Have a great and safe weekend everyone….
Hope you can join us next Thursday at Hibachi Grill for our monthly NASA retirees luncheon at 11:30!
NASA and Human Spaceflight News
Friday – April 25, 2014
Women Who Have Gone Into Space
TIME Highlights Women Who Have Gone Into Space
In its "Time 100" special section, TIME reports on the 57 women who went into space, starting with the Soviet Union's Valentina Tereshkova. Kathryn Sullivan, the "first American woman to space walk," was noted as a 2014 TIME100 honoree. The article highlights these women's achievements while stating that the U.S.' current program is in a "state of drift" because of its inability to send people to the ISS. Still, according to the article, it is good that over time the fact that women are going into space is drawing less attention, thus highlighting how "routine" spaceflight is becoming.
HEADLINES AND LEADS
NASA Space Kit by LittleBits: A Starter Satellite for Your Kid Astronaut
Nathan Olivarez-Giles – Wall Street Journal
NASA is partnering with an innovative toymaker to show kids how they can get involved in a whole new frontier: building space gadgetry.
NASA tries space kits to engage kids in science and space
Sarah McBride – Reuters
Making mini satellite dishes that collect signals or building remote-controlled mini Rovers such as the kind NASA has used on Mars are the types of activities that could interest kids in science, but their complexity can derail all but the most enthusiastic hobbyist.
Hubble Space Telescope instruments star in new Smithsonian exhibit
Robert Pearlman – collectSPACE
Almost a quarter of a century after the Hubble Space Telescope was launched into orbit, two of the observatory's most famous instruments have landed in a new exhibit at the Smithsonian's National Air and Space Museum.
Jack Swigert Aerospace Academy students chat with space station astronauts
Debbie Kelley – Colorado Springs (CO) Gazette
Students at Jack Swigert Aerospace Academy had a real out-of-this-world experience on Thursday.
Morpheus lander test flight a success
Florida Today
Score another success for NASA's Morpheus lander.
Russian Space Agency Plans China Shift Amid Sanctions Fears
Matthew Bodner – The Moscow Times
Russia's space agency chief said that Russia did not need Western space technology, and pledged further cooperation with China amid concerns that additional U.S. sanctions could cripple the space industry and collaborative projects like the International Space Station, or ISS.
Crimea's space infrastructure to be used and developed - Roscosmos
ITAR-TASS
Crimea's space infrastructure will be used and developed, head of the Russian Space Agency (Roscosmos) Oleg Ostapenko told a news conference on Thursday.
Spacewatch: Supplying the ISS
Alan Pickup – The Guardian
Since the final space shuttle retired in 2011, the only means of flying astronauts to and from the International Space Station (ISS) has been by Russian Soyuz spacecraft. This is far from ideal, particularly when one considers the current tensions over Ukraine.
Space Radiation Remains Major Hazard for Humans Going to Mars
Adam Mann – Wired
During a conference this week in Washington D.C., enthusiasts are attempting to rouse support for a manned mission to Mars sometime in the next two decades. NASA is there, as are many key players in the spaceflight community. But there continue to be major obstacles to manned Mars missions.
IndyCar drivers Hinchcliffe, Newgarden revel in Space Camp adventures during Huntsville visit
Mark McCarter - Huntsville (AL) Times
James Hinchcliffe steered the massive spaceflight trainer contraption to its finish platform and proclaimed, "The Eagle has landed."
Plan to move NASA jumbo jet through streets of Clear Lake is finalized
Craig Hlavaty – Houston Chronicle
Space Center Houston has released a map of the route that a disassembled Boeing 747 jumbo jet will take early next week as it moves to the museum.
What Happens When You Cook French Fries in Space
Ria Misra – io9
Space is full of mysteries, but one in particular has been weighing on our minds lately: How's the food up there? We're taking a look at how space meals get made, the best astronaut food hacks, and the experiment that showed just where the best french fries in the galaxy would really be found.
COMPLETE STORIES
NASA Space Kit by LittleBits: A Starter Satellite for Your Kid Astronaut
Nathan Olivarez-Giles – Wall Street Journal
NASA is partnering with an innovative toymaker to show kids how they can get involved in a whole new frontier: building space gadgetry.
In 2011, when Ayah Bdeir created her toy line LittleBits, as a student at MIT's Media Lab, her hope was to make engineering fun and accessible. A collaboration with Korg, an iconic synthesizer company, was a bid to make playing music less intimidating. Now, Bdeir is teaming up with NASA.
"So much is happening with space and our culture right now," Bdeir told the Journal in an interview. "Cosmos has relaunched on TV, SpaceX has docked on the ISS, scientists have found a new planet about the size of Earth that could have had water on it at one point. But space still seems out of reach—it's not personal, not something we can participate in ourselves. That's what this collaboration is about."
Like other LittleBits kits, the Space Kit for Earth, introduced and on sale today, is made up of small, plastic "modules" that snap together magnetically. They form to make all sorts of battery-powered gadgetry. The Space Kit includes 12 modules such as a microphone, a light sensor, a power switch, a speaker, a DC motor, a number module that has a two-digit display and a remote trigger to turn whatever you build on or off.
Along with all the pieces, there are also 10 'hands-on projects" that NASA designed to help kids build specific devices: a mini Mars Rover, a wave generator and a scaled-down satellite dish (which, as LittleBits' general philosophy, also requires the reuse of a few household items: a paper or plastic bowl and some aluminum foil).
Bdeir says NASA and LittleBits worked together for a year and a half to get the science behind each project just right. Like other LittleBits kits, the Space Kit for Earth isn't cheap at $189, but it also does plenty regular old LEGO blocks can't do.
"We try to sense the pulse of society and figure out the fields that people are interested in, but also a bit scared of—engineering, music, space," she said. "Collaborators like Korg and NASA help us do that, help us show that these fields don't have to be intimidating."
NASA tries space kits to engage kids in science and space
Sarah McBride – Reuters
Making mini satellite dishes that collect signals or building remote-controlled mini Rovers such as the kind NASA has used on Mars are the types of activities that could interest kids in science, but their complexity can derail all but the most enthusiastic hobbyist.
Now, NASA, the U.S. space agency, hopes it has found a workaround through new space kits and a collaboration with a New York-based startup called LittleBits.
NASA, through its Aura mission to study the Earth's ozone layer and climate, is working with LittleBits to develop activities around a new $189 space kit, announced on Thursday.
Using electronic modules such as motors and dimmers that snap together, the creations will perform functions that normally might require hours of tedious tinkering or piles of electronics components.
The new kits are more demanding than playing with snappable blocks like Legos, but far easier than wiring, soldering or programming.
"You don't have that frustration level," said Steve Heck, a 5th and 6th grade math and science teacher at Mulberry Elementary in Ohio who says too many students lose interest in science and space experiments when the projects become too difficult.
"You're going to get a much better student in the long run."
For NASA, the partnership has a more specific goal.
"From our perspective, it was to engage kids in how NASA uses the electromagnetic spectrum," said Ginger Butcher, education and public outreach lead for the Aura mission. "We can see how much ozone is in the atmosphere. We can see features on Mars."
NASA reached out to LittleBits after Butcher saw its chief executive and founder, Ayah Bdeir, give a talk in 2012 about the company's online modules and decided they could be helpful for Aura's educational goals.
LittleBits is building and selling the kit while NASA is developing the activities that go along with them. NASA will not benefit financially from the sale of the kits, Butcher said.
While the playthings are designed to stay earthbound, a few lucky kids could see their creations end up in space.
Working with a company called Xcor Aerospace, Heck said he hopes to get 10 student projects onto a suborbital flight in 2015. The students will be selected through a contest, and Heck said he believes many will submit LittleBits-based projects.
LittleBits says the kits will boost revenue as well as the company's missions of incorporating better design into electronics and increasing familiarity with electronics among the public.
"Not understanding electronics is a form of illiteracy," said CEO Bdeir. Her company is backed by venture-capital firms including the Foundry Group, Khosla Ventures and True Ventures.
It is unclear what demand may emerge for the kits - Bdeir said she expects to sell tens of thousands - or if they really will help children better understand the electromagnetic spectrum or outer space.
They go on sale at a time when space-related issues are increasingly coming into the public eye.
A few days ago, scientists announced they have found an earthlike planet known as Kepler-186f.
Hubble Space Telescope instruments star in new Smithsonian exhibit
Robert Pearlman – collectSPACE
Almost a quarter of a century after the Hubble Space Telescope was launched into orbit, two of the observatory's most famous instruments have landed in a new exhibit at the Smithsonian's National Air and Space Museum.
On Wednesday (April 23), the Washington, D.C. institution debuted "Repairing Hubble" in its Space Hall. The display, which is positioned under the full-size structural dynamic test mockup for the Hubble, features the Corrective Optics Space Telescope Axial Replacement (COSTAR) and the Wide Field and Planetary Camera 2 (WFPC2) instruments that were returned to Earth by the space shuttle after the final Hubble servicing mission in 2009.
