Recently in NASA Category

The Orion capsule that will take astronauts back to the Moon and beyond could be delayed by more than two years if the Ares-1 rocket is canceled as part of the recommendations of the Augustine Committee that is studying NASA's manned space program. The comment comes from a NASA official quoted by the Orlando Sentinel.

The Ares and Orion programs are part of the $35 billion Constellation program that will replace the space shuttle with a smaller medium lift vehicle to get astronauts into space, and a larger unmanned Ares-V heavy-lift vehicle to get major components into orbit.

The Orion capsule, which will sit on top of the Ares-1 rocket, passed its preliminary design review on Tuesday, a major step towards building actual hardware.

The review evaluated the vehicle's capability, as currently designed, to support three types of missions: flights to the International Space Station, weeklong missions to the moon and missions to the moon for up to 210 days.

"The Orion vehicle design is much more mature than you might see on many programs at the review checkpoint because we have worked so closely with our NASA counterparts every step of the way during the vehicle design phase," said Cleon Lacefield, vice president and Orion project manager at Lockheed Martin in Denver. "To date we have completed more than 300 technical reviews, 100 peer reviews and 18 subsystem design reviews."

However, Ares 1 faces mounting technical and financial problems, which suggest that the likelihood that the launcher will be canceled in the next few days is high.

Paul Guinnessy

The National Research Council's Executive Office has announced the nominations of the scientists that will be in the four of the five panels—the Inner Planets, Mars, Primitive Bodies and Satellites—that form the Planetary Sciences Decadal Survey.

Membership of the Giant Planets Panel will be announced later in the year.

Paul Guinnessy

INNER PLANETS

Chair
1. Ellen Stofan, Proxemy Research

Vice chair
2. Steve Mackwell, Lunar and Planetary Institute

3. Ayana Howard, Georgia Institute of Technology
4. Douglas Stetson, Space Science and Exploration Consulting Group
5. Barbara Cohen, NASA Marshall Space Flight Center
6. Martha Gilmore, Wesleyan University
7. Alan Treiman, Lunar and Planetary Institute
8. Steven Hauck, Case Western Reserve University
9. Charles Shearer, University of New Mexico
10. Edward Stolper, California Institute of Technology
11. Lori Glaze, NASA Goddard Space Flight Center
12. David Grinspoon, Denver Museum of Nature and Science

MARS

Chair
1. Phil Christensen, Arizona State University

Vice chair
2. Wendy Calvin, University of Nevada, Reno

3. Bobby Braun, Georgian Institute of Technology
4. Glen Cunningham, Jet Propulsion Laboratory, retired
5. Raymond Arvidson, Washington University, St. Louis
6. John Grotzinger, California Institute of Technology
7. Linda Elkins-Tanton, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
8. Penny King, University of New Mexico
9. Francois Forget, Institut Pierre Simon Laplace
10. Paul Mahaffy, NASA Goddard Space Flight Center
11. David Des Marais, NASA Ames Research Center
12. Lisa Pratt, University of Indiana

SATELLITES

Chair
1. John Spencer, South West Research Institute, Boulder

Vice chair
2. David Stevenson, California Institute of Technology

3. Glen Fountain, Applied Physics Laboratory
4. Tom Spilker, Jet Propulsion Laboratory
5. Louise Prockter, Applied Physics Laboratory
6 Elizabeth Turtle, Applied Physics Laboratory
7. Francis Nimmo, University of California, Santa Cruz
8. Jerry Schubert, University of California, Los Angeles
9. Krishan Khurana, University of California, Los Angeles
10. Hunter Waite, South West Research Institute, San Antonio
11. Caitlin Griffith, University of Arizona
12. Chris McKay, NASA Ames Research Center

PRIMITIVE BODIES

Chair
1. Joseph Veverka, Cornell University

Vice chair
2. Harry Y. McSween, University of Tennessee, vice chair

3. Marc Rayman, Jet Propulsion Laboratory
4. Edward Reynolds, Applied Physics Laboratory
5. Jessica Sunshine, University of Maryland
6. Eric Asphaug, University of California, Santa Cruz
7. Timothy McCoy, Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History
8. Mark Sephton, Imperial College
9. Faith Vilas, Multiple Mirror Telescope Observatory
10. Donald Brownlee, University of Washington
11. Marc Buie, South West Research Institute, Boulder
12. Michael Brown, California Institute of Technology

The US Senate has easily confirmed former astronaut Charles Frank Bolden as the new NASA administrator, along with Lori Beth Garver as his deputy.

Bolden, a former Marine Corp pilot, flew in the space shuttle four times between 1986 and 1994 (STS-61C, STS-31, STS-45, and STS-60), which included the 1990 deployment of the Hubble Space Telescope.

Bolden said in a press release, "It is an honor to have been nominated by President Obama and confirmed by the Senate to lead this great NASA team. Today, we have to choose. Either we can invest in building on our hard-earned world technological leadership or we can abandon this commitment, ceding it to other nations who are working diligently to push the frontiers of space."

