusted for the sequester. The vote was 318-109. Many Democrats oppose the sequester, but split 115-82 in favor of the bill. Republicans were split 203-27 in favor.

At the end of the day, some programs may fare better than others because of language in the bill or explanatory statement that instructs agencies on how to fund specific activities. For example, the explanatory statement has rather extensive language about NOAA's GOES-R and JPSS programs as well as a number of NASA programs. Also, the sequester and rescission are intended to be applied equally to all budget accounts as well as the programs, projects and activities (PPAs) within those accounts. Agencies may interpret the meaning of a PPA differently, however.

Some programs also may be exempt from the sequester either by law or policy. NASA Administrator Charlie Bolden said at a House Appropriations subcommittee hearing yesterday that he has excluded NASA's top three priorities as well as funding for security, safety and export control compliance from across-the-board cuts. The three priorities, agreed to in 2011 by key Senators and the Administration, are the James Webb Space Telescope, the Space Launch System and Orion spacecraft, and the International Space Station augmented by commercial cargo and commercial crew.

Consequently, until NASA and other agencies issue operating plans or otherwise make public how they plan to distribute the funds, the precise dollar amounts for each program cannot be determined.

Senate Passes FY2013 CR

Wed, 20 Mar 2013 04:00:00 GMT

The Senate passed its version of the FY2013 Continuing Resolution (CR) today that will fund the government for the rest of this fiscal year.

The vote was 73-26. The bill approves the same level of funding as the House version -- $984 billion -- and keeps the sequester in place. For most agencies, the best news about Senate passage is that they are closer to knowing how much money they can spend through September 30. The existing CR expires on March 27.

The Senate bill is different from its House counterpart, however, so now must go back to the House for their agreement. House Speaker Boehner indicated earlier that he was comfortable with the changes made by the Senate at that point, so hopes are high that the House will accept it. The bill then would still need to be signed by the President.

The Senate version includes a full year appropriations bill for agencies in the Commerce-Justice-Science (CJS) bill, which includes NASA and NOAA. Although the total funding for NASA is lower in the Senate version, the agency would have greater flexibility in spending it than in the House version.

Johnson-Freese: Space Threats Include Public's Lack of Knowledge about Space Benefits

Wed, 20 Mar 2013 04:00:00 GMT

Naval War College Professor Joan Johnson-Freese made the case today that one of the space threats to worry about is the threat from the public's lack of understanding of the benefits from space.

Johnson-Freese testified at a Senate Commerce, Science and Transportation subcommittee hearing on "Assessing the Risks, Impacts, and Solutions for Space Threats." Most of the hearing dealt with threats from asteroids and comets, a topic also addressed at a House committee hearing yesterday. A SpacePolicyOnline.com summary of the two hearings is forthcoming.

Her testimony highlighted a different set of issues. Saying that space is not the next frontier or the final frontier, she called it the "benignly neglected" frontier. Although the public is aware of GPS, "that's about it" she argued. They do not appreciate the overall economic and national security implications of space. "Space exploration and development is not expendable. It is in our strategic national interest."

As for the threat from asteroids, she believes that Hollywood movies like Armageddon lead to a sense of complacency among the public. That movie created a public perception that if an asteroid threatens Earth "people would get in the shuttle and go fix it. It was myth ... not reality." What actually is needed, she continued, is obtaining more information about asteroids as outlined by other witnesses at the hearing -- NASA's Jim Green and B612 Foundation's Ed Lu. "We need to convey more of the fact and separate it from the fiction that the movie industry has really convinced ... the public that ... we can take care of it."

Bolden Reassures Wolf on China, Talks Budget Realities

Wed, 20 Mar 2013 04:00:00 GMT

NASA Administrator Charlie Bolden outlined actions he is taking in response to concerns highlighted by Rep. Frank Wolf (R-VA) on access to NASA facilities and information by Chinese nationals. Bolden testified at a hearing chaired by Wolf this afternoon.

Wolf has called NASA officials to task for allowing Chinese nationals access to NASA's Ames Research Center in Moffett Field, CA and Langley Research Center (LaRC) in Hampton, VA particularly. Wolf chairs the House Appropriations subcommittee that funds NASA and announced earlier this week the arrest of a Chinese national who worked for an LaRC contractor.

Bolden emotionally responded that he takes his responsibility to protect sensitive information very seriously. "This is about national security, not NASA security, and I take that personally," he said. Bolden is a retired Marine Major General and subcommittee ranking member Rep. Chaka Fattah (D-PA) spent some time laying out Bolden's military career to underscore his service and dedication to the nation.

Wolf is an unrelenting critic of the Chinese government and said today that five NASA employees had come to him with concerns about Chinese access to Ames and LaRC because they were afraid to talk to their NASA supervisors. Bolden said he was was "bothered" about the effectiveness of his leadership if even five of his 18,000 NASA employees "don't trust me." Wolf replied "I would trust you."

On March 7, Wolf issued a seven step "remediation plan" for NASA to address what he called "systemic security issues." Although he is laser-focused on China, he also has raised concerns about access by nationals from the State Department's other seven "countries of particular concern" -- Burma, Eritrea, Iran, North Korea, Saudi Arabia, Sudan and Uzbekistan.

Bolden publicly responded to those steps today. Among the actions he is taking is a review of access that nationals from those countries have to NASA facilities led by Associate Administrator Robert Lightfoot, which is in addition to a review by the NASA Inspector General (IG). Once those reports are completed, Bolden said he would consider requesting an independent review by an outside group, as recommended by Wolf. Bolden also said he had closed the NASA technical reports database until the agency could determine if export-controlled documents are included in it, created a moratorium on any new access to NASA facilities by nationals from the countries of concern, ordered that remote access to NASA computers by people from those countries be terminated while under review, and is reemphasizing to supervisors the need to strictly adhere to export control regulations.

Wolf seemed satisfied with Bolden's response in general, but pressed him on the issue of having an independent, outside review. Wolf recommended previously that an organization like the National Academy of Public Administration would be an appropriate body to conduct an independent review and suggested it be chaired by someone like former Attorney General Dick Thornburgh. Bolden replied that he did not want to make that commitment until his own review and the NASA IG's review are completed, but that he is likely to do that.

Wolf had harsh words for NASA's IG, Paul Martin, today, as he did last week at a hearing where Martin testified. He feels the IG office failed in its duty to investigate access by Chinese nationals to NASA facilities.

The hearing also exposed a difference in interpretation of language included in NASA's appropriations act that sharply restricts NASA's interactions with China. Bolden said his understanding was that it prohibited bilateral, but not multilateral, meetings with Chinese space program officials. Wolf was irritated earlier this month upon learning that China would participate in a meeting of the Committee on Earth Observation Satellites (CEOS) chaired by NASA at LaRC. Bolden said he would have his staff work with Wolf's to clarify the matter.

