Recently in NASA Category

NASA chief technologist Robert Braun briefed the more than 300 business owners, scientists, and policymakers who attended the event on the particulars of the agency's new Space Technology Program (STP)—an expansion of NASA's joint innovation efforts with the private and public sectors. The program is one element of President Obama's radical plan for NASA's future. As outlined in his FY 2011 NASA budget request, the plan calls for the space agency to shift its focus from near-term human exploration missions to longer-term research and technology development.

The forum's tone and turnout reflected the optimism that many in industry and academia have for the STP. Provided its budget is approved by Congress, the STP will dole out $5 billion over five years into such existing NASA initiatives as the Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) and the Small Business Technology Transfer (STTR) programs. It would also double the funding for NASA's Centennial Challenges, which award cash prizes of $1.5 million–2 million to individuals or teams that are not federally funded and who achieve certain challenge goals.

On the forum's first day, three new challenges, the first since 2005, were announced:

• Nano-Satellite Launch to send small satellites (with mass between 1-10 kg) into Earth orbit, twice in one week.
• Night Rover to develop a solar-powered exploration vehicle that can operate in darkness using stored energy.
• Sample Return Robot to build a robot that can locate and retrieve geological samples.

The Centennial Challenges, along with the SBIR and STTR programs, will fall under the new early-stage innovation division, one of three STP divisions whose objectives span NASA's technology readiness level scale (where 1 is a pie-in-the-sky concept and 6 is a mission-ready demonstration model). The other two divisions are Game Changing Technology and Cross Cutting Capability Demonstrations. Each division will operate as progressive stages: At each stage, the number of accepted projects decreases, but the awards for each increase.

Students and academic researchers will benefit from the Early-Stage's Space Technology Research Grants Program, which plans to annually award 100 NASA research grants, valued at $250 000, and up to 500 graduate-school fellowships, ranging from $55 000 to $60 000. Researchers at aerospace and space systems businesses will likely seek larger awards from yet another Early-Stage Innovation program, the NASA Innovative Advanced Concepts. A two-phase program, NIAC gives $100 000 for viable technology ideas and $500 000 if those ideas show sufficient promise after one year of further development.

Game changing?

Forum attendees were less clear about the second division, particularly what was meant by "game changing." Braun responded by indicating that "disruptive" was how he preferred to describe the technologies at the second stage and that they "should change the way we do business," citing the cell phone and the internet as examples. The nature of NASA's business partnerships will also change. Braun cited the agency's plans to turn over the bulk of its human spaceflight program to the commercial sector.

Few technologies will graduate from Game Changing Technology Division to the Cross Cutting Capability Demonstrations Division, says Braun. Those that do will be tested for their ability to benefit multiple missions or multiple NASA customers--for example, satellites for academic research and communications companies. NASA says that at least 70% of the budget for the Division will be dedicated to projects that were competitively selected by the Early-Stage Innovation Division. Also, STP projects will not be NASA-center-specific; rather, grantees will have access to all of the agency's 10 nationwide centers.

For now, though, all eyes are on Congress, where several key legislators have mounted stiff opposition to the Obama Administration's plans to halt the existing Constellation program, whose goal is to send humans back to the Moon and to Mars. On 15 July, in its latest response to Obama's NASA budget, the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation passed an alternative spending plan for NASA that, according to the press release,

Extends the space shuttle program well into [2011] and advances the date for future human flight in a newly developed spacecraft to 2016 from a 2025 target-date initially proposed by the administration.

Final passage of the president's budget isn't expected until late fall.

Jermey N. A. Matthews

Early this year the White House announced a major restructuring of the National Polar-orbiting Operational Environmental Satellite System (NPOESS) and the Geostationary Operational Environmental Satellite-R series (GOES-R) after a decade of delays, cost overruns, and general mismanagement that brought the program to the brink of extinction.

Following President Obama’s address at the Kennedy Space Center regarding the administration’s new space exploration policy, NASA administrator Charles Bolden, Office of Science and Technology Policy director John Holdren, and retired Lockheed Martin chairman and CEO Norman Augustine spoke to a gathering of government, private, and academic leaders.

Holdren said that the administration's new strategy offered a number of important advantages, such as faster access to space, less cost to the taxpayer, and a wider range of space destinations. He predicted the policy will gain support as more people come to fully understand it.

Augustine briefly described how the 10-member commission that he chaired examined NASA’s current space exploration programs, budgets, and objectives. Having 90 days in which to write a report, the committee was tasked with offering options but not specific recommendations.

Explaining that a nation’s space policy depends heavily on how much it can afford, Augustine reviewed some of the factors considered by the committee. Among them was the years-ago decision made by the Bush administration to retire the space shuttle. The committee concluded that keeping the shuttle in active service would consume funding that is needed for the exploration program and increase the time that American astronauts would be confined to a low Earth orbit.

