SpaceRef

An Interview with Don Pettit

2013-05-21T18:14:30Z

Kerry Ellis: Astronaut Don Pettit began his career with NASA seventeen years ago and has since flown on three spaceflight missions. Logging more than 370 days in space and over 13 spacewalk hours, he lived aboard the International Space Station for five and a half months during Expedition 6, was a member of the STS-126 crew, and again lived aboard station for six and a half months as part of the Expedition 30/31 crew.

Ellis: What led you to pursue a career as an astronaut?

Pettit: As a little kid I remember John Glenn flying, like so many people my age. That sat a bit in my mind: wouldn't it be neat if I could fly in space? Then I forgot about it for twenty years and studied what I was interested in. I did not consciously change my course of study with the idea that it would make me more attractive to NASA. And I tell students this when they ask me what they should study. You need to do something technical that speaks to your heart and excel at it. When I was getting out of graduate school, I suddenly realized I was qualified to fly in space.

Ellis: What additional advice do you give students?

Pettit: You have to take the hard subjects in school and be really good at math and science and engineering. The reason for this is human beings aren't meant to go into space. If you put a human being in space, you need machines to take you there, keep you alive, and bring you home, so you need to understand how those machines work and how to fix them. Your life depends on that.

Ellis: You also play several roles as an astronaut: engineer, scientist, doctor ...

Pettit: You are absolutely right. Jack of all trades and master of a few comes to mind. Our crew size is small yet we have a large number of specialties. If you had a crew size of twenty-five, you could have a cook, a surgeon, a mechanic, an electrician, a navigator. You could have all these specialties. But when you have a crew size of six, almost everybody has to be able to do medical, navigation, and cooking. But people gravitate toward things they like to do. For example, Andre Kuipers was on our mission, and he's a medical doctor. When it came time to draw blood, he did his own and then drew everybody else's. Even though I was trained to draw blood, I didn't have to do it much during the mission--which was great because one of the reasons I'm not a medical doctor is I don't like sticking people. I gravitated toward keeping the galley in shape and making sure we all had food deployed in a manner we could eat and weren't running out of things. Any of us could have done it, but I started doing it at the beginning and kept it up for the whole mission.

Ellis: You also took on blogging during that mission.

Pettit: I like to write. I have a hard time writing something meaningful in 140 characters, so my style is to write three or four pages at a time instead of for Twitter. Blogging fit my style. Blogging and tweeting are personal, not a piece of being a crew. If you're interested in doing it, you do it.

Ellis: Great way to reach the public.

Pettit: It is. And at the same time it's meaningful. For the diary of a space zucchini, I was telling a story from the view of a third person who was part of the crew while also taking time to weave in the technology needed to keep space zucchini alive, and the trials we had to go through, such as lighting and not having dirt. I started to compost food and use the liquid from the compost in an aeroponic potting system I cobbled up to keep the plants alive.

Ellis: Was space zucchini your favorite experiment during the mission?

Pettit: Yeah. There are programmatic experiments--the ones that justify the work on space station--that come up from the ground and are well thought-out and well-planned. There are principal investigators on the ground and we, the astronauts, are more like glorified graduate students doing the experiment on their behalf. The stuff I did, like space zucchini, I like to call opportunistic science. It's science of opportunity.

We do this in research labs on the ground: you do your programmatic science, and while you're there and have off-duty time, you may get an idea. Since you have a lab in front of you, you do an opportunistic experiment on the side. A lot of times these things fail, but every once in a while something really neat will come from these opportunistic experiments. And at ground laboratories, they often are the roots for writing a proposal and getting funding to become future programmatic science. Many times the real advances--the eurekas--come from the opportunistic science. Knowing that is how science is advanced on Earth, I use that model on station. I do the programmatic science for the principal investigators, using all the facilities and expendable resources how they want. Then in my off-duty time, I use extra things, like food and water, little bits of wire, and maybe a few things I brought up in my personal kit to do scientific investigations of my own design. Simply because I was there and I could.

Ellis: Did any of the experiment results or behaviors surprise you?

Pettit: Yes. All the time. For example, I had a weekend coming up with some off-duty time scheduled, and I got permission to use one of the research freezers that wasn't currently occupied. What an opportunity. Now I could investigate things at cold temperatures. So I made ice cubes, and then I looked at the ice cubes under polarized light to see the interlocking crystal grains and how the single crystals of ice formed--their morphology. I made hundreds of these ice wafers and took pictures both in white light and polarized light, and there's some interesting behaviors. It's going take months to go through these images, look at the crystal structures, and see whether there's anything unusual about how ice freezes in a weightless environment.

Ellis: Are there challenges to doing science experiments in space?

Pettit: The people who are proposing programmatic experiments have never been into space. They're using creativity and imagination to figure out what would be a good space experiment, but in space the behaviors are foreign to our Earth-mode intuition. We can think of things that someone on the ground would never have thought about. The work that I call symphony of spheres is a great example. Before I'd done this experiment, if I wrote a proposal to NASA and said I'm going to make a fixture of water and put a bubble in it and look at droplets bouncing around in the bubble, I'd be laughed out of the room. You'd never get funding for that. But when you're on space station, you can make a hemisphere of water and put a bubble in it, then inject it with droplets and just see what happens. That in turn advances a whole new series of experiments looking at droplets colliding on the interface and the potential for mass transfer across the interface. It's something that you'd never think about doing if you're living on the ground and you've never been in space, but once you get there, these things just come to you.

Ellis: What else about your perspective has changed as a result of being in space?

Pettit: You can use the whole volume of your living space. You can sit on the ceiling. You can set your computer on the ceiling. Or you can just free-float and type on your computer. We originally could put a laptop on a desk attached to the wall of space station so we could type as if we were on Earth. We had been provided a desk on a frame that clamps to the wall, so we could put a laptop on it, then float up to it and put our feet under a handrail to hold us in place, and we could sit there and type. That's just like we use laptops on Earth. But what we discovered is we don't need the desk. We can just fold the laptop in the shape of an L and stick it on the wall with Velcro. But because we're Earth polarized, we think we need to put our laptop on a desk. So they make desks for us to put our laptops on. After a while, you realize you don't even need to have a laptop stuck to the wall. You can just free-float with your laptop. We can free-float and type, and if you get close to the wall, you just give it a push with your finger and keep bouncing around like a slow-moving asteroid in a video game. Being Earth-centric, you think you need your computer on a desk; then you realize you don't need a desk, just a wall; then you go one stage further and realize you don't even need the wall.

Ellis: What else have you learned?

Pettit: There's all kinds of lessons in terms of how you design something. How many different screws do you specify torque for, and how many screws do you just say get good and tight? Some things are overly complicated and should be simplified. Some things are too simple and should be made more complicated. There's all kinds of lessons to be learned in terms of how to best equip the crew for getting their work done.

Ellis: For example?

Pettit: This was something that happened during my mission. I would have one activity that was maybe two hours. But it wouldn't show up on the timeline as a single two-hour activity; it would show up as eleven little slices of things that needed to be done, and I was obligated to open and read all eleven slices. There might be a five-minute slice of time and it might take me five minutes to open the slice just to read it. The overhead of taking a single activity and slicing it up into eleven separate pieces impedes your ability to get a task done. So I talked with the ground about the issue and they were able to fix it so a single activity would appear as a single activity, and you wouldn't have a fragmented instruction set. We worked together to fix the problem, and after that we had streamlined activities that would be easy to read and orchestrate.

Ellis: They were able to fix the issue while you were still on mission?

Pettit: Yes. We have flight director meetings every week where you talk to your flight director and tell him the good, the bad, and the ugly of what went on that week. They listen to you and then they in turn will tell you the good, the bad, and the ugly of things that you did. We work together. Crews try to become more efficient in terms of interacting with the ground, and the ground tries to become more efficient at working with the crew. You have a sub-team on orbit--the crew--and a sub-team on the ground--mission control--but all together you work in concert as a team that transcends both Earth and space.

Ellis: So being an astronaut requires not only hard training but also being generally curious and willing to learn?

Pettit: That, and you have to be able to laugh when a change comes about because change happens all the time. NASA changes the name of the game. We don't do everything the way we learned two years ago because now things have changed. This happens all the time--both in training on the ground and on your space mission. It's just the way of life when you're dealing with the frontier. Space station is in a frontier. It's a place where mistakes can cost you dearly. It's a place that's rich in discovery.

