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Peter B. de Selding
SPACE.com peter B. De Selding
MUNICH, Germany – The International Space Station (ISS) partners have begun reviewing their on-board hardware with the goal of certifying it for use until 2028 even as they seek ways to reduce the annual operating costs of the orbital complex, the partners said in a joint statement Thursday.
Meeting in Tokyo, the heads of space agencies from the United States, Russia, Europe, Japan and Canada expressed approval at the U.S. President Barack Obama’s proposal to continue NASA use of the space station until 2020, and said operating beyond that date should also be considered.
“[T]here are no identified technical constraints to continuing ISS operations beyond the current planning horizon of 2015 to at least 2020 … the Partnership is currently working to certify on-orbit elements through 2028,” the five agencies said in a statement, adding that they share a “strong mutual interest in continuing operations and utilisation for as long as the benefits of ISS exploitation are demonstrated.”
The 2028 date was selected because it will mark the 30th anniversary of the first space station module, which Russia placed into orbit in 1998.
The partners also agreed to seek ways to reduce the annual cost of ISS operations. Simonetta Di Pippo, space station director at the 18-nation European Space Agency (ESA), said in a Thursday interview that several ideas were floated. Di Pippo said these include new-generation water-regeneration systems to reduce the need to launch fresh supplies, and increasing the upload capability of cargo carriers including Europe’s Automated Transfer Vehicle, which is scheduled to make its second flight to ISS later this year.
Di Pippo said the all-but-certain decision to extend the station’s operations to 2020, if not longer, buttresses the argument in Europe to modify the Automated Transfer Vehicle to permit it to return to Earth with station supplies. ESA has made preliminary studies of what is called the Advanced Re-Entry Vehicle, but has not begun hardware development, in part because of uncertainties over how long ISS would remain in service.
As currently designed, the Automated Transfer Vehicle, after bringing supplies to the space station, is loaded up with refuse and guided back into the atmosphere to burn up upon re-entry.
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AFP/NASA/File – In the grasp of the Canadarm2, the cupola was relocated from the forward port to the Earth-facing port …
PARIS (AFP) – The consortium of agencies building the International Space Station (ISS) wants to see if the orbital outpost can operate until 2028, the European Space Agency (ESA) said on Thursday.
“There are no identified technical constraints to continuing ISS operations beyond the current planning horizon of 2015 to at least 2020,” it said in a press release after a meeting of ISS partners in Tokyo.
“The partnership is currently working to certify on-orbit elements through 2028,” it said.
The Tokyo meeting gathered space agency heads from the United States, which is shouldering the main burden of building the ISS, from Canada, Japan and Russia and as well as from ESA.
Costing a reputed 100 billion dollars, the ISS has been hit by budget overruns and setbacks, including the loss of two of the US space shuttles, used to hoist components into low Earth orbit.
The station is due to be completed this year after a 12-year construction effort.
But its future beyond 2015 has recently been under cloud because of NASA’s budget constraints.
That sparked fears within ESA that years of investment will yield little scientific reward before the station is mothballed.
In his draft spending plans for 2011, President Barack Obama pledged to extend the US commitment to the ISS to 2020 or beyond, NASA said in February.
Obama also confirmed the shuttle fleet’s phaseout this year, promised help for commercial manned missions in space and dropped the so-called Constellation programme his predecessor George W. Bush announced in 2004 to return Americans to the Moon by 2020.
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By Matt CanhamThe Salt Lake Tribune
Washington » A group of House members says it makes more sense for NASA to slow the development of a new space shuttle rather than kill the program.
In a letter sent Thursday, 15 House members — including Utah Republican Reps. Rob Bishop and Jason Chaffetz — asked NASA’s top administrator to develop a plan to continue the Constellation program using only the money already set aside by President Barack Obama. They want a response within 30 days.
“We can still go forward with Constellation without necessarily having a significant increase in the amount of money that was there,” Bishop said.
