You’re in love, bored with five star eats, and filthy stinking rich. Why not grab your date and hop a space bus to the International Space Station?
Hold that thought, but NASA just made it a smidge less improbable, tossing some $269 million in funding to commercial companies like Boeing and SpaceX, all of them hoping to someday carry astronauts to the International Space Station.
According to NASA, each company gets “between $22 million and $92.3 million” of the pot “to advance commercial crew space transportation system concepts and mature the design and development of elements of their systems, such as launch vehicles and spacecraft.”
Boeing took home the lion’s share, with a cool $92.3 million, followed by Space Exploration Technologies (SpaceX) with $75 million, Sierra Nevada Corp with $80 million, and Amazon founder Jeff Bezos’ human spaceflight startup Blue Origin nabbing the $22 million remainder.
“We’re committed to safely transporting U.S. astronauts on American-made spacecraft and ending the outsourcing of this work to foreign governments,” said NASA Administrator Charles Bolden in a statement. “These agreements are significant milestones in NASA’s plans to take advantage of American ingenuity to get to low-Earth orbit, so we can concentrate our resources on deep space exploration.”
You may have read about a sidewise push to rejuvenate NASA’s retiring Space Shuttle fleet. No word on where that stands, but it’s another commercial spaceflight contender.
In the meantime, the days of hopping a space bus to Mars, the Moon, or just into orbit may be decades away (or just for the superrich), but with a move toward commercialization of this magnitude, the ball’s clearly in motion.
There may have never been a space shuttle Endeavour, had it not been for one of NASA’s worst tragedies.
After shuttle Challenger was destroyed in 1986, Congress the following year mandated the construction of a new orbiter to take its place.
The youngest in the shuttle fleet, Endeavour rolled off the assembly line in 1991 after four years of construction.
Due to cost issues, a new shuttle was built instead of refitting Enterprise, the original shuttle that was only used for testing and never made it to space.
Endeavour was built with spare parts from Discovery and Atlantis, two of the other spaceworthy shuttles.
“It’s the lightest one,” said NASA Public Affairs spokesman Allard Beutel. “The most modern one, in terms of being finished in the early 1990s. From that point of view, it’s the baby of the fleet.”
That baby got some grown up upgrades. NASA gave Endeavour a drag chute, lowering the orbiter’s landing distance up to 2,000 feet. Its plumbing and electrical systems were designed for up to 28-day missions, although the longest shuttle mission ever lasted just 17 days.
These modifications were later added to the other orbiters.
Now, just 19 years “young,” Endeavour will head to space for the final time. Then it’s off to its permanent home in Los Angeles, very close to where it was built, in Palmdale.
This will be Endeavour’s 24th and final trip to space, and its 11th to the International Space Station.
Once decommissioned, Endeavour will journey across the country to the California Science Center, where it will be on permanent display.
A study has found that exposure to cosmic radiation outside the Earth’s magnetic field could be detrimental to astronauts’ arteries.
The study by University of Alabama at Birmingham researchers used an animal model to assess the affect of iron ion radiation commonly found in outer space to see if exposures promoted the development of atherosclerosis, as terrestrial sources of radiation are known to do.
They observed that cosmic radiation accelerated the development of atherosclerosis, independent of the cholesterol levels or circulating white blood cells of the mice. It also worsened existing atherosclerotic lesions.
“It’s well known that prolonged exposure to radiation sources here on Earth, including those used in cancer treatment, excessive occupational exposure and atomic bombs, are associated with an increased risk for atherosclerosis,” Dennis Kucik, M.D., Ph.D., associate professor in the UAB Department of Pathology, said.
“But cosmic radiation is very different from X-rays and other radiation found on Earth. The radiation risks of deep-space travel are difficult to predict, largely because so few people have been exposed,” he said.
Accelerated ions in cosmic radiation interact differently with objects and people, Kucik said.
Lead shields can block X-rays, however, cosmic radiation ions can become more dangerous when they interact with metals, generating secondary particles that also may have biological effects.
Although it is possible to use other materials to shield against ion radiation, incorporating these into spacesuits presents significant challenges.
The only people who have been exposed to high levels of cosmic radiation are the 24 astronauts who have been to the moon as part of NASA’s Apollo missions in the late 1960s and early 1970s.
