NASA: Mark Kelly Will Return To Space

Astronaut Kelly listens to U.S. President Obama speak at the National Prayer Breakfast in Washington on Feb. 3. Mr. Kelly is the husband of Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords, who is recovering from the Tucson shootings. Kelly also spoke at the prayer breakfast. KEVIN LAMARQUE/Reuters

Wounded Congresswoman’s Husband Will Fly On Shuttle -- New York Times

Cmdr. Mark E. Kelly, the husband of Representative Gabrielle Giffords, will head the space shuttle mission in April that he was assigned to command before his wife was shot, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration announced on Friday.

"I am looking forward to rejoining my STS-134 crew members and finishing our training for the mission," Commander Kelly said in a statement released Friday. “I appreciate the confidence that my NASA management has in me and the rest of my space shuttle crew."

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My Comment: Now that he and his wife have made a decision .... they have my 100% support.

Will Astronaut Mark E. Kelly Fly Or Not?

Mark E. Kelly at a news conference in Tucson this month, joined by Dr. Peter Rhee, one of Gabrielle Giffords’s doctors. Joshua Lott/Reuters

Giffords’s Husband Faces Decision on Shuttle Flight -- New York Times

As Representative Gabrielle Giffords settles into a rehabilitation hospital in Houston, a major question remains for her husband, the astronaut Mark E. Kelly: Will he fly or not?

Captain Kelly, a Navy officer who flew 39 combat missions in the Persian Gulf war, is scheduled to fly the shuttle Endeavour on a two-week mission to the International Space Station in April.

With his wife at the beginning of a long and arduous rehabilitation program to recover from a gunshot wound to the head, Captain Kelly and his bosses at NASA will have to determine whether he can maintain the training regimen in the weeks leading up to the launching and command the mission.

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Update: Giffords husband to decide on space trip in mid-Feb -- Reuters

My Comment: I do not envy the decisions that he has to make.

NASA Honors Astronauts Lost From Apollo, Shuttles

From ABC News:

NASA marks Day of Remembrance to honor 17 fallen astronauts; Apollo fire, 2 shuttle accidents.

NASA is pausing Thursday to remember the 17 astronauts lost in the line of duty.

The so-called Day of Remembrance — always the last Thursday of January — takes on special meaning this year. Friday marks the 25th anniversary of the shuttle Challenger launch disaster.

Flags will fly at half-staff at NASA centers nationwide Thursday. In addition, NASA officials will lay wreathes at various memorials to honor the dead.

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My Comment: They will forever be remembered.

NASA's Future Looks Bleak Amid Policy Shift

From The L.A. Times:

The demise of the Constellation moon rocket means 7,000 job losses in a year. Funding for a heavy-lift rocket for asteroid missions will be comparably less than that for the moon rocket.

Reporting from Washington — A new law passed by Congress this week finally gives NASA some badly needed direction, but the future of the space agency remains bleak — at least in the near term.

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Budget Deal Propels NASA On New Path

From Wall Street Journal:

House's Passage of $58 Billion Compromise Bill Funds Commercial Space Travel, More Robotic Deep-Space Missions.

In unusual bipartisan fashion, the House on Wednesday approved a three-year $58-billion compromise bill intended to revive NASA's manned-exploration programs while funding plans for pioneering private rockets able to blast astronauts into orbit.

Capping nearly a year of intense industry turmoil, agency uncertainty and congressional debate, the vote reflected last-minute decisions by House leaders from both parties to embrace a previously-passed Senate blueprint for NASA, though it doesn't completely satisfy any of the rival interest groups or regional factions maneuvering to shape the agency's future.

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NASA Budget Likely to Remain In Limbo Until After Election Day, Lawmakers Say

To the Launch Pad Space Shuttle Discovery crawled toward Launch Pad A this week, preparing for its final flight in November. via Flickr/ forthebirds (CC licensed)

From Popular Science:

Apparently, space doesn’t sell in an election year. Lawmakers are saying Congress is unlikely to make any spending decisions about NASA until after November 2, according to several reports.

Congress has been debating the space agency’s future in fits and starts since the beginning of the year, when President Obama first proposed shifting its priorities. Lawmakers balked at his plans and offered their own budget suggestions, which have been bandied about through the summer. Still, competing House and Senate bills remain in play, and they’re unlikely to get resolved in the next two weeks, when Congress goes on fall break to concentrate on the midterm elections.