He continued: "If we choose to lead, we must build on our investment in the International Space Station, accelerate development of our next generation launch systems to enable expansion of human exploration, enhance NASA's capability to study Earth's environment, lead space science to new achievements, continue cutting-edge aeronautics research, support the innovation of American entrepreneurs, and inspire a rising generation of boys and girls to seek careers in science, technology, engineering and math."

The theme was highlighted in his confirmation hearings when Bolden emphasized that NASA needed to re-ignite public interest in the space program, particularly among children. "If I go to a classroom today, it's different from when I went as an astronaut in 1980," he told members of the US Senate Committee on Commerce, Science and Transportation.

"I could ask, 'How many of you want to be an astronaut?' Every hand went up in the class. When I go to a school today and ask that question, I may see three hands. All of them want to go into business."
Bolden will have a number of critical issues to manage at NASA. The space shuttle is scheduled to be retired next year and the White House is reviewing plans for its replacement.

Paul Guinnessy

A blue-ribbon panel—chaired by Thomas Young, former head of Goddard Space Flight Center—has called on the White House to overhaul the National Polar-orbiting Operational Environmental Satellite System (NPOESS) program as costs have spiraled out-of-control to nearly double its original $7 billion price tag.

NPOESS, which was established in 1993, is designed to replace weather forecasting satellites from the Department of Defense and National Oceanic Atmospheric Administration, and to help gather long-term climate data. But the instruments have been scaled back and the project has "extraordinarily low probability of success," says the panel's report.

At an oversight hearing held by the House of Representatives Committee on Science and Technology last month, that also included an assessment from the Government Accountability Office, Young stated that maintaining access to weather data is "at extreme risk" and placed management—a committee with equal weight given to representatives of NASA, NOAA, and DOD—as the main reason for the program's failure.

"This Committee has devoted years of oversight to NPOESS," said Subcommittee Chairman Brad Miller (D-NC). "Despite our pressure to get this program under control, we are again facing cost overruns and slipping schedules. At the current pace, we won't see a NPOESS launch until 2039. That is obviously unacceptable. The time has come to reorganize the management of this program to guarantee a successful launch."

Young recommended that NOAA, which is the principle stakeholder in the project, be put directly in charge.

Paul Guinnessy

Related Links
Subcommittee Examines Troubled NPOESS Program
Thomas Young report
GAO report

A blue-ribbon committee has held its first public meeting on the future of NASA’s human spaceflight program.

The 10-member panel, chaired by retired Lockheed Martin chairman Norman Augustine, is to present its recommendations to President Obama in late August.

Last week, it heard competing proposals for getting a new US launcher and crew vehicle capability into place as quickly as possible.

NASA’s current plan, known as Constellation Systems, is expected to cost $35 billion and be ready to carry astronauts into space by March 2015. That would leave a five year gap after the space shuttles are retired next year in which NASA will have to pay the Russian Federal Space Agency to ferry US astronauts to and from the International Space Station.

But United Launch Alliance, a joint venture of the Boeing Company and Lockheed Martin, proposed an alternative in which the Delta IV Heavy rocket used to carry satellites into orbit for the military and other customers could be upgraded for astronauts and be ready in 2014.

A third plan known as Direct, would shift components of the space shuttle into a new series of rockets. That option would also be cheaper and faster than the NASA plan, its advocates said.

Finally, SpaceX, which has won funds as part of the Commercial Orbital Transportation Services (COTS) project, to develop an unmanned cargo vessel called Dragon to deliver supplies to ISS, has a proposal to adapt its Falcon IX rocket for human spaceflight, in a three-to-four year timeframe.

Meanwhile NASA has announced delays to the next two space shuttle flights as they attempt to track down a hydrogen leak on the launchpad.

David Kramer

Background documents

Every NASA administrator in the last 10 years has called for new blood in the organization and worried about the looming percentage of the workforce that would be eligible to retire in the next five years.

These retirees contain valuable knowledge on how to launch and prepare spacecraft that could be lost during the retirement of the space shuttle and the suspected delays to its replacement, the Ares constellation program.

In evidence presented to House Subcommittees on the Federal Workforce, Postal Service and District of Columbia earlier this week, Gregory J. Junemann, President of the International Federation of Professional and Technical Engineers gave a report "Public Service in the 21st Century: An Examination of the State of the Federal Workforce" that touched in particular on the large scarcity of young NASA staff members compared to the early 1990s, a proportion of which left the organization, leaving it understaffed in young to middle-age management expertise for the foreseeable future.

"The consequences for NASA's long-term health are dire," said Junemann, "NASA must reverse course in President Obama's first term or key intellectual capabilities will be lost and not replaced."

"Between 1993 and 2009, despite the fact that NASA's overall budget and responsibilities increased, NASA lost 6,787 civil-servant employees under the age of 40, who were never replaced (see purple oval for missing cohort). Without a course correction, the demographic distribution will become even more skewed with the proportion of NASA employees who are 50-59 increasing to nearly half the entire civil-service workforce by the 2014."

Paul Guinnessy