Kucik said because many people have early atherosclerosis, whether they travel in space or not, they could not draw any conclusions from the small number of astronauts who have been outside the Earth’s magnetic field.
And, he added, even if they could, with so few people it would be impossible to perform a relevant epidemiological study
Instead, Kucik and his colleagues examined atherosclerosis development in mice following targeted exposure to a particle beam of high-velocity iron ions – similar to those found in space – produced by scientists at Brookhaven National Laboratory in New York.
They analysed the mice at 13 and 40 weeks afterward to assess the development of atherosclerosis in the aorta and carotid arteries. They concluded there was involvement of components in the arterial wall in the biological response to radiation injury.
“At 13 weeks it was surprising and quite remarkable that we already could see permanent damage – an irreversible thickening of the artery wall where it had been exposed to radiation,” co-author Janusz Kabarowski, PhD, assistant professor in the UAB department of microbiology, said.
“The irradiation had no significant effect on the frequency of circulating immune and inflammatory white blood cells or plasma lipid profile,” Kabarowski stated.
Knowing the effects of cosmic radiation on the heart health of deep-space astronauts will help meet the unique challenges of treatment and prevention posed by missions of long duration.
“Our future research will look at the mechanisms causing the damage, and we will try to find a way to target those mechanisms to correct the damage or prevent it altogether,” Kabarowski said.
Kucik said the team’s findings may also inform cancer treatment. Newer proton radiation therapies can be targeted to stop and deposit all of their energy in a tumour, much like iron ions from space stop in the body.
“No one knows the atherosclerotic risk of this therapy. Anything we learn through these studies on deep-space travel will be useful for cancer patients,” Kucik said.
An investigation into a March 14 launch pad fatality at Kennedy Space Center has uncovered no evidence of foul play or any problems with safety tethers and other fall-protection equipment, a senior NASA official said today.
NASA Shuttle Program Manager John Shannon called the death of United Space Alliance swing arm engineer James Vanover “a tragic event.” Vanover, 53, of Titusville, fell to his death off at launch pad 39A, where shuttle Endeavour is being prepped for a planned April 19 launch on its 25th and final flight. Medics rushed to the pad but were unable to revive him.
NASA suspended work at the pad for a day and sent grief counselors to talk with workers there. Launch preparations picked up the following day.
“There was a strong desire to resume work,” Shannon said. “We kept the counselors out there for the entire week just in case anybody wanted to talk or any issues can up, and that I think was very effective.”
NASA officials said the incident was the first fatality at a shuttle launch pad since an incident a few weeks before the NASA’s first shuttle flight in April 1981.
NASA safety and security officials are investigating Vanover’s death along with the federal Occupational Safety and Health Administration, the Brevard County Sheriff’s Office and the Brevard County Medical Examiner.
Shannon said he expected the investigation to be complete with the next few weeks.
As Japan reels from the disastrous earthquake and tsunami that struck earlier this month, one of the country’s astronauts is soldiering on with training for his upcoming mission to the International Space Station.
“Our thoughts and prayers are with those that suffer a great deal of damage from the big earthquake in Japan,” Japanese astronaut Satoshi Furukawa, 46, said in a mission briefing today (March 21) at NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston. “We are with you. People all over the world are with you.”
Furukawa, who represents the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA), is training to launch on a six-month mission to the International Space Station on May 30. He will be accompanied by two crewmates — NASA astronaut Mike Fossum and Russian cosmonaut Sergei Volkov — when he blasts off aboard a Russian Soyuz spacecraft.
The space missions comes as Japan works to recover from a 9.0-magnitude earthquake, which struck the country on March 11 and triggered a tsunami that devastated much of the country’s northeastern coast. [ Photos: Japan Earthquake and Tsunami in Pictures ]
“I’d like to do whatever I can to contribute to science for those that have suffered from the damage, and all the Japanese [people], all the people all over the world,” Furukawa said.
The massive earthquake and tsunami forced JAXA to evacuate its Tsukuba Space Center in Tsukuba, Japan. The space center includes a control room for part of the International Space Station that oversees the Japanese Kibo laboratory at the orbiting outpost, and coordinates JAXA’s unmanned cargo ships that ferry supplies to the space station.
The agency’s flight controllers were sent home safely on March 11, but the center sustained some damage from the earthquake.