China issues were in the forefront at the hearing today, but other topics were also addressed. Ordinarily, this would be a hearing where NASA and the subcommittee discussed the budget request for the upcoming fiscal year, but the Obama Administration has not yet submitted that request. At the American Astronautical Society's Goddard Memorial Symposium in Greenbelt, MD this morning, Bolden was asked "what can you say about the budget" and he joked "I'd like to have one."

Without a request for FY2014, the hearing more generally discussed NASA's ongoing programs and the interests of particular subcommittee members. Bolden passionately defended the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) after Wolf commented that the Government Accountability Office (GAO) issued a report praising improvement in NASA's program management except for that program. Bolden insisted that NASA now has that program well in hand. When Wolf said that it would be extremely difficult to cancel the program at this point, Bolden disagreed and said that if some major unanticipated technical problem was discovered, the agency would have to reassess the program. "Nothing is too big to fail," Bolden asserted.

As for NASA priorities, Bolden stressed that Congress and the Administration already agreed on NASA's top three priorities: JWST, the Space Launch System (SLS) and Orion for sending humans beyond low Earth orbit, and the International Space Station (ISS) augmented by commercial cargo and commercial crew. He insisted that the agency will not take money from "the big three" to deal with budget constraints, but all bets are off if sequestration remains in effect for the next 10 years (as current law requires): "What could affect them is sequestration. Ten years of that ... could have devastating effects on all our programs."

Bigelow's Mike Gold Warns Don't Jump the Gun on ITAR Changes

Tue, 19 Mar 2013 04:00:00 GMT

Mike Gold warned his space industry colleagues today not to jump the gun by assuming that satellite export control reforms already are in place. Congress passed a law that will loosen satellite export controls, but it will be quite some time before new regulations are in place and now would be the worst time for anyone to make a misstep, he said.

Gold is the Director of DC Operations & Business Growth for Bigelow Aerospace and a long time champion of reforming export controls for commercial satellites, which are currently governed by the International Traffic in Arms Regulations (ITAR). After a decade-long effort, Congress finally passed export control reform at the end of the 112th Congress in the FY2013 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA). During a panel session at Satellite 2013 today, key participants in that effort from Congress, the Administration, and industry shared stories of what it took to reach this point and the many steps yet to be taken.

Tony Dearth of the State Department and Kevin Wolf of the Commerce Department laid out the complicated and time-consuming regulatory process that is now underway to actually move items off of the State Department's strict ITAR-controlled U.S. Munitions List (USML) and onto the Commerce Department's more flexible Commerce Control List (CCL). They expressed hope that the rulemaking process would be completed in the October-November time frame, followed by a 180-day waiting period for the new rule to go into effect to give industry time to adjust its own processes.

The message from Gold, who brought a half bottle of champagne to celebrate the occasion -- joking that he would have brought a full bottle except for sequestration -- was that the reforms have not gone into effect yet. He worries that smaller companies, in particular, may simply be reading headlines that the law passed and do not realize how much more is left to be done. Consequently, someone may inadvertently violate the existing regulations, which remain in effect, and undo all the gains especially if it involves China.

Satellite exports to China are not permitted under the current export control regime and that prohibition will remain in effect in the new regime. China was "the third rail" in the discussions and any "giant mistake or blunder...particularly with regard to China ... could derail this thing yet," Gold stressed.

He particularly thanked David Fite of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, a key figure in achieving what Gold called a "miracle." Fite was also on today's panel and recounted the numerous twists and turns in Congress over the past decade that eventually led to success. Panel moderator Patricia Cooper, President of the Satellite Industry Association (SIA), was also singled out for praise (and was presented with the champagne).

The key message from Gold, though, was "Don't think that because the NDAA passed that it's over." Passing the law was "an incredible victory" but the "fight isn't over yet."

SIA and the Aerospace Industries Association issued a fact sheet explaining what lies ahead.

Bolden Keynote At AAS Wednesday Morning Will Be Livestreamed

Tue, 19 Mar 2013 04:00:00 GMT

NASA Administrator Charlie Bolden will keynote the American Astronautical Society's Goddard Memorial Symposium tomorrow morning, Wednesday, March 20, and AAS will stream the event live.

The symposium is being held in Greenbelt, MD near NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center. Bolden is scheduled to speak at 8:45 am ET. AAS said the "first morning" of the symposium would be livestreamed, but mentioned only the Bolden keynote. Other sessions may also be included, however. The agenda for the conference is on the AAS website.

The link to watch the livestream is

http://www.ustream.tv/channel/nasa-gsfc

Wolf to Announce Major Development Re NASA Security Violations Today

Mon, 18 Mar 2013 04:00:00 GMT

Rep. Frank Wolf (R-VA) issued a press release this morning announcing that he will hold a press conference at 3:00 pm ET today "to reveal a major development in NASA security violations."

The press conference will be in the Capitol Visitor Center Studio A (HVC 114). The press release said that the announcement concerns "a Chinese national allegedly involved in security violations at several NASA centers."

Wolf chairs the House Appropriations subcommittee that funds NASA. He is intently focused on NASA's dealings with China or Chinese nationals. He has taken aim at NASA's Ames Research Center for the past several months and more recently added NASA's Langley Research Center to his list of concerns. In the Langley case, one set of allegations focuses on a specific Chinese individual who was hired as a contractor and given access to the Center. NASA and the FBI have been investigating those allegations.

Wolf Announces Arrest of Chinese National Working as NASA Contractor-UPDATE

Mon, 18 Mar 2013 04:00:00 GMT

UPDATE: This artidle was updated at 11:25 pm on March 18, 2013.

Rep. Frank Wolf (R-VA) announced today that a Chinese national, Bo Jiang, was arrested at Dulles International Airport on Saturday as he was preparing to return to China.

Wolf took credit for getting the FBI to look into whistleblower allegations that Bo had access to NASA's Langley Research Center (LaRC) and information on projects being pursued there in possible violation of the Arms Export Control Act and its International Traffic in Arms Regulations (ITAR). Bo was a NASA contractor through the National Institute of Aerospace (NIA), Wolf said.

At a press conference today, Wolf said federal agents arrested Bo after they learned that he was "abruptly" returning to China on a one-way ticket. After flying from Norfolk, VA (near LaRC) and boarding a plane to Beijing, Bo was asked by federal agents to declare what electronic media he had with him and did not reveal all of the items in his possession and thus was arrested for lying to the agents, according to Wolf, citing the arrest warrant.

