Happy Flex Friday everyone. Have a safe and good weekend.
NASA and Human Spaceflight News
Friday – March 14, 2014
INTERNATIONAL SPACE STATION:
"LIVE FROM SPACE"
8-10 p.m. EDT Friday, March 14, on NatGeo (simulcast in Spanish on NatGeo Mundo)
HEADLINES AND LEADS
Up, up and away for a live TV special from space
Frazier Moore - AP
National Geographic Channel is targeting a subject that's literally over our heads, bringing it down to Earth in an ambitious two-hour special.
'Gravity' fans, here's the real International Space Station
Diane Werts – Newsday
WHAT IT'S ABOUT: "Live From Space" will show us Life in Space — what it's like living and working aboard the International Space Station.
Behind Nat Geo's 'Live From Space'
Astronauts will get to show viewers what they've been up to on the International Space Station.
Tierney Sneed – U.S. News & World Report
They cover David Bowie songs. They snap selfies. And on Friday, astronauts on the International Space Station will take over the National Geographic Channel for "Live From Space," a live two-hour broadcast hosted here on Earth by Soledad O'Brien. The program will take viewers – who can interact with the astronauts during the show via Twitter – inside the ISS as it orbits the Earth one and one-third times while two of its residents, Rick Mastracchio of the U.S. and Koichi Wakata of Japan, show off some of the work being done in their laboratory 250 miles above the planet.
Catch the Space Station This Week on TV and in the Skies Above
Andrew Fazekas – National Geographic
What's it like to live and work in space? On Friday, March 14, at 8 p.m. EDT you will find out, thanks to an exciting two-hour live National Geographic TV Channel broadcast from the International Space Station (ISS) and NASA's Johnson Space Center in Houston, Texas.
David Miller, MIT Professor, Joins NASA as Chief Technologist; Charles Bolden Comments
Ross Wilkers – ExecutiveGov
David Miller, professor of aeronautics and astronautics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, has joined NASA to serve as the agency's chief technologist under an intergovernmental personnel agreement between the agency and MIT.
SpaceX launch from Cape Canaveral delayed
James Dean – Florida Today
SpaceX's planned Sunday morning launch of cargo to the International Space Station has been delayed at least two weeks, to no earlier than March 30, the company announced this afternoon.
NASA's Next Discovery Competition Has More than Strings Attached
Dan Leone – Space News
NASA has ruled nuclear power off limits for its next Discovery-class planetary mission and likely will require any such mission going farther than the Moon to carry an experimental laser communications payload, officials said here March 12.
COMPLETE STORIES
Up, up and away for a live TV special from space
Frazier Moore - AP
National Geographic Channel is targeting a subject that's literally over our heads, bringing it down to Earth in an ambitious two-hour special.
Airing Friday at 8 p.m. Eastern/5 p.m. Pacific, "Live From Space" will originate from the International Space Station with American astronaut Rick Mastracchio and Koichi Wakata, who's Japanese, as on-board correspondents. (It will air on National Geographic Channel in 170 countries in all, on Channel 4 in the United Kingdom and on the Spanish-language Nat Geo MUNDO network.)
Veteran reporter Soledad O'Brien will anchor from NASA Mission Control in Houston.
O'Brien said she's excited about the special, and particularly happy to be hosting "Live From Space" from a comfortable distance.
"The moment I understood that I would be firmly on the ground and THEY would be firmly in space, and we would have an opportunity to do something that hasn't been done before, I was in," said O'Brien as she prepared to leave for Houston where, besides serving as a producer, she will preside alongside astronaut Mike Massimino, who has logged quite a few miles in space.
One of the many challenges of mounting a TV special like this: Its remote "studio" is 250 miles above the Earth's surface and hurtling through space at 17,500 miles per hour. During the span of the special, the space station (and viewers) will circle the planet and begin a second orbit, with dazzling dawn-to-dusk-to-nightscape views promised.