"The achievements associated with WFPC2 and COSTAR date from 1993, when repairs accomplished on the first servicing mission enabled the telescope to function in an optimum way," J.R. "Jack" Dailey, director of the National Air and Space Museum, said at a reception marking the exhibit opening Wednesday. "The exhibition tells the story of the Hubble by tracing the brilliant technology it required and showing the human skill and courage that led to its long and successful life."
"This exhibition is in anticipation of the 25th anniversary of the operational life of Hubble," he stated. "The display will enable millions of people to understand how the telescope has enriched our understanding of the universe."
Soon after the Hubble Space Telescope was deployed into orbit by the shuttle Discovery on April 25, 1990, scientists discovered the telescope's primary mirror had a flaw called "spherical aberration." The mirror's outer edge was ground too flat by a depth roughly equal to 1/50th the thickness of a human hair. Its images were fuzzy because some of the light from the objects being studied was being scattered.
After the amount of aberration was understood, scientists and engineers developed WFPC2 and COSTAR.
COSTAR deployed corrective optics ("contact lenses") in front of three of Hubble's first generation instruments but it could not correct for the vision of the Wide Field/Planetary Camera. So, a replacement instrument, which was already in work as an upgrade, was hastily completed as WFPC2.
WFPC2 had its own corrective optics to compensate for the scattered light from the primary mirror. This allowed it to record razor-sharp images of celestial objects for more than 15 years. One of its landmark observations was the 1995 "Hubble Deep Field" that captured the light of 4,000 galaxies stretching 12 billion years back into time.
"COSTAR fixed Hubble's eyesight and the WFPC, and its 48 filters, allowed scientists to study precise wavelengths of light," Charles Bolden, NASA Administrator and pilot of the mission that deployed the Hubble, said. "Its postage-stamp-sized circuitry recorded the first light from some of the most massive phenomena we've ever comprehended."
"I am proud to have had a part in Hubble's legacy and very pleased today that the millions of visitors to the Air and Space Museum will be able to see the actual space-flown instruments that have peered across the galaxy at some of the most amazing cosmic phenomena ever witnessed," Bolden added.
The WFPC2 and COSTAR instruments were donated by NASA to the Smithsonian in November 2009, six months after they returned from orbit by the STS-125 crew on the space shuttle Atlantis. After a brief initial exhibition at the National Air and Space Museum, they travelled to the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in California and other venues before returning in 2010 to go on permanent public display in Washington.
In addition to the instruments, "Repairing Hubble" features a selection of the images that the telescope captured as a result of being outfitted with the COSTAR and WFPC2.
We have to remind kids when we bring them here that all those pictures, many of them came from this camera and other instruments like it," Bolden said. "So when they look at [WFPC2], it helps them understand that it is more than just a box. It is an incredible instrument."
"All told," said former WFPC2 principal investigator John Trauger, "this object orbited the Earth 85,000 times, taken something on the order of 135,000 images, supported tens of thousands of scientific papers, and it is kind of a joy to see that it has worked out so well."
"Repairing Hubble" was supported by NASA, including the Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, and the Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore. The exhibit was designed and constructed by the National Air and Space Museum's staff.
"Enjoy it," John Grunsfeld, NASA associate administrator for the Science Mission Directorate and an astronaut who flew on three of the servicing missions to Hubble. "I know millions of people visiting the museum will come by and will be stimulated by the images and the exhibit."
Jack Swigert Aerospace Academy students chat with space station astronauts
Debbie Kelley – Colorado Springs (CO) Gazette
Students at Jack Swigert Aerospace Academy had a real out-of-this-world experience on Thursday.
Eighth grader Ian Robertson got to bid "good morning" to two NASA astronauts, and sixth grader Karen Arvizo asked how they eat their food since there's no gravity in space.
"It was very exciting," Ian said.
"It was fun," Karen said.
What made the conversation unique is that the astronauts are aboard the International Space Station, which is orbiting 260 miles above the Earth. And they spoke to the students live.
American flight engineers Steve Swanson and Rick Mastracchio, two of six crew members of ISS Expedition 39, chatted with the students in Colorado Springs via a special downlink made possible through NASA's Johnson Space Center in Houston, Texas.
The astronauts appeared on a large screen set up in the school auditorium.
The pair demonstrated how they can toss food into their mouths or simply suspend a bite in the air and move their bodies toward it.
Karen said that was her favorite part of the 20-minute exchange, and now she really wants to become an astronaut.
"I've always wanted to go up in space," she said.
Students also were interested in knowing how often the astronauts take a shower, how their days compare to being on Earth, how they use science and math principles and what they do for fun.
The answers went something like this. Because there's no running water in space, astronauts shower before and after their flight and take sponge baths during their mission.
Their days follow a similar routine: They cover the windows of the orbiter, sleep for eight hours, have breakfast, brush their teeth and go to work. But it's a shorter commute, they joked.
They use a lot of science and math in doing their jobs of collecting samples and repairing equipment. For example, Swanson and Masatracchio took a short space walk on Wednesday to replace a backup computer, a vital data link to Earth.
For fun, they take advantage of weightlessness and float around in the air. Swanson did a back flip for students. They also take pictures of their hometowns from large windows. The ISS orbits the Earth every 90 minutes and flies at 17,500 miles per hour, they said.
Classes at Jack Swigert selected 15 students to each ask one question, which they also voted on, said Cami Debise, project manager for the Magnet Schools Assistance Program grant. The funding is enabling the charter middle school, a project of the Space Foundation and Colorado Springs School District 11, to develop its aerospace focus.
"You can bring in guest speakers but to have students be able to speak to the astronauts while they're in space and answer their questions is an amazing opportunity," Debise said. "I think it opens their eyes to all the STEM (science, technology, engineering and math) activities out there."
Students from schools in Texas, Alabama, Michigan, Minnesota and New York also watched the event.
Jack Swigert, which has about 500 students, has been trying to get selected for a live educational downlink through NASA's Digital Learning Network almost since it opened in the fall of 2009, said Maripat Webster, who also works with the grant program.
This time, connections helped. An Air Force Academy engineering instructor, Col. Jim Dutton Jr., piloted the Space Shuttle Discovery in 2010, during the STS-131 mission. Mastracchio was one of the crew members, and the two became friends. Dutton asked Mastracchio if he would do a downlink from his current mission with cadets at the academy. After getting the go-ahead, Dutton decided to extend the unusual opportunity to Jack Swigert because of its space and astronautics emphasis and involve cadets who are in the STEM Outreach Club. About 60 cadets attended the downlink and then provided engineering-related demonstrations and hands-on activities for students for the remainder of the day.
Winston Sanks, a junior at the academy and president of the STEM Outreach Club, said the group does up to 70 demonstrations in the community each year but the event at Jack Swigert was unlike any other.
"Talking live to the astronauts was a great way to start the program," he said.
Cadets taught the middle school students how to fire a hybrid rocket, operate robotic arms with an Xbox controller, create a mini water treatment facility and build airplanes.
"Honestly, we just love getting out in the community and inspiring kids about STEM," Sanks said. "This is our way of having fun."
Morpheus lander test flight a success
Florida Today
Score another success for NASA's Morpheus lander.
Today's test flight from Kennedy Space Center appeared to have gone off without any problems.
This time the goal was a 98-second flight climbing about 803 feet and flying downrange 1,333 feet, with a pre-planned maneuver to change its trajectory.
"SUCCESS! Morpheus has landed," NASA tweeted.
The four-legged vehicle, a Johnson Space Center-led technology development project, has had a string of successful test flights.
Russian Space Agency Plans China Shift Amid Sanctions Fears
Matthew Bodner – The Moscow Times
Russia's space agency chief said that Russia did not need Western space technology, and pledged further cooperation with China amid concerns that additional U.S. sanctions could cripple the space industry and collaborative projects like the International Space Station, or ISS.
"We can independently perform any task," even if it means replacing Western components, said Oleg Ostapenko, head of the Federal Space Agency, or Roscosmos, in an interview with Vedomosti on Wednesday.
He said that Russia was still willing to continue its involvement in joint ventures, technology transfer and production, but only if such projects are "mutually beneficial" and not used as leverage, likely referring to the ongoing spat between Washington and Moscow over Russia's actions in Ukraine.
Space has already been dragged into that feud, however.
The U.S. State Department has instituted a ban on export licenses for advanced dual-use technology, namely satellites, preventing U.S. firms from purchasing launches on Russian rockets.
Yet, the most important commercial interaction between the U.S. and Russian space industries, the export of two types of Russian-made rocket engine, has not been affected, and Ostapenko said that the decision on whether to continue these exports lies with the U.S., not Russia.
One of the engines, the RD-180, is manufactured for use in the Atlas V rocket — the mainstay of the U.S. rocket fleet.