Wolf restated what he has said in the past that he is concerned that NASA officials directed NIA to hire Bo "in an apparent attempt to circumvent appropriations restrictions ... in place to prevent the hiring of certain nationals of concern." He also wants to know how many other nationals from China or other "foreign nationals of concern" are employed by NASA contractors. At a hearing last week, Wolf asked NASA Inspector General Paul Martin how many Chinese nationals, specifically, work for NASA contractors and Martin replied there were over 200. Martin did not know how many other "foreign nationals of concern" -- defined by Wolf as Burma, Eritrea, Iran, North Korea, Saudi Arabia, and Sudan -- worked as NASA contractors, but agreed to look into it.

Wolf issued a seven step remediation plan to address "systemic security issues" at NASA on March 7, which he reiterated today. NASA Administrator Charlie Bolden is scheduled to testify to Wolf's subcommittee on Wednesday, and Wolf said that he expects Bolden to say "whether these actions will be taken."

Editor's note: Wolf's press statement and the FBI's arrest warrant refer to the individual as "Jiang." Traditionally, Chinese names are written with the last name first, however, so we refer to him as Bo.

Jim Green Clarifies Travel Policy for LPSC 2013

Sun, 17 Mar 2013 04:00:00 GMT

NASA Planetary Science Division Director Jim Green sent a message to the planetary science community today trying to clarify the impact of the new NASA travel regulations on NASA-funded participation in the Lunar and Planetary Science Conference being held this week.

Green said that anyone traveling to the conference using grant money is OK. "To be perfectly clear, all those traveling to [LPSC] this week using funding on a NASA GRANT please go to the meeting. You are exempt for now from these restrictions."

As for NASA and JPL employees, the bottom line is that no news is good news. " If you have any questions about whether this applies to you or not and have not received work [sic] from NASA please assume that you have permission to attend the meeting."

Green's message comes in response to new guidance announced by NASA last week about the impact of the sequester on NASA operations, including participation in conferences. It was issued as a Special Edition of the Planetary Exploration Newsletter (PEN), a service provided by the Planetary Science Institute. The full text of Green's message is as follows:

PLANETARY EXPLORATION NEWSLETTER - SPECIAL EDITION
Volume 7, Number 12 (March 17, 2013)

PEN Website: http://planetarynews.org
Editor: Mark V. Sykes
Co-Editors: Melissa Lane, Susan Benecchi
Email: pen_editor at psi.edu

LPSC TRAVEL CONFUSION UNDER THE SEQUESTER

James L. Green, Director, Planetary Science Division, NASA HQ

Recent guidance has come from the Administration that needs
interpretation relative to supporting travel for all NASA activities.
These rules will go into effect on March 19, 2013. We are in the
process of executing all elements of the guidance and will notify
those that are affected. For instance, we have worked with all the
NASA Centers and JPL employees and have completed an approved list
of attendees. We are working on other clarifications that will be
issued as soon as possible. If you have any questions about whether
this applies to you or not and have not received work from NASA please
assume that you have permission to attend the meeting.

To be perfectly clear, all those traveling to the Lunar and Planetary
Science Conference this week using funding on a NASA GRANT please go to
the meeting. You are exempt for now from these restrictions.

Space Policy Events for the Week of March 18-22, 2013

Sun, 17 Mar 2013 04:00:00 GMT

The following events may be of interest in the coming week. The House and Senate are in session.

During the Week

The House and Senate are hoping to complete action on the FY2013 Continuing Resolution (CR) by Friday when both chambers are scheduled to begin a two week Easter/Passover recess. They each also hope to pass their respective FY2014 budget resolutions. (For an explanation of the difference between the CR and the budget resolutions, see the article we published Friday.) Congress has until March 27 to pass something to keep the government operating -- that is when the current CR expires. If they do not pass a new one, they could pass a short-term extension of the current law.

This is a very busy week for the space community as a whole, with two major conferences in Washington, DC (Satellite 2013 and the AAS Goddard Memorial Symposium) and one in Houston (LPSC 2013). There are four hearings of particular interest: the House SS&T Committee's rescheduled hearing on the threat posed by meteors and comets on Tuesday; the Senate Commerce subcommittee's hearing on "threats from space" that apparently includes not just meteors and comets, but judging from the witness list, space debris and perhaps others threats on Wednesday; and the House Appropriations Commerce-Justice-Science (CJS) subcommittee hearing on Wednesday afternoon with NASA Administrator Bolden and a separate CJS hearing on Thursday with "outside witnesses" who may talk about space issues among the broad array of other topics under the subcommittee's jurisdiction.

Monday-Thursday, March 18-21

Satellite 2013, Walter E. Washington Convention Center, Washington, DC
- Monday is a series of pre-conference meetings, the conference itself is March 19-21

Monday-Friday, March 18-22

Lunar and Planetary Science Conference 2013 (LPSC 2013), The Woodlands, TX (near Houston)

Tuesday, March 19

House SS&T Committee hearing on Threats from Space: Meteors and Comets, 2318 Rayburn, 10:00 am ET
Marshall Inst/Heritage Foundation Commemoration of 30th Ann of Strategic Defense Initiative, 214 Massachusetts Ave., S.E., Washington, 10:00 am - 1:00 pm ET
NASA News Conference on Upcoming ISS Mission, NASA Johnson Space Center, 1:00 pm CT (2:00 pm ET), watch on NASA TV

Tuesday-Thursday, March 19-21

AAS Goddard Memorial Symposium Greenbelt, MD

Wednesday, March 20

Senate Commerce Sbcmte Hrg on Space Threats, 253 Russell, 10:00 am ET
House Appropriations CJS Sbmcte Hearing on NASA with Charlie Bolden, 2359 Rayburn, 2:00 pm ET
Women in Aerospace Women's History Month Reception with Astronaut Suni Williams, 116 Dirksen, 5:00-7:00 pm ET

Thursday, March 21

House Appropriations CJS Sbcmte Hearing with Outside Witnesses, H-309 Capitol, 9:30 am ET
NASA News Conf on Results from Planck Spacecraft re Cosmology, NASA HQ, Washington, DC, 11:00 am ET

Friday, March 22

National Space Club Goddard Dinner, Hilton Washington Hotel, 1919 Connecticut Ave., NW, Washington, DC, 6:30 pm ET

White House Moves Forward With Export Control Reform

Sat, 16 Mar 2013 04:00:00 GMT

President Obama issued a new Executive Order on March 8 updating delegated authorities related to export and import controls. He also notified Congress of the first in a series of changes to the U.S. Munitions List (USML). The Aerospace Industries Association (AIA) praised the Administration's announcement.

The Obama Administration has been a strong proponent of export control reform, including for commercial satellites, and took several steps in the President's first term. A White House fact sheet summarizes these latest two actions. The new Executive Order (EO) supersedes EO 11958 from January 1977 and amends EO 13222 of August 2001, consolidating all brokering responsibilities with the Department of State, eliminating possible double-licensing requirements, directing the Department of Commerce to establish procedures for congressional notification of approved export licenses for certain items, and making other updates.