Ellis: What do you enjoy most about being part of that frontier?

Pettit: I like all phases of it. The training is long and arduous, but it's the next best thing to flying in space. And flying in space is what our job description is. Training can be grueling. It can wear you out over time, but it is blissful fun. Because after you do all this training, you get to fly in space. It doesn't get any better than that.

Ellis: What's the most difficult part of being on that frontier?

Pettit: The most difficult part, and this is always the same answer, is being away from your family. I call it the explorer's dilemma. When you are home with your family, you have this desire to journey off to the frontier. And when you're in the frontier, you have this intense desire to be with your family.

Ellis: Is it any easier with Internet on station?

Pettit: Actually, we don't have Internet on station. We have a pseudo-Internet. We have e-mail, but it's not continuous. We get e-mail drops during the day. I send an e-mail out in the evening, and it might be a day or two before I get an answer. But we have great communication. We get a two-way video meeting with our family once a week, so you can stay versed with what's happening with your family. My sons were doing a piano recital during a mission and NASA was able to uplink the video so I could watch them. We have stayed connected now in this era better than any time in the past. Even though you are away from your family, you can maintain this long-distance connection. And perhaps that's the next best thing to being there.

Ellis: What's coming next for you?

Pettit: I'm just starting on my ground assignment. I'm flying a desk right now, in NASA vernacular. And I'm back in line for spaceflight. I still meet all the medical requirements and I'm interested in flying again, so I'm in line. It's a long line, and it's moving slow. But it's a good line to be in.

Storms on Uranus & Neptune Confined to Upper Atmosphere

2013-05-21T18:11:22Z

Similar to the giant gas planets Jupiter and Saturn, their smaller cousins, Uranus and Neptune, have long been known to harbor swirling clouds and violent winds churning up their atmospheres. Massive bands of jet streams encircling the entire planet have been observed in both cases.

But given that Uranus' atmosphere is believed to be thick enough to swallow the entire Earth, it was not known just how far the weather perturbations reach into the planet's interior.

Now a team of planetary scientists with the University of Arizona's Lunar and Planetary Laboratory, including William Hubbard and Adam Showman, has published the results of new analyzes that put an upper limit to the weather zone on Uranus and Neptune.

According to their data, reported in the journal Nature, the atmosphere on both planets goes from screaming winds of infernal violence to dead-quiet at a much shallower depth than previously thought.

"Our analyzes show that the dynamics are confined to a thin weather layer no more than about 680 miles deep," said Hubbard. "This number is an upper limit, so in reality, it is possible that the atmosphere quiets down even shallower than that."

For the study, which was led by Yohai Kaspi, a planetary researcher at the Weizmann Institute of Science in Rehovot, Israel, the team applied computer simulations and numerical analyzes to data collected by the spacecraft Voyager 2 during a fly-by in 1989.

Without a means to probe the atmosphere of gas giants directly, the researchers had to rely on indirect measurements to gather clues about weather patterns on the two planets.

"For Neptune and Uranus, the only spacecraft data we have were taken with Voyager 2's equipment more than 20 years ago, and we won't be able to get anything that lives up to today's standards anytime soon," explained Hubbard, whose research focuses on studies of the structure and evolution of Jupiter, Saturn and extrasolar giant planets.

Instead, the team used deep circulation theories developed by Showman and Kaspi to predict what the gravitational fields of Neptune and Uranus should look like. This method takes advantage of the fact that large weather perturbations in the atmospheres of giant planets modify their gravitational fields in a way that allows researchers to draw conclusions about the nature and extent of those weather phenomena.

"Basically, by applying these newly developed theories, we are able to tease out new information from old data," Hubbard said. "The reason we can constrain the weather to the upper 680 miles or so is that we would see a much stronger distortion of the gravitational field if the weather extended much deeper."

Hubbard said he made calculations back in 1989, at the time of Voyager 2's encounter with Neptune, "but today of course we have much better methods than two decades ago, so we can put a more accurate constraint on these phenomena than I was able to at the time."

As a co-investigator on NASA's Juno mission currently en route to Jupiter, Hubbard develops tools for analyzing the gravity signal from the giant gas planet with the famous Red Spot. Hubbard showed how high-precision gravity data from a close-range orbiter of Jupiter can be used to determine the depths to which Jupiter's extraordinary zonal wind patterns penetrate.

Juno's goal is to study the interior composition of the largest planet in our system, which is thought to have formed before the other planets and hold answers to many unsolved questions about the formation of our solar system.

"We are going to get similar data for Jupiter and Saturn, but in much higher quality than what we have from Voyager 2," he said, and also with higher precision than anything that has been done on Jupiter so far."

Using two radio receivers, one on the spacecraft and one on Earth, locked in synchrony, Juno will be able to measure gravity with unprecedented accuracy, Hubbard explained.

Unlike the jet streams on Uranus and Neptune, Hubbard said the winds are much more subtle on Jupiter and Saturn.

"When we start getting detailed data from Juno, we are going to use those methods to apply to what we see on Jupiter and Saturn," he said. "We want to see how deep these weather phenomena go on those planets."

Hubbard explained that researchers believe the atmospheric disturbances are more numerous on Jupiter and Saturn but less strong compared to Uranus and Neptune, for reasons that may have to do with the planets' different compositions and their angles between the magnetic fields and rotational axis.

"In the case of Earth, our atmosphere is very thin and almost negligible from the point of view of gravity," Hubbard explained. "One would need extremely sensitive measurements to see the effects of the atmosphere on the Earth's gravitational field."

"In the case of giant gas planets, we are talking about deep, hydrogen-dominated atmospheres that are much denser, more like an ocean than an atmosphere. There is so much mass involved that it leaves a much more visible signature on the gravity."

PIO Contact:
Daniel Stolte
UA University Communications
+1 520-626-4402
stolte@email.arizona.edu

Science Contact:
William Hubbard
UA Lunar and Planetary Laboratory
+1 520-621-6942
hubbard@lpl.arizona.edu

Research paper:
http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v497/n7449/full/nature12131.html

The Future of the Sun

2013-05-21T18:04:48Z

A team of astronomers led by Jose Dias do Nascimento (Department of Theoretical and Experimental Physics, Universidade Federal do Rio Grande do Norte [DFTE, UFRN], Brazil) has found the farthest known solar twin in the Milky Way Galaxy -- CoRoT Sol 1, which has about the same mass and chemical composition as the Sun.

Spectra from the High Dispersion Spectrograph (HDS) on the Subaru Telescope showed that CoRoT Sol 1 is about 6.7 billion years old while space-based data from the CoRoT (Convection, Rotation and planetary Transits) satellite indicated a rotation period of 29 +/- 5 days. This newly discovered, evolved solar twin allows astronomers to uncover the near future of our solar system's central star -- the Sun.

Since the Sun is the closest star to Earth, it has been extensively studied in a variety of ways. Despite considerable efforts by astronomers, we do not know yet how typical a star the Sun is. Except for the youngest stars, the true rotation of those similar to the Sun is unknown, and there are few studies of mature solar twins or of more evolved ones.

The mass (the amount of matter) and chemical composition of a star are the main characteristics that determine its evolution. Studying stars with the same mass and composition as the Sun, the so-called "solar twins," can give us more information about our own Sun; solar twins of various ages offer snapshots of the Sun's evolution at different phases (Figure 1).

The satellite CoRoT (Convection, Rotation and planetary Transits) has provided precise space-based data from which it is possible to determine the rotation periods of stars. The current team selected the best solar twin candidates within a range of rotation periods to study the evolution of the Sun's rotation period in detail. Because solar twins are faint, the team initially used the High Dispersion Spectrograph (HDS) on the Subaru Telescope to observe three of their solar twin candidates. The large size of the Subaru Telescope and the capability of HDS to precisely spread out the stellar light into many constituent colors allowed them to study the stars' characteristics in detail. A meticulous analysis of the data showed that one of the solar twin candidates was truly a star with a mass and chemical composition similar to that of the Sun. The finding was even more precious, because the star is at a more evolved stage and can serve as an indicator of the future of the Sun.