Furukawa is from Yokohama in Japan’s Kanagawa Prefecture and was trained as a medical doctor and surgeon prior to his training as an astronaut. This upcoming Soyuz flight will be his first trip into space, and he is looking forward to his months-long stay at the orbiting outpost after many years of training, he said.
“I am very excited about everything during the mission,” Furukawa said. “I’ve been training for 12 years — in other words, I dedicated one fourth of my life to astronaut training, so I’m really looking forward to the mission.”
Fossum, Furukawa and Volkov will launch in their Soyuz vehicle from the central Asian spaceport of Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan on May 30. Furukawa, Fossum and Volkov are three of the six crewmembers who will make up the Expeditions 28 and 29 missions to the space station.
With most of the station’s construction now complete, the trio’s main mission objectives will be to carry on the plethora of crucial science experiments conducted aboard the laboratory, Fossum said.
For Fossum, who has journeyed to the space station twice on two previous space shuttle missions, he is most looking forward to spending time on the massive structure that he helped assemble.
“It’s been a great partnership and a great benefit to us all,” Fossum said. “All of this working for all these years, I helped build it, I helped design it in some ways … and now I get to live on it, not just visit.”
KENNEDY SPACE CENTER, Fla.–Enduring the heat of re-entry one last time, the shuttle Discovery dropped out of orbit and returned to Earth today to wrap up a near-flawless 39th and final mission, marking the beginning of the end for NASA’s winged rocket ships.
After firing its twin braking rockets for a computer-controlled descent halfway around the planet, commander Steven Lindsey took over manual control and guided Discovery through a 250-degree left turn to line up on runway 15.
Pilot Eric Boe then deployed the ship’s landing gear and the 204,000-pound shuttle swooped to a tire-smoking touchdown on runway 15 at 11:57:17 a.m. EST.
The shuttle Discovery settles to a smooth touchdown at the Kennedy Space Center to close out its 39th and final flight.
(Credit: NASA)
Lindsey had no problems with a stiff 25-knot headwind, and a few moments later, NASA’s oldest surviving space shuttle rolled to a halt, wrapping up a career spanning some 5,750 orbits, 148 million miles, and 365 days in space during 39 missions since its maiden launch in August 1984.
“And Houston, Discovery, for the final time, wheels stopped,” Lindsey radioed flight controllers in Houston.
“Discovery, Houston, great job by you and your crew,” replied astronaut Charles Hobaugh in mission control. “That was a great landing in tough conditions and it was an awesome docked mission you all had…So job well done.”
With only two more missions left on NASA’s shuttle manifest–a flight by Endeavour in April and a final voyage by Atlantis in late June–Discovery’s landing marked the beginning of the end for the world’s most complex and expensive to operate manned rocket.
“We’re seeing a program come to a close here and to see these shuttles, these beautiful, magnificent flying machines end their service life is obviously a little bit sad for us,” astronaut Michael Barratt said earlier this week.
“But it is about time, they’ve lived a very long time, they’ve had a fabulous success record, they’ve built this magnificent space station, they’ve given us lots of science and a tremendous amount of experience of just how to operate in space. More than anything, we look forward to seeing them retire with dignity and bringing on the next line of spaceships.”
Discovery races down runway 15, rolling out on its final landing at the Kennedy Space Center.
(Credit: NASA/Bill Ingalls)
Lindsey, Boe, Barratt and their crewmates–Nicole Stott and spacewalkers Stephen Bowen and Alvin Drew–were welcomed home by NASA Administrator Charles Bolden and scores of other agency managers and engineers who turned out for Discovery’s final homecoming.
“This is a pretty bittersweet moment for all of us,” Lindsey said on the runway. “As the minutes pass, I’m getting sadder and sadder about this being the last flight. And I know all the folks involved in the shuttle program feel the same way.”
Lindsey thanked Discovery’s processing team at the Kennedy Space Center for “giving us just a fantastic vehicle to fly. It was a privilege to be in charge of her for just a couple of weeks and I’m sad to give her back. But I couldn’t imagine giving her back into better hands than this group right here.”
Over the course of an extended 13-day mission, Lindsey and his crewmates attached a final U.S. module to the International Space Station, delivered a spare set of radiator panels and an external stowage platform, and transferred several tons of supplies and equipment to the lab complex.
