News Summaries for February 18

Delta 2 Delivers Five NASA Satellites to Orbit (Source: Florida Today)
A United Launch Alliance Delta 2 rocket blasted off from the Cape Canaveral Spaceport on Saturday, hurling five NASA science satellites toward orbit. Standing 12 stories tall, the sleek blue-and-white rocket leapt off a beachside launch pad at 6:01 p.m. and streaked into sunset skies, trailing a growing tail of puffy white smoke. Nine strap-on boosters peeled away from the rocket and tumbled back toward the Atlantic Ocean as the rocket rumbled toward orbit. The spacecraft were successfully deployed from the Delta 2 about 73 minutes into flight. They now are headed toward strategic spots over North America, where they will study polar aurora.

Audit Criticizes NASA for Award Fee Management (Source: Space News)
NASA needs to do a better job of following its own guidelines on determining contract award fees, the U.S. Government Accountability (GAO) said in a report released Feb. 16. The report was requested by House Science and Technology Committee Chairman Rep. Bart Gordon (D-Tenn.). The report says NASA has not consistently followed its own criteria for determining a contractor’s award-fee eligibility and has in some instances paid award fees when contractors did not meet specified cost, schedule or performance milestones.

Ben Bova: Stingy U.S. Risks Losing Edge in Space (Source: Naples News)
Thinking about NASA’s budget reminds me of an old Sicilian story about a farmer and his donkey. Seems there was a farmer who one day got the idea that he was spending too much money feeding his hard-working donkey. Being frugal by nature, he cut the donkey’s daily ration of hay in half. The donkey kept on working, just as usual. “What a fool I’ve been, feeding my donkey all that hay,” thought the farmer. So he halved the donkey’s feed again. The donkey kept on working, although his ribs began to show. After a few days of this, the farmer decided it was foolish to feed the donkey anything at all. The donkey kept on working — until one day the animal collapsed and died.

The farmer grew furious. He began to kick the donkey’s emaciated carcass, screaming, “Ungrateful beast! Here I show you how to work without eating and you drop dead on me!” We’re sort of like that farmer, when it comes to NASA. We expect the space agency to blaze the trail into space, explore the universe, develop new technology for space and aircraft (that second A in NASA is for “aeronautics”). Yet we often forget that you have to feed the donkey if you want to keep it working.

U.N. Urged to Take Action on Asteroid Threat (Source: Reuters)
An asteroid may come uncomfortably close to Earth in 2036 and the United Nations should assume responsibility for a space mission to deflect it, a group of astronauts, engineers and scientists said on Saturday. Astronomers are monitoring an asteroid named Apophis, which has a 1 in 45,000 chance of striking Earth on April 13, 2036. Although the odds of an impact by this particular asteroid are low, a recent congressional mandate for NASA to upgrade its tracking of near-Earth asteroids is expected to uncover hundreds, if not thousands of threatening space rocks in the near future, former astronaut Rusty Schweickart said. The Association of Space Explorers, a group of former astronauts and cosmonauts, intends to host a series of high-level workshops this year to flesh out the plan and will make a formal proposal to the U.N. in 2009.

Astronauts Urged to Take Up Skiing Ahead of Lunar Missions (Source: SpaceDaily.com)
Astronauts could be trained to cross-country ski across the surface of the moon as preparations for the next generation of lunar missions take shape, a conference heard Saturday. Apollo 17 astronaut Harry Schmitt said that future inhabitants of the moonbase should be taught Nordic skiing to travel around the moon, where lower gravity means large distances can be covered with minimum effort.

Boeing Satellite Unit Faces Lawsuits (Source: AP)
Boeing's satellite unit faces two new lawsuits collectively seeking $610 million in damages for alleged satellite malfunctions. Telesat Canada and its insurers are seeking more than $385 million in damages and $10 million in lost profits related to alleged malfunctions in its model 702 satellite made by Boeing. Several early model 702 satellites, including Telesat's Anik F1, allegedly faltered in orbit in 2004 after having problems with their solar panel cells. Insurers for Japanese firm Space Communications Corp. brought a second suit against Boeing's satellite unit, seeking $215 million related to a botched 2004 launch of Japan's Superbird-6 satellite.