May 17 News Items

NASA Awards Development Contract For Ares I Roll Control Engines (Source: Aero-News)
NASA has selected Aerojet to provide developmental engines for the Ares I crew launch vehicle first stage roll control system. These engines are the first in a series of steps to develop the roll control system to manage the amount of rotation by the first stage solid rocket from liftoff to its separation from the second stage, ensuring that Ares I stays on the designated trajectory for the first two minutes of flight. The engines being developed by Aerojet under this contract will be used to mature the roll control system that will be used on the Ares I tests program.

Embry-Riddle Student Team Takes Second Place in Aero Design Competition (Source: ERAU)
A student team from Embry-Riddle took second place in the open class category of the 2007 Society of Automotive Engineers (SAE) Aero Design East competition, and they won the Best Report/Presentation Award. The design-and-fly event challenged 73 teams of college students from around the world to build and fly a remote-control aircraft carrying as much weight as possible. The Embry-Riddle students competed against 10 other teams in open class, the category that permits maximum design innovation and complexity. With a 12.5-foot wingspan, the team’s aircraft weighs 16 pounds and can carry 40 pounds of payload. It has two engines that generate 20 pounds of static thrust and is capable of flying on one engine.

NASA Official Guest Speaker at Cape Coral Event (Source: News-Press.com)
Stephanie Stilson enjoyed a rare homecoming to Cape Coral from her busy job at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center. Stilson, a Cape Coral High School graduate, was the guest speaker at the city’s monthly “Do the Right Thing” award ceremony, which honors Cape youngsters who make positive choices. Stilson, now 37, recalled a time when she was in the award-winners’ age range. At 8 years old, during her third-grade year at Caloosa Elementary, her family visited the space center.“There’s a rocket garden with all the old rockets and missiles you can walk by and read the plaques, see the launches and what they were for,” she said. “And I stood out there and I said, ‘Dad, when I grow up, I’m going to work for NASA.’ And at the time he probably patted me on the head and said, ‘OK, honey, whatever you want to do.’”

Glove Design Is Out of this World (Source: Ellsworth American)
A glove designed for astronauts working in space — made from materials purchased from Home Depot and on the Internet — has earned $200,000 for Peter Homer, an unemployed aerospace engineer who made the prototype on his dining room table. The Astronaut Glove Challenge was one of several contests sponsored by NASA to stimulate solutions in space flight technology. Homer said he decided about a year ago to work on a way to make pressurized spacesuit gloves more flexible. Developing a better inner glove could be done without expensive equipment or materials, he reasoned. "It was something I thought I could do,” Homer said. “It wasn’t a big project...The main problem is the resistance to the bending of joints,” he said. “The problem I focused on was the mobility of the joints.”

NASA Needs Plan to Transition Workforce (Source: Florida Today)
NASA needs to attract more young scientists and retrain its existing employees if it wants to successfully revive its manned space program and return to the moon and go to Mars. That was the message of several witnesses at a hearing of the House Science Committeeabout the future of NASA's workforce. But Lee Stone, with NASA's unionized engineers, said the agency is overly focused on forcing older workers to retire and is not properly funding President Bush's ambitious plan to return to manned space flight.

"NASA is not facing a workforce crisis, it is facing a fiscal crisis, " said Stone, legislative representative for the NASA Council of the International Federation of Professional and Technical Engineers. The issue is of intense interest to NASA and contractor workers, particularly at shuttle-centric sites such as Kennedy Space Center and Johnson Space Center. Those sites could face reductions after the shuttles retire in 2010 and NASA transitions to a spacecraft that is expected to require fewer people to support and launch.

Orbital Express Suffers Anomaly (Source: SpaceToday.net)
A pair of spacecraft launched earlier this year to test satellite servicing technologies are drifting apart from one another after suffering a computer problem. The Orbital Express mission, launched in March, consists of a pair of satellites, NextSat and ASTRO, designed to autonomously rendezvous and dock with each other and test the ability to service spacecraft in orbit. After several earlier, successful tests, the two spacecraft drifted apart last week after ASTRO suffered a problem with a flight computer and moved away from NextSat to avoid a potential collision. Satellite watchers have noticed that the two spacecraft are now as much as five kilometers apart. Project officials said while they're uncertain of the root cause of the problem, they plan to bring the two spacecraft closer together soon, using a backup flight computer on ASTRO.

Bigelow Space Habitat Test Delayed (Source: MSNBC)
The launch of Bigelow Aerospace's second prototype for a future space station has been delayed again, from late this month to late June, due to continuing Russian qualms about the rocket that would be used for the launch. An earlier version of the Russian-Ukrainian Dnepr rocket blew up last July, right on the heels of the successful liftoff of Bigelow's Genesis 1 inflatable space module. Since then, the Dnepr has gotten an upgrade - but making sure that the upgrade solves all the problems without creating new ones has taken longer than expected.

Florida School Teams Compete as Finalists in Rocket Challenge (Source: AIA)
Nine student teams from seven Florida high schools will compete among 100 finalists in the Team America Rocketry Challenge on May 19. Their amateur-class rockets will attempt to carry raw egg payloads to an altitude of 850 feet during a 45-second flight. The team that is closest to the altitude and time goals, with an uncracked egg, will win the prize. Prizes include $5,000 in scholarships to each of the top three teams (provided by Lockheed Martin), and a trip for the winning team to the Paris Air Show (provided by Raytheon).

Florida teams are from Spanish River High School, West Boca Raton High School, Boynton Beach Community High School, Park Vista Community High School, Charles Flanagan High School, Plantation High School, and Trinity Preparatory School.