In early April, NASA was ordered to suspend cooperation with Roscosmos, though it was allowed to keep working with Russia on the ISS program. However, Ostapenko said during the interview that Roscosmos has not been notified of the change and that cooperation continued as normal.
In any case, ISS depends more on Russia than any of the other 14 nations involved in the program, Ostapenko said.
Russia's Soyuz rocket is currently the only way astronauts and cosmonauts can reach the station, and Ostapenko expressed confidence that Russia will continue to enjoy its dominance of the international launch market, despite the U.S.' ongoing work on an alternative to Soyuz.
U.S. commercial space firm SpaceX expects to complete work on a manned version of its Dragon spacecraft by 2015.
"We are absolutely competitive, and the backlog that we have and that we are accumulating enables us to claim superiority over our colleagues," Ostapenko said. "We are working hard to make our solutions competitive, including in terms of cost."
Russia is actively working with China, the newest player in the space industry, and will continue working with them on a number of programs, particularly in the field of deep space exploration, he added.
While Russia weighs up a recent NASA proposal to stretch the lifespan of the ISS to at least 2024, China, which has been left out of the ISS program, is working on deploying its first large, multi-module space station, and is also pursuing a manned moon program.
Crimea's space infrastructure to be used and developed - Roscosmos
ITAR-TASS
Crimea's space infrastructure will be used and developed, head of the Russian Space Agency (Roscosmos) Oleg Ostapenko told a news conference on Thursday.
Crimea, in his words, "has many interesting things": an observatory, a unique station near Yevpatoria, and a number of other stations.
"We have decided what is interesting for us," he said. "We have set up a joint group with a number of other agencies, which have their own visions and possibilities of further use (of Crimea's space infrastructure). Now we are working on a programme on what is to be used and how to develop these facilities in future," he added.
Earlier, the director of the Main (Pulkovo) Astronomical Observatory of the Russian Academy of Sciences, Alexander Stepanov has said that the reunification of Crimea with Russia can and must lead to revival of science on the peninsula, first of all astronomy.
The scientific potential created in Crime in the Soviet times can be restored, he believes. Astronomical instruments are in good working condition, but many scientists from the observatory left for the United States, Belgium and Russia. Many went into business.
There is a reflector a 2.5-metre telescope, one of Europe's largest, and several smaller telescopes at the Crimean astrophysical observatory. A powerful 22-metre radio telescope is located in the village of Nauchny. After technical renovation, it can give perfect material to study Gamma radiation, Stepanov notes.
"The Crimean observatory can become the brightest diamond in the crown of Russia's astronomy," the scientist said, "not only for its good instruments, but for its climate favourable to take high-quality pictures," he noted. St. Petersburg, where the Pulkovo observatory is located, has only 80-90 clear days a year, while Crimea has 200.
With a competent approach, the scientific potential in Crime can make the peninsula a leading scientific centre, he concluded.
Spacewatch: Supplying the ISS
Alan Pickup – The Guardian
Since the final space shuttle retired in 2011, the only means of flying astronauts to and from the International Space Station (ISS) has been by Russian Soyuz spacecraft. This is far from ideal, particularly when one considers the current tensions over Ukraine.
In terms of supplying cargo to the ISS, the situation is very different. For the ISS's first decade, this was handled exclusively by the shuttles and Russian Progress craft. Now, though, there is an international fleet of supply vehicles and a growing number of flights.
True, Progress craft maintain an important lifeline, being responsible for about half of the flights over the past two years. In fact, one arrived at the ISS on 9 April and the next is pencilled in for launch on 23 July. These remain docked to the ISS for a few months, during which time they become stuffed with rubbish before they undock and are incinerated on re-entry over the Pacific.
Japan has sent four HTV or Kounotori supply craft to date, with another planned for next February. Europe is using its ATV vehicles, with the fifth, called Georges Lemaître, due for launch on 26 July. Two commercial US companies also help. Orbital Sciences and SpaceX have their Cygnus and Dragon capsules respectively, with the latest Dragon and its Falcon rocket sighted as they soared over the UK 20 minutes after launch on the 18th. A Cygnus is due on 6 May, and a further Dragon a month later.
In total, there were eight supply missions in each of 2012 and 2013, and four to date, plus another seven planned, in 2014.
Space Radiation Remains Major Hazard for Humans Going to Mars
Adam Mann – Wired
During a conference this week in Washington D.C., enthusiasts are attempting to rouse support for a manned mission to Mars sometime in the next two decades. NASA is there, as are many key players in the spaceflight community. But there continue to be major obstacles to manned Mars missions.
A new study highlights one of the big problems with extended space travel: galactic cosmic ray radiation. According to the report, astronauts on the International Space Station would receive doses that exceed their lifetime limits after just 18 months for women and two years for men. A Mars mission crew would be spending at least this long in the harsh radiation of deep space.
Cosmic rays are a unique type of radiation in that they are difficult to shield against. And the new research points out that the cancer an astronaut could develop after too much cosmic ray radiation is bound to be very dangerous.
"The type of tumors that cosmic ray ions make are more aggressive than what we get from other radiation," said Francis Cucinotta a radiation expert at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, and author of the new report published Apr. 23 in PLoS One. The news isn't all doom and gloom. During certain periods in the solar cycle, galactic cosmic rays are reduced. Biologists are also working out exactly what kinds of medicine, from antioxidants to aspirin, could help deal with cosmic ray damage in the body. But more than anything, Cucinotta and other radiation experts recommend that NASA gather far more data about the health risks their astronauts are exposed to.
Approximately 41 percent of people in the U.S. will be diagnosed with some type of cancer at some point in their lives. Certain types of work—like cleaning up after nuclear disasters or flying in space—will increase your risk of developing it. NASA's guidelines prohibit its astronauts from increasing their probability of dying from cancer by more than 3 percent. If you've flown out in space too many times and accumulated too much radiation, that's it, you're grounded.
The problem is that nobody knows exactly how much is too much. We have information about your odds of getting cancer after a nuclear explosion but that's because we have historical data on large populations that have been exposed. Just over 500 people have flown in space, a sample size too small for epidemiological studies. And the most harmful type of radiation in space is very different from that which people are exposed to after an atomic bomb. Astronauts are exposed to galactic cosmic rays, the nuclei of atoms careening through space with incredible speed and energy. If they hit an important cellular structure, like DNA, they can generate mutations.
Because they move so fast, galactic cosmic rays aren't stopped much by shielding. And there are a lot of them. Out in space, it is estimated that it would take about three days for every single one of your trillions of body cells to be hit by a high-energy proton (the lightest and most common galactic cosmic ray). Over the course of a year, each of your cells would likely have encountered at least one heavy and damaging iron nuclei. Other types of radiation are relatively weak and diffuse, sort of like a BB pellet, making a galactic cosmic ray a cannonball – large, weighty, and packing a punch.
One way to reduce astronauts' exposure to galactic cosmic rays could be to send them to space only during the peak of the sun's natural 11-year solar cycle. During solar maximum, the sun's radiation blows counteractively against the cosmic rays streaming in to our solar system, reducing an astronaut's exposure. Of course, being in space during this time also means the sun could unleash a potentially deadly solar flare, frying astronauts in their spaceship.
What kind of extra exposure are astronauts normally dealing with? People living in the U.S. are exposed to about 3 millisieverts of radiation from natural background sources each year (millisieverts are units of radiation exposure in the human body). A nuclear accident, like Fukushima, might raise this by about 1 millisievert. An astronaut on a round-trip, two-and-a-half-year Mars mission, by contrast, can expect to receive around a sievert of cosmic ray radiation, nearly 1,000 times more.
If 41 percent of people in the U.S. can expect to be diagnosed with cancer that means, out of 100 people, on average 41 of them will get cancer. If you exposed 100 people to the 1 sievert of cosmic ray radiation that a Mars astronaut would get, there would now be 61 total incidents of cancer, an increase of 20, according to reports from the U.S. National Academy of Sciences (.pdf) and United Nations Scientific Committee on Atomic Radiation (UNSCEAR). About half of those tumors would result in death.
Certain types of cancer, including lung, breast, and colorectal cancer, are the most likely to appear from cosmic ray radiation and tend to be more aggressive than normal. Cucinotta estimates that an astronaut's lifespan after exposure to radiation on a Mars trip would be shortened between 15 and 24 years from the average.
So the concerns from radiation are very real. But there could be a number of biological ways to mitigate cancer for long-duration spaceflight, said oncologist and cell biologist Mary Helen Barcellos-Hoff of NYU, who was not involved in the recent study. Radiation doesn't just damage DNA; it also seems to change the ways that cells signal to one another. Tumor cells are helped along, for instance, by impairment in the immune system's macrophages, which seek out and destroy defective cells. If macrophages aren't doing their job, it can promote the tumor's growth, allowing it to invade and metastasize in the body.