The changes to the UMSL that were notified to Congress concern Aircraft and Gas Turbine Engines. Additional changes will be made to other categories on the USML throughout 2013 and eventually will update every category of items on the USML.

Exports of commercial satellites are currently regulated under the USML and its International Traffic in Arms Regulations (ITAR) because of language in the 1999 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA). Congress passed that language because it concluded U.S. satellite manufacturers aided China in developing missile technology in the 1990s, a period of time when U.S.-built satellites could be exported to China for launch. U.S. satellite manufacturers argued strongly that the strict export controls make them less competitive in the global marketplace. The Aerospace Industries Association (AIA) and the Satellite Industry Association (SIA), in particular, lobbied for more than a decade to relax the restrictions. They succeeded at the very end of the 112th Congress with language included in the FY2013 NDAA. Satellite exports to China and certain other countries continue to be prohibited, however.

Passage of the law is just the first step. AIA issued a press release lauding the Administration's March 8 announcement, saying it "marks the final steps required before formal launch of our recommended reforms can occur." AIA and SIA also issued a joint fact sheet explaining the many steps that lie ahead.

Soyuz TMA-06M Lands Successfully-UPDATE 3

Fri, 15 Mar 2013 04:00:00 GMT

UPDATE 3: March 15, 11:50 pm EDT: All three crew members are now out of the capsule, with big smiles on their faces.

UPDATE 2: March 15, 11:15 pm EDT: The screen at Russian mission control says the Soyuz landed, but fog and low clouds at the landing site apparently are hampering on-site recovery crews from immediately locating the capsule.

UPDATE: March 15, 10:35 pm EDT: The reentry is proceeding well, though weather at the landing site has deteriorated. Landing at 11:05 pm EDT.

One day later than planned, three International Space Station (ISS) crew members are now in their Soyuz TMA-06M spacecraft with the hatches closed preparing for a return to Earth in a few hours.

The hatches between ISS and the Soyuz spacecraft were closed at 4:38 pm Eastern Daylight Time (EDT). NASA's Kevin Ford and Russia's Oleg Novitsky and Evgeny Tarelkin are inside Soyuz and conducting leak checks and making other preparations for undocking at 7:43 pm EDT. Landing in Kazakhstan is scheduled for 11:05 pm EDT.

The three were supposed to return to Earth last night, but bad weather at the landing site changed those plans. The weather has markedly improved and is said to be "nearly ideal" for the landing today.

Local time at the landing site is 11 hours ahead of EDT, so the landing will take place a little over an hour after sunrise there. The temperature is forecast to be 15 degrees Fahrenheit, with a light wind.

Canadian Chris Hadfield is the new commander of ISS. Today he tweeted this photo of the change-of-command ceremony on Wednesday. Hadfield is in the red shirt, shaking hands with NASA's Kevin Ford as command passes form Ford to Hadfield.

Photo Credit: Tweeted by Canadian astronaut Chris Hadfield (in the red shirt) on March 15, 2013.

Status Check on the FY2013 CR and FY2014 Budget Resolutions

Fri, 15 Mar 2013 04:00:00 GMT

As the week draws to a close, here is a status check on where Capitol Hill stands on the FY2013 Continuing Resolution (CR) and FY2014 budget resolutions.

The House passed its version of the CR (H.R. 933) on March 6, but it hit a snag in the Senate yesterday. The bipartisan sponsors of the Senate version of the bill, Sen. Barbara Mikulski (D-MD) and Richard Shelby (R-AL), along with Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) were optimistic that the Senate would complete action on the bill this week and send it back to the House. Congress is hoping to clear the new CR by next Friday, March 22, when both chambers are scheduled to begin a two-week Easter break.

The current CR expires on March 27 so something must be enacted before then to avoid a government shutdown.

The Senate began debate on the CR on Wednesday, a day later than planned after Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) and Tom Coburn (R-OK) complained they had insufficient time to read it, the bill having been introduced only the night before. Then came a flurry of over 100 proposed amendments. After spending most of the day debating the first few, Reid sent the Senate home last night to give Mikulski and Shelby a long weekend to sort through the remaining 99 amendments and determine which would be offered on the floor. Debate is scheduled to resume on Monday. Reid said he was disappointed in both Republican and Democratic Senators for offering too many amendments.

House Speaker Boehner reportedly is amenable to the changes made in the Senate version, at least so far. If that remains true, there is still a chance it could pass by March 22.

The CR would fund the government for the rest of FY2013 -- until September 30. The House-passed and Senate-introduced versions contain mixed news for NASA and NOAA.

Separately, the House and Senate Budget Committees released details of their budget resolutions for FY2014 and beyond this week. The two are completely different. The House version, crafted by House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan (R-WI), proposes stiff spending cuts to eliminate the deficit in 10 years, the period of time covered by the bill. It was approved by the House Budget Committee on Wednesday on a party line vote. The Senate version, developed by Senate Budget Committee Chairman Patty Murray (D-WA), proposes a combination of tax increases and spending cuts, repeals the sequester, and does not eliminate the deficit during the 10-year period. The Senate Budget Committee approved it Thursday, also on a party line vote.

Word came today in The Hill newspaper that a third proposal is in the works in the House. The conservative House Republican Conference under the leadership of Rep. Steve Scalise (R-LA) reportedly is planning to introduce an alternative to the Ryan proposal that would eliminate the deficit in only four years instead of 10, also through spending cuts alone. A significant portion of the cuts in both the Ryan and Scalise proposals would come from reforming Medicare.

Both the House and Senate plan to bring their respective budget resolutions to the floor for debate next week. In theory, each side passes a budget resolution and the two then work together to reach a compromise on a single, final bill. That has not happened in many years, and is not likely to this year, either, considering the different underlying philosophies at the heart of each proposal.

Meanwhile, President Obama still has not submitted his budget request for FY2014, nor announced when it will be submitted. The most recent rumor is that April 8 is when DOD's budget, at least, will be sent to Congress, but the White House has not confirmed it.

DELAYED-Three ISS Crew Return, Canadian Becomes ISS Commander

Thu, 14 Mar 2013 04:00:00 GMT

UPDATE: The landing was delayed one day due to bad weather at the landing site and this article has been updated accordingly.

Three International Space Station (ISS) crew members are getting ready to return to Earth in their Soyuz TMA-06M spacecraft. Their departure was scheduled for March 14 Eastern Daylight Time (EDT), but was postponed for one day because of inclement weather at the landing site in Kazakhstan.

The three crew members -- American Kevin Ford and Russians Oleg Novitsky and Evgeny Tarelkin -- are now scheduled to undock from the ISS on March 15 EDT at 7:43 pm and land at 11:06 pm (it will be 11 hours later local time in Kazakhstan).

The return of the three marks a change in "expedition" crews, which means a new ISS commander. Yesterday, Chris Hadfield became the first Canadian to hold that position.