Determining the age of a star is probably one of its most difficult aspects to ascertain, but high quality spectra shed light on stellar ages. CoRoT Sol 1 is about two billion years older than the Sun, but its rotation period is about the same as the Sun's. Subaru Telescope's HDS spectra of CoRoT Sol 1 show that its overall chemical composition is similar to that of the Sun, but its detailed abundance pattern shows some differences, like most nearby solar twins (Figure 2). For example, the abundance of lithium (Li), an element that decreases with age, is less than that of the Sun.

Team leader Dr. Jose Dias do Nascimento commented on the significance of CoRoT Sol 1's age for understanding the Sun's future: "In two billion years' time, about the solar twin's actual age, the Sun's radiation may increase and make the Earth's surface so hot that liquid water can no longer exist there in its natural state."

In contrast to other solar twins that are relatively bright, CoRoT Sol 1, which is located in the constellation Unicorn (Monoceros), is more than 200 times fainter than the brightest solar twin known. The large 8.2 m mirror of the Subaru Telescope and the precision of its high dispersion spectrograph made it possible to conduct this detailed study of the spectra of such a faint star. The team plans to use the Subaru Telescope to continue its research on how typical a star the Sun is; they intend to describe its rotation evolution by finding solar twins representing a broad range of stellar ages and then placing the Sun within this context.

PIO Contact

Suzanne G. Frayser
Subaru Telescope, Hawaii
+1 808-934-5022
frayser@naoj.org

Science Contact:

Jose-Dias do Nascimento, Jr.
The Federal University of Rio Grande do Norte (UFRN), Brazil
+55 (84) 91244221 (Brazilian local time is GMT minus 3 hours.)
dias@dfte.ufrn.br

Figure 1: http://www.naoj.org/Pressrelease/2013/05/17/fig1.jpg Artist's rendering of CoRoT Sol 1 and a chronology of the Sun's evolution based on data from theSubaru Telescope and the CoRoT space mission. The illustration indicates how CoRoT Sol 1's discovery will greatly improve our understanding of how the Sun may evolve and allows astronomers to test current theories of solar evolution against an observed, evolved solar twin.

Figure 2: http://www.naoj.org/Pressrelease/2013/05/17/fig2.jpg Spectra for CoRoT Sol1 from Subaru Telescope's HDS compared with the Sun's spectra, highlighting the lithium feature (Li I 6707.8 A). The superimposed spectrum of the Sun is shown with open circles, while the CoRoT Sol 1 spectrum is shown with the solid red line. The jagged red line at the bottom of the figure represents the differences between the spectra of the Sun and the solar twin.

The research paper entitled "The Future of the Sun: An Evolved Solar Twin Revealed by CoRoT," on which this article is based, has been accepted and will be published in the Astrophysical Journal Letters (ApJL). Preprint: http://arxiv.org/abs/1305.3652

Related material: http://astro.dfte.ufrn.br/corottwin

The members of the research team are J-D do Nascimento, Universidade Federal do Rio Grande do Norte (UFRN), Brazil; Y. Takeda, National Astronomical Observatory of Japan (NAOJ), Japan; J. Melendez, University of Sao Paulo, Brazil; J.S. da Costa, UFRN, Brazil; G. F. Porto de Mello, Observatorio do Valongo of the UFRJ, Brazil; and M. Castro, UFRN, Brazil.

CoRoT is the Convection, Rotation and planetary Transits space mission, which was launched on December 27, 2006. It is operated by the Center national d'etudes spatiales (CNES) with the participation of science programs of European Space Agency (ESA), ESA's Research and Science Support Department (ESA-RSSD), Austria, Belgium, Brazil, Germany, and Spain.

This research was partially supported by the following:

* The National Council for Scientific and Technological Development (CNPq) and Ministry of Science and Tecnologia (MCT), Brazil
* Laboratorio Nacional de Astrofisica (LNA), Brazil
* The Federal University of Rio Grande do Norte (UFRN), Brazil
* Fundacao de Amparo a Pesquisa do Estado de Sao Paulo (FAPESP), Brazil

NASA Innovative Advanced Concepts: Phase II Studies

2013-05-21T17:27:58Z

This NRA will solicit multiple studies, each of which will investigate an architecture, mission, or system concept with the potential to enable a great leap in space or aeronautics. NIAC is part of the Space Technology Mission Directorate. Aerospace architecture, mission, or system concepts proposed for NIAC Phase II studies must be exciting, unexplored, far-term, and credible. Proposals for narrow technology or subsystem development, or incremental or near-term advancement, are explicitly out of scope for this program. Finally, while NIAC encourages daring vision and accepts the accompanying risk, proposals must be technically credible and plausibly implementable.

NASA SPACE TECHNOLOGY MISSION DIRECTORATE NASA INNOVATIVE ADVANCED CONCEPTS: PHASE II STUDIES NASA RESEARCH ANNOUNCEMENT - 2013

Synopsis - May 21, 2013

General Information

Solicitation Number: NNH13ZUA003N
Posted Date: May 21, 2013
FedBizOpps Posted Date: May 21, 2013
Recovery and Reinvestment Act Action: No
FedGrants Posted Date: May 21, 2013
Application Due Date Explanation: Proposals of no more than 20 pages due Tuesday, July 2, 2013
Classification Code: A -- Research and Development
NAICS Code: 541712

Grant Specific Information

Funding Instrument Type: Grant
Funding Instrument Type: Cooperative Agreement
Funding Instrument Type: Procurement Contract
CFDA Number: 43.009
Cost Sharing or Matching Required: No
Estimated Total Program Funding: not available
Expected Number of Awards: not available
Ceiling Amount: none
Floor Amount: none
Funding Activity: Science and Technology and other Research and Development (ST)
Eligible Applicants: 25 - Others
Open to Principal Investigators or organizations who have completed a successful Phase I study
Link to Full Announcement: http://nspires.nasaprs.com (planned to be posted May 28, 2013)

Contracting Office Address

NASA/Goddard Space Flight Center, NASA Headquarters Acquisition Branch, Code 210.H, Greenbelt, MD 20771

Description

National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) Headquarters is releasing a NASA Research Announcement (NRA) for initial studies of visionary aerospace concepts. NNH13ZUA003N, entitled NASA Innovative Advanced Concepts: Phase II Studies, will be available as of May 28, 2013 by opening the NASA Research Opportunities homepage at http://nspires.nasaprs.com/ and then linking through the menu listings "Solicitations" to "Open Solicitations."

This solicitation represents continuation of the NASA Innovative Advanced Concepts (NIAC) program, which issued its first solicitation on March 1, 2011. More information is available at: http://www.nasa.gov/niac .

This solicitation is open to any principal investigator or organization that has completed a NIAC Phase I study, but has not yet completed a Phase II study. Applicants from the prior NASA Institute for Advanced Concepts that have completed a Phase I study, but have not completed a Phase II study, are also eligible unless the reason for not completing a Phase II study was discontinuation at the midterm review.

Affiliation with any educational institution, commercial or not-for-profit organization, research laboratory, government agency, or NASA Center (including the Jet Propulsion Laboratory) is permitted. Individuals may submit, as long as they meet the registration requirements for NSPIRES. Every organization that intends to submit a proposal in response to this NRA must be registered with NSPIRES, and such registration must identify the authorized organizational representative(s) who will submit the electronic proposal. Each electronic proposal system places requirements on the registration of principal investigators and other participants (e.g. co-investigators). Potential proposers and proposing organizations are urged to access the electronic proposal system(s) well in advance of the proposal due date(s) to familiarize themselves with its structure and enter the requested information. Specific proposal submission deadline dates, evaluation criteria, and submission information will be identified in the NRA. Proposals will be due on or before July 2, 2013.

The number of awards will be subject to the availability of appropriated funds.

Comments and questions may be addressed by e-mail to NIAC Program representatives at hq-niac@mail.nasa.gov. Responses to inquiries will be answered by e-mail and also included in the Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ) document located on the NSPIRES page associated with the solicitation; anonymity of persons/institutions who submit questions will be preserved.

Point of Contact

Name: John (Jay) Falker PhD
Title: NASA Innovative Advanced Concepts (NIAC) PE
Phone: 202-358-3043
Fax: 202-358-3602
Email: hq-niac@mail.nasa.gov

Image: Strong Storms Over Oklahoma

2013-05-21T16:09:02Z

This image of the storm system that generated the F-4 tornado in Moore, Oklahoma was taken by NASA's Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) instrument aboard one of the Earth Observing System (EOS) satellites.