But staying connected won't be a snap. To fill any gaps when TV contact with the space station might be interrupted, and to supplement the special with background perspective, the on-site astronauts have been taping features for inclusion in the program.
"They are phenomenal 'field reporters,'" said O'Brien, "especially when you think of everything they have to do when they're NOT shooting video."
One of the more dramatic taped segments: Last summer's near-drowning of Italian astronaut Luca Parmitano as his helmet filled with a half-gallon of water during a spacewalk to do repair work on the craft. He barely made it back inside the station alive. Despite Parmitano's calm demeanor, the sequence is riveting, even alarming, as a reminder of the risks of space travel — and may recall for some viewers the recent outer-space thriller "Gravity."
"Sometimes the reality is more compelling than a movie version has to be," said O'Brien.
But most of "Live From Space" is meant to be live, including a guided tour of the station, which spans the area of a football field and weighs nearly 1 million pounds. Besides Mastracchio and Wakata, the station's only other resident currently is Russia's Mikhail Tyurin. But the complex has more livable room than a conventional six-bedroom house, with two bathrooms, a gym and a 360-degree bay window that viewers will be able to peer out of.
The astronauts will conduct never-before-broadcast experiments that demonstrate the scientific purpose of the station.
And they'll address some up-close-and-personal issues, such as what it's like living in microgravity for months, how they're able to sleep upside down, how they maintain personal hygiene and how they use the toilet.
Viewers are welcome to get on board — virtually — through Instagram by posting photos, videos and questions.
In many ways, "Live From Space" will be a typical project for O'Brien (who has tackled lots of live telecasts for NBC News, CNN and elsewhere). On Thursday, she prepared for a routine run-through of the broadcast.
But there will be differences aplenty that set this show apart.
"What is the best way to navigate an interview with two guys who are 250 miles up and speeding through space?" O'Brien wondered, voicing just one of them.
'Gravity' fans, here's the real International Space Station
Diane Werts – Newsday
WHAT IT'S ABOUT: "Live From Space" will show us Life in Space — what it's like living and working aboard the International Space Station.
You know, that giant prop from "Gravity."
And that, sadly, is pretty much what most of us know about the ISS, even though it's been continuously inhabited by humans from around the globe, doing awesome science work, for 13 years now. Put it in a megastar movie, and suddenly we care.
So NASA is seizing the moment to take us around the world — live — inside the ISS, which completes an Earth orbit every 90 minutes at 17,500 miles per hour. As Soledad O'Brien hosts from Houston's Johnson Space Center, we'll go into orbit with ISS astronauts Rick Mastracchio and Koichi Wakata, while getting ground commentary from colleague, Franklin Square's Mike Massimino (he fixed the Hubble Telescope).
They'll be our tour guides around a space structure like the one through which Sandra Bullock floated, showing firsthand how its crew members work out, sleep and eat. Surprise: Their orbital home has more livable space than a six-bedroom house. And two bathrooms.
But it's a workplace, too. "Live From Space" aims to show actual experiments in real time. Inspiring Bullock's movie adventure, the ISS crew has made more than 175 spacewalks, up to five hours at a time. And they've found their own extravehicular drama. Last July, Italian astronaut Luca Parmitano almost drowned in space when his helmet sprang a leak and filled with water; it nearly did him in before he could scramble back to the hatch of the airlock.
Thanks to "Gravity," we can throw around terms like that. Now "Live From Space" wants us to know what they really mean. And what it's really like to see our Earth rotate — in real time — 220 miles beneath our floating feet.
MORE TO EXPLORE: Watch a live ISS video feed, follow its flight path, explore its component parts, meet the crew, wave hi to them, learn lots at the interactive site livefromspace.com ———
LIVE FROM SPACE
8-10 p.m. EDT Friday on NatGeo (simulcast in Spanish on NatGeo Mundo)
Behind Nat Geo's 'Live From Space'
Astronauts will get to show viewers what they've been up to on the International Space Station.