These kinds of immune response changes are similar to those in chronic inflammatory diseases, which produce oxidants that mess up intercellular signaling. It's possible that antioxidants and non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs, like aspirin, taken during spaceflight could help hold back some of the worst effects of cancer, said Barcellos-Hoff. There will always be a higher chance of developing tumors during a deep-space mission, "but getting into a rocket and shooting to Mars is not exactly a risk-free activity," she said.
NASA is planning one-year stays on the ISS (astronauts currently take six-month shifts) and mulling over the idea of sending humans to an asteroid or beyond. A recent report from the Institute of Medicine stated that NASA should develop an ethical framework for exposing its astronauts to the health hazards of long-term spaceflight.
One of the major problems in our understanding of cancer risks for astronauts is the high amount of uncertainty. Cucinotta's data is based on studies where mice here on Earth were exposed to heavy ions from particle accelerators. These mice tend to be engineered to be more susceptible to certain tumors and are often inbred, which most humans are not.
These are all complicating factors in making the most recent cancer risk estimates for astronauts. The most important thing for him would be to simply get more and better data. NASA has not done a great deal of studies on the biology of radiation. Some were conducted decades ago. But our knowledge of cancer is constantly being renewed and studies from more than ten years ago tend to be out of date.
Before humans are sent to the Red Planet, NASA should do a focused decade-long study on all the potential health problems that radiation could cause. Hopefully, this would bring up new ways to combat some of the worst effects.
"Once we know better, we can find the true answer, and it could lower our risk estimate," said Cucinotta.
IndyCar drivers Hinchcliffe, Newgarden revel in Space Camp adventures during Huntsville visit
Mark McCarter - Huntsville (AL) Times
James Hinchcliffe steered the massive spaceflight trainer contraption to its finish platform and proclaimed, "The Eagle has landed."
Considering his fellow IndyCar racer Josef Newgarden was still wrestling with the controls of his mechanism and darn near lost in space, Hinchcliffe then taunted, "Take that Josef. First win of the weekend!"
Hinchcliffe then added, "I don't want to say it was amazing ... but wasn't it?"
It was a morning of equal amazement at the Space and Rocket Center's Space Camp, for both the drivers and their audience that was, as the cliché goes, kids of all ages.
Hinchcliffe, a 27-year-old Canadian , drives the No. 27 United Fiber and Data car for Andretti Autosports. Newgarden, a 23-year-old from the Nashville suburb of Hendersonville, is in the No. 67 Hartman Oil Car for Sarah Fisher Hartman racing.
The pair sampled pretty much everything Space Camp had to offer - they even extended their stay and missed a track tour at Barber - including the Multi-Axis Trainer. Or, as known in laymen's terms, that gizmo that spins around in circles and upside down real fast and makes you feel like you're going to throw up something you ate two weeks ago.
"Like running one lap at Barber," Hinchcliffe said.
They also spoke to a large group of campers from Dubai and Puerto Rico about the importance of teamwork, drawing a parallel to the teamwork in space missions. They also stressed the notion of STEM - science, technology, engineering and mathematics - that is a current mantra for Space Camp and others in the technology field.
Racing and space exploration have "a huge team of people and everybody involved is important," Hinchcliffe said.
"We push the pedals and we turn the wheel, but we have to be smart, too," Newgarden said. "We have to be able to communicate."
The engineering of the car, he said, "is all math. It's all computer-driven and everything has a calculation."
Hinchcliffe stressed the importance of "hard work. It's not easy to be a race-car driver or an astronaut or an engineer. It's the ones that buckle down and keep focus and work ethic that will be successful."
For Hinchcliffe, this was a return visit.
He attended Space Camp in Florida as a youngster, then attended Huntsville's Space Academy in 1996. Hinchcliffe, a three-time winner in three-plus seasons in IndyCar, once had aspirations of being an astronaut.
Because the racers are, well, racers, much of the morning turned into a competition. As Hinchcliffe beat Newgarden in a couple of "sprints" on a device that mimics anti-gravity travel, he calmly pointed out, "This was not my first time walking on the moon."
Plan to move NASA jumbo jet through streets of Clear Lake is finalized
Craig Hlavaty – Houston Chronicle
Space Center Houston has released a map of the route that a disassembled Boeing 747 jumbo jet will take early next week as it moves to the museum.
The NASA 905 jet ferried dozens of space shuttles just back from orbit across the country during the shuttle program and will be moving from its current spot in a remote part of Ellington Field to its new home just outside the front doors of Space Center Houston.
The Independence shuttle mock-up will eventually sit atop it as part of a $12 million, six-story interactive attraction.
All lanes of Highway 3 will be closed from Scarsdale Road to NASA Parkway from 9 p.m. Monday, April 28, until 4:30 a.m. All lanes of NASA Parkway from Highway 3 to Saturn Lane will be closed from 9 p.m. Tuesday, April 29, until 4:30 a.m.
Nine large plane pieces on six tractor trailers will be moved over those two nights over a distance of just 8 miles. All of the pieces will move to a site near NASA Parkway early Tuesday before moving again for a Wednesday morning arrival at the museum.
The roads will be temporarily closed so that workers can dismantle streetlights, signs and utility poles as the convoy approaches.
If you were planning on staking out a spot to watch the developments, you are on your own.
"There is no official public viewing area, and we tried to evaluate that possibility early on, but in the interest of safety we decided to move it overnight and minimize the impact on our neighbors," said Space Center Houston spokesman Jack Moore. There will be limited access areas for the press to view the convoy, though.
If you really want to see the move on Monday and Tuesday nights, your best bet is to probably camp out in a parking lot along Highway 3, but you might have to stay put until just before dawn each morning, as the roads will be closed until 4:30 a.m.
"You'll be able to see it for some distance, it's a big operation," Moore said. The fuselage is the biggest piece of the moving puzzle.
Palletized Trucking is doing the work for Space Center Houston at what Moore says is "an extremely reduced cost."
The special "Aircraft on Ground" team from Boeing that took apart the NASA-donated plane did it in such a way that it would still be able to fly, if it weren't for its engines being removed. Those went back to NASA to be re-purposed.
"The airframe is definitely air-worthy," Moore said.
Once the pieces are all in the Space Center Houston parking lot, there will be a two-day breather and it's back to work for the Boeing team.
"Work will begin that next Saturday in hopes to get it back together within 44 days," said Moore. Hoisting the Independence shuttle in the air to attach it to the top of the 747 will come sometime after before the end of the year.
Moore said the museum has already raised 75 percent of the $12 million needed for the project.
"We need an extra $2.7 million to populate it with the exhibits planned," he said.
This project is just the first phase of a 10-year expansion of the museum, he added.
What Happens When You Cook French Fries in Space
Ria Misra – io9
Space is full of mysteries, but one in particular has been weighing on our minds lately: How's the food up there? We're taking a look at how space meals get made, the best astronaut food hacks, and the experiment that showed just where the best french fries in the galaxy would really be found.
The Astronaut Diet
Over the years, the Space Food Systems Laboratory at Johnson Space Center in Houston — the group responsible for making sure astronauts stay fed in space — has arrived at a list of 200 core foods, each neatly stored in its own little pouch which can serve as a rehydration chamber if necessary or even be popped into the space station's food warmer for a heat and serve meal.
Those 200 core items — which include everything from a rehydrated chicken-pineapple salad to a thermostabilized mocha yogurt — make up the backbone of the astronaut diet, though some of them are more appreciated parts of it than others.
The freeze-dried shrimp cocktail is a particularly popular choice, a preference lab manager Vickie Kloeris told io9 she attributes to the cocktail's secret ingredient: horseradish, which gives the dish a bit of a spicy kick sorely lacking in much of the space fare. But, just like some items remain around through the years, there are also a few foods that get cut. Graham crackers, for instance, were axed from the manifest after crew members complained about all the crumbs drifting around, a problem that also led them to favor tortillas over sliced bread.
Besides the core items, each astronaut gets a bonus food container. And in there, there's also always a few off the shelf-items that make it into space (at the astronauts' request and the Food Lab's discretion) things like Kool-Aid, packaged snack cakes, condiments, and instant coffee. Sometimes, though, astronauts will go even further off menu.
Cooking with astronauts!
It's not so surprising that — when you gather a group of engineers and research scientists, and trap them in a metal tube for months at a time high above the Earth's atmosphere — they might start figuring out ways to tinker with their environment. Astronauts, particularly those stationed for long stints on the International Space Station, have come up with a few food hacks to add a little unexpected zest to their meals.
ISS-favorite Chris Hadfield did a far-too-short-lived web series while in space, "Chris' Kitchen", where he took a Julia Childs-esqe approach to preparation of some of the freeze-dried, vacuum-packed options available, ranging from simply showing how he rehydrated a packet of dried spinach to a much more ambitious attempt at turning a premade steak, some tortillas, and hot sauce into a passable burrito.