The image was captured on May 20, 2013, at 19:40 UTC (2:40 p.m. CDT) as the tornado began its deadly swath.

Image Credit: NASA/Goddard/Jeff Schmaltz/MODIS Land Rapid Response Team. Larger images

Life of Sally Ride Honored at Kennedy Center Tribute

2013-05-21T13:12:49Z

PBS News Hour Science Correspondent Miles O'Brien talks with Jeffrey Brown about the legacy of astronaut Sally Ride.

The Impact of Sally Ride's Contributions in Space and Education

2013-05-21T13:07:55Z

NASA Television aired, live a special event from the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum in Washington to honor the contributions and legacy of the late Dr. Sally Ride, America's first woman in space.

Johnson Space Center Director Ellen Ochoa participated in a panel discussion about how Ride, who founded the educational company, Sally Ride Science, helped open doors to students in the science, technology, engineering and math fields

NASA and The White House Pay Tribute to Sally Ride

2013-05-20T23:42:15Z

NASA and President Obama are honoring the life and legacy of Sally Ride on the day a national tribute was held for the first American woman in space.

The president announced Monday afternoon Ride will be posthumously awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom during a ceremony at the White House later this year. The Medal of Freedom is the nation's highest civilian honor, presented to individuals who have made especially meritorious contributions to the security or national interests of the United States, to world peace, or to cultural or other significant public or private endeavors.

"We remember Sally Ride not just as a national hero, but as a role model to generations of young women," said President Obama. "Sally inspired us to reach for the stars, and she advocated for a greater focus on the science, technology, engineering and math that would help us get there. Sally showed us that there are no limits to what we can achieve, and I look forward to welcoming her family to the White House as we celebrate her life and legacy."

Monday night, NASA further paid tribute to Ride by creating a new agency internship program in her name and renaming a science instrument aboard the International Space Station. The announcement was made by NASA Administrator Charles Bolden during a national tribute called, "Sally Ride: A Lifetime of Accomplishment, A Champion of Science Literacy," at the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington.

The Sally Ride Internship is intended to help students from underserved backgrounds pursue a research interest at one of NASA's centers nationwide. As many as 10 internships total will be available in the spring and fall semesters of each school year, giving students the opportunity to develop a meaningful professional experience and work side by side with practicing scientists and engineers who are helping the United States lead the world in exploration and discovery. The internships also will encourage students to go into careers in science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM), of which Ride was a strong and longtime proponent.

NASA also is recognizing Ride by renaming a camera aboard the space station the Sally Ride EarthKAM. Through Sally Ride Science, hundreds of thousands of middle school students have participated in space research by using EarthKAM. Students use the Internet to request images based on their classroom investigations, and the image collection and accompanying learning guides and activities are extraordinary resources to support lessons in Earth and space science, geography, social studies, mathematics, communications, and even art.

"Sally's impact on our nation and future generations of explorers is immeasurable," said Bolden, who served with Ride in NASA's astronaut corps in the 1980s. "God speed, Sally Ride, and thank you for reminding us to reach higher, break barriers and dream big."

Monday's tribute highlighted Ride's contributions and her legacies. The celebration included longtime friends and colleagues who worked side-by-side with her to motivate and inspire girls and boys to study the STEM fields.

"Sally Ride Science is thrilled to be presenting a National Tribute to Sally to honor her lifelong commitment to space exploration, but also to improving science education and to supporting science literacy for all students," said Tam O'Shaughnessy, Ride's life partner, co-founder and chair of the board of Sally Ride Science.

In addition to space exploration and science, the tribute was built around others things that had special meaning to Ride, including sports, music, dance and poetry. Those were represented by the Maryland Classic Youth Orchestras playing Claude Debussy's "Clair de Lune"; Twyla Tharp's "Jordan" dance; Patti Austin singing Tena Clark's "Way Up There"; and Maria Shriver reading Mary Oliver's poem "The Summer Day."

Speakers at the tribute included Sen. Barbara Mikulski of Maryland, who talked about how Ride changed STEM education and policy, and NASA's Associate Administrator for Education and former astronaut Leland Melvin and former astronaut and space shuttle commander Pam Melroy, who spoke about Ride's impact on the astronaut corps, the space program and beyond.

"I'm thrilled to pay tribute to Sally because her dedication and superb talent cemented the value of women's contributions in space and in science, smoothing the path for all women to achieve success," said Pam Melroy, former NASA astronaut and space shuttle commander. "Sally showed the world what was possible, opening the eyes of millions of women and men to what could be. Her achievements in space inspired a generation of young women, and her achievements in STEM education will pass that legacy of inspiration on to future generations."

Ride died on July 23, 2012, after a 17-month battle with pancreatic cancer. Ride's first space flight was 30 years ago next month, on June 18, 1983.

For more information about Sally Ride Science, visit: http://www.sallyridescience.com

For more information about Ride and the national tribute, visit: http://go.nasa.gov/15sRyyM

The Impact of Sally Ride's Contributions in Space and Education

First British Astronaut in Space for Over 20 Years

2013-05-20T17:41:25Z

Former Apache helicopter pilot Tim Peake is to become the first British astronaut to visit the International Space Station, making him the first UK astronaut in space for over 20 years.

After more than three years of training with the European Space Agency's (ESA) Astronaut Programme, Peake has been selected to live and work on the International Space Station (ISS) for six months. He will carry out a comprehensive science programme and take part in a European education outreach programme in the build up to and during his mission.

Tim is one of six astronauts who have been selected from among 8,000 hopefuls. The flight is expected to take place in November 2015.

Speaking at a special event at the Science Museum in London, Tim Peake said:

"I am delighted to be proposed for a long-duration mission to the International Space Station. This is another important mission for Europe and in particular a wonderful opportunity for European science, industry and education to benefit from microgravity research.

"Since joining the European Astronaut Corps in 2009, I have been training to work on the Station and I am extremely grateful to the ground support teams who make it possible for us to push the boundaries of knowledge through human spaceflight and exploration."

Prime Minister David Cameron said:

"This is a momentous day, not just for Tim Peake but for Great Britain. It is a great sign of our thriving British space sector, which has seen real growth thanks to our world-class research, and now supports nearly 30,000 jobs.

"What an achievement that Tim was picked for this historic role from over 8,000 applicants from around the world. I am sure he will do us proud and I hope that he will inspire the next generation to pursue exciting careers in science and engineering."

Tim was appointed as an ambassador for UK science and space-based careers in 2009 and is working with the UK Space Agency in developing the UK's microgravity research programme. He has been involved in the international Mission X programme, which promotes science careers and healthy lifestyles in schools, and his outreach will continue throughout his training and his time on the International Space Station (ISS).

Minister for Universities and Science David Willetts, said:

"This is a landmark moment for Britain and our reputation as a leading science nation. Not only will we have the first UK astronaut for over two decades, but Tim Peake will be the first ever Briton to carry out ground-breaking research on the International Space Station.

"Tim represents the very best of British. He will become a powerful role model for the young people we need to bolster this country's science and engineering workforce.

"Today's announcement builds on the continued success of the British space sector, which is worth #9 billion to the economy annually and employs nearly 30,000 people."

Tim is the first British ESA astronaut and the second British astronaut that did not have to get US citizenship to fly to space.

Today's announcement follows increased investment by the UK Space Agency in Europe's space programme to #240 million per year, including a #16 million contribution to the ISS, agreed at the ESA Ministerial last November. This is expected to secure #1 billion in orders per year for British businesses.

Space technology is an essential part of everyday life and is vital for weather forecasting, navigation, global communications, broadcasting and health. Traffic monitoring, for example, relies on the GPS satellite system. CAT scanners and MRI scanners, which allow more accurate diagnosis and reduce the need for exploratory operations, were developed from technology originally used for enhancing images taken of space.

Space can also provide the tools to manage global challenges such as climate change and natural disasters, and has helped drive the development of robotics.

Chief Executive of the UK Space Agency Dr David Parker said:

"Tim Peake is working with the UK Space Agency to help us build a strong programme of science in the UK. With our new investment in the International Space Station and Europe's microgravity programme, his flight in 2015 could help expand our international competitiveness in areas such as health and ageing research, innovative materials and plasma physics.

"Tim is also an inspirational role model for young people in the UK. As an ambassador for UK science and space-based careers, he is demonstrating the upper limits of what British kids of every age can aspire to."