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Nasa Tests Robot Hardware For Planet Missions

A suit port allows astronauts to be on the surface within a few minutes

From The BBC:

Nasa is testing the next generation of human spaceflight technology in the deserts of Arizona, US.

The Desert RATS (Research and Technology Studies) programme is designed to give advanced equipment a trial run, and to expose any issues before it is used in space.

The dry, dusty, rocky land near the lip of the Grand Canyon provides a good simulation of other planets.

"The terrain is very varied, and is very volcanic in nature, which more or less represents what you would see on the Moon" says Joe Kosmo, Mission Manager for the Desert RATS programme.

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The Trials Of The Modern-Day Astronaut

A NASA Astronaut in space challenges earthlings to a chess match Photo: PHOTOSHOT/NASA

From The Telegraph:

Origami, 'non-sweat' underpants and nauseating sherry: in her new book, 'Packing for Mars', Mary Roach explains why today's astronauts have to be more than just heroes.

First you remove your shoes, as you would upon entering a Japanese home. You are given a pair of special isolation chamber slippers, light blue vinyl imprinted with the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency logo, the letters JAXA leaning forward as though rushing into space at terrific speed.

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NSS Calls For House To Adopt Senate Version of NASA Authorization Act Of 2010

Photo: The Senate bill provides a framework for compromise, which will be required in order to obtain the widespread political support necessary to pass and fund a set of programs that together will enable the United States to once again move beyond low Earth orbit.

From Space Travel:

The National Space Society (NSS) is reaffirming its longstanding and unwavering commitment to further space exploration and development, by calling on the Executive and Legislative branches to incorporate their various proposals into a Unified Space Policy so that the United States can once again begin to move beyond low Earth orbit.

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NASA Flies First Drone Over Hurricane

From Wired Science:

Hurricane Earl is waning as it moves northward up the east coast of the United States. Some of the first researchers to notice the weakening had front row seats, watching the eye of the hurricane via drone flights.

In addition to the usual cadre of satellites, NASA is using a small fleet of unmanned aircraft into, over and around the hurricane as it tracks north from the Caribbean. While flying into a hurricane is nothing new, Earl is the first hurricane that NASA has observed using their unmanned Global Hawk observation aircraft (pictured above).

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NASA Planning Mission To Visit The Sun

Artist Representation of Solar Probe Plus
(Credit: NASA)

From The CBS:

We know it's hot up there but NASA wants to know a bit more about the Sun and its environs. And so sometime before 2018, the agency intends to send a spacecraft into the solar atmosphere.

This will mark the first time that a spacecraft from earth will actually visit a star.

The decision to chart a mission to the Sun also realizes a dream that astronomers almost realized a half century ago, when the National Academy of Science's "Simpson Committee" in 1958 recommended a probe to investigate. Several studies were subsequently carried out testing the feasibility of the project. But nothing came of them.

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Loud Video: NASA Test Fires Largest-Ever Solid Rocket Motor

From Popular Science:

In Utah today, NASA completed a successful test of the world's largest, most powerful solid rocket motor, the DM-2. For two minutes, the motor, designed to provide up to 3.6 million pounds of thrust, roaringly fired a column of flame, while some 760 instruments monitored its every aspect. Best to turn down your speakers before the countdown in this video hits zero.

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NASA's Earth Day Gift Runs On a 56,832-Core, 128-Screen Climate Research Supercomputer

NASA's Advanced Supercomputing Facility at Ames Research Center This ain't NASA's first supercomputer.

From Popular Science:

Earth Week is upon us, and NASA has prepared a very special gift for the blue planet. Dwarfing the iPods that we customarily give each other to celebrate another year of existence, NASA put together NEX, a planetary data-crunching tool that uses a 56,832-core, 128-screen supercomputer to blend global satellite data and sophisticated modeling software with an online collaborative culture aimed at helping scientists work together toward better climate change research.

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Obama Consigns Moon Landings To History

Buzz Aldrin on the Moon, 20 July 1969, during the Apollo 11 mission. Aldrin is among those who support the ending of the planned Moon landing programme. NASA/ AP

From The Independent:

President's vision for Nasa rules out return to lunar surface – and divides Apollo astronauts.

Standing near the spot where the US launched its first space missions, Barack Obama attempted to sell his plans for the future of Nasa last night, predicting that his new programme for the space agency will protect thousands of jobs and send astronauts to Mars within his lifetime.

