September 6 News Items

Space Florida Lets Brevard Students Learn at KSC (Source: Florida Today)
Patriot eighth-grader C. J. Shiffer and 29 of his classmates from the Patriot campus of Palm Bay Municipal Charter Schools became the first school group from Brevard County to attend a three-day space academy at Kennedy Space Center. The academy began Wednesday and ends today with the launch of a 12-foot wide scientific balloon carrying a camera that should float up high enough to capture images of the Earth’s curvature. Using a global positioning system, the students hope to track the balloon for 60 to 90 minutes. “Everybody thinks I’d make a great engineer,” the 13-year-old said. Patriot hopes to send more teachers and students through the program to spur interest in math and science. Space Florida, a public-private partnership to develop the state’s aerospace industry, paid for the Patriot group to attend the academy and will fund places for 30 more students next spring.

Proton Launch Fails (Source: SpaceToday.net)
A Proton rocket carrying a Japanese communications satellite failed to reach orbit Thursday because of an anomaly with the vehicle's second stage. The Proton-M, carrying the JCSAT-11 spacecraft, lifted off from the Baikonur spaceport. While the launch initially proceeded as planned, the Proton's second-stage engines apparently failed to ignite, causing the upper stages of the rocket to crash on Kazakh territory downrange from the launch site. Few other details about the accident have been released; International Launch Services, which markets the Proton for commercial customers, said in a statement that a Russian State Commission has been convened to investigate the accident. The failure is the second in less than 18 months for the Proton: a commercial Proton launch in March 2006 failed because of a problem with the vehicle's Breeze-M upper stage.

Only One Source for Astronaut Drinking Allegations (Source: NASA Watch)
Hearings are being held regarding the Astronaut Health Report issued in July by the NASA Astronaut Health Care System Review Committee. According to its chair, Col. Richard Bachmann, Jr., the allegation about astronaut drinking was only made by one NASA individual - and made only to one member of Bachmann's committee. It would seem that Bachmann's committee never tried to corroborate this information by finding other sources. Instead, they just published it as fact.

ISRO Bleeds as Scientists Leave (India Economic Times)
India's space agency is bleeding. Droves of scientists are leaving for greener pastures with the result that ISRO is hiring scientists in a great hurry to replace hundreds of trained hands. Last year, it hired 354 fresh scientists, but 187 trained ones left the organization. The trend is only growing. Against a nearly similar level of fresh recruits in 2004 and 2005 (360 and 346), the number of those who left the organization was 105 and 100. If you take all three years together, and you get a sense of the high level of attrition. In 36 months, ISRO has lost 392 scientists against 1,060 it has hired. This means almost 11 scientists are leaving every month.

This trend is not unique to ISRO. The government has already admitted that a good number of scientists have quit the Department of Atomic Energy (DAE) and Defence Research Development Organisation (DRDO) in recent years and it was finding it difficult to stem the outflow as the monetary incentive outside the government was much higher. "The stupendous growth of IT and communications sector and the higher remunerative packages offered by the private sector are the main reasons for scientists/engineers to leave ISRO," Chavan said.

Plan to 'Launch' ISRO Institute Hits Roadblock (Source: Times of India)
The 'launch' of a space institute by ISRO to serve as an assembly line for the country's future space scientists has hit a stumbling block in Kerala even before its lift-off. A land deal near Thiruvananthapuram -- with a private party to set up the institute -- has landed ISRO in the centre of a raging controversy. The Opposition Congress has demanded a CBI probe into the purchase of the land, which it says is ecologically fragile. A portion of the 82 acres sold to ISRO by businessman Xavi Mano Mathew, the party says, is actually owned by the government and, therefore, not transferable. Tempers ran high on Wednesday with the Opposition demanding the resignation of state Forest Minister Binoy Viswam, asking how the land under his ministry came to be in possession of a private individual.

Compulsory ISRO Stint for IIST Students (Source: Times of India)
ISRO is hiring scientists in a great hurry to replace hundreds of trained hands who have left for greener pastures. Realising the scale of the problem, ISRO, which has shortlisted 150 students to for BTech or MSc courses at the just established Indian Institute of Space Technology (IIST), has made it mandatory for them to serve ISRO for five years after graduation, provided they secure a first class. And if they still do quit, they have to shell out Rs 10 lakh. The first batch starts its classes on September next week and ISRO hopes IIST to be its nursery for space scientists and technologists.

Florida Researchers Use NASA Satellites to Eye Coastal Water Quality (Source: SpaceDaily)
Using data from instruments aboard NASA satellites, Zhiqiang Chen and colleagues at the University of South Florida in St. Petersburg, found that they can monitor water quality almost daily, rather than monthly. Such information has direct application for resource managers devising restoration plans for coastal water ecosystems and federal and state regulators in charge of defining water quality standards. The team's findings will help tease out factors that drive changes in coastal water quality. For example, sediments entering the water as a result of coastal development or pollution can cause changes in water turbidity - a measure of the amount of particles suspended in the water. Sediments suspended from the bottom by strong winds or tides may also cause such changes. Knowing where the sediments come from is critical to managers because turbidity cuts off light to the bottom, thwarting the natural growth of plants.

Brevard Prepares for Life After Shuttle (Source: Florida Today)
Efforts to help workers in Brevard County and elsewhere in the state weather the space shuttle program's 2010 retirement may cost $75 million over three years, local workforce experts said Wednesday. "We have to move quickly," said Lisa Rice, president of the Brevard Workforce Development Board. Rice joined economic development and education officials at the second Brevard County Commission workshop on the topic in the past month. All agreed a coordinated campaign must begin immediately to anticipate job training needs, attract new businesses and lobby political leaders in Tallahassee and Washington for funding.

Lobbying will ramp up this fall to convince legislators and Gov. Charlie Crist to allocate funding in next year's session. Local officials want to expand their pitch beyond Brevard's state and congressional delegates and capture the attention of presidential candidates. "Brevard County underestimates how powerful we are as a voting block," said commission chairwoman Jackie Colon. Representatives from area schools, colleges and universities pledged to expand or develop programs that would help train workers for new technologies or the transition to new careers. They also will work to secure research grants that could diversify Kennedy Space Center operations.

Amid a Second Tragedy, Plans for New Mexico Spaceport are Unveiled (Source: Popular Science)
Under the cloud cast by Steve Fossett's apparent accident, Richard Branson's Virgin Galactic moves forward with the ambitious Spaceport America in the New Mexico desert. The press conference unveiling the design for Spaceport America, the New Mexico facility from which Virgin Galactic intends to launch paying customers on suborbital spaceflights, was originally going to be held on July 27. The day before, however, a tragic explosion killed three engineers at a test facility in California operated by Burt Rutan's Scaled Composites, the company building Virgin's spacecraft. The press conference was quickly postponed to September 4, which unfortunately turned out to be the day after adventurer Steve Fossett, a close friend of Virgin Galactic founder Richard Branson and pilot of Rutan's around-the-world Virgin Atlantic GlobalFlyer aircraft, disappeared on a flight over the Nevada desert