Senate Democrats Introduce Their Budget, a Sharp Contrast to House Republicans

Wed, 13 Mar 2013 04:00:00 GMT

Senate Democrats today officially unveiled their FY2014 budget plan, which is vastly different from the House Republican plan introduced yesterday.

The names of the two plans hint at their differences. The House plan is entitled "The Path to Prosperity: A Responsible, Balanced Budget" while the Senate's is "Foundation for Growth: Restoring the Promise of Opportunity."

Politico wryly commented that the two budget plans "aren’t even apples and oranges. They’re more like apples and bicycles.” The documents "have no chance of becoming law, but they do help explain the impasse over spending and debt in Washington," it adds.

Senate Budget Committee Chairman Sen. Patty Murray (D-WA) posted a video on the committee's website emphasizing the differences between her approach and that of her House counterpart, Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI). The lines of demarcation are all too familiar. The House wants to balance the budget only by cutting spending. The Senate wants to balance the budget both by cutting spending and raising revenue. More fundamentally they reflect a philosophical clash over the role of the federal government in the economy and in personal lives.

The Senate Budget Committee is holding hearings this afternoon and will continue tomorrow. The expectation is that the budget resolution will go to the Senate floor next week. As House Republicans continually remind the public, the Senate has not passed a budget resolution since 2009. Time will tell if Murray is more successful this year with a slightly larger number of Democratic votes, but still not the 60 needed to break a filibuster. There are 53 Democrats, 2 Independents who usually vote with Democrats, and 45 Republicans in the Senate this Congress.

For his part, President Obama reportedly told House Republicans today that his priority is to avoid an economic slow down, not to balance the budget. The President is making several trips to Capitol Hill this week to meet with Representatives and Senators on their own turf to talk about resolving the nation's economic problems.

The budget resolutions deal with the future -- FY2014 and beyond. Congress is simultaneously dealing with funding the government for the rest of this fiscal year, FY2013. The government is currently operating under a law that expires on March 27 and the House and Senate are scheduled to begin their Easter break on March 22, so that effort is on a faster track.

NASA Releases New Policy Guidance to Respond to Sequestration--UPDATE

Wed, 13 Mar 2013 04:00:00 GMT

UPDATE, March 13, 2013, 6:30 pm: This article is updated with additional information on the effect on conference attendance by NASA employees and contractors.

NASA Administrator Charlie Bolden released new policy guidance to NASA employees today in response to funding constraints imposed by the sequester. Conference sponsorship and attendance are among the areas that will be subject to greater scrutiny.

Bolden's memo to employees revealed that he and Deputy Administrator Lori Garver have cancelled their participation in the Space Foundation's National Space Symposium (NSS) next month, but a separate document released later in the day shows that the new guidance goes much further.

NASA will no longer fund travel or registration costs for NASA employees or contractors to participate in several major conferences through the end of the fiscal year unless a list of specific criteria are met. The document specifically identifies the American Astronautical Society's Goddard Memorial Symposium, the National Space Club's signature Goddard Dinner, and the annual spring meetings associated with the International Astronautical Conference, all of which will be held next week, as not meeting those criteria. Nor does the NSS or the 6th European Conference on Space Debris, both in April, among others.

AAS has published an updated agenda replacing planned panels featuring NASA's Center Directors with local NASA officials. NASA employees still may attend local conferences, but cannot rely on NASA to pay registration fees.

Bolden emphasized in his memo that the agency still does not plan to furlough any employees and hiring can proceed as scheduled, but he cautioned that the agency would continue to monitor congressional action on NASA's budget and revise the policy as needed.

The changes he announced set limits on monetary awards and conference sponsorships and attendance, as well as increased scrutiny of travel and training expenditures for the rest of FY2013. In addition to cancelling his participation in the National Space Symposium, Bolden said he also cancelled an overseas trip.

Mikulski, Shelby Introduce Bipartisan FY2013 CR, Mixed News for NASA and NOAA

Tue, 12 Mar 2013 04:00:00 GMT

Late last night Senators Barbara Mikulski (D-MD) and Richard Shelby (R-AL) introduced a bipartisan FY2013 Continuing Resolution (CR) as a replacement for the version that passed the House last week. The two are chairwoman and vice chairman, respectively, of the Senate Appropriations Committee. The fact that it is a bipartisan bill increases the chances it might pass the Senate -- though that is far from assured.

The bill is different from the House-passed version in that it incorporates three more of the 12 regular appropriations bills and at first glance the total amount appropriated looks very different. A Senate Appropriations Committee press release states that the total budget authority in the bill is $1.043 trillion "consistent with the Budget Control Act of 2011." By contrast, the House-passed CR adopted a sequester-adjusted total of $984 billion.

A careful reading of the Senate bill, however, suggests that it also provides only $984 billion. Section 3002 of the bill "affirms that nothing in the bill changes current law with respect to sequestration" as the committee's explanatory statement clarifies. The Senate bill also imposes across-the-board rescissons to some of the agencies in the bill, including NASA and NOAA.

In the House-passed CR (H.R. 933), agencies covered by two of the 12 regular appropriations bills -- Defense, and Military Construction/Veterans Affairs -- would get new FY2013 bills instead of being constrained by their FY2012 laws. The Senate CR would add agencies in three more of the regular appropriations bills: Commerce-Justice-Science (CJS), which includes NASA and NOAA; Agriculture; and Homeland Security.

At first glance, NASA and NOAA both appear to do relatively well in the Senate CR, but there are adjustments elsewhere in the bill that make it difficult to state with any certainty what the numbers are. This is our understanding, at this point in time, subject to clarification if needed.

For example, NASA would be provided with a total FY2013 appropriation level of $17.862 billion according to the numbers in the bill itself as well as page 54 of the explanatory statement and an accompanying table with a detailed breakdown. However, the committee's press release says the total is $17.5 billion, probably because a provision at the end of the bill (section 3001) subjects everything in the CJS portion to a 1.877 percent across-the-board rescission. That would lower NASA's budget to $17.527 billion, which rounds down to $17.5 billion for press release purposes. That is without the sequester, however, which is nominally 5 percent, which would leave NASA with $16.651 billion for FY2013.

For comparison, the House-passed CR appears to hold NASA to its $17.8 billion appropriated level, minus the 5 percent sequester, and then imposes a 0.098 percent rescission, leaving NASA with about $16.894 billion. In terms of dollars, NASA fares better in the House bill, but the Senate bill provides somewhat greater flexibility in spending whatever the agency gets.