ESA's Director of Human Spaceflight and Operations Thomas Reiter said:

"The value of Europe's astronauts and the training given at the European Astronaut Centre is reflected in the large number of mission assignments awarded to ESA astronauts.

"I am confident that all astronauts of ESA's 2009 class will have flown to the International Space Station by 2017 and that we will continue to use this unique research facility in Earth orbit for many years to come."

Notes to editors

1. For a selection of images and videos of Tim Peake in training please visit http://spaceinimages.esa.int/content/search?img=1&SearchText=peake&sortBy=score. Please note that ESA images can be used for editorial purposes and that a full credits line has to be indicated for each image used. Some images contained in our website have come from other sources, and this is indicated in the Copyright notice. For re-use of non-ESA images contact the designated authority. For more information about ESA's image policy visit http://spaceinimages.esa.int/ESA_Multimedia/Copyright_Notice_Images?img=1.

2. Tim Peake's biography can be found at https://www.dropbox.com/sh/hhp6wm0y8hur5mp/MvwSDjKA3D.

3. At the 2012 ESA Ministerial the UK Space Agency made a one off investment of #16 million to the European Space Agency's participation in the International Space Station. The investment will be focused on telecommunications and propulsion technology to be integrated into the new Multi-Purpose Crew Vehicle (MPCV) called Orion. UK industry has an established capacity to deliver these key technologies, and the UK Space Agency has seized the opportunity presented in negotiations to secure the possibility of long-term industrial return for the UK.

4. The UK Space Agency also joined the European Life and Physical Sciences Programme (ELIPS) and pledged an investment of #12.4 million in this long-running programme to exploit the unique environment of space for fundamental and applied science in health, biology, materials and physics. Benefits of joining this programme include insights into the human ageing process and new lightweight materials for jet engines.

5. The UK Space Agency is at the heart of UK efforts to explore and benefit from space. It is responsible for all strategic decisions on the UK civil space programme and provides a clear, single voice for UK space ambitions. The Agency is responsible for ensuring that the UK retains and grows a strategic capability in the space-based systems, technologies, science and applications. It leads the UK's civil space programme in order to win sustainable economic growth, secure new scientific knowledge and provide benefits to all citizens.

The UK Space Agency:

* Co-ordinates UK civil space activity
* Encourages academic research
* Supports the UK space industry
* Raises the profile of UK space activities at home and abroad
* Increases understanding of space science and its practical benefits
* Inspires our next generation of UK scientists and engineers
* Licences the launch and operation of UK spacecraft
* Promotes co-operation and participation in the European Space programme.

6. The government's economic policy objective is to achieve 'strong, sustainable and balanced growth that is more evenly shared across the country and between industries.' It set four ambitions in the 'Plan for Growth' (PDF 1.7MB), published at Budget 2011:

* to create the most competitive tax system in the G20
* to make the UK the best place in Europe to start, finance and grow a business
* to encourage investment and exports as a route to a more balanced economy
* to create a more educated workforce that is the most flexible in Europe.

Work is underway across government to achieve these ambitions, including progress on more than 250 measures as part of the Growth Review. Developing an Industrial Strategy gives new impetus to this work by providing businesses, investors and the public with more clarity about the long-term direction in which the government wants the economy to travel.

This Week @NASA - Kepler Troubles

2013-05-20T13:45:31Z

This week, the Kepler science team announced the spacecraft was in a Thruster-Controlled Safe Mode. The root cause was undetermined but the proximate cause appears to be an attitude error caused by a malfunction in Kepler's reaction wheel 4, one of the telescope's pointing mechanisms.

The team has since put the telescope in what's known as a Point Rest State, to minimize fuel usage while the investigation continues. Though no decisions have been made about the fate of the mission, the team notes that even if data collection were to end, Kepler has collected substantial quantities of data that should yield a string of scientific discoveries for years to come. Also, Living Off Earth, Future of Human Space Exploration, Garver briefed on Future Technologies, J-2X prepared for gimbal tests, Bolden checks out Aero Tech, Dreamchaser's arrival, Hangout with Star Trek cast and more.

Project Morpheus: Hard Lessons and Lean Engineering

2013-05-18T18:17:31Z

Kerry Ellis: Future human space exploration will mean getting beyond low-Earth orbit--and returning safely. Several projects across NASA are working on the challenges that goal presents, among them propulsion alternatives and guidance, navigation, and control. Three years ago, Project Morpheus and the Autonomous Landing and Hazard Avoidance Technology project, or ALHAT, began collaborating on advances in these areas.

Morpheus is a rapid-prototype vertical lander concept testing many ideas at once. It is known as a vertical test bed: a lander that can be adjusted, scaled, and reconfigured to test different design ideas. This makes it a great platform on which to test ALHAT's sensors and software, meant to detect hazards in real time and adjust flight trajectories to avoid them without human intervention.

Together, they can provide a template for future planetary landers, one that can scale down for asteroid missions or potentially scale up for human spaceflight to Mars.
Lean Engineering

To provide quick technology demonstrations, both projects have focused on keeping their management and engineering approaches lean and mean. For the project managers, this has meant finding ways to document processes and lessons learned with enough rigor to satisfy requirements and benefit current and future projects but without a mountain of paperwork that might prevent rapid design and development. On the engineering side, the philosophy has focused on a test early, test often approach using low-cost materials that can be found commercially or quickly modified.

At the core of these approaches has been collaboration and communication. The Morpheus and ALHAT teams have looked to their peers at other centers to provide their expertise and knowledge to the projects, and to industry partners with experience in operating rapid-prototype projects.

According to Jon Olansen, Morpheus project manager, Morpheus is about 90 percent in-house collaboration spanning several NASA centers, including Johnson Space Center, Goddard Space Flight Center, Stennis Space Center, Kennedy Space Center, and Marshall Space Flight Center. "By keeping the work predominantly in house, our civil servants have learned a tremendous amount," he said. The team includes experienced personnel as well as those new to the agency and students. "We have all learned so much doing this hands-on work, and I think the benefit to the agency is astronomical. It's been a great training ground."

One lesson Morpheus has taken from its commercial partners is finding the right level of documentation. In one instance, the team worked closely with Armadillo Aerospace to see how a small development team operated. They learned how to improve processes for lean development and were able to pass on some NASA knowledge to improve Armadillo's safety and process measures.

"We decided to pick and choose from procedural requirement 7120.5 and the agency's project management policies to determine what was applicable to Morpheus. Those policies primarily exist for larger projects and programs, but they're a great information source for project management if appropriately tailored to your project," explained Olansen. "We don't produce a bunch of documents, and we only produce a handful for written signatures, such as range-safety documents." Everything else is kept online to ensure the project has enough rigor regarding safe operations and capturing lessons learned.

"Engineers like to do things, not write documents," added Chirold Epp, project manager for ALHAT, "so as a project manager, I have to work a bit to make sure we document what we've done, and people can pick it up and understand what we did right and what we did wrong. Our effort has been to document all data whenever we do a field test and ensure it's readable; otherwise, you can spend way too much time writing documents. We need to do the work. And for good technology development, we believe that's the right way to go."

The lean development approach also applies to the engineering itself, often relying on "good enough" solutions that will allow for safe testing and progressive learning in the moment.

On Morpheus, for example, engineers needed to figure out how propellant would slosh within their fuel tanks. Usually, this requires a lot of time creating and analyzing models before development takes place. Instead, one of the engineers went to a hardware store and spent $80 on wood, attachment fittings, four light globes, and food coloring. They put together a simple model of Morpheus's four-tank structure, filled the globes with colored water, hung it from a single point, and induced oscillations to see how the fluid would slosh within the globes.

"We could see that if we induced an oscillation in one direction, eventually the water would swirl in the globes instead of slosh back and forth, due to the tank configuration. It got us 80 percent of the answer," explained Olansen. "It didn't give us every detail, but it gave us plenty of information to design baffles we could put into the tanks to reduce slosh to the point where it's not an impact to the way we fly. It's great for a prototype, but it would require more work if we were going to fly in space with a follow-on vehicle. But we now have an 80-percent solution, and it cost us $80 to get it there."

"Because you don't always have the money to buy the most expensive and best parts, you've got to build something that works, then go out and test," added Epp. "You just proceed in that fashion and move ahead."