The letter is the latest attempt to block Obama’s plan to cut funding to the Constellation program. The president plans to shift the $3.5 billion to the International Space Station and other scientific research. In place of Constellation, NASA would support private companies that are trying to develop a space vehicle to ferry U.S. astronauts to the space station. Under Obama’s plan, NASA would have no ongoing attempt to return humans to the moon or beyond, though the president has announced plans for an April 15 space conference in Florida to discuss NASA’s future.
Bishop called Obama’s cut “naïve” and argues that it will not only cede American space superiority to Russia, India and China, but it will hurt national security.
“The kinds of people and the kinds of jobs that build a rocket to put a man on the moon, are the same kinds of jobs and the same kinds of people who build missiles to defend this country,” he said.
Like the other House members who signed the letter, most of whom are Republicans, Bishop discounts private space vehicles as “unproven.”
He said the Constellation cuts would eliminate thousands of jobs at companies already working on the project, including hundreds in his district. ATK is developing the Ares rocket in northern Utah, which would launch the new vehicle out of Earth’s orbit.
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By SPACE.com Staff
A newly released photo from a German radar satellite has revealed the International Space Station (ISS) like never before, depicting the massive orbiting laboratory as an eerie apparition glowing in blue.
The photo, taken by Germany’s TerraSAR-X satellite, shows the space station from above as an incomplete space outpost. It was taken on March 13, 2008, but Germany’s space agency released the unique view this month.
“The orbital configuration that provides the opportunity for a picture like this occurs between 10 and 11 times each month, but there is absolutely no risk of a collision because TerraSAR-X and the ISS are on very different orbits,” officials with the German Aerospace Center (DLR) said in an update.
The TerraSAR-X view reveals the $100 billion space station as it appeared two years ago, when the outpost did not yet have its final set of huge, wing-like solar arrays. As a result, the station looks off-kilter, with one set of solar arrays on the left side and two on the right.
Since 2008, astronauts have delivered the final set of solar wings, as well as new modules and laboratories. The station is currently home to five astronauts – two Americans, two Russians and one Japanese astronaut.
TerraSAR-X is an Earth-observation satellite that travels around the planet in a polar orbit, and records X-band radar data about the planet using its active antenna. TerraSAR-X is not affected by weather conditions, cloud cover or the absence of daylight.
The station image taken by TerraSAR-X was recorded on March 13, 2008 during a brief, three-second flyby using the satellite’s synthetic aperture radar.
A few hours before this image was taken, NASA’s space shuttle Endeavour arrived at the space station carrying a storage room for the station’s Japanese Kibo laboratory during the STS-123 mission. At the time, the Russian and American modules, as well as the European “Columbus” laboratory, all had been installed. Six of the station’s eight solar panels had already been placed.
The satellite whizzed past the space station as it flew 122 miles (195 km) over the orbiting laboratory. The station typically flies about 220 miles (354 km) above Earth. TerraSAR-X and the station passed each other at a relative speed of about 22,000 mph (34,540 kph).
This ghostly image does not show light reflecting from the surfaces of the space station like an optical photograph.
In fact, radar does not detect surfaces, which deflect the radar beam, at all. Rather, edges and corners reflect the microwave signals transmitted by the radar more strongly. Thus, the solar power generators of the ISS and the radiator panels used to dissipate excess heat appear as dark areas. The ISS, then, is drawn from bright spots which clearly outline the space station. The central element of the ISS, on which modules are docked, possesses a lattice grid structure featuring multiple surfaces to reflect the radar beam, so it stands out clearly.
This image resolves objects of about one meter, with separation of at least 3 feet (1 meter). Structures more closely spaced are merged into a single block. Items smaller than one meter can be identified, if they are very reflective. However, they will be enlarged to at least 1 meter in the image.
Today, the space station’s exterior structure is as long as an American football field and it has about the same internal living space as a Boeing 747 jumbo jet.
In February, NASA’s shuttle Endeavour visited the space station to deliver a new room called Tranquility and an observation deck that provides stunning views of Earth from space. They left the orbiting laboratory about 98 percent complete after 11 years of construction.