As for NOAA, perhaps the best news in the Senate CR is that Mikulski withdraws her recommendation that all of NOAA's satellite programs be transferred to NASA. She made that recommendation in her subcommittee report on the CJS bill last year. The report accompanying the CR does still recommend, however, that NOAA "consider" transferring one of those programs, Jason-3, to NASA. Mikulski criticized NOAA last year for increasing the life cycle cost estimate for the Joint Polar Satellite System (JPSS) from $11.9 billion to $12.9 billion. In the report accompanying the CR, NOAA is instructed to submit to Congress documentation that "reflects" the $11.9 billion life cycle cost. The report has several other provisions that make it clear the appropriations committee is not yet convinced NOAA is effectively managing its satellite programs.

NOAA's total funding for satellite procurement for FY2013 would be $1.8 billion in the CR, a $117 million increase over FY2012 and about the same as the FY2013 request. NOAA needs the increase in FY2013 to begin procurement of launch vehicles for its new Geostationary Operational Environmental Satellite (GOES-R) series. However, subtract the 5 percent sequester and the 1.877 percent across-the-board rescission and that figure is reduced by $123 million.

Again, these figures are preliminary not only because the CR has only been introduced, not passed, but also because these multi-hundred page bills may contain exceptions, nuances and adjustments that we missed. Or more may be added as the process plays out. But at the moment, this is our understanding of what the Senate CR would mean for the two agencies.

Congress Keeps Working on Budgets: Senate CR, House Budget Resolution Introduced

Tue, 12 Mar 2013 04:00:00 GMT

President Obama may be late in sending his FY2014 budget request to Congress, but Congress is continuing to work both on FY2013 and FY2014 budget matters.

Late last night, Senators Barbara Mikulski (D-MD) and Richard Shelby (R-AL), chairwoman and vice chairman, respectively, of the Senate Appropriations Committee, introduced the Senate version of the FY2013 Continuing Resolution (CR). The House passed its version last week. That legislation is for the remaining months of FY2013, which began last October. SpacePolicyOnline.com will publish an article summarizing the Senate CR later. Sorting out the numbers is no easy task and what looks like good news for NASA and NOAA at first glance isn't quite so good after reading the fine print. The fact that the bill is bipartisan makes its chances for clearing the Senate better than usual, but whether the House will agree is another matter.

That's all about the current fiscal year. Today, Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI), chairman of the House Budget Committee, offered the opening round in negotiations over the FY2014 budget and beyond by introducing the House version of the FY2014 budget resolution.

Budget resolutions make top-level funding recommendations not on an agency-by-agency basis, but by separating government spending into about 20 "budget functions." Most of NASA's funding, for example, is in function 250 (general science, space, and technology), except for its aeronautics budget which is in function 400 (transportation). It is not possible to say what effect the budget resolution would have on NASA or other agencies other than in broad terms. Since Paul's new budget resolution proposes cutting spending over the next 10 years such that the nation's budget will be balanced at the end of that decade -- instead of balancing it over 25 years as proposed last year (see an analysis in The Hill newspaper) -- one can imagine that space spending would be subject to further reductions. The Senate Budget Committee is expected to release its version of the FY2014 budget resolution later this week.

Meanwhile, although Congress is still waiting for President Obama to submit his FY2014 budget request, some committees are proceeding with hearings anyway. The House Appropriations Commerce-Justice-Science (CJS) subcommittee announced today that it will hold a hearing with NASA Administrator Charlie Bolden next week.

NASA Determines Mars Was Habitable

Tue, 12 Mar 2013 04:00:00 GMT

The primary mission for NASA's Mars Curiosity rover was to determine if Mars was habitable in the past. Today NASA answered that question: yes.

Curiosity drilled into a rock near its landing site in Mars's Gale Crater and deposited material from it into instruments designed to analyze such samples. This is the first time a sample from the interior of a Martian rock has been able to be analyzed.

At a press conference at NASA Headquarters today, Curiosity's science team, led by CalTech's John Grotzinger, announced the results. They are convinced that the analysis shows the area once was filled with salty water, either the end of a river system or a lake. Grotzinger's bottom line is that if a person had been on Mars at the time "you would have been able to drink this water." Another important discovery is that the material contains chemicals "providing an energy gradient of the sort many microbes on Earth exploit to live."

The analysis does not indicate whether life actually existed on Mars, only that it could have. NASA stresses that Curiosity is not designed to answer the question of whether life existed on Mars.

The rover is still recovering from a computer memory problem and although it is functioning well on its backup computer, science operations remain suspended until ground controllers understand the root cause of the anomaly. They hope to resume science operations soon, but they will be suspended again during most of April when a celestial conjunction prevents communications between Earth and Mars because the Sun is in the way. After the conjunction, the science team plans to obtain a second sample to confirm this discovery.

As David Blake, principle investigator for Curiosity's Chemistry and Mineralogy (CheMin) instrument, said today, Gale Crater "is the only definitively habitable environment" found in the solar system other than Earth.

Correction: An earlier verison of this article incorrectly stated that John Grotzinger is with the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL). He is at the California Institute of Technology (CalTech), which operates JPL for NASA.

Waitin' on the Budget

Mon, 11 Mar 2013 04:00:00 GMT

For the first time in nearly a century, Congress will kick off the year's budget process this week rather than the President.

The National Journal tracks back the history of the modern federal budget cycle using data from the Library of Congress's Congressional Research Service (CRS) and the New York Times. According to that analysis, when House Republicans and Senate Democrats introduce their respective FY2014 budget resolutions this week, it will mark the first time since the 1921 Budget and Accounting Act that Congress goes first.

The 1921 law created what is now known as the Office of Management and Budget and required the President to submit a budget to Congress each year.

The National Journal doesn't mention it, but the deadline of the first Monday in February for the President to submit the request to Congress was established in the Congressional Budget Act of 1974.

Other Presidents have missed that deadline, but Obama is stretching the limit apparently. The Administration still has made no official announcement about when the FY2014 budget request will be submitted, but some media reports say that it will not be until April 8. That would be more than 60 days past the deadline, eclipsing the 45-day delay by the Reagan Administration in 1988 per the National Journal.

CAIB Chairman Hal Gehman: “The Work is Never Done”

Sun, 10 Mar 2013 05:00:00 GMT

Adm. Harold (Hal) Gehman (Ret.), chairman of the Columbia Accident Investigation Board (CAIB) that determined the cause of the 2003 space shuttle STS-107 Columbia tragedy, says that he does not know if NASA’s culture changed as a result of the accident and CAIB’s recommendations because CAIB no longer exists and Congress never asked it back.

Columbia disintegrated as it returned to Earth on February 1, 2003 after a 16-day science mission. At a March 8, 2013 seminar sponsored by George Washington University’s (GWU’s) Space Policy Institute and the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics (AIAA), Gehman and others who were involved in dealing with the aftermath shared stories and lessons learned from the disaster. They also raised questions about what lessons were unlearned or forgotten in the intervening 10 years.