Both teams follow a build-test-build philosophy. "When you do that kind of testing, things don't always work how you expect. But you learn, then you go back and do it again," said Epp.

Crucial to that learning is good communication--across the team and up the chain of management. Since the combined teams include seven NASA centers and a few commercial partners spread out across the nation, much of the communication happens in teleconferences and e-mail, but Olansen and Epp are co-located at Johnson and get folks face to face when needed.

"Whenever we felt it was necessary to get the group together face to face, we would do that. You can do a lot with telecommunications, but sometimes you still need to get together and talk," said Epp. Early on, the ALHAT team got together four times a year for a few days to review what they were learning and how to proceed. "This year we moved everything initially to Langley Research Center and tested there with the whole team: Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Langley, Johnson, and Draper Laboratories. Then we came to Johnson and brought everyone here to work on Morpheus."
Crash Landing

After several successful tethered tests at Johnson--where the Morpheus lander was held aloft by crane and its thrusters fired for continuous periods--both teams were anticipating the first free-flight attempt. They began at Kennedy on August 3 with another tethered test to ensure all systems were working as expected. Everything checked out. No shipping-related issues were found.

On August 7, Morpheus made its first free-flight attempt. The vehicle successfully rose a couple feet off the ground but, shortly after liftoff, sensors onboard the vehicle falsely detected an engine burn-through. The rest of the system reacted as programmed: it initiated a soft abort, descended to the launch-pad, and shut off its engines.

"The test lasted probably a total of 7 seconds," said Olansen. "We brought the vehicle back to the hangar, and we knew immediately it was a false indication, which we fixed." During that review, the team discovered the lander's footpads had melted slightly from being in the engine plume. They reached out to the thermal-protection experts at Kennedy for advice. "They came up with a design using excess shuttle materials, implemented it, and built new thermally protected footpads for us in about four hours."

Two days later, they were ready to try again. Loaded with mass simulators to represent the ALHAT payload--the actual sensors would be used once free-flight tests completed successfully--Morpheus again fired up its engines and began to ascend. Just 0.6 seconds after liftoff, the lander experienced data loss from its inertial measurement unit (IMU), the prime navigation sensor that tells the vehicle where it's headed.

"Without that data, the vehicle had no way to control itself," Olansen explained. "It continued to try to respond to the last piece of data it had, which was a slight correction in attitude. As a result, it continually corrected for that pitch error and never received information it was corrected, which resulted in a parabolic flight trajectory."

Morpheus crashed--and the crash was streamed live on the Internet. The response, both within the agency and from external news media, was immediate. Calls and e-mails came pouring in. Those from the agency, including from Administrator Charles Bolden, were supportive and reassuring. Upper management let the team know immediately the project would continue, and they should work to recover, learn, and improve the next build.

For Olansen, the toughest part of being a manager during the time immediately following the crash was ensuring his attention wasn't pulled away from his team. Because everything was streamed publicly, there was a lot of attention that required his response. "Instead of responding to those things right away, the first thing I did was ensure the emergency procedures and recovery activities were occurring properly. Take care of the important things first and make sure the team, the hardware, and everything else was safe," he said.

As the team picked up the pieces from the crash site, Olansen paused to gather everyone in the middle of the field and let them know their efforts were not over; Morpheus wasn't canceled; this was a chance to learn and make the next lander better.

The failure investigation never escalated to a full, formal mishap investigation largely because the team's communication and documentation had been robust, even with its scaled-back customization.

The team worked to "pre-declare" expected test outcomes, a process introduced for rapid-prototype projects at NASA. Gerry Schumann, the mishap investigator program manager at Kennedy, sat down with the project managers and safety personnel to define the potential risks. "Tests are just that: tests," he said. "If we pre-declare what might go wrong through fault analysis and perform engineering analysis afterward, then we don't need a full-blown mishap investigation.

"Appropriately notifying everyone when the crash happened was also important," Schumann added. "Terry [Wilcutt, NASA's chief of safety and mission assurance] knew right away it was not a mishap because I notified him that this outcome was identified in a pre-declare."

"When Terry got the initial notification, his quick response was this does not rise to the threshold for NASA mishap," said Mike Ryschewitsch, NASA's chief engineer. "From his perspective and my perspective, they had pre-identified that loss of the hardware was one of the possible outcomes and had done a very thorough job of safety planning to protect against the worst-case incident, which was what actually did happen, to be sure that no one would get hurt. If either one of those had not been true ... then it would have been a different slice."

Morpheus's deputy project manager, Stephen Munday, led the failure-investigation meetings that followed, sitting down with Olansen to discuss findings and next directions, which were communicated to the team, who were simultaneously working on design improvements. Since much of the evidence had burned in the crash, a definitive root cause could not be determined. But knowing the IMU failure contributed to the crash and analyzing the flight data they could recover, the team deduced that heavy vibration likely led to connectors from the IMU losing contact.

"We were able to recover vibration data all the way through the crash, and we could evaluate and assess the vibro-acoustic environment, which we believe was a significant player in the cause of the crash," said Olansen. "We know there was a failure between the IMU and the computer that was receiving the data, but the computer itself and the software were working fine. It was in the transmission from the IMU to the computer where the problem occurred. There are cable connectors, bus couplers, and the IMU itself--any of those components could have been the failure and would have provided the signature we saw."

To reduce the chance of recurrence, they are adding a second IMU and will isolate both units from vibration (which was not done initially because isolation could affect the vehicle's ability to meet ALHAT's stringent pointing requirements). In addition, they plan to upgrade the cable connectors and bus couplers with military-grade hardware as well as create a flame trench on their launch-pad to reduce the vibration.

Confident they will have a lander on which to test their payload, the ALHAT team has proceeded with testing and improvements to their sensors.

"We realized there was going to be a lull, so we quickly set out to run a helicopter test and fly trajectories toward the hazard field using our sensors exactly the way we would fly them on Morpheus," said Epp. "And that has turned out to be extremely valuable. It's going to help us get a big head start on success once Morpheus flies again. Our sensors are being updated and improved based on that helicopter test. And that test has gotten our team excited."

"We didn't stand the team down while we did a failure investigation," said Olansen. "A couple of us focused on the failure investigation, but the rest of the team focused on the redesign effort, the improvements we needed, and the rebuild. We still put rigor into the failure investigation, but we didn't have the whole team stand down to do that. I think giving them something to look forward to and work toward, which was driving them the couple years prior, was a key component to getting back on the horse."

Epp added, "The impact to us wasn't quite as bad as it was for Morpheus, but one of the things I always try to seize on is opportunity. Failure frequently opens up opportunity. Suddenly there was opportunity for us to make our system better. The whole idea of moving on and finding ways to do it better became a pretty good rallying point."
Future Flight

Since last summer, the Morpheus and ALHAT teams have become a single team, though not much has changed in the way they work together. The camaraderie and trust that existed before continue today.

"I've been with NASA for a while, and NASA culture rallies around accidents and failure," said Epp. "NASA has a culture that says pick your feet up, figure out what went wrong, and do it better. I've seen that over and over again, and I think this was another beautiful illustration of that."

Collaborative Planning for IceBridge Science

2013-05-18T18:14:49Z

George Hale: Success in science often relies as much on planning, communication, and constant improvement as it does on gathering data, writing papers, and giving lectures. This is especially true for large scientific missions like NASA's Operation IceBridge.

To ensure the mission meets its goals, shares knowledge, and fosters communication, IceBridge conducts science team meetings twice a year, most recently in January 2013, when scientists and engineers met at Goddard Space Flight Center. The knowledge shared at these meetings helps shape IceBridge's scientific aims and improves efficiency.

Operation IceBridge started in 2009 when NASA's Ice, Cloud, and Land Elevation Satellite (ICESat) stopped collecting data. With ICESat-2, NASA's replacement for ICESat, still years away from launch, there was an urgent need to fill this observation gap at a time when ice in the Arctic and Antarctic was showing signs of dramatic change related to the warming environment. IceBridge started as a way to maintain a continuous data record between the two satellite missions. Since it began in 2009, IceBridge has been gathering detailed information on many aspects of polar ice to improve understanding of how the Arctic and Antarctic are changing and how these regions interact with the global climate system.

Guidance and Advice

Like many NASA missions, IceBridge relies on a team of expert scientists to guide the project in the form of Level 1 science requirements--the mission's essential aims. These requirements and other guidance from the science team determine what IceBridge will study.