NASA’s next mission to the space station is slated to launch April 5 aboard the shuttle Discovery, which will haul a cargo pod filled with new science gear and other equipment to stock up the space station. A new Russian room is due to launch in May on the shuttle Atlantis, with a $1 billion space experiment to follow in July on Endeavour.
The final flight in September will deliver more supplies and leave a storage room permanently attached to the space station. NASA currently plans to retire the shuttle fleet after just four more missions to complete the space station.
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 Reuters – Former shuttle astronaut Sally Ride (R) is congratulated by former Apollo 13 Commander James Lovell (L) …
By Ros Krasny Ros Krasny –
Rueters
BOSTON (Reuters Life!) – American physicist Sally Ride achieved lasting fame in June 1983 when she became the first American woman to travel in space as a crew member of the Space Shuttle Challenger.
After leaving NASA Ride became a physics professor at the University of California San Diego, and is now president of Sally Ride Science, a company dedicated to helping teachers raise students’ interest in science.
Ride, 58, spoke to Reuters after appearing at a round-table discussion in Boston on gender equity and educating girls in the areas of math, science and engineering.
Q. Surveys show that about two-thirds of American girls in the fourth grade say they “like science.” But the numbers fall off steadily from there. What is going wrong?
A. “There are a lot of very subtle — and some not so subtle — messages that make girls not want to go into science. There are rather important stereotypes that society implants in our children at a young age.
“If you Google for pictures of scientists you get a page of geeky guys who look like Einstein. There’s no 11-year-old girl who aspires to that.
“The message that our culture sends to kids is that science isn’t cool, that science is really hard. In 5th and 6th grade kids start to internalize that. Everyone wants to be normal at that age. It’s very important to counter those messages, and to make the teachers aware of this too. Often teachers don’t realize how pervasive the messages are.”
Q. Since 1970 the percentage of women in medical school and law school has risen toward gender equity. But women are still a rarity in engineering and many scientific disciplines.
A. “Role models are important, and medicine is a perfect example. There are female doctors on television. More young women were going through medical school and more people started having female doctors. The profession reached a critical mass, and expectations changed. Everyone accepts that women can be doctors, but that’s not try about some other types of science professions.”
Q. What kind of jobs in science are likely to lure young women — and young men for that matter?
A. “The generation growing up today is very interested in the issues of climate change and energy. Girls and boys, eight, 10, 12 years of age, are so interested. It’s palpable; they’re driving the rest of us along.
“So far, we haven’t done a good job at linking that interest to work in science, technology, and engineering, where kids could have a huge impact. It’s a matter of making that connection — that science can help solve those problems.”
Q. When you studied physics at Stanford in the 1970s, did it bother you that you were one of the few women in the program? Empower you?
A. “I honestly didn’t think about it one way or another. I was oblivious to it. That negative peer pressure didn’t really have an effect on me. It did on a lot of my friends, though, and it still happens.”
Q. Do you consider yourself a feminist role model?
A. “It’s very, very important for girls and young women to have role models and to put female faces on any profession they choose.
“There have been many women in space, but I’m the one that people remember. That gives me a major responsibility to talk to girls, to young women — to help them appreciate that these are careers that are wide open for women.”
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By Peter Salgo
My 5-year-old daughter knows their names: Earhart, Lindbergh, Yeager, Shepard, Glenn, Armstrong, Aldrin, Gagarin. In New York, she has visited the Intrepid Sea, Air & Space Museum and attended lectures in the planetarium of the American Museum of Natural History. She has seen a shuttle streak skyward from a Florida beach.
To her, manned exploration of space is about more than technical capability. It is an expression of her curiosity about the world. The questions that begged answers, and the humans that dared answer them, inspire her.
Now, the Obama administration has slashed spending for manned spaceflight. It has canceled the “back to the moon, then on to Mars” initiative. It has gutted funding for the Orion capsule designed to carry humans into the next phase of space exploration. With these cuts, the administration has lost sight of our historical roots in exploration, risk-taking and discovery.
