March 14 News Items

SpaceTEC & BCC Sponsor Technician Appreciation Night on March 27 (Source: SpaceTEC)
Aerospace technicians are invited to the 5th annual Technician Appreciation Night on March 27, from 5:30 to 7:30 p.m., at the Radisson Resort at Cape Canaveral. This year's event will include KSC Director Bill Parsons and 45th Space Wing Commander Brig.Gen. Susan Helms. Come enjoy door prizes and free refreshments. An RSVP is necessary to give correct headcount to caterers. Please email mailto:rossd@brevardcc.edu or call 321-433-7750.

Space Bills Advance Through Florida Legislature (Source: ERAU)
Two space-related bills advanced through committees during the first full week of Florida's legislative session. HB-1055, which would establish a Space Technology & Research Diversification Initiative (STRDI), was passed unanimously by the House Economic Development Committee. HB-0737, which addresses "informed consent" for human spaceflight liability, was passed unanimously, with amendments, by the Constitution & Civil Law Committee.

United Launch Alliance Inaugural Atlas V California Launch A Success (Source: SpaceDaily.com)
Adding to the Atlas rocket's legacy of launches from the west coast that began in 1959, United Launch Alliance's Atlas V made its debut flight from Space Launch Complex-3 East at Vandenberg Air Force Base. It carried a National Reconnaissance Office (NRO) payload. The launch ushers in a new era of space launch capability for the Air Force and ULA as part of the Evolved Expendable Launch Vehicle (EELV) program. For Atlas V, today's success builds on 12 previous Atlas V launches from the Cape Canaveral Spaceport, starting in 2002.

Modifications to SLC-3E to support an Atlas V vehicle began more than four years ago when a 22-month development program was initiated. Construction began Jan. 5, 2004 and was completed March 31, 2005. Major elements of the modification included raising the height of the mobile service tower by 30 feet; building a new 250-ton fixed launch platform; installing a new 60-ton bridge crane; replacing the ground command, control, and communication system; and finishing work on new and refurbished launch control and mission support centers.

Delta Set to Launch on March 15 from Cape Canaveral Spaceport (Source: SpaceFlightNow.com)
A United Launch Alliance Delta-2 rocket will launch the sixth modernized NAVSTAR Global Positioning System Block 2R military navigation satellite on March 15 from the Cape Canaveral Spaceport. The launch will be run by the U.S. Air Force. The launch window will open at 2:09 a.m.

Upcoming Departures From the Cape Canaveral Spaceport (Source: ERAU)
Upcoming launches from the Cape Canaveral Spaceport include the April 14 launch of an Atlas-5 rocket carrying the year's sole commercial payload from the Cape at 4:12 p.m.; the May 16 launch of a Delta-2 rocket carrying a NASA gamma ray telescope at 11:45 a.m.; and the May 25 launch of the Space Shuttle Discovery on a Space Station assembly mission at 7:26 p.m.

Lottery Winner: I'm Heading to Space (Source: Waikato Times)
An Auckland beneficiary who bought a lottery ticket on a whim is more than $5 million better off and hopes to travel into space. The man, who wants to remain anonymous, was on a bike ride when he had a spur of the moment drink stop in a New Zealand store. "People have always told me that you can't win these big prizes - but now I'm the lucky bugger this week", he said. "I also want to look at travelling in real style - by booking a trip into space. It would be great to one of the first kiwis to make that trip."

Florida College Makes Griffin Honorary Chancellor (Source: Lakeland Ledger)
The lead man at NASA, Michael D. Griffin, was honored at a ceremony last week at Florida Southern College in Lakeland, becoming the school's 74th honorary chancellor. The humble, unassuming and short-winded administrator of the nation's space program spoke of space really being the final frontier, with mankind poised, at long last, to boldly go where no man has gone before. Griffin spoke of America's lead role in an ongoing space race that will include further manned missions to the moon, Mars and beyond. Griffin has held NASA's highest post for nearly three years after having been space department head at Johns Hopkins University's Applied Physics Laboratory. In addition to a doctorate in aerospace engineering from the University of Maryland, he holds five master's degrees and is a certified flight instructor.