The administration’s new policy recommends the International Space Station be kept in service for an additional five years beyond its original retirement date of 2010. Augustine said this would be “a very good investment” that would avoid damaging US relationships with the station’s international partners.

Regarding the Constellation medium- and heavy-lift launch vehicle program, Augustine described how appropriations for the program had been about one-third less than what was originally planned, which has resulted in a significant disparity between the program’s objectives and its funding. The original program is, he said, “not executable.” The Constellation’s Ares I has had a schedule slippage of between three and five years, which will result in the rocket being put in service too late to ferry crews to the shuttle, and too early for use in exploration. It is important for the US to develop a heavy-lift launch vehicle such as the Ares V for deep space exploration. Work on this rocket has barely started because funding has been shifted away from it to other programs. Augustine concurred with the president’s decision to develop the Orion space capsule as a space station rescue vehicle.

One of the most controversial aspects of the administration’s new space policy involves the eventual use of commercial contractors for the transportation of astronauts to the space station following the shuttle’s retirement. Augustine contends commercial interests would be able to provide this service at less expense than the shuttle would. In addition, federal contracting for this service would encourage the development of commercial space providers in much the same way that the government’s use of commercial airlines did for the delivery of air mail. “I believe our industry is up to the job,” Augustine said, asking if critics have more faith in Russia’s Soyuz to transport American astronauts to the space station than US companies.

Augustine predicted that after spending tens of billions of dollars the US would land humans on the Moon in 2020, which, he said, many would see as their “grandfather’s” space program. Augustine said it would take decades for America to land humans on Mars. In the intervening years, much could be learned from sending Americans to other destinations such as asteroids, Lagrange points, and an orbital mission to Mars.

In concluding his remarks, Augustine explained that the administration’s new space policy is “very close” to Variant 5B in the Augustine Commission’s report, and would be “worthy of our nation.” It would, Augustine said, transform our space program from one of transportation to exploration.

Written by Richard M. Jones; edited by Paul Guinnessy. Originally published at the American Institute of Physics FYI.

US President Obama announced in Florida yesterday at the Kennedy Space Center, that the US will not be sending humans back to the Moon, but will instead send them to near-Earth astroids by 2025 and onto Mars by 2035 "and bring them back safely." Obama also committed more forcefully his administration to pushing NASA to do more research in Earth sciences, space science and in technology innovation, and to keep the international space station going to beyond 2020.

NASA officials laid out plans last Wednesday to boost spending on climate research substantially over the next five years, to make up for cutbacks during the Bush administration.

The news was widely covered in the media, including the Washington Post.

Edward Weiler, the agency's associate administrator for science, said that NASA's Earth science budget will get a $2.4 billion, or 62%, increase through 2015. By that point, the program will have launched as many as 10 new missions, collecting information about ocean temperatures, ice coverage, ozone depletion, and the central question of how much carbon dioxide is being released through human activities.

NPR also covered the budget request, while in a related piece on the BBC website on the new US exploration strategy, NASA administrator Charlie Bolden gives an interview in which he reflects on the end of the space shuttle program and the battle to win over critics of the new strategy.

Richard Stone reports in Science that science won a big boost in spending at this year's meetings of the National People's Congress and the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference, or Liang Hui as the conferences tackled everything from budgets to carbon emissions.

Central government spending on science and technology is slated to rise 8% to $24 billion in 2010, of which $4 billion is basic R&D.

Little progress was made at the conferences on some of the most fundamental questions regarding China, for example, what exactly is the "real" GDP of the country (as outside observers believe its running higher than the official state figures, for example, the World Bank had to revise upwards China's official GDP figure in January) and how much pollution, such as heavy metals, carbon dioxide etc.. does China produce? Some new satellites developed by NASA, the European space agency and used by the Chinese may help answer some of these questions in the near future. The data will become particularly important as China races to become the biggest spender in low carbon emission energy sources, such as wind and solar power.

As NASA struggles to implement the final four space shuttle flights, and the termination of the Constellation program—the Orion crew exploration vehicle and its Ares rockets—that was scheduled to replace it, lawmakers with districts containing a large number of NASA contractors are trying to scuttle the plans.

The troubled Constellation program—which involved developing a replacement for the space shuttle as well as new heavy-lift unmanned vehicle, and a craft to take astronauts to the Moon—has been eliminated in the NASA budget.