The undisputed champion of space food hacking, however, is without a doubt another ISS crew member: Sandra Magnus, the flight engineer for Expedition 18.
While aboard the ISS, Magnus undertook a number of cooking experiments, aided by cutting boards and bowls that she anchored down with copious amounts of duct tape. Perhaps the most impressive, though, was her repurposing of the ISS food warmer to make roasted garlic and onions, an operation she achieved by using foil packets that had previously held heat and serve meals and running the vegetables through the food warmer again and again for hours at a time.
Image: Magnus cooking in the space station, with the aid of some duct tape and plastic bags to fight against the problems of gravity / NASA
The garlic and onions technique made its way into a Christmas meal Magnus prepared by remixing a variety of core and bonus food items to arrive at a final menu of mesquite grilled albacore steaks, a dressed up cornbread stuffing, and crab salad. (Although Magnus noted that the packaged, rehydrated egg that she used in the salad in place of a hardboiled egg was an extremely disappointing substitution.)
But, not every day can feature so elaborate a spread: the onions alone took Magnus almost three hours to cook in the food warmer and astronauts' days are already packed. So what's the hungry, but time-strapped, astronaut to do when tired of eating their meals straight from the foil? The answer is best served wrapped up in a tortilla.
In her space log, Magnus wrote a little about the important place the tortilla held in astronaut meals, especially in creating her favorite: the space cheese quesadilla.
You can do so much with a tortilla; it becomes the vehicle with which to eat almost anything. I cannot think of anything that cannot be put on a tortilla, or has not been put on a tortilla. Consequently, one of the main goals of any crew is to make sure that enough tortillas get on board (the only other high demand object is caffeine) . . . My favorite thing though, is to just heat the cheddar cheese spread, put it on the tortilla and add some salsa. You end up with a space cheese quesadilla.
The best fries in the galaxy
Image: Astronauts Shane Kimbrough and Sandra Magnus enjoy a rare treat with fresh fruit on the space shuttle. / NASA
Of course, it's not just issues of taste and preparation that you have to think of when approaching the problem of cooking on space. The physics of cooking itself are altered by the conditions of space. Our cooking techniques are honed at Earth's gravity and, when we take those techniques to other gravities, the results can be surprising.
Jean Hunter, a professor at Cornell who studies how food and cooking work in space, explained how even something as simple as making a hard-boiled egg becomes difficult without Earth's gravity to aid in the boiling process.
"The problem with cooking in space is that there's no gravity," Hunter told io9. "If you wanted to boil an egg, for instance, the vapor and the liquid won't separate. Rather than the water boiling like on earth where the bubbles rise to the top and release steam, what you'd get is more like a can of soda flowing over. It would be very difficult to cook with it."
If we're looking ahead, however, to not just cooking on the space station, but perhaps to cooking on other planets and moons someday, the issue of gravity becomes even more complex. Hunter is currently working on an in-progress experiment looking at how the gravities of the Moon and Mars might change the way cooking oil behaves, especially how it splatters (valuable information to anyone who has ever held a sauté pan).
Image: Astronaut Loren Shriver eating M&Ms on the Space Shuttle Atlantis / NASA
There's good reason to believe, though, that different gravities can alter not just cooking processes, but how the food responds to those processes as well. Consider, for instance, the humble french fry.
Last year scientists in Greece's Aristotle University, working along with the European Space Agency, began to wonder just how this most earth-bound of dishes might respond to being cooked in the exotic gravities of space. So, using the ESA's centrifuge, some julienned potatoes, and a specially-manufactured deep frier, the researchers tested out how fries responded to being cooked in gravities up to nine times greater than Earth's own.
What they found, as they explained in a journal article for Food Research International, was that the stronger the gravity, the crispier the skin of the fry and the quicker it cooked — up to a point. The sweet spot for a genuinely crispy fry was at about 3 times Earth's gravity (interestingly, a situation most closely reflected in our solar system on Jupiter). Increasing gravity wasn't completely good for the fries, however. At gravities stronger than the coveted 3 times slot, the fry began to lose structural integrity.
Salads on Mars
We have a pretty good handle on how to feed astronauts on the short space trips taken so far. But what about when we're talking about going further into space — to Mars, perhaps, or Europa, or even beyond?
NASA's Food Lab has already begun grappling with the problem of how it would feed astronauts headed out to Mars, a problem that is as much one of time as it is of food.
"A mission to Mars is going to require foods with a very, very long shelf life, probably in the neighborhood of five years," Kloeris told io9. "We're doing research into how we can extend the shelf lives. Our current foods have 2-3 years of shelf life. We're also looking at, over time, how much nutrition do you lose out of the foods and which nutrients are the most at risk in a 5-year food supply."
It isn't just a matter of the food not spoiling, though, there are also concerns about the amount of weight and storage space that would be occupied by such a significant amount of food. Longer shelf-lives and packaging innovations are one way to slice the problem, but there's also another possible solution, one that combines portability, renewability, and even freshness: Perhaps astronauts could grow their own food.
Of course, it's still a long way from salads grown in space. But, if successful, it could at least provide a welcome respite from the days of rehydrated scrambled eggs.
END
Image: Magnus cooking in the space station, with the aid of some duct tape and plastic bags to fight against the problems of gravity / NASAThe garlic and onions technique made its way into a Christmas meal Magnus prepared by remixing a variety of core and bonus food items to arrive at a final menu of mesquite grilled albacore steaks, a dressed up cornbread stuffing, and crab salad. (Although Magnus noted that the packaged, rehydrated egg that she used in the salad in place of a hardboiled egg was an extremely disappointing substitution.)But, not every day can feature so elaborate a spread: the onions alone took Magnus almost three hours to cook in the food warmer and astronauts' days are already packed. So what's the hungry, but time-strapped, astronaut to do when tired of eating their meals straight from the foil? The answer is best served wrapped up in a tortilla.In her space log, Magnus wrote a little about the important place the tortilla held in astronaut meals, especially in creating her favorite: the space cheese quesadilla.You can do so much with a tortilla; it becomes the vehicle with which to eat almost anything. I cannot think of anything that cannot be put on a tortilla, or has not been put on a tortilla. Consequently, one of the main goals of any crew is to make sure that enough tortillas get on board (the only other high demand object is caffeine) . . . My favorite thing though, is to just heat the cheddar cheese spread, put it on the tortilla and add some salsa. You end up with a space cheese quesadilla.The best fries in the galaxy
Image: Astronauts Shane Kimbrough and Sandra Magnus enjoy a rare treat with fresh fruit on the space shuttle. / NASAOf course, it's not just issues of taste and preparation that you have to think of when approaching the problem of cooking on space. The physics of cooking itself are altered by the conditions of space. Our cooking techniques are honed at Earth's gravity and, when we take those techniques to other gravities, the results can be surprising.Jean Hunter, a professor at Cornell who studies how food and cooking work in space, explained how even something as simple as making a hard-boiled egg becomes difficult without Earth's gravity to aid in the boiling process."The problem with cooking in space is that there's no gravity," Hunter told io9. "If you wanted to boil an egg, for instance, the vapor and the liquid won't separate. Rather than the water boiling like on earth where the bubbles rise to the top and release steam, what you'd get is more like a can of soda flowing over. It would be very difficult to cook with it."If we're looking ahead, however, to not just cooking on the space station, but perhaps to cooking on other planets and moons someday, the issue of gravity becomes even more complex. Hunter is currently working on an in-progress experiment looking at how the gravities of the Moon and Mars might change the way cooking oil behaves, especially how it splatters (valuable information to anyone who has ever held a sauté pan).