CAIB determined the technical cause of the accident: a hole in the left wing created when foam liberated from the External Tank struck it during launch; this allowed the superheated gases surrounding the shuttle 16 days later as it sped through the atmosphere during its return to Earth to enter the wing. The superheated gases deformed the wing, creating aerodynamic forces that ripped the shuttle apart. Seven astronauts died: NASA’s Rick Husband, William McCool, Michael Anderson, Laurel Clark, David Brown, and Kalpana Chawla, and Ilan Ramon of the Israeli Air Force.

Gehman and fellow CAIB member John Logsdon, GWU Professor Emeritus, stressed that the accident had a more fundamental cause, however, rooted particularly in NASA’s culture. When asked if CAIB’s work was done, Gehman said “the work is never done.” He recounted that when he testified to committees in both the House and Senate in 2003, he was asked a similar question and he replied “wait a couple years and bring the CAIB back and we can tell you in 10 days whether or not the culture has changed. No one ever called us back.”

Other participants in the day-long symposium painted a detailed picture of the conditions prior to, during and after the disaster and several suggested that, 10 years later, several of the external and internal factors that – apart from the technical failure – led to the accident may once more be in place.

The agency’s actions immediately following the disaster, including their care of the crew’s families, are perhaps the silver lining in the story. Former astronaut Scott “Doc” Horowitz and former NASA Marshall Space Flight Center Director David King described in detail their respective roles in the monumental task of recovering the remains of the astronauts and the pieces of the shuttle scattered across East Texas and parts of Louisiana, a search area equivalent to the size of the state of Rhode Island. The undertaking involved 140 local and federal organizations, 25,000 people – including the National Guard – and ground, air and water searches. They succeeded in recovering the remains of the crew members within two weeks and in retrieving and cataloguing over 40% of the Shuttle (by weight) in just 100 days. The effort was impressive from a number of levels, not the least of which was the human aspect. King and Horowitz, who listed a number of elements that contributed to success of the recovery operation, highlighted the importance of sustaining morale in what was at times a very challenging emotional experience.

Former astronaut Pam Melroy was particularly effective in conveying the challenge of studying specifically what happened to her seven colleagues in order to better understand what might have been done to make the mission safer. She led the reconstruction efforts of the debris that was recovered, including that of the crew cabin, and successfully convinced the agency to publish a detailed report of the fate of the cabin and its occupants to help in design of future vehicles. She particularly thanked three people – former shuttle program manager Wayne Hale, former Johnson Space Center Director (and former astronaut) Mike Coats, and former NASA Administrator Mike Griffin – for their “moral courage” in getting her report published so that the lessons it contained would not get lost.

Driving their work in recovering the hardware was the goal of Return to Flight, said King. The information on what pieces of the shuttle were found, precisely where, and in what condition played a critical role in CAIB’s analysis. Logsdon described how the $17 million, six-month effort went beyond traditional investigations of technical failures to look at NASA as an organization and place the accident in the long-term historical context of the space program. He noted that several of the CAIB’s observations, such as the lack of a clearly defined long-term human spaceflight goal and the lack of sustained government commitment to the program, are just as relevant today.

Doug Cooke, who served as NASA’s technical advisor to CAIB and later became Associate Administrator for Exploration before retiring in 2011, walked through the reconstruction of events and how it was informed by the hardware recovery process. He commented on the importance of the discovery of the flight data recorder, which cemented the Board’s suspicion that a foam impact on RCC panel 8 had been the main cause. But the process also highlighted other vulnerabilities that Cooke said “might have caused the next accident” if STS-107 had survived. This “indicated the degree to which we misunderstood the vehicle we were flying,” he said, adding that “we were learning about the shuttle ‘till the day it was decommissioned.”

Cooke enumerated a number of concerns for today’s human spaceflight program, such as the extent to which NASA can or cannot impose requirements on commercial crew operators, the consequences of “overconfidence” born of success, and the effects of political influences on safety. He agreed with the sentiments of other speakers that NASA did indeed become stronger after the accident, but cautioned that as time goes by those lessons may become less relevant and safety can be compromised. “The consequences, we know, can be catastrophic,” he said.

Vice Admiral Joseph Dyer (Ret.), chair of NASA’s Aerospace Safety Advisory Panel (ASAP), expressed similar concerns. Dyer considered the legacy of the accident on the safety practices of the agency and said of the Columbia crew that “in their lives and in their loss they made NASA better.” He described the shuttle program as “significantly safer” after the accident, thanks in particular to the adoption of the concepts of rescue and launch-on-need, which relied on a back-up shuttle ready to launch in the event of an emergency, a practice that was kept until the last shuttle launch.

Yet looking at the agency now and, in particular, the future of commercial crew transport, Dyer expressed concern. Aside from the relationship between cost and safety and a question of requirements, budgetary pressures are a principal obstacle. He reiterated that we must learn from our mistakes and let them influence our future but “not limit our spirit or need to explore.”

The seminar looked at lessons learned, unlearned, forgotten, and in one case, wrongly learned from the Challenger disaster in 1986. Several speakers referenced the late Sally Ride’s haunting comment that she heard “echoes” of Challenger in the Columbia tragedy. Ride, the first American woman in space, served on the accident investigation boards for both Challenger and Columbia.

At Friday’s seminar, Wayne Hale, who served in several positions in the space shuttle program before becoming program manager several years after Columbia, said that the lesson he originally learned from Challenger was that “one venal, amoral manager made an improper decision and browbeat the troops” into supporting it. It was only after Columbia, he said, that he discovered that was not the lesson at all, that both tragedies were the result of NASA’s culture.

He came to that realization, he said, after reading The Challenger Launch Decision by sociologist Diane Vaughn, which came to prominence in the aftermath of Columbia. Hale said it was only then that he understood Vaughn’s central point that the Challenger disaster was the result of a “rule-based decision. It was not amorally calculating managers violating rules… It was conformity. They were following the rules.” Because he did not understand that at the time, he and others wrongly concluded that NASA was basically on the right track with Return to Flight, but they were not, as Columbia demonstrated.

That was a lesson wrongly learned that needed to be unlearned, he stressed. Prof. Julianne Miller of George Mason University, author of Organizational Learning at NASA: The Challenger and the Columbia Accidents, spoke at length about lessons learned, unlearned and forgotten. Lessons are forgotten unintentionally, she explained, but unlearning is when lessons are “intentionally jettisoned” because they are deemed to be no longer relevant or fall victim to budget cuts or management changes.

The impressive array of speakers – many of them former astronauts offering poignant stories of being on the front line of recovering their fallen comrades and shuttle fragments, piecing the fragments back together to determine what went wrong, and moving the shuttle program forward to Return to Flight – along with other former NASA officials, offered many of their own lessons learned. Scott Pace, who was Deputy Chief of Staff to then-NASA Administrator Sean O’Keefe and now heads GWU’s Space Policy Institute, said the lesson he took away was “have a degree of humility in front of the hardware.” Although the major shuttle components – the orbiter, SRBs and External Tank – were performing all right, he said, “the system as a whole was exhibiting dangerous behavior that we didn’t recognize. … We had failed to listen to the vehicle and what it was telling us.”