Tierney Sneed – U.S. News & World Report
They cover David Bowie songs. They snap selfies. And on Friday, astronauts on the International Space Station will take over the National Geographic Channel for "Live From Space," a live two-hour broadcast hosted here on Earth by Soledad O'Brien. The program will take viewers – who can interact with the astronauts during the show via Twitter – inside the ISS as it orbits the Earth one and one-third times while two of its residents, Rick Mastracchio of the U.S. and Koichi Wakata of Japan, show off some of the work being done in their laboratory 250 miles above the planet.
"This is allowing us to communicate what we're doing with science and utilizing technologies that cannot only benefit us on Earth but are going to allow us to go beyond low Earth orbit for extended periods of time," says Dylan Mathis, a spokesman for the International Space Station Program.]
The broadcast functions as a reminder of what NASA has been up to since retiring the space shuttle in the summer of 2011.
"NASA is very much still in business," Mathis says, adding there has been a nonstop human presence in space for the last 13 years. "You may not see it, but it's there, 24/7/365. It's not smoke and fire like the launch of a rocket. It's almost like a long-distance race in comparison to a sprint."
NASA has also faced the constraints of its $17.6 billion budget – less than half of one percent of the national budget – amid debates of federal budget cuts and fiscal conservatism. President Barack Obama's latest budget request only shrinks the budget only by 1 percent, and even includes increases for some programs like commercial spaceflight, but also slashes NASA's education budget by nearly one-quarter.
According to former astronaut Sandy Magnus, now the executive director of the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics, the government-funded space program continues to lead the charge in doing the long-term research that private companies often are not willing to invest in, and it develops the technologies that can be then adopted by earthly industries. The work done on the ISS that will be explored in "Live From Space" is an important aspect of that, she says.
"It's important that NASA do things like this because [NASA] is funded by the taxpayer and part of that mission is to let taxpayers know what we're doing with their money," Magnus says. "Space stations are a little bit more remote [than shuttle launches] and it's harder for people to relate to it because it is just up there going around and around and around," she says.
"Live From Space" comes as attention toward space exploration has surged, from the Oscar-winning, blockbuster film "Gravity" to the reboot of the beloved science series "Cosmos," which is also being broadcast on National Geographic along with Fox.
"It's not really a revival of interest. The interest is always out there," Magnus says. "It's providing a vehicle by which people express their innate interest in the space program."
This is not the first time the ISS has taken over the TV airwaves. It has been featured on the Discovery Channel and ISS astronauts have livestreamed into various other programs.
"This is more of us being able to tell our story rather than it being making television history, so to speak," Mathis says.
NASA had been considering the idea of a live television broadcast for many months, but started working in earnest with Nat Geo and its British partner (a version of "Live From Space" will also air on the United Kingdom's Channel 4) last May.
"The International Space Station is a very busy place, and there's a lot going on all the time," Mathis says. "It took continual communication to make sure that our goals meshed."
Nat Geo gained NASA's trust "through months of listening to them very carefully and being very respectful limitations that they put on us," says "Live From Space" executive producer Al Berman, who – in addition to producing live events like the 1998 Nagano Olympics and reality shows such as "The Apprentice" -- has overseen TV coverage of several live space shuttle launches.
For instance, something seemingly as simple as placing a wireless camera on the floor of master control was "a very big deal for them," Berman says, with considerations ranged from finding optimal frequency to security issues. "That probably took a couple months to work out with experts."
In addition to the live event, the program will include pre-produced segments looking at various aspects of the space program, from how food is packaged to be sent up to the station to preparing the protocol for a "Gravity"-esque emergency. The ISS even shot special footage for Nat Geo of Mastracchio's and his fellow astronaut's six-hour emergency spacewalk on Christmas Eve to fix a faulty cooling pump.
"When we do live television, we compare ourselves in some measure to a rocket launch. We're live. The consequences of when something goes on are pretty severe. There's backups to the backups," Berman says. "But when we say, 'oops,' that's a technical problem; when they say, 'oops,' it could be deadly. And so just being around them and seeing how much more thorough and careful they are about every detail than we are by nature – and we think we're careful – has been a real learning experience."