Image: Astronaut Loren Shriver eating M&Ms on the Space Shuttle Atlantis / NASAThere's good reason to believe, though, that different gravities can alter not just cooking processes, but how the food responds to those processes as well. Consider, for instance, the humble french fry.Last year scientists in Greece's Aristotle University, working along with the European Space Agency, began to wonder just how this most earth-bound of dishes might respond to being cooked in the exotic gravities of space. So, using the ESA's centrifuge, some julienned potatoes, and a specially-manufactured deep frier, the researchers tested out how fries responded to being cooked in gravities up to nine times greater than Earth's own.What they found, as they explained in a journal article for Food Research International, was that the stronger the gravity, the crispier the skin of the fry and the quicker it cooked — up to a point. The sweet spot for a genuinely crispy fry was at about 3 times Earth's gravity (interestingly, a situation most closely reflected in our solar system on Jupiter). Increasing gravity wasn't completely good for the fries, however. At gravities stronger than the coveted 3 times slot, the fry began to lose structural integrity.Salads on MarsWe have a pretty good handle on how to feed astronauts on the short space trips taken so far. But what about when we're talking about going further into space — to Mars, perhaps, or Europa, or even beyond?NASA's Food Lab has already begun grappling with the problem of how it would feed astronauts headed out to Mars, a problem that is as much one of time as it is of food."A mission to Mars is going to require foods with a very, very long shelf life, probably in the neighborhood of five years," Kloeris told io9. "We're doing research into how we can extend the shelf lives. Our current foods have 2-3 years of shelf life. We're also looking at, over time, how much nutrition do you lose out of the foods and which nutrients are the most at risk in a 5-year food supply."It isn't just a matter of the food not spoiling, though, there are also concerns about the amount of weight and storage space that would be occupied by such a significant amount of food. Longer shelf-lives and packaging innovations are one way to slice the problem, but there's also another possible solution, one that combines portability, renewability, and even freshness: Perhaps astronauts could grow their own food.Of course, it's still a long way from salads grown in space. But, if successful, it could at least provide a welcome respite from the days of rehydrated scrambled eggs.END
HEADLINES AND LEADSSpacewalking astronauts complete urgent repair job at space station, replace dead computerMarcia Dunn – Associated PressSpacewalking astronauts easily replaced a dead computer outside the International Space Station on Wednesday and got their orbiting home back up to full strength.Astronauts complete spacewalk, fix computerWilliam Harwood - CBS NewsAstronauts Rick Mastracchio and Steven Swanson returned to the Quest airlock aboard the International Space Station at 11:32 a.m. EDT (GMT-4), ending a short but successful one-hour 36-minute spacewalk to replace a faulty external computer.Spacewalking Astronauts Replace Dead Computer on Space StationTariq Malik – Space.comA pair of NASA astronauts replaced a dead backup computer on the International Space Station during a short spacewalk Wednesday (April 23) to restore a critical computer system back to full strength.Spacewalkers replace failed computer outside space stationIrene Klotz – ReutersTwo U.S. astronauts wrapped up a speedy spacewalk outside the International Space Station on Wednesday, replacing a failed computer that backs up one used to control critical systems such as the station's solar panel wings.Mars Missions Could Make Humanity a Multi-Planet Species, NASA Chief SaysMiriam Kramer – Space.comIn order for humanity to survive into the distant future, we need to visit and learn how to survive on other worlds, according to NASA chief Charles Bolden.Buzz Aldrin Wants NASA Astronauts to Visit Asteroid in Deep SpaceMiriam Kramer – Space.comWhile moonwalker Buzz Aldrin thinks that a mission sending humans to an asteroid is a good idea, the Apollo astronaut isn't so happy with NASA's current plan to use a robot to shrink-wrap a space rock and park it near the moon.Obama finds Japanese robots 'a little scary'Juliet Eilperin – The Washington PostPresident Obama played soccer Thursday with a Japanese robot -- and came away a bit scared.Feds see innovation decline within governmentAndy Medici – Federal TimesSupport for innovation is declining across the government, according to a report by the Partnership for Public Service released April 23.Top SLS, Orion Official Leaving NASA July 1Dan Leone – Space NewsDan Dumbacher, NASA's deputy associate administrator for exploration systems development, will leave the agency effective July 1, a NASA spokesman confirmed April 21.COMPLETE STORIESSpacewalking astronauts complete urgent repair job at space station, replace dead computerMarcia Dunn – Associated PressSpacewalking astronauts easily replaced a dead computer outside the International Space Station on Wednesday and got their orbiting home back up to full strength.The two Americans on board, Rick Mastracchio and Steven Swanson, hustled through the urgent repair job, swapping out the computers well within an hour. The new one tested fine."Excellent work, gentlemen," Mission Control radioed.The removed computer, a critical backup, failed nearly two weeks ago. The prime computer has been working perfectly, but NASA wanted to install a fresh spare as soon as possible.Mission Control waited until after the arrival of a capsule full of fresh supplies Sunday.Replacing the computer — a compact 50-pound box — involved just three bolts, hardly anything for a spacewalking chore.Engineers do not know why the original failed. Mission Control asked the spacewalkers to keep an eye out for any damage that might explain the breakdown. Nothing jumped out.Flight controllers were trying to load software into the spare computer on April 11, but it failed to activate. That set into motion a frenzy of ground meetings and tests to fix the problem.NASA feared that if the primary computer went down as well, the entire space station would be in jeopardy. These two computers — the primary and backup — control the pointing of the solar wings and radiators, as well as the movement of the robot-arm rail cart.It was the first failure of one of dozens of so-called MDMs, or multiplexer-demultiplexers, in and outside the space station.Mission Control kept the spacewalk short and straight-to-the-point; it lasted a mere one hour and 36 minutes. All routine spacewalks by U.S. station crew have been on hold since last summer's near-drowning by a spacewalking astronaut. His helmet filled with water from the cooling system of the suit, and NASA is continuing to investigate the problem.NASA hopes to reuse the bad computer, once it's inspected indoors by the astronauts and updated.Their mission accomplished, Mastracchio and Swanson exchanged a few jokes and laughs as they got ready to go back inside."My arms are too short for a selfie," Mastracchio said with a chuckle, his camera pointed at himself.Mission Control spotted a small object floating over Mastracchio's right shoulder as the spacewalk drew to a close. He said he didn't think he lost anything. The NASA commentator, Dan Huot, later said it appeared to be a tiny wire tie.The space station is home to six men: the two Americans, three Russians and one Japanese.Astronauts complete spacewalk, fix computerWilliam Harwood - CBS NewsAstronauts Rick Mastracchio and Steven Swanson returned to the Quest airlock aboard the International Space Station at 11:32 a.m. EDT (GMT-4), ending a short but successful one-hour 36-minute spacewalk to replace a faulty external computer.The start of the spacewalk, known as U.S. EVA-26, came just five hours after the departure of a Russian Progress supply ship that undocked from the Zvezda command module at 4:58 a.m. After moving about 300 miles ahead of the station, the uncrewed Progress will return and re-dock Friday to test an upgraded navigation and rendezvous system planned for future vehicles.But the spacewalk was the focus for the station's NASA crew and flight controllers at the Johnson Space Center in Houston. The goal was to replace an external multiplexer-demultiplexer, or MDM, a 49-pound computer mounted in the central S0 segment of the station's solar power truss that failed April 11.Less than an hour into a planned 2.5-hour spacewalk, Mastracchio and Swanson pulled a failed external computer from its rack in the central S0 truss segment of the International Space Station's solar power truss Wednesday and installed a replacement, making quick work of a critical repair.Before unbolting the computer, Mastracchio reported there were no obvious signs of any damage in the area and examining the faulty "black box" after it was removed, he said everything looked good with no evidence of anything out of the ordinary. While additional troubleshooting will be needed to make sure, it would appear that an internal component failure of some sort was responsible for the original malfunction.With the new computer in place, flight controllers sent commands to power it up and then began a series of diagnostic tests to verify its performance before uplinking the latest software. The faulty computer was carried back inside the station for troubleshooting and repairs."Your R & R was successful, we have a good MDM," Hansen called. "It's in diagnostic mode as expected.""Oh, wonderful," one of the spacewalkers replied. "Fantastic," said the other.The only other task on the spacewalk timeline was to cut two launch restraint lanyards that were interfering with the operation of doors covering a bay housing spare electrical components. With the lanyards removed, the station's robot arm will be able to access the spares."It's a pretty simple EVA in terms of the overall work we have to do," said Glenda Brown, the lead spacewalk planner at the Johnson Space Center in Houston, before the spacewalk. "It's just coming out from the airlock, driving three bolts to remove the failed unit, removing it, temp stowing it and installing the new one. Very straight forward."On April 11, the backup computer, MDM EXT-2, failed to boot up properly and after reviewing telemetry, flight controllers concluded it was no longer useable. The computer was launched in place with the S0 truss segment in 2002 and operated flawlessly until the malfunction occurred.While the failure had no immediate impact on station operations, the loss of redundancy put the outpost one failure away from major problems across a wide variety of systems.Given the critical nature of the systems in question -- solar array positioning mechanisms, a robot arm transporter, coolant loop telemetry -- replacing a failed command MDM was on NASA's "big 12" list of quick-response spacewalk repairs.But in this case, NASA managers opted to press ahead with launch of the SpaceX