Science team members are selected for a three-year term through an open process. Candidate proposals are assessed at NASA Headquarters and the winners are chosen based on the strengths of the proposals and the particular expertise of the scientists who submit them. "NASA did the IceBridge project a great service by giving us diversity in the expertise and perspectives of the science team members," said Jackie Richter-Menge, IceBridge science team co-lead and researcher with the U.S. Army Cold Regions Research and Engineering Laboratory in Hanover, NH.

At the end of each three-year term, a new call for proposals goes out. "This allows members of the science community to actively participate and engage in IceBridge," said Michael Studinger, Operation IceBridge's project scientist, based at Goddard. "Open competition every three years is a mechanism to make sure the project is supported by the best ideas from the science community."

Because IceBridge studies many aspects of polar ice, its science team requires a wide range of expertise. One group studies sea ice and one looks at land ice. The land-ice group, led by Ken Jezek, a scientist at the Byrd Polar Research Center at Ohio State University, concerns itself with the Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets, Canadian ice caps, and various glaciers. Richter-Menge leads the sea-ice group, which focuses on sea ice in the Arctic and Southern oceans. The specialized groups also work with each other and the IceBridge project science office on matters related to the overall mission plan during coordinated sessions at the meetings.

Meeting of the Minds

Members of the science team work together continually through e-mail and telephone, but their twice-yearly team meetings have the most impact. During these sessions the science team meets with mission representatives and scientists using IceBridge data, reviews mission goals, and works on plans for the upcoming IceBridge campaign.

Campaign planning is a vital part of the science team meetings, but the presentations on research are probably just as important. Listening to researchers at the meetings led to surveys of the Beaufort and Chukchi seas, collaborative activities such as IceBridge's work with the European Space Agency's CryoSat verification campaign, and the quick-look sea-ice data product that rose from a need to get data for seasonal predictions more quickly. "Meetings are a big part of knowing what the community is doing and how IceBridge figures into the picture," said Richter-Menge.

In addition to bringing forth new ideas, listening to the polar science community gives the IceBridge science team a way to learn how the mission can improve what it does. The influence of this process can be seen in the differences between Arctic flight lines in 2011 and 2012. Sea-ice cover in the Beaufort and Chukchi sea regions north of Alaska are seeing big changes and there is growing interest in commercial activity. Community feedback highlighted the shortage of good information on sea ice there, motivating the team to consider more flights in this region. "The big jump in coverage came from the sea-ice team listening to the community," said Richter-Menge.

Choosing Paths

One of the most important and visible tasks of the science team meetings has to be the selection of campaign flight lines. This process involves looking at the needs of many different scientists and then prioritizing which flights will meet which needs while working within the mission's budget and time constraints. The requests are vetted by the science team and then turned into potential flight lines that are discussed at the meeting. During these discussions the science team decides which flights meet the most needs, starting with those laid out in the Level 1 science requirements.

Scientists work to balance trade-offs--for example, compromising on repeat flights in order to expand coverage area. Through this process of give and take, the team reaches a consensus on which flights best meet the mission's overall goals. Prioritizing the next campaign's surveys is one of the main highlights of IceBridge science team meetings. "One of our primary roles is to make recommendations on flight lines," said Richter-Menge.

This selection procedure has been improving over the past year in a manner reflecting an overall move toward process improvement with the IceBridge science team and project science office. In the past, scientists would send e-mails to various people in the science team or project science office. "You might have to search through e-mails from twenty or thirty people to put together one mission," said John Sonntag, Airborne Topographic Mapper senior scientist and IceBridge mission planner.

"We needed a unified way to manage requirements," said Christy Hansen, IceBridge project manager. "So we created a spreadsheet for them to fill out." The 2012 Antarctic campaign was the first use of this new process, which turned out to be a success. This sort of improvement is at the heart of the interaction between the science team and project science office. "We ask the team what problems they had in the past and work to make things more efficient," Hansen said.
Improving the Process

If the science team's job is to make recommendations for the mission, then the IceBridge project science office's job is to turn them into reality. As project scientist, Studinger handles details such as how to implement Level 1 science requirements. Hansen manages the overall logistical and planning aspects of the mission, ensuring the mission is meeting requirements and following process. One of the biggest parts of this task is keeping the lines of communication open. "We don't want people feeling like they're left out of the loop," said Hansen.

Two new tools for keeping these lines open are IceBridge's science web site and mission tools suite. The mission tools suite is a portal where the various members of the IceBridge team share documents, track the mission's milestones on a shared calendar, and communicate with each other via an online message board. The science web site serves as a one-stop shop for the science team, project science office and instrument teams, and researchers in the polar science community, containing updated Level 1 science requirements, lists of publications, and links to IceBridge data. In the future, it will include tools and computer code for working with that data. These tools and the continual interaction with the science team, instrument teams, and groups like the National Science Foundation and NASA Headquarters are all about making the mission as efficient and successful as possible.

Not all of IceBridge's improvements rely on high technology. To streamline the sometimes time-consuming process of prioritizing flight lines, one science team member came up with the idea to use printouts of proposed flights. "I had a feeling that people were having trouble visualizing the whole scheme," said Robin Bell, scientist at the Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory at Columbia University. By sorting the printouts into low-, medium-, and high-priority groups, the science team was able to reach a decision on flight lines and walk away with a better sense of the mission's goals.

Looking to the Future

In addition to planning for the next IceBridge campaign, the science team is also looking further ahead. Part of this is coordinating collaborative efforts for next year's campaigns. "We're looking down the road and fostering cooperation," said Richter-Menge. A couple of the opportunities currently being explored include coordinating with research planned by Germany's Alfred Wegener Institute later in 2013 and a new season of European Space Agency CryoSat verification work slated for 2014.

The IceBridge science team is also working on the coming transition to ICESat-2. The satellite, scheduled for launch in 2016, will carry a laser altimeter at a far higher altitude than IceBridge. To ensure a smooth transition, the team is collaborating with researchers using the land, vegetation, and ice sensor (LVIS), a laser altimeter instrument. "We're working with the LVIS team on collection of high-altitude data," said Richter-Menge.

Before the Arctic campaign ends in May, IceBridge will start working on goals for the Antarctic flights coming up later in the year and--using the mission's newly honed processes and tools--will prepare for the science team meeting taking place this summer.

The Legacy of NASA's Balloon Missions

2013-05-18T18:12:27Z

Don Cohen: In an article on the NuSTAR launch delay in the fall 2012 issue of ASK, I wrote, "NuSTAR, the Nuclear Spectroscopic Telescope Array, contains the first focusing telescopes designed to look at high-energy X-ray radiation." Soon after that issue was sent out, complaints began to arrive: What about the balloon missions with focusing X-ray telescopes that preceded it?

Didn't I know about HERO, the High-Energy Replicating Optics mission? Or HEFT, the High-Energy Focusing Telescope? And what about InFOCuS, the International Focusing Optics Collaboration for micro-Crab Sensitivity? Even the names of two of the three made it clear that those pre-NuSTAR missions featured focusing high-energy telescopes.

Well, no, I didn't know about them. I'd never heard of them. My mistake. In the online version of the NuSTAR article, we added a qualifier--the first focusing telescopes "on orbit"--to the offending sentence to make it true. I promised to correct the error in a later print issue of ASK.

Which is what I'm doing here. But when I began to look into those balloon missions, it became clear that they should have more than a brief mention in a one- or two-sentence apology. They are well worth writing about in their own right. And the way they have fostered expertise and technical advances that made NuSTAR possible and continue to contribute to new missions is an especially rich subject for ASK.

Why Balloons?

View from inside the optical bench of the HERO configuration consisting of eight co-aligned mirror modules, each module containing twelve mirror shells.

The drawbacks of balloon-based astronomy are obvious. The missions are very brief compared to the years-long life of orbiting telescopes, many lasting less than a full day. Although the balloons rise high enough to avoid much of the atmospheric distortion and absorption that limits Earth-based telescopes, they do not eliminate those problems entirely. And even the thin atmosphere above 125,000 feet exerts forces that make holding a steady focus on distant objects challenging.

But there are important advantages. The obvious one is cost. Launching a balloon payload costs a tiny fraction of what a rocket launch does. And, unlike an orbital mission, a balloon's gondola and the instruments it contains can usually be recovered intact and used again.