Catch the Space Station This Week on TV and in the Skies Above
Andrew Fazekas – National Geographic
What's it like to live and work in space? On Friday, March 14, at 8 p.m. EDT you will find out, thanks to an exciting two-hour live National Geographic TV Channel broadcast from the International Space Station (ISS) and NASA's Johnson Space Center in Houston, Texas.
The National Geographic Channel, in partnership with NASA, are taking viewers from around the world on a spectacular television tour of the space station, courtesy of onboard astronauts. The astronauts will showcase how they live for months in space and conduct unique science experiments in the microgravity environment. Expect to see some jaw-dropping views of Earth below.
Coincidentally, lucky sky-watchers across most of the Northern Hemisphere, including North America and Europe, can see the manned orbiting laboratory make a series of very bright flybys in the early morning sky over the next week.
As long as you have clear or partially clear skies, the football-field-size station will appear as a bright white star, traversing the overhead sky in a matter of two to five minutes.
With more than 11 pressurized metallic modules, the ISS is the largest spacecraft ever constructed in space. This makes it highly reflective and therefore easily visible to the naked eye, even when viewed from light-polluted cities.
In fact, on some flybys, when the solar panels are oriented just right, the station's brightness can be on par with that of the planet Venus, now shining like a beacon low in the east at dawn—the second brightest celestial object in the night sky after the moon!
On most nights over the next week or so, observers may see the ISS make two or even three flybys. Orbiting between 230 and 286 miles (370 and 460 kilometers) above the planet and traveling at 16,800 miles an hour (27,000 kilometers an hour), the station takes only 90 minutes to make one trip around the Earth, putting it in direct sunlight for many hours before observers see sunrise.
David Miller, MIT Professor, Joins NASA as Chief Technologist; Charles Bolden Comments
Ross Wilkers – ExecutiveGov
David Miller, professor of aeronautics and astronautics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, has joined NASA to serve as the agency's chief technologist under an intergovernmental personnel agreement between the agency and MIT.
The MIT Space Systems Laboratory director and 17-year university veteran succeeds Mason Peck, who has returned to his teaching position at Cornell University after nearly three years of service as NASA's lead technology official, the space agency said Thursday.
Miller's work at MIT has focused on developing ideas for spacecraft that could repair and upgrade multi-mission satellites through space operations and docking using standard interfaces, NASA says.
Miller also helped develop a technique to control satellite movement by using high temperature super-conducting electromagnets without needing propellant.
"He has challenged his students to create new ways to operate in space," NASA Administrator Charles Bolden said.
"His experience in engineering space systems, small satellites, and long-duration microgravity platforms will allow him to offer the kind of expert advice I have learned to expect from my chief technologists."
Miller will advise Bolden on issues concerning agency-wide technology policy and programs.
NASA has named Miller to positions on previous projects such as principal investigator for the Regolith X-ray Imaging Spectrometer for the OSIRIS-REx asteroid sample return mission, which has a scheduled 2016 launch data.
He also served as principal investigator for the Synchronized Position, Hold, Engage and Reorient Experimental Satellites project on the International Space Station.
SpaceX launch from Cape Canaveral delayed
James Dean – Florida Today
SpaceX's planned Sunday morning launch of cargo to the International Space Station has been delayed at least two weeks, to no earlier than March 30, the company announced this afternoon.
SpaceX said the extra time would "ensure the highest possible level of mission assurance and allow additional time to resolve remaining open items."
No specific systems were cited as needing additional work, but both a Falcon 9 rocket and Dragon capsule packed with more than 4,000 pounds of ISS cargo were said to be "in good health."
"Given the critical payloads on board and significant upgrades to Dragon, the additional time will ensure SpaceX does everything possible on the ground to prepare for a successful launch," said spokeswoman Emily Shanklin.