Dragon cargo ship before replacing MDM EXT-2. Procedural changes were implemented to ensure good solar array positioning even if a problem later developed with MDM EXT-1.While NASA normally includes a variety of secondary objectives and "get-ahead" tasks in spacewalk timelines to take full advantage of the crew's time outside, only one minor item was added to the MDM replacement EVA. That's because NASA is still working through an extensive spacesuit analysis triggered by a potentially catastrophic water leak during a spacewalk last summer.Engineers believe the water backup was caused by contamination that clogged a coolant loop filter, allowing water to make its way into European Space Agency astronaut Luca Parmitano's helmet. Since then, new filters have been installed, the coolant water has been flushed and replaced and new pump assemblies installed.In addition, Mastracchio and Swanson installed water-absorbing pads in their helmets and plastic straw-like tubes running from their helmets down into the body of their suits to provide an emergency breathing path in case all else fails. The modifications were developed for a pair of "contingency" spacewalks last December.Mastracchio was wearing suit No. 3011, the same extravehicular mobility unit, or EMU, that Parmitano used, while Swanson was wearing EMU No. 3005. A fresh spacesuit was carried up aboard a SpaceX Dragon cargo ship that was berthed Sunday, along with additional spare parts."The anomaly is due to contamination that was likely introduced by a filter that was used to clean the (cooling) system," said space station Program Manager Mike Suffredini."We have since scrubbed all the suits' water lines, basically we've flushed the water three times in all three of the suits on orbit and in the cooling lines in the station that provide water to the suits."In addition to that, we've replaced the filters, we have replaced the fan pump sep that got clogged up in EMU 3011...and we just did the fan pump sep R & R for suit 3005."But until the failure investigation is complete, NASA will only conduct contingency spacewalks to carry out critical repairs. Two such spacewalks were carried out last December by Mastracchio and Mike Hopkins to replace an ammonia coolant pump assembly. Today's EVA was NASA's third since the leak."We have been working diligently to understand the cause of the anomaly and to recover from that," Suffredini said. "In the process, we have done a thorough review of all our processes and procedures and our hazard reports, and we established a goal for ourselves to have all of that work done before we did a planned EVA."However, the vehicle keeps flying and occasionally we have contingency EVAs. We've done (two) of those already, to do a pump module replacement, and we're prepared to do this one for this EXT MDM that has failed."The U.S. segment of the space station includes 46 computers, 24 of which are mounted in the lab's solar power truss. One of those external MDMs is used to command the others while a second unit serves as a "hot backup," ready to take over in case of any problems that might derail the primary computer.This was the 179th spacewalk devoted to station assembly and maintenance since construction began in 1998, the second so far this year, the ninth for Mastracchio and the fifth for Swanson.With today's spacewalk, 114 astronauts and cosmonauts representing nine nations have now logged 1,123 hours and 28 minutes of space station EVA time, or 46.8 days.Mastracchio moves up to No. 5 on the list of most experienced spacewalkers, with 53 hours and 4 minutes of EVA time across his nine excursions while Swanson's total now stands at 27 hours and 58 minutes."Thank you, everyone," Swanson called. "Great work."Spacewalking Astronauts Replace Dead Computer on Space StationTariq Malik – Space.comA pair of NASA astronauts replaced a dead backup computer on the International Space Station during a short spacewalk Wednesday (April 23) to restore a critical computer system back to full strength.NASA astronauts Rick Mastracchio and Steve Swanson made quick work of their repair during the spacewalk, removing the faulty station computer and installing a spare less than an hour after floating outside the orbiting laboratory at 9:56 a.m. EDT (1356 GMT)."It looks like a good day for you guys to take a walk in space," Mission Control radioed the astronauts as the spacewalk began. The spacewalk was slated to last only 2.5 hours.Mastracchio and Swanson replaced a computer known in NASA parlance as a Multiplexer-Demultiplexer, or MDM. The device is a backup computer for routing commands to systems supporting the space station's solar arrays, robotic arm rail car and other critical systems along the station's backbone-like main truss.The 10-year-old MDM computer failed on April 11 during a standard test. The primary computer in the system is working fine, but NASA station flight controllers ordered today's repair spacewalk to restore redundancy in the system."Looks like we've got a new MDM," Mastracchio said as he finished the job.A quick test showed the new computer was working fine."Oh wonderful," Mastracchio said.There are 45 MDM computers on the International Space Station, with 21 of them located on the orbiting lab's exterior and the rest installed inside the station's habitable area. Replacing the MDM computer boxes is one of 12 core space station repair skills astronauts learn before launch, NASA officials have said.Despite their swift work, the spacewalkers did take time to marvel at the bright blue Earth below. At one point, Mastracchio reminded Swanson to take a look down at the sunlit Earth."Where are we?" Mastracchio asked Mission Control later. The answer: Over South America."A great view," the astronaut replied.Wednesday's 2.5-hour spacewalk was substantially shorter than the typical six-hour excursions astronauts take outside the International Space Station. That's because the MDM computer replacement was sole goal for Mastracchio and Swanson"We want to get this job done as quickly as we can, so we didn't want to add a whole bunch of things for this team to sort out," NASA space station program manager Mike Suffredini told reporters on Friday (April 18).Suffredini said the decision for a short spacewalk is also a safety measure for Mastracchio and Swanson, who are using spacesuits that have new water filters and fan pump systems. That maintenance was performed in the wake of a harrowing June 2013 spacewalk in which a water leak flooded the helmet of Italian astronaut Luca Parmitano, nearly drowning him. NASA engineers suspect contamination in the water line caused the leak."I feel pretty strongly that we've sorted out the root cause and that our suits are in good shape," Suffredini said.Today's space station repairs marked the ninth career spacewalk for Mastracchio, and the fifth spacewalk for Swanson. Japanese astronaut Koichi Wakata and Russian cosmonauts Mikhail Tyurin, Oleg Artemyev and Alexander Skvortsov round out the crew. The spacewalk came on the heels of two other major events for the six-man crew on the International Space Station.On Sunday (April 20), an unmanned SpaceX Dragon cargo ship arrived at the station carrying 2.5 tons of fresh supplies and gear for the orbiting lab's crew. Then earlier today, at 4:58 a.m. EDT (0858 GMT), a robotic Russian Progress 53 cargo ship was due to undock from the station and park itself about 311 miles (500 kilometers) from the orbiting lab to test its new Kurs automated docking system. The Progress spacecraft is due to return to the space station on Friday (April 25).Spacewalkers replace failed computer outside space stationIrene Klotz – ReutersTwo U.S. astronauts wrapped up a speedy spacewalk outside the International Space Station on Wednesday, replacing a failed computer that backs up one used to control critical systems such as the station's solar panel wings.Flight engineers Rick Mastracchio and Steve Swanson left the station's Quest airlock just after 10 a.m. EDT (1400 GMT) for what was expected to be a 2-1/2-hour spacewalk. They replaced the failed computer and got back into the space station with an hour to spare."Nice and clean. Great job," Canadian astronaut Jeremy Hansen from NASA's Mission Control in Houston radioed to the spacewalkers as they prepared to close the hatch.The computer, about the size of a small microwave oven, is one of two that control critical systems outside the station. These include sending commands to rotate the solar panel wings to track the sun and positioning a mobile base for the station's robotic crane."I don't see any obvious damage," Mastracchio said as he and Swanson inspected the unit, which failed on April 11.U.S. spacewalks generally last more than six hours, but except for emergency repairs, NASA spacewalks remain suspended while engineers assess last year's spacesuit failure that nearly drowned Italian astronaut Luca Parmitano after his helmet filled with water.The leak was traced to a blocked filter, and NASA flew parts to the station for astronauts to make spacesuit repairs before a pair of emergency spacewalks in December to fix the station's cooling system. Those astronauts also had snorkels and absorbent pads in their helmets in case of similar leaks.Mastracchio, making his ninth spacewalk, and Swanson, on his fifth, also included snorkels and pads in their helmets.A new spacesuit is among the cargo aboard the Space Exploration Technologies' Dragon capsule that reached the station on Sunday.NASA expects to resume routine spacewalks for maintenance and less-pressing repairs in July.The station, a $100 billion project of 15 nations, is a permanently staffed research laboratory that flies about 260 miles (420 km) above Earth.Mars Missions Could Make Humanity a Multi-Planet Species, NASA Chief SaysMiriam Kramer – Space.comIn order for humanity to survive into the distant future, we need to visit and learn how to survive on other worlds, according to NASA chief Charles Bolden.NASA is in the process of developing technologies that are expected to help humans get to Mars and beyond. Landing astronauts on Mars and even establishing a long-term human presence on the Red Planet is just one step toward learning how to live on a different world, Bolden said during the Humans 2 Mars Summit in Washington, D.C., Tuesday (April 22)."If this species is to survive indefinitely, we need to become a multi-planet species," Bolden said. "One reason we need to go to Mars is so that we can learn a little bit about living on other planets ... Mars is a steppingstone in the steppingstone approach to other solar systems and other galaxies and things that people have always dreamed of but frequently don't talk about."Ideally, the first crewed mission to Mars will represent the culmination of many incremental steps — like NASA's ambitious plan to retrieve an asteroid and park it near the moon — taken to safely get humans to and from Mars, NASA officials have said.Under the space agency's current framework, NASA officials hope to launch humans to Mars by the 2030s after sending an astronaut crew to an asteroid by 2025."We, today, are