The low cost and instrument reuse make the balloon mission especially useful for testing and improving instruments--as opposed to the orbital-science missions whose instruments need to be as close to perfect as possible before launch. That low cost and the relative frequency of missions also make them ideal opportunities for graduate students in high-energy astronomy to learn their trade--something that the more expensive but budget-limited orbital missions could not accommodate. Brian Ramsey, leader of Marshall Space Flight Center's HERO mission, notes that balloon missions' time scale of a few years is ideal for PhD students. Because of that relatively short span from start to finish and because balloon mission teams are much smaller than the teams responsible for orbital missions, students can be involved in every aspect of a mission.
From HEFT to NuSTAR

Graduate student experience with balloon-based high-energy astronomy brought Fiona Harrison into the field. The desire to build a more sensitive, focusing instrument eventually led to her becoming principal investigator for HEFT, a NASA-sponsored mission carried out by Caltech, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, Columbia University, and the Danish National Space Center. Harrison, a professor of astronomy at Caltech, says that HEFT helped develop the technology that eventually made NuSTAR possible.

Proposed in 1995, HEFT's first flight occurred in 2005. The ten years between proposal and launch included four or five years of technology development of the instrument's optics and detectors. A big challenge of imaging high-energy X-rays is that they can only be reflected toward a detector if they strike a mirror at a very shallow angle, grazing the surface like a stone skipping off the surface of a lake. At a steeper angle of incidence, they will penetrate the reflecting material instead. So HEFT's mirrors are conical tubes that focus X-rays that enter almost parallel to their surface. In order to collect enough of the radiation to create a useful image, the telescope consists of several hundred reflecting surfaces nested each within the others, separated by a thin substrate.

The teams originally used aluminum foil as the substrate but that material could not hold its shape well enough to meet the required rigorous specifications. Through trial and error, they eventually settled on a "slumped" glass substrate--extremely thin glass sheets, like those developed for flat-panel televisions, melted into the proper shape over molds (called "mandrels"). Designing and building an effective detector was also a process of trial and error. Before the first launch, several prototypes using different technologies had to be tried so the right combination could be built into the flight payload.

Without HEFT, there probably would have been no NuSTAR. For one thing, the success of the balloon mission was an incontestable proof of concept that helped convince the committee judging candidate proposals for NASA's Explorer program that NuSTAR could perform as promised. And the HEFT team became the core of the NuSTAR team, bringing their experience and the knowledge it fostered to the orbital mission. So in addition to providing its own science results, like an X-ray image of the Crab Nebula, HEFT was a test bed and training ground for the later mission.

Not all the expertise that made NuSTAR possible comes from HEFT. At Goddard Space Flight Center, Will Zhang was working on slumped-glass substrate for mirrors for the proposed Constellation-X mission (which later merged with the European XEUS, or X-ray Evolving Universe Spectroscopy, project to become the International X-ray Observatory, or IXO). Harrison was lead of the Constellation-X team and thus knew about Zhang's work. She determined that it had advantages over what had been done for HEFT and asked him to make glass segments for NuSTAR, which were then coated and built into mirrors by the same team that built HEFT.

From HERO to ART

Marshall's HERO mission uses a different technology for building its telescopes. Instead of the slumped-glass substrate segments used on HEFT and NuSTAR, it uses electroformed nickel replication to create nickel-cobalt shells that are then coated with a thin reflective layer of iridium. Only 1/100th of an inch thick, the shells are grown in a tank on polished aluminum mandrels. Unlike the slumped-glass substrates, which must be bonded together to make a conical whole, the nickel-cobalt shells are single conical pieces. This allows the HERO technology to provide greater angular resolution--the ability of a telescope to separately image objects at a small angular distance from one another. NuSTAR's optics have an angular resolution of about 50 arc seconds; the angular resolution of HERO's optics is 25 arc seconds. (One arc second is 1/3,600th of a degree of angular measurement.) HERO's mirrors are, however, relatively heavier than glass-substrate mirrors.

HERO took the first focused hard X-ray images of any kind in 2001--images of Cygnus X-1 and the Crab Nebula. It is scheduled to fly next in the fall of 2013 to look at our sun as well as targets outside the solar system.

HERO's superior imaging technology has been used on FOXSI, the Berkeley-based Focusing Optics X-ray Solar Imager, a sounding-rocket mission that flew in November 2012. And the Russian space program is purchasing HERO-like optics for the ART (Astronomical Roentgen Telescope) instrument aboard the Russian-led Spectrum Roentgen Gamma project, an orbital mission designed for an all-sky X-ray survey and scheduled for a 2014 launch.

The Ongoing Legacy

Jack Tueller, principal investigator for InFOCuS, describes the "enormous technological evolution" that has characterized that mission (a collaboration between Goddard and the University of Nagoya), which launched its first balloon-borne telescope in 2001. As was true of HEFT and HERO, the InFOCuS team had to work toward the design of an effective instrument. Some of the early versions of nested reflective surfaces would "crinkle up," says Tueller. Commenting on the trial-and-error opportunities offered by balloon missions, Tueller adds, "The risk is less than for orbital missions. If it's not successful, you get the payload back and fly it again."

InFOCuS continues to develop. X-Calibur, a new instrument that will detect the polarization of X-ray, will fly by 2014. And the InFOCuS team is investigating long-duration flights that would be launched from Antarctica, where wind patterns and 24-hours-a-day summer sunlight make the long flights possible. Thirty-day flights have occurred and a newly designed high-pressure balloon might stay aloft for more than one hundred days. That, notes Ramsey, could make them a low-cost competitor with orbital missions.

A new pointing system that can keep balloon-based telescopes aimed at distant objects with unprecedented accuracy should also contribute to the scientific value of future missions. The Wallops Arc Second Pointer (or WASP), developed at NASA's Wallops Flight Facility, can steadily aim a telescope at an object or area a single arc-second wide. Ramsey hopes that WASP will be used on a future "Super-HERO" mission.

InFOCuS also currently features a rigid telescope 8 meters long, something not possible in the confined payload space of existing orbital launch vehicles. But what scientists and engineers learn from that instrument can guide future orbital missions that have a deployable folded version of an instrument of similar size.

Zhang's continuing work on slumped-glass-based mirrors will also serve future missions. Currently, he is able to produce substrates with approximately ten times the resolution of NuSTAR's instruments. The challenge here is whether they can be built up into a full optic and retain the good performance. The technology was expected to be used in IXO. That mission has been canceled, but the technology is ready for the future application that will come and will bring with it new discoveries.

The story of these past, present, and future missions shows how technological progress happens. Instruments become increasingly sophisticated and powerful by incorporating and improving on the achievements of their predecessors. That improvement is possible because of the openness of scientific and engineering communities to share with and learn from one another. There is competition, Zhang admits, but, he says, "We compete and cooperate." Communication is key. "We go to the same conferences," says Zhang. "We read and publish in the same publications; we hear things through the grapevine." And they share the same goal: a fuller understanding of how the universe works.

Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada At Night As Seen From Orbit

2013-05-18T12:41:30Z

One of the crew members aboard the International Space Station photographed this might image of Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada on March 31, 2013.

ISS035-E-013076 (31 March 2013) - high res (2.9 M) low res (121 K)

STEREO Detects a CME From the Sun

2013-05-18T00:39:20Z

On 5:24 a.m. EDT on May 17, 2013, the sun erupted with an Earth-directed coronal mass ejection or CME, a solar phenomenon that can send billions of tons of solar particles into space that can reach Earth one to three days later and affect electronic systems in satellites and on the ground.

Experimental NASA research models, based on observations from NASA's Solar Terrestrial Relations Observatory, show that the CME left the sun at speeds of around 745 miles per second. The solar material in CMEs cannot pass through the atmosphere to affect humans on Earth.

Not to be confused with a solar flare, a CME can cause a space weather phenomenon called a geomagnetic storm, which occurs when they connect with the outside of the Earth's magnetic envelope, the magnetosphere, for an extended period of time.

The CME may also pass by Spitzer and its mission operators have been notified. If warranted, operators can put spacecraft into safe mode to protect the instruments from the solar material.

NOAA's Space Weather Prediction Center (http://swpc.noaa.gov) is the U.S. government's official source for space weather forecasts, alerts, watches and warnings.