The President told a crowd of 200 people at the Kennedy Space Centre
at Cape Canaveral that he remains committed to space exploration, despite his controversial decision earlier this year to cancel plans for a new mission to the Moon.

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NASA's Orion Capsule To Be Reborn As Escape Pod For Space Station

Orion Reborn A mock-up of Orion lies on the ground after a test set-up chute failed on July 31, 2008 NASA

From Popular Science:

President Obama also promised to commit to a new supersized rocket by 2015.

NASA's Orion crew capsule, which was part of the cancelled Constellation program, has been revived as an escape pod for the International Space Station. A smaller version of the capsule could launch on an Atlas or Delta rocket and eliminate the need to buy a multimillion-dollar Russian Soyuz spacecraft for emergency crew escape, Florida Today reports.

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First Man On The Moon Neil Armstrong Blasts Obama's Space Plans

Neil Armstrong Blasts Obama’s ‘Devastating’ Nasa Cuts -- Times Online

Neil Armstrong, the first man on the Moon, has launched an unprecedented attack on President Obama’s plans to dismantle Nasa’s manned space exploration programme.

The world’s best-known astronaut, who has traditionally avoided controversy and rarely seeks the limelight despite his feat 41 years ago, warned that Mr Obama risks blasting American space superiority on a “long downhill slide to mediocrity”.

The decision to cancel Constellation, the project to send astronauts to the Moon again by 2020 and Mars by 2030, was “devastating”, Mr Armstrong said in a powerful open letter to the President.

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More News On Protests Against President Obama's NASA Plans

Space Fight: President Obama's Plans for NASA Attacked By Former Astronauts -- ABC News
Moon vets say Obama's NASA cuts would ground U.S. -- USA Today
White House Moves to Placate Critics of its NASA Plan -- Wall Street Journal
Put NASA on a Diet?! Them's Fightin' Words, Mr. President -- Newsweek
Obama's Revised Space Plan: Build Rocket, Save Orion -- NPR

Astronauts Take 3rd, Final Spacewalk; Valve Stuck

From ABC News:

Astronauts take 3rd, final spacewalk to finish installing tank; stuck valve threatens cooling.

A pair of spacewalking astronauts finished installing a fresh storage tank outside the International Space Station on Tuesday, but a stuck valve was threatening to jeopardize half of the cooling system.

No sooner had Rick Mastracchio hooked up the fluid valves for the new ammonia tank on the third and final spacewalk of shuttle Discovery's flight, then flight controllers encountered the valve trouble in a separate pressurizing unit.

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Nasa Astronaut Gets Ready For Blast-Off

From The Telegraph:

Technicians at a space centre in Kazakhstan have hoisted a rocket on to its launch pad ahead of Friday's blast-off.

A NASA astronaut and two Russian cosmonauts will be inside and will travel to the International Space Station.

NASA's Tracy Caldwell Dyson and Russians Alexander Skvortsov and Mikhail Kornienko are to blast off at 10.04am (0404 GMT) Friday for their six-month mission in the orbiting science lab.

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$500 Million Launcher Lacks One Thing: Rocket

The Constellation Program's Ares I-X test rocket roars off Launch Pad 39B at NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida on Oct. 28. At right is space shuttle Atlantis. Photo courtesy of Scott Andrews

From MSNBC:

Space industry tense over pending demise of Constellation program.

CAPE CANAVERAL, FLA. - Anyone need a $500 million, 355-foot steel tower for launching rockets into space?

There's one available at NASA's Kennedy Space Center. Brand new, never been used.

The mobile launcher has been built for a rocket called the Ares 1. The problem is, there is not yet any such thing as an Ares 1 rocket — and if the Obama administration has its way, there never will be.

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Obama Nasa Plans 'Catastrophic' Say Moon Astronauts

From The BBC:

Former Nasa astronauts who went to the Moon have told the BBC of their dismay at President Barack Obama's decision to push back further Moon missions.

Jim Lovell, commander of the ill-fated Apollo 13 mission, said Mr Obama's decision would have "catastrophic consequences" for US space exploration.

The last man on the Moon, Eugene Cernan, said it was "disappointing".

Last month Mr Obama cancelled Nasa's Constellation Moon landings programme, approved by ex-President George W Bush.

Nasa still aims to send astronauts back to the Moon, but it is likely to take decades and some believe that it will never happen again.

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