Bowen and Drew also staged two spacewalks to accomplish a variety of long-planned maintenance tasks. And the astronauts helped their station colleagues service a U.S. oxygen generator and a carbon dioxide removal system.
With Discovery safely back on Earth, engineers in the nearby Vehicle Assembly Building made final preparations to haul the shuttle Endeavour to launch pad 39A tomorrow for work to ready the ship for its 25th and final launch April 19.
If all goes well, NASA will close out the shuttle program by launching the Atlantis June 28 on a final space station resupply mission.
Discovery is towed back to its processing hangar for decommissioning.
(Credit: NASA TV)
Discovery’s landing brought that long-awaited–and to some, long-dreaded–end game into sharp focus. Barratt captured the thoughts of many space workers when he reflected on the shuttle program’s legacy from orbit.
“I think about this space shuttle fleet like the clipper ships that were strong and fast and powerful, they did their jobs but they were also graceful and beautiful,” he said. “They conjured up imagination, of foreign travel, exotic places, of exploration. And Discovery is just an elite member of this elite fleet.
“We have the legacy of the clippers in our shuttle fleet and it’s a legacy that everybody who’s ever touched these vehicles should be extremely proud of. I think the only problem area there is we don’t have that follow on, we’re not replacing the shuttle with something and I think that’s what makes it a little bit sad for us.”
At the same time, he said, “it is a time to celebrate.”
“The legacy this spaceship has made for herself is just nothing more than cause for celebration. She’s returned so much science, so much experience, and the experience that we as crew members have had has just been marvelous and, again, something our country should be very, very proud of.”
Over the next few months, Discovery will be decommissioned and ultimately turned into a museum display.
NASA has not yet announced where the orbiters will end up, but it’s widely expected that one of them will be displayed at the Smithsonian’s National Air and Space Museum.
An undated image from video provided by NASA shows space shuttle commander Mark Kelly training in a simulator at Johnson Space Center in Houston. Kelly announced Friday, Feb. 4, 2011 that he will return to training to command the scheduled April mission of space shuttle Endeavour’s last voyage. Putting aside problems and feelings in little boxes and zeroing in on the tough task at hand _ compartmentalizing _ is what astronauts, military officers, firefighters, surgeons and presidents do all the time. (AP Photo/NASA)
(AP)
Washington AP
Here’s the challenge. Your wife, Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords has been shot in the head and is recovering, but still has a long way to go. You also have two teenage daughters and a high-profile, difficult and very public job.
So given all that, how do you fly, in just a couple of months, one of the world’s most complex vehicles — the sometimes deadly space shuttle?
Easy, says astronaut Mark Kelly, the Navy pilot and captain who resumed his duties Monday as commander of the shuttle Endeavour’s final voyage in April. “Ignore stuff going on in your personal life and just focus on your mission. We get a lot of practice doing that. I’ve been doing that for 24 years.
“The key word there is being able to compartmentalize things,” he said.
Putting aside problems and feelings in little boxes and zeroing in on the tough task at hand — compartmentalizing — is what astronauts, military officers, firefighters, surgeons and presidents do all the time. It’s a good coping technique that works, especially for people like Kelly who is dealing with a family crisis, psychologists say.
Kelly explained his focusing abilities Friday at the news conference where he and NASA declared he would indeed lead the space mission he was assigned before his wife was shot in the head on Jan. 8. Giffords is going through rehab work in a Houston hospital, and Kelly wouldn’t discuss the extent of her brain damage. There are no reports she has spoken, and doctors previously have said she has limited use of her right side. Kelly says she is making progress every day and “would be very comfortable” with his decision to return to spaceflight.
Most people compartmentalize all the time on a smaller scale. But some people are naturally better at putting aside their feelings than others, or they learn how to be better at it.
“They are ultimately super-rational and super-logical,” said psychologist and executive coach Marilyn Puder-York, of Old Greenwich, Conn. “They access their emotions, but they don’t let their emotions control their cognition or their behavior or their choices.”
Jim Lovell, commander of the Apollo 13 mission that limped back to Earth after an explosion crippled its flight to the moon in 1970, said it is a way of thinking that helps you survive: “You focus on what has to be done immediately … One by one you overcome each crisis as they come along.