The manned space program, viewed through my daughter’s eyes, is a shining example of the human spirit. The generation of us that lived through the age of Apollo understands her wonder. I remember my father taking me outside our house one evening in October 1957. We watched as a small luminous object crossed the sky. “It’s a space satellite,” he said. I was 6 years old. To those who say the space race was only about politics, I offer the awe of a young child watching Sputnik.
Many of us remember President Kennedy’s speech in which he said we choose to go to the moon, not because it is easy but because it is hard. It was a stirring sentiment, but we had no choice. Not to go to the moon, though possessing the technology to do so, was an abnegation of all that was quintessentially human.
When Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin landed on the lunar surface, Walter Cronkite sat speechless in his anchor chair. Eventually he croaked, “Whew … boy.” I was watching. I, too, realized that something indefinable had happened.
“Spinoff” was a term we heard from NASA a lot in the ’60s.But I would have to wait more than a decade to see what going to the moon contributed to my day-to-day life. Today, I work in a large metropolitan hospital. I see NASA technology all around me. The digital image processing software, the chemical method that eliminates toxins from used dialysis fluid, intensive care unit monitoring systems, physical therapy equipment — all are spinoffs from the great adventure.
But spinoffs were not the reason we went into the void. The late Carl Sagan, asked about the value of an unmanned voyage to the rings of Saturn, got it mostly right. He pointed out that human beings are explorers; exploring is what we do best. When we cease to explore, we become somehow less human.
Machines as avatars are not enough. My daughter recently walked through the Intrepid Museum with me. She wanted to climb into the model of a Gemini spacecraft I had told her she’d see. But it wasn’t there. Instead, exhibit space had been dedicated to the Mars Rover. The Mars Rover is amazing, but the proper study of mankind is man.
She walked past the Rover and sat in an airplane cockpit that featured a flight simulator screen. “How does this work?” she asked. I showed her. She mastered the stick technique quickly and attempted a landing on a carrier. “This is tricky,” she said.
Going to the moon, continuing manned spaceflight, is tricky. It is dangerous. It is magnificent. My daughter understands. It is the effort of the human spirit that defines us. We must not let her generation down.
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Space Shuttle Discovery sits atop pad 39A at the Kennedy Space Center
Reported by: Bill Kallus ABS news
WASHINGTON D.C. — Could the Space Shuttle Program be getting a new lease on life?
Two Florida lawmakers introduced legislation in Washington, Wednesday, that would extend the Space Shuttle program past its retirement date, which is slated for 2010 or possibly 2011.
The push is being spearheaded by Reps. Suzanne Kosmas, D-New Smyrna Beach, and Bill Posey, R-Rockledge.
The proposed legislation would also close the gap between the Shuttle and its eventual replacement.
When the Shuttle retires, NASA must rely on the Russians to ferry supplies and astronauts to the International Space Station.
President Obama is set to visit Central Florida to discuss the future of the space program.
Right now, his plan is to cancel NASA’s planned Constellation program, which would have been the Shuttle’s eventual replacement.
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By William Harwood
CBS News Space Consultant
Clarifying what he described as “a big misconception,” the shuttle program manager said Tuesday that NASA’s vendors could restart production and deliver the parts and hardware needed to extend shuttle flights beyond the current September retirement target.
But lawmakers lobbying to keep the orbiters flying until new commercial rockets are available to replace them would need to come up with about $2.4 billion a year to pay for it. And there would still be a two-year gap between a decision to proceed and production of new flight hardware beyond the handful of external tanks and boosters left in the shuttle inventory.
“The real issue the agency and the nation has to address is the expense,” said John Shannon, the shuttle program manager at the Johnson Space Center in Houston.
“The shuttle program is fairly expensive, we burn at about a $200 million a month rate. So that gives you a base of about $2.4 billion a year that it would require to continue flying the shuttle, almost irregardless of how many flights you flew during the year. … There’s just a base cost there you have to pay to keep the program in business. Where that money comes from is the big question.”
NASA currently plans to fly just four more shuttle missions between now and the end of September. Discovery is up next, scheduled for launch April 5, followed by Atlantis on May 14, Endeavour on July 29 and Discovery for a final time on Sept. 16.