Earth-reliant," Bolden said. "We're dependent on being on this planet. We are not a multi-planet species yet … Only multi-planet species survive for long periods of time."In general, the architecture for a mission to Mars is not like the Apollo program that brought astronauts to the moon for the first time. The current plan could involve sending multiple spacecraft to the Mars system over the course of years, however, the plan to get to Mars is an evolving process, William Gerstenmaier, NASA's associate administrator for the agency's human exploration and operations mission directorate, said during the conference today."We're starting to take a different approach toward Mars than we have before," Gerstenmaier said. "Our classic [ideas for Mars] missions were more Apollo-style in a way — where we launched everything within a year and we sent the armada of spacecraft … toward Mars. I think we're going to do that maybe over a period of time, over a period of years and build more of an evolvable piece."It's not a single mission, but it really is the pioneering aspect," Gerstenmaier added. "Once that mental change starts … and you're looking at it in the long term, then you invest in some things that might actually take longer to go do, but they may be more sustainable."Learning more about Mars also has tangible effects right now, Bolden said. Understanding the Red Planet could also help scientists peer into the past and future of Earth."Mars' formation and evolution are comparable to Earth's and we know that at one time Mars had conditions suitable for life," Bolden wrote in a post on Space.com. "What we learn about the Red Planet may tell us more about our own home planet's history and future and help us answer a fundamental human question — does life exist beyond Earth?"Buzz Aldrin Wants NASA Astronauts to Visit Asteroid in Deep SpaceMiriam Kramer – Space.comWhile moonwalker Buzz Aldrin thinks that a mission sending humans to an asteroid is a good idea, the Apollo astronaut isn't so happy with NASA's current plan to use a robot to shrink-wrap a space rock and park it near the moon.The space agency's asteroid plan centers on launching a robotic mission that aims to capture an asteroid — or a smaller boulder from a space rock — and deliver it to an orbit around the moon where astronauts can visit and sample it sometime in the 2020s. Aldrin would rather see NASA launch astronauts on a mission to an asteroid still in deep space."I sure do not think bringing a rock back is better than what the president said — a human mission to an asteroid in 2025 — but send a robot there first so the two get there at the same time," Aldrin said during his talk at the Humans 2 Mars Summit being held in Washington, D.C., Tuesday (April 22).Aldrin's model, NASA would send an astronaut crew to an asteroid using the space agency's Space Launch System rocket and Orion space capsule. The astronaut crew would be able to operate the asteroid-exploring robot with no time delay, Buzz Aldrin explained. (NASA's plan would use the Orion capsule when astronauts visit the asteroid lassoed near the moon.)NASA's asteroid-retrieval mission, in its present form, would also help engineers test out ways of deflecting potentially harmful asteroids that could threaten Earth. If NASA officials choose to launch a robotic mission that would pick a boulder off a larger asteroid, they could also use the robot to try to move the large asteroid into a slightly different orbit.That demonstration could aid in planetary protection, but generally, Aldrin doesn't think that should be NASA's job. "Planetary defense is not a NASA mission. It should be at the very highest level [of the] National Security Council," Aldrin said.Aldrin also thinks that humans should establish a permanent, internationally co-operative base on Mars. Aldrin believes that an insightful leader could make that particular dream happen as well. And if they prioritize a base on Mars, it could happen."That is a legacy that will last in history for a very long time," Aldrin said. "We need to convince people of doing that, and maybe I'll retire. I kind of doubt it … There are a lot of people that think this is an 'egghead' idea, so I've got to hang around and smarten them up."Obama finds Japanese robots 'a little scary'Juliet Eilperin – The Washington PostPresident Obama played soccer Thursday with a Japanese robot -- and came away a bit scared.Obama's visit to the National Museum of Emerging Science and Innovation, or Mirikan, aimed to highlight both Japan's technological prowess and the renewal of a 10-year scientific collaboration agreement between the two countries. While the event had plenty of examples of how the two countries are working together -- including a pre-recorded message from the International Space Station's Japanese commander and two American flight engineers serving alongside him -- the real stars of the show were a couple of robots.Honda's humanoid robot ASIMO, which was dressed in an astronaut suit and is about the height of a 10 year-old child, went through a series of exercises for the president."It's nice to meet you," it said in a metallic voice, before approaching a soccer ball and telling Obama, "I can kick a soccer ball too.""Okay, come on," the president replied.The robot then took a couple of steps back and then then ran up to the ball to deliver a hefty punt.The president trapped the ball with his foot, later telling an audience of roughly 30 students he was slightly intimidated by ASIMO and the other robot he observed at the museum."I have to say that the robots were a little scary, they were too lifelike," Obama declared. "They were amazing."The astronauts described how the two countries' space agencies were working together to monitor rainfall patterns with a Global Precipitation Measurement satellite (GPM), and Obama used it as an example of how Japan and the U.S. "have been at the cutting-edge of innovation," from some of the first modern calculators decades ago to smartphones.Technology, he told the students, "has allowed us to understand the planet that we share, and to understand not only the great possibilities but also the challenges and dangers from things like climate change -- that your generation is going to help us to find answers to some of the questions that we have to answer.""Whether it's: How do we feed more people in an environment in which it's getting warmer? How do we make sure that we're coming up with new energy sources that are less polluting and can save our environment?" Obama asked. "How do we find new medicines that can cure diseases that take so many lives around the globe? To the robots that we saw that can save people's lives after a disaster because they can go into places like Fukushima that it may be very dangerous for live human beings to enter into. These are all applications, but it starts with the imaginations and the vision of young people like you."Feds see innovation decline within governmentAndy Medici – Federal TimesSupport for innovation is declining across the government, according to a report by the Partnership for Public Service released April 23.Federal employee answers to three innovation-related questions on the annual Federal Employee Viewpoint Survey dropped from 61.5 out of 100 in 2012 to 59.4 out of 100, according to the report, produced in partnership with Deloitte.While 90 percent of employees surveyed report they are always looking for better ways to do their jobs only 54.7 percent feel encouraged to do so and only 33.4 percent believe their agency rewards creativity and innovation."The bottom line is that federal workers are motivated to improve the way they do their work, but they do not feel supported by their organizations," the report said.Dave Dye, a director of human capital at Deloitte, LLP, said the report is a message to agency leaders to pay attention and have discussions on innovation and make concerted efforts to enhance innovation in their areas."It's not that leaders have to be innovative in their own right it means they need to set up environments for people to feel that innovation Is encouraged, rewarded and respected," Dye said.Most agencies saw a decline in their "innovation score" according to the report, including:■ The Army saw one of the largest drops in its innovation score - from 64.2 out of 100 I 2012 to 60.1 out of 100 in 2013.■ NASA – which had the highest score at 76.0 out of 100 in 2013 – also dropped from 76.5 in 2012.■ The Financial Crimes Enforcement Network at the Treasury Department saw one of the largest drops among component agencies, from 63.8 out of 100 in 2012 to 52.0 in 2013.Some agencies that have shown improvement are the National Science Foundation and the Peace Corps. Some NASA facilities also saw improvement, including the John C. Stennis Space Center in Mississippi and the George C. Marshall Space Flight Center in Alabama.The ongoing effects of sequestration, budget cuts and threat of furloughs may also have had a dampening effect on federal employees, Dye said."When people feel safer or more sure about whats going on they are going to better focus on the mission," he said.Agency managers should also work to improve their work environments to build trust and confidence in their workforce by showing concerns about people's careers and supporting development opportunities while recognizing good work, according to Dye.The report recommends that agencies recognize employees at team meetings or with more formal awards to highlight innovation and creativity and reward success. Managers should make sure to share specific goals, provide a forum for open discussion and work to build trust among the workforce that is needed to help spur innovation.Top SLS, Orion Official Leaving NASA July 1Dan Leone – Space NewsDan Dumbacher, NASA's deputy associate administrator for exploration systems development, will leave the agency effective July 1, a NASA spokesman confirmed April 21.Dumbacher is returning to his alma mater Purdue University in West Lafayette, Ind., to take a faculty position in the School of Aeronautics and Astronautics. He has been with NASA since 1979, but for a two-and-a-half-year detour to industry that ended in July 1987. Dumbacher became the top Washington-based official for NASA's Space Launch System and Orion programs in 2010 and will be succeeded in that capacity on an interim basis by his deputy, William Hill, Dumbacher told SpaceNews April 22.Dumbacher's departure was first reported by NASAWatch.com.Asked why he chose to leave the agency only months before Orion is slated to make its first flight to space aboard a United Launch Alliance Delta 4 — the launch window opens Dec. 5 — Dumbacher said the Purdue opportunity was too good to pass up."Chances only come around in life rather sporadically, and that really was the decision," Dumbacher told SpaceNews in an April 23 interview at the Humans to Mars summit here.Dumbacher said he is leaving the SLS and Orion programs in good shape."We got to the point where things are working and things are working well. We're getting budget support on both sides of Pennsylvania Avenue," Dumbacher said.END