Former astronaut and former head of NASA’s Safety and Mission Assurance Office Bryan O’Connor offered the lesson to “look where you slipped, not where you fell.” Hale provided a cogent list of 10 lessons that enveloped many of those offered by other speakers:

It can happen to you
Focus
Speak up
You are not nearly as smart as you think you are
Dissention has tremendous value
Question the conventional wisdom
Do good work
Engineering is done with numbers
Use your imagination
Nothing worthwhile was accomplished without taking risk

He agreed with Gehman that the work is never done because there are new people designing new human spaceflight systems who did not live through the shuttle tragedies and need to understand what happened.

In the final analysis, did CAIB make a difference, Gehman asked rhetorically. He answered by saying it was forums like this that will keep the lessons alive.

The overarching point that he and others stressed, however, is that “there is no progress unless you do risky activity.” The key is knowing the risk, being honest about it, evaluating whether the risk is worth the reward, and, if it is, managing that risk.

Note: Marcia Smith also contributed to this article.

Space Shuttle Columbia Tragedy 10 Years Later: Lessons Learned and Unlearned

Sun, 10 Mar 2013 05:00:00 GMT

On March 8, 2013, George Washington University's Space Policy Institute and the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics held a day-long seminar to look back at the 2003 space shuttle Columbia (STS-107) tragedy and what lessons were learned, unlearned, or forgotten in its aftermath. Speakers included Adm. Harold (Hal) Gehman, who chaired the Columbia Accident Investigation Board (CAIB) and fellow CAIB member John Logsdon, along with many of the former astronauts and NASA officials who were on the frontline of recovering the remains of the crew and fragments of the space shuttle and helping CAIB determine the causes of the disaster. This SpacePolicyOnline.com summary of the seminar by Laura Delgado and Marcia Smith was published on March 10.

Space Policy Events for the Week of March 11-15, 2013

Sun, 10 Mar 2013 05:00:00 GMT

The following events may be of interest in the week ahead. The House and Senate both are in session.

During the Week

Senator Barbara Mikulski (D-MD), chair of the Senate Appropriations Committee, is expected to introduce the Senate Democrats' version of the FY2013 Continuing Resolution (CR) on Monday, with floor consideration possible as early as Wednesday. Rumors of what will be in the bill are just that, rumors, and these have short lifetimes, but for what it is worth, the most recent betting seemed to be that she would try to incorporate three more of the 12 regular appropriations bills into the CR. The House-passed CR, which would fund the government for the rest of FY2013 (through September 30), included two of the 12 regular appropriations bills -- defense and military construction/veterans affairs. The Mikulski bill is rumored to add these three: Commerce-Justice-Science (CJS, which includes NASA and NOAA); Agriculture; and Homeland Security. The goal does not seem to give the additional agencies more money -- it's said the total amount of funding in her bill is the same as what passed the House last week, $984 billion, the sequester-adjusted total for FY2013 -- but to give them more flexiblity in how to spend it. That is the big complaint about the sequester, not that it cuts too much money (though there certainly are people who would argue that), but that it does not allow cuts to specific activities. It cuts every activity by roughly the same amount regardless of priority or merit.

Meanwhile, the House and Senate Budget Committees also are expected to reveal their separate budget resolutions for FY2014 and beyond. The Obama Administration still has not sent its budget request for FY2014 to Capitol Hill, nor publicly stated when it will do so. The latest rumor there is that the DOD request, at least, will not be submitted until April 8. Usually, the entire budget request for all departments and agencies is submitted at the same time, but there is no way to tell at this point if that will be true this year. Meanwhile, President Obama is scheduled to visit Capitol Hill on Wednesday and Thursday to talk with Representatives and Senators on their own turf about a long term budget strategy to avoid the crisis-dominated pattern of recent years.

Monday, March 11

Rescheduled from last week: Marshall Institute Panel on Investing in National Security Space in a Time of Austerity, 601 Pennsylvania Ave., N.W., North Building (enter from Indiana Ave.), Suite 600, Washington, DC, 9:00-10:30 am ET

Tuesday, March 12

SASC Hrg on Strategic Command and Cyber Command, G-50 Dirksen, 9:30 am ET
NASA News Conference on Mars Curiosity, NASA HQ, Washington, DC, 1:00 pm ET
ISU-DC Space Cafe Featuring Marcia Smith, SpacePolicyOnline.com, Science Club, 1136 19th St., NW, Washington, DC., 7:00 pm ET

Wednesday, March 13

House Appropriations CJS Sbcmte Hearing on Oversight of NASA, H-309 Capitol, 11:00 am ET

Thursday, March 14

Three ISS Crew Members Return to Earth on Soyuz TMA-06M, undocking 8:30 pm ET, landing 11:57 pm ET (March 15 at the landing site in Kazakhstan), watch on NASA TV

FY2014 Budget Request Delayed to April?

Fri, 08 Mar 2013 05:00:00 GMT

President Obama should have submitted his FY2014 budget request to Congress in February, but the latest rumor is that it will be delayed until the first week of April.

By law, the budget request is supposed to be sent to Congress on the first Monday in February -- this year, that would have been February 4. The White House informed Congress that it would not meet that date, but still has not officially announced when it will be released.

Some press reports had been saying that March 25 would be the date, but today The Hill newspaper says the Department of Defense (DOD) budget, at least, won't be ready then, either. Instead, the new date is April 8.

Ordinarily the budgets for all agencies are submitted at the same time. It is possible that DOD's could be earlier or later than others, but until the White House makes an official announcement, April 8 is the best date available.

Both the House and Senate are scheduled to be in recess from March 25-April 5 for Easter, so in that sense the difference between March 25 and April 8 (the Monday they return) seems less dramatic, but congressional staff and a legion of organizations and lobbyists are anxiously awaiting information on what the FY2014 budget may bring.

Colbert's Take on Inspiration Mars Mission

Thu, 07 Mar 2013 05:00:00 GMT

If you haven't had your morning laugh yet, you might want to watch this Stephen Colbert segment.

It's his take on the announcement by Dennis Tito et al of the Inspiration Mars mission to send a married couple on a flyby mission to Mars. Regardless of your views on that mission, Colbert's segment is priceless.

Watch at: http://www.colbertnation.com/the-colbert-report-videos/424391/march-05-2013/mars-flyby-mission?xrs=share_twitter.

Thanks to Michael Listner (@ponder68) and Tanja Masson-Zwaan (@tanjamasson) for pointing it out.