Launch dates for the final three flights may change depending on payload processing issues and other factors, but the orbiters and mission assignments are expected to be flown as currently planned.
The shuttle retirement date was set by the Bush administration, which announced plans in 2004 to complete the International Space Station by the end of fiscal 2010, to then shut down the shuttle program and to develop a new family of rockets to carry astronauts to and from the space station and eventually back to the moon.
But the Obama administration’s 2011 budget request would cancel NASA’s Constellation moon program and turn over flights to and from low-Earth orbit to private industry. With some 9,000 shuttle- and Constellation-related job losses expected in Florida alone, congressional criticism has been widespread, with some lawmakers calling for an extension of the shuttle program until new rockets become available.
President Obama plans to visit Florida’s Space Coast in April for a conference to discuss his administration’s new approach to manned spaceflight.
“A foundational element of this new strategy is to invest in the development of a targeted set of inter-related technologies and capabilities that can help us travel from the Earth’s cradle to our nearby solar system neighborhood in a more effective and affordable way, thus laying the foundation to support journeys to the Moon, asteroids, and eventually to Mars,” the White House said in a statement.”
Extending the shuttle program would not appear to be an option, but looming job losses have prompted widespread discussion. Asked about extension possibilities Tuesday, Shannon said the real issue was money, not restarting the shuttle’s complex supply chain.
“There’s a big misconception out there (regarding) the shuttle supply chain, (people believe) they’re all out of business because we’re ending the program and to get them back would be this enormous effort,” Shannon said.
“It’s not like there are small companies or small businesses out there that made shuttle widget number five and now that we’re not flying the shuttle anymore, they’re out of business. For the most part, our suppliers and vendors are major companies.”
As an example, Shannon cited North Carolina Foam Industries, which supplies the foam insulation that covers the shuttle’s external tank. The company is a major player in the commercial insulation business, Shannon said, and “shuttle is a small part of their business.”
“Because the shuttle is going out of business does not mean that those companies are gone,” he said.
Last week, in the wake of congressional discussion of a possible shuttle extension, “we kicked off … a study for each of the program elements to go out and physically touch base with each of the vendors and the sub vendors and the entire supply chain and understand where we might have some issues if we were to restart the program.
“I get those results on Thursday and we’ll formally write that up and submit it to headquarters,” Shannon said. “But there’s this misconception that there’s all this big supply chain that was shuttle specific only. Shuttle is for the most part a sideline business for these major companies that support the actual program.”
Another issue for shuttle extension is recertification. In the wake of the 2003 Columbia disaster, the accident review board concluded that if NASA wanted to fly the shuttle past 2010, the vehicle should be recertified, a costly and complex procedure intended to make sure the aging spaceplanes can be safely maintained and operated.
While not required given the decision to retire the fleet this year, recertification-class reviews have been underway since 2005.
“We’ve pretty much, over the last five years, gone through the entire orbiter vehicle to make sure we’re operating within the environment that the different orbiter pieces were originally certified for,” Shannon said. “We feel like we’ve addressed recertification.
“We did not stop there. We continued and had meetings with aging vehicle experts to understand from an aviation standpoint what types of things do they typically find, what types of things do they typically look at, we benchmarked things like the B-52 bomber, things that have been flying for greater than 50 years. And as a result of those meetings, we added 23 additional inspection points into each of the orbiters that we hit every time we turn the vehicle around.”
While he does not see any insurmountable problems with the shuttle’s supply line or flight certification, Shannon said it would take about two years to build new external tanks and other hardware.
“We’ve addressed the orbiter recertification issues, we are addressing the supply line issues,” he said. “I don’t expect to find any problems there. The real issue we would have is just in manufacturing. While you have a supply chain, while you can get a workforce back to go and build things like external tanks, there would be some type of a gap. Right now we estimate that gap would be about two years from when we’re told (to start) to when we’d have the first external tank rolling off the assembly line.
“You could address that in many different ways, by slowing down the shuttle program until that two years was up or you’d just accept that gap and do other things.”