The White House said that program was late, over budget, and unlikely to meet its deadline of returning astronauts to the Moon by 2020. In fact, even if the White House increased the human spaceflight program substantially it would still take NASA until 2030 to reach the Moon, said White House Office of Management and Budget Director Peter Orszag and White House Communications Director Dan Pfeiffer in a telephone press conference yesterday. The US could not afford that level of investment they said. So far NASA has spent $9.1 billion on the Constellation program, and it may cost $2.5 billion to cancel it.

Although science did relatively well in the new budget, the Obama administration is currently implementing a three-year freeze on most nondefense discretionary spending.

This spending freeze impacted NASA's 10-year strategic vision which forecasted increases for the agency above inflation until the end of the decade in order to build equipment and vehicles to return to the Moon.

A private hope

Instead of relying on the Constellation program the Obama administration proposes expanding the Commercial Orbital Transportation Services (COTS) program. Designed to help commercial companies develop launch vehicles to supply the International Space Station when the space shuttle retires at the end of the year, COTS will also develop vehicles that could be used for exploration outside of Earth orbit. Under this program, which will cost $6 billion over five years, NASA would rent the spacecraft developed.

The first major test under the COTS program of one of these launch vehicles—a Falcon 9 rocket made by by Space Exploration Technologies Corp (SpaceX)—is scheduled provisionally for March.

The trigger for canceling the Constellation program was the Augustine committee report from last fall that said the current human spaceflight program would require an additional $3 billion a year to remain on track.

Bretton Alexander, president of the Commercial Spaceflight Federation, hailed the change calling it "a win-win decision" that would create thousands of high-tech jobs in the US.

A boost for science

NASA's budget will be up slightly, at $18.7 billion, from last year, but the biggest surprise may be increased funds for unmanned robotic space and Earth observation missions.

Orszag said that in addition to research and development, NASA's proposal invests in "advance robotics and other steps that will help to inspire Americans and not just return a man or a woman to the Moon but undertake the longer range research that could succeed in human spaceflight to Mars."

Although Congress is expected to come under intensive lobbying to reverse the administration's proposal, Pfeiffer said the White House is determined to fight special interests attempting to do so.

US Senator Richard Shelby (R-AL), ranking member of the Commerce, Justice, Science, and Related Agencies Appropriations Subcommittee, today issued a statement sharply criticizing the Obama administration's proposal. "Congress cannot and will not sit back and watch the reckless abandonment of sound principles, a proven track record, a steady path to success, and the destruction of our human space flight program," he said.

The opposition wasn't a surprise. "We don't expect that this is going to be easy," Pfeiffer said. "There was a lot of opposition to some of the cuts that we proposed last year. And we had I think a historically very successful rate about 60 percent of the cuts we proposed were actually enacted into the law."

"I think this is a dramatic shift in the way we've gone about particularly human spaceflight over the past almost 50 years," said John M. Logsdon, former director of the Space Policy Institute at George Washington University to the New York Times.

"It is a somewhat risky proposition," Logsdon said, "but we've been kind of stuck using the technologies we've developed in the '50s and '60s."

A complete summary of the 2011 budget, which includes increases for every science agency, can be found on the White House web site.

Paul Guinnessy

At a speech to members of the American Astronomical Society's annual meeting, NASA administrator Charles Bolden spoke about the major scientific discoveries that NASA facilities had helped produce, but remained quiet on the results expected of the report of the Augustine committee (headed by retired aerospace executive Norman Augustine) of the future strategic direction for human spaceflight. The current strategic plan is unsustainable unless NASA's budget is increased dramatically said the Augustine report which provided four options for the Obama administration to consider under different budget scenarios.

"I'm sure all of you would like to know what direction President Obama will choose for the future of the space program," said Bolden. "All I can say for now is that NASA is working closely with the executive office in helping him determine the best path forward."

The result is expected to be an extra $1 billion in funding, but at the cost of canceling the Ares 1 launcher that would take astronauts into space.

Instead NASA will concentrate on building a new simpler heavy lift launcher based heavily on the Shuttle-C concept says Science magazine. Some services, such as supplying the International Space Station, would be contracted out to commercial companies such as Space X, which would use its Falcon 9 medium-lift launcher that is scheduled to fly for the first time in March.

The European Space Agency, which recently confirmed an agreement to work more closely with NASA on lunar and Mars missions, along with other partners such as Japan, may be asked to share costs and provide hardware for joint missions.

A future for space science?

Bolden assured the audience that "the future of human spaceflight will not be paid for out of the hide of the science program," a comment that received cheers and a round of applause.

However, in an interview with Physics Today held last month, associate administrator Ed Weiler who is in charge of NASA's science program, said that the community will soon be faced with "hard decisions" over which programs will receive funding as too many science missions are extended beyond their initial design life, and that the space mission budget would likely be constrained in the near future.

Paul Guinnessy

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