April 2 would be the backup launch date for the company's third of 12 ISS resupply missions under a $1.6 billion NASA contract.
SpaceX said the new dates were the earliest available launch opportunities on the Air Force's Eastern Range, and are not yet approved.
With the slip, a United Launch Alliance Atlas V becomes the next vehicle in line to launch from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station, on March 25 with a National Reconnaissance Office satellite.
NASA's Next Discovery Competition Has More than Strings Attached
Dan Leone – Space News
NASA has ruled nuclear power off limits for its next Discovery-class planetary mission and likely will require any such mission going farther than the Moon to carry an experimental laser communications payload, officials said here March 12.
The 25-kilogram payload, which draws 75 watts, would be provided by the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif., as part of an interplanetary laser communications demonstration , Michael New, chief scientist for the Discovery Program at NASA headquarters here, told members of the NASA Advisory Council's planetary science subcommittee during a public teleconference.
New acknowledged that the so-called mass and power tax that carrying such a payload would entail "is a lot" for a planetary mission that can cost no more than $450 million, not counting launch. As such, New said, NASA could still decide to drop the requirement to demonstrate JPL's laser communications package if it ultimately proves unfeasible.
"We will probably be requiring missions to carry it, and demonstrate it somewhere in flight," New said. "If it works, great. The mission is welcome to use it for its own data return. If it doesn't work ... the mission should have its own radio system to back it up."
If NASA decides to eliminate the piggyback payload requirement, the change would show up by the end of 2014 in the final announcement of opportunity for what would be the agency's 13th standalone Discovery-class mission since inaugurating the program of cost-capped, competitively selected missions with the 1996 launches of the Near Earth Asteroid Rendezvous probe and Mars Pathfinder rover. A draft announcement of opportunity is expected in May, and an award is planned for 2016, when NASA will choose one mission from among two or three finalists to be selected next spring.
While NASA could effectively make the laser-comm experiment mandatory for nonlunar Discovery proposals this time around, it is also barring a tried-and-true payload from consideration.
NASA is telling scientists not to propose Discovery missions that require a radioisotope power system — long-lasting nuclear batteries capable of providing spacecraft with electricity when sunlight is too faint to rely on solar arrays.
That is a big turnaround from NASA's most recent Discovery competition, when scientists were given the option to design their mission's around a government-furnished Advanced Stirling Radioisotope Generator, a next-generation nuclear power supply four times more efficient than the flight-proven generators aboard the Mars Curiosity rover and Cassini Saturn probe.
NASA ultimately selected the solar-powered InSight Mars lander over two competing nuclear-powered proposals for the 2016 launch opportunity and has since halted development of the Stirling system.
With Stirling out of the picture, NASA says there will not be enough plutonium-238 ready at the end of the decade to fuel comparatively inefficient Multi-Mission Radioisotope Thermoelectric Generators for both the Mars 2020 rover and the Discovery 13 mission.
Jim Green, director of NASA's Planetary Science Division, told the NASA Advisory Council's planetary science subcommittee March 12 that the Department of Energy is having trouble with aging equipment known as a hot press and as a result will only be able to mint enough plutonium-238 pellets for the Mars 2020 rover.
NASA has been paying DoE about $50 million a year to restart plutonium-238 production at Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Tennessee. The United States stopped producing the nonweapons-grade isotope in the 1980s and has been relying since on a dwindling stockpile supplemented with periodic purchases from Russia.
NASA is now pouring money into repairing DoE's hot press, which is more than 50 years old, but Green said "it will take approximately three-and-a-half years to replace that fully and get into production of the pellets," Green said. Once the hot press is back on line, the Mars 2020 mission has first claim on the plutonium pellets it will produce, Green said.
Meanwhile, NASA has also put a hard limit on international contributions to the next Discovery mission, saying no more than one-third of the mission's development cost may be borne by a non-U.S. partner. The same one-third limit also applies to the mission's science payload, New said.
END