That leaves the issue of money to pay the thousands of workers required to maintain and process space shuttles for launch. Even with a reduced flight rate, Shannon said, the cost would be roughly what it is today, or about $2.4 billion a year.
Shannon did not say whether he personally favored an extension, telling reporters “we just provide the data, and we’ll let the nation go off and decide what they would like this team to go do.” Even so, he added, “from a personal standpoint, I just think it’s amazing that we’re headed down a path where we’re not going to have any vehicles at all to launch from the Kennedy Space Center for an extended period of time. To give up all the lessons learned, the blood, sweat and tears we’ve extended to get the space shuttle to the point where it is right now, where it’s performing so magnificently. “But it’s a money discussion,” he said. “If we don’t have the resources to do that and to continue to logistically supply the space station, then I understand that, it’s the path we’ve been on and we’ll take this team and try our hardest to seed them out to either the commercial sector or into whatever NASA is going to do next to bring those lessons learned … to try and make the next program as successful as possible.”
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Washington Post
A group memorializing astronauts killed in the line of duty and their families has invoked their names in an effort to convince the Obama administration to drop its planned changes to the National Aeronautics and Space Administration. The group’s outreach comes as lawmakers and other space advocates have called on the White House to continue with plans to return Americans to the moon by 2020.
The Astronauts Memorial Foundation, an educational foundation honoring the 24 Americans killed during space mission missions, said altering NASA’s future would run counter to their sacrifice.
“All of the astronauts who have flown subsequently would tell you that they succeeded by standing on the shoulders of their fallen colleagues,” AMF Chairman Michael J. McCulley wrote in a letter sent to President Obama. “Neil Armstrong, Buzz Aldrin and Mike Collins were only able to fly Apollo 11 to the moon after we lost Gus Grissom, Ed White and Roger Chaffee on a simulated countdown to Apollo 1.”
“In order to honor those astronauts and their families who have sacrificed for all of the benefits of human exploration, and to allow Americans continued pride in our space program, we urge you to vigorously support uninterrupted continuation of U.S. human space flight systems, including the Space Shuttle, and to maintain NASA’s leadership in space exploration,” McCulley wrote in his letter sent last Friday that was first released publicly on Wednesday.
AMF’s outreach is less harsh than recent comments by former astronauts and lawmakers from space states, including Alabama, Florida and Texas. But it’s part of a growing chorus of scientists, space buffs and business leaders concerned with the White House’s plans to kill NASA’s Constellation program and essentially privatize future space transportation efforts.
Former U.S. senator and astronaut Harrison Schmitt told The Post this week that Obama’s plans are “bad for the country.”
“This administration really does not believe in American exceptionalism,” Schmitt said.
President Obama will host a summit on the future of American space exploration in Florida next month in response to the growing criticism.
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 In the White Room of Launch Pad 39A at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida, the members of space shuttle Discovery’s STS-131 crew take time out from their training for a group portrait. Kneeling, from left, are Commander Alan Poindexter, Pilot James P. Dutton Jr., and Mission Specialist Naoko Yamazaki of the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency. Standing, from left, are Mission Specialists Clayton Anderson, Dorothy Metcalf-Lindenburger, Rick Mastracchio and Stephanie Wilson. Image credit: NASA/Kim Shiflett
Discovery and Crew Prepare for STS-131 Mission
Commander Alan Poindexter is set to lead the STS-131 mission to the International Space Station aboard space shuttle Discovery. Joining Poindexter will be Pilot Jim Dutton and Mission Specialists Rick Mastracchio, Clay Anderson, Dorothy Metcalf-Lindenburger, Stephanie Wilson and Naoko Yamazaki of the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency.
Discovery will carry a multi-purpose logistics module filled with science racks for the laboratories aboard the station. The mission has three planned spacewalks, with work to include replacing an ammonia tank assembly, retrieving a Japanese experiment from the station’s exterior, and switching out a rate gyro assembly on the S0 segment of the station’s truss structure.
STS-131 will be the 33rd shuttle mission to the station.
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