Spacecraft Flies Through Saturn Moon's Plumes (Source: AP)
The international Cassini spacecraft collected science data on mysterious geysers spewing from Saturn's moon Enceladus and recorded new images of its surface during a close flyby. The pass Wednesday brought Cassini as close as 30 miles to the surface of the moon. It went through the icy geysers at 32,000 mph and an altitude of 120 miles. It's hoped that instrument data on density, size, composition and speed of plume particles will provide clues to whether there's a water ocean or organics inside the frozen moon. The geysers spew water vapor from fractures in the moon's south pole.

Former NASA Administrator Gets Job with GE (Source: The Advocate)
Former LSU Chancellor Sean O’Keefe is taking over General Electric Co.’s aviation operations in Washington, D.C. A former NASA administrator, O’Keefe stepped down amid controversy as LSU chancellor in January and has since continued to teach at LSU while looking into other job opportunities. O’Keefe said Thursday that he was attracted to a private sector job that matches his experience, where he can focus on strategic planning and government relations for GE.

Hardy Earth Bacteria Can Grow in Lunar Soil (Source: New Scientist)
A hardy life form called cyanobacteria can grow in otherwise inhospitable lunar soil, new experiments suggest. Future colonists on the Moon might be able to use the cyanobacteria to extract resources from the soil that could be used to make rocket fuel and fertilizer for crops. Cyanobacteria grow in water-rich environments. They are technically a type of bacteria, but like plants, they produce their own food via photosynthesis. (Sometimes called 'blue-green algae', cyanobacteria are actually not related to the algae they resemble.) Lunar soil is inhospitable to plants because many of the nutrients it contains are locked up in tough minerals that the plants cannot break down. But experiments show that some cyanobacteria are perfectly happy growing on lunar soil, if supplied with water, air and light.

Software "Hiccup" Undermines Trip Past Saturn Moon (Source: Reuters)
A software malfunction prevented a key piece of equipment on the Cassini spacecraft from recording data as it flew through the plume from a geyser shooting off a moon of Saturn. NASA called the problem "an unexplained software hiccup" that came at a very bad time, preventing Cassini's Cosmic Dust Analyzer instrument from collecting data for about two hours as it flew over the surface of the moon Enceladus on Wednesday.

Alliance Plans to Save Delta 2 (Source: Florida Today)
United Launch Alliance has a strategy to prevent the demise of the Delta 2 rocket program. The company's plan keeps the world's most reliable rocket in production beyond 2010, but the number of launches is expected to fall from six or eight per year to one or two. The ULA strategy will keep the Delta 2 program alive while the company waits and hopes for a resurgence in demand. By 2010, the plan will phase out 200 jobs and will vacate one of the Delta 2 pads and as many as 10 buildings at the Cape Canaveral Spaceport. After Saturday morning's launch of a GPS spacecraft, the company has a total of 16 remaining Delta 2 launches planned from the Cape and from Vandenberg in California. Delta 2 rocket bodies and critical parts have been stockpiled to keep the program flying at the less-frequent rate after 2010.

Scientist: Space Vision Lacks Funds (Source: Florida Today)
President Bush has failed to back up his broad vision to revive the nation's interest in space exploration with adequate funding or even public support, a leading scientist told lawmakers Thursday. "The money that was promised to execute the mission has not been provided, and it's hard to say that the vision has generated much excitement, particularly among the young, who are expected to benefit the most," said Lennard Fisk, chairman of the National Research Council Space Studies Board.

Rep. Tom Feeney, the panel's top Republican, said both the president and Congress often are eager to assign NASA new missions -- without providing the necessary money. "The result of our actions is that NASA's resources are shrinking in real terms while the agency is charged with maintaining America's preeminence as a space faring nation," said Feeney, whose district includes part of the Cape Canaveral Spaceport.

Does Space Need Air Traffic Control? (Source: Christian Science Monitor)
The way Kirk Shireman describes it, the International Space Station is fast becoming the O'Hare International Airport of low Earth orbit. Joking about the increasing flow of missions to and from the Space Station, NASA's Shireman said: "We're thinking about launching an air-traffic controller soon to keep it all straight." His jest, during a recent prelaunch briefing, highlights what several specialists see as an emerging issue for spaceflight in the 21st century: a need to overhaul the way people manage traffic in space – from human-tended craft and satellites to the long-standing problem of space debris.