“People that live on the edge and do the work that astronauts do, they look at things one step at a time,” Lovell said in a telephone interview Monday. “They look at what they want to accomplish and what steps are required to accomplish.”
Experts say that for most ordinary people, this is a case of, “Don’t try this at home.” Puder-York said emotions can “come back and bite you, if you don’t process right.”
Lawrence Palinkas of the University of Southern California, who has studied the psychology of astronauts and explorers, said “not everyone should simply assume that they can compartmentalize. Generally if they can, it requires more than simply willpower.”
NASA and Kelly have a support system, as well as experience, that enable him to cope in his work, Palinkas said.
It’s a skill that NASA fosters and celebrates. In 1969, when a computer alarm came on just seconds before the first moon landing, Neil Armstrong and ground controllers in Houston focused on the task at hand and touched down successfully. American astronauts and Russian cosmonauts used hyper-focus to get through a fire and collision on the Mir space station in the 1990s.
And those are just the examples the public hears about.
“There are people who have flown with deep troubles in their lives, whether it is a parent who is sick, or worse, a child who is sick or a marriage in trouble, who have done exceptionally well in orbit,” former astronaut Jay Apt said. “Folks who are under stress in non-aviation may not understand the extent in which you are focused because your whole life has been about focus.”
NASA flight crew operations chief Brent Jett said that the space agency monitored Kelly last week as he worked with his crew and did flight simulations, and he did fine.
On Monday, Kelly — a veteran of 39 combat missions during Desert Storm — officially resumed his training duties. He and his five crewmates spent much of the day in simulators practicing launch, landing and docking with the International Space Station, preparing for Endeavour’s scheduled April 19 launch. NASA released video of Kelly working in the command seat in the shuttle simulator, telling colleagues: “I’m all set.”
That type of training is typical for two months before launch, said Apt, who pulled out his training schedule for a 1996 flight. Days usually start around 8 a.m. and stretch till around 7 p.m. with hours upon hours of simulations. Lunch is even eaten inside the simulator with “the same food you eat on orbit,” Apt said.
Experts said this not only trains astronauts for flights, but how to focus.
In some ways people who “are very successful and high achievers” generally feel better because of this well-honed compartmentalizing skills, said Virgil Zeigler-Hill, a University of Southern Mississippi psychology professor. But they also can pay a big price later with an emotional rebound that can hit hard.
(Corrects award date of Air Force contracts in fourth paragraph.)
U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates and French Defense Minister Alain Juppe are scheduled to sign an agreement to cooperate on reducing the risk of accidents and collisions in space.
Marine Colonel Dave Lapan, a Defense Department spokesman, said the defense chiefs plan to sign the statement of principles tomorrow at the Pentagon.
Separately, the U.S. Air Force has plans under way to upgrade the Space Surveillance System, a network of ground-based radars and sensors, to track more objects in orbit.
The service on Jan. 26 awarded a $107 million contract to Waltham, Massachusetts-based Raytheon Co., and another $107 million contract to Bethesda, Maryland-based Lockheed Martin Corp. for continued development of the “Space Fence” program. The companies announced the awards today.
Gregory Schulte, deputy assistant secretary of defense for space policy, said U.S. Strategic Command, based at Offutt Air Force Base in Nebraska, provides satellite collision warnings to certain countries and companies. “We’re looking at how do we increasingly share this information both with close allies to enable coalition operations but more broadly to promote a stable and safe domain in space,” he said at a Feb. 4 news briefing on space strategy.
About 60 countries and government consortia operate about 1,100 satellites. The government tracks about 10,000 pieces of debris, nearly half of which came from two events: the February 2009 collision between an inoperable Soviet-era Russian Cosmos satellite and a U.S. commercial satellite made by McLean, Virginia-based Iridium Communications, Inc., and the January 2007 Chinese anti-satellite missile test, according to the document.
The non-binding agreement between the U.S. and France is similar to one the U.S. made with Australia last fall. Gates and French President Nicolas Sarkozy pledged a year ago in Paris to cooperate more in aeronautics and space, said Luis Vassy, a spokesman for the French Embassy in Washington.
The U.S. and Australia on Nov. 8 agreed to investigate building radar facilities in Australia “to support the United States space surveillance network,” according to the statement of principles.
Revisit the 73 seconds in U.S. space shuttle history, when the tragic death of seven astronauts stunned a nation.
(CBS) Friday marks 25 years since the space shuttle Challenger broke apart shortly after takeoff.
“Early Show” co-anchor Jeff Glor took a look back at the tragedy on the broadcast Friday morning.
On Jan. 28, 1986, June Scobee watched the shuttle’s 25th liftoff first-hand. Her husband, Dick Scobee was the commander. Scobee was among the six astronauts — and one teacher — aboard the shuttle.
June recalled to CBS News, “We were so excited shouting, jubilant, that finally they were launching.”
This particular mission was routine in many ways, but more significant in one. Christa McAuliffe, a social studies teacher from New Hampshire, was chosen to become the first teacher in space. Through lessons, she’d bring the nation’s students along with her.
That morning, school kids around the country were glued to TV sets as the shuttle left Earth.
Just 68 seconds into the flight, Scobee uttered the last words anyone would ever hear from the Challenger crew: “Go with throttle up.”
Bob Sieck, shuttle operations manager at Kennedy Space Center, said, “We knew as soon as we saw the fireball that the explosion that we didn’t have a chance of getting the crew back alive.”
The space shuttle — America’s symbol of technical prowess — was brought down because cold weather had caused rubber O ring seals in the rocket boosters to weaken and fail. Seven people lost their lives — as a nation looked on.
That evening, President Reagan consoled the country, saying, “We will never forget them, nor the last time we saw them, this morning, as they prepared for the journey and waved goodbye and ‘slipped the surly bonds of earth’ to ‘touch the face of God.’”
Today, June Scobee’s effort — The Challenger Space Centers — stand in remembrance. The centers, at locations across the U.S., teach children the same lessons Christa McAuliffe and the Challenger crew were going to teach back in 1986.
They call it New Space, a commercial effort to send people into space as tourists. Entrepreneurs are creating startups that are flying tourists into space, for a fee. One of the companies doing so is Virgin Galactic, a startup funded by billionaire Richard Branson of the Virgin Group.
We caught up with George Whitesides, chief executive of Virgin Galactic, at the recent Digital Life Design conference in Munich. He thinks that as early as next year he can send you up into space and experience weightlessness and see the Earth from a unique point of view.
If these entrepreneurs succeed, they’ll be sending a lot more spacecraft into outer space than governments will. And hopefully they will create new technologies that everyone will benefit from, just as NASA’s 1960s space program led to a lot of cool new technologies that were exploited by entrepreneurs in Silicon Valley.
Competitors charge much more. Space Adventures, funded by Eric Anderson, charges $20 million or more to send its astronaut tourists into space. Game designer Richard Garriott flew to the space station on a SpaceX flight that cost $30 million. By those standards, Virgin Galactic is a lot cheaper. Whitesides (below) says his company will charge a mere $200,000 for its trips. Space Adventures also has moon flights that are more expensive and sub-orbital flights that are cheaper. But Whitesides says that Branson’s goal is to make it possible for anyone to go into space.
Each Virgin Galactic launch will have six passengers and two pilots. They will fly up into sub-orbital space, stay there for five minutes, and then come back down again. It’s not much time, but it’s far more affordable than the cost for sending someone into space for a week. Whitesides says the company is testing its space ships now and it plans on sending its first commercial flight into space in 2012. The hope is that such spacecraft could one day be used to fly from San Francisco to New York in a matter of minutes, not hours.
Branson’s company has funded the creation of two space ships developed over the past six years with technology from Scaled Composites. The design is based on that of S paceShipOne, which was piloted into space twice starting in 2004. Designed by aerospace engineer Burt Rutan, the spacecraft won the Ansari X Prize. That ship now hangs in the Smithsonian Air and Space Museum. The two new Virgin Galactic ships are called WhiteKnightTwo and SpaceShipTwo. They’re being prepped at place called Spaceport America in New Mexico. Over time, Whitesides says it will get cheaper to send tourists into space. So you better book your flight now.
The shuttle Discovery settles to a smooth touchdown at the Kennedy Space Center to close out its 39th and final flight.
Discovery races down runway 15, rolling out on its final landing at the Kennedy Space Center.
Discovery is towed back to its processing hangar for decommissioning.