Some say it may be time to set up an international body similar to the International Civil Aviation Organization to establish common standards and practices. Others suggest that individual nation-to-nation agreements could be enough. Whatever the approach, aerospace traffic management "is getting to be a hot topic," says Ben Baseley-Walker, a consultant for the Secure World Foundation, a space-policy think tank based in Superior, Colo. Meetings on the subject that drew a few dozen academics two or three years ago are now drawing crowds of nearly 200 from around the world, he says. And several of the newer attendees are wearing military uniforms. Visit http://www.csmonitor.com/2008/0314/p01s02-usgn.html to view the article.

Dextre Robot Arm Needs Fix (Source: Reuters)
NASA and the Canadian Space Agency were working on a software patch to bypass a problem that is preventing the $209 million "Dextre" robot from tapping into the station's electrical system. "There's not a sense of great urgency," said a NASA official. "We don't have our hair on fire." Dextre can go at least five days before the cold of space becomes a problem. About half of the five spacewalks planned during Endeavour's 12-day stay at the station are dedicated to building Dextre, which has never been assembled on the ground. With 11-foot-long arms and a mass of more than 1.5 tons, the robot would topple in Earth's gravity.

Huge Ice Deposits 'Seen' on Mars (Source: BBC)
Large volumes of water ice have probably been detected below Mars' surface, far from the planet's polar ice caps, scientists have said. The Sharad radar experiment, on Nasa's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO) spacecraft made the discovery in Mars' mid-northern latitudes. The ice is found in distinctive geological structures on Mars' surface that are hundreds of metres thick. The radar data suggest that some of these features consist mostly of ice.

A Solar System That Looks Like Home (Source: Science Now)
A disk of gas and dust 450 light-years away bears a close resemblance to our early solar system, astronomers report. The region contains relatively large quantities of some of the most important basic building blocks of life, and these are concentrated at a potentially habitable distance away from the parent star. The finding should provide new insights into how life managed to arise in our own neighborhood.

Space Rocks Brought Life's Raw Material (Source: Space.com)
Nobody knows how life on Earth began, but the primordial soup likely got a lot of its ingredients from space. Scientists have discovered concentrations of amino acids in two meteorites that are more than ten times higher than levels previously measured in other similar meteorites. Amino acids are organic molecules that form the backbone of proteins, which in turn build many of the structures and drive many of the chemical reactions inside living cells. The production of proteins is believed to constitute one of the first steps in the emergence of life. So the finding suggests that the early solar system was far richer in the organic building blocks of life than scientists had thought. The researchers speculate that rocks from space may have spiked Earth's primordial broth.

How We Present Ourselves to Aliens (Source: Space.com)
Humans live and die by approximations. We are seldom as perfect or as accurate as we would like to be. And as we contemplate what we might say to an advanced extraterrestrial civilization, maybe that's a point we should emphasize. The only way we are likely to detect ET is if alien civilizations are much older than we are. If the typical civilization has the capacity to communicate by radio for only a few decades before it self-destructs, then it's very unlikely that we and they will happen to co-exist in the long lifetime of our galaxy. That disparity of age explains why current SETI programs merely listen for signals from other civilizations, rather than transmit. Transmitting requires greater patience and more resources than listening, so shouldn't we expect our cosmic elders to shoulder the burden?

Priest-Cosmologist Wins $1.6 Million Templeton Prize (Source: New York Times)
The $1.6 million Templeton Prize, the richest award made to an individual by a philanthropic organization, was given to Michael Heller, 72, a Roman Catholic priest, cosmologist and philosopher who has spent his life asking, and perhaps more impressively answering, questions like “Does the universe need to have a cause?” He says science and religion “are prerequisites of the decent existence.” Much of Professor Heller’s career has been dedicated to reconciling the known scientific world with the unknowable dimensions of God. Professor Heller said he believed, for example, that the religious objection to teaching evolution “is one of the greatest misunderstandings” because it “introduces a contradiction or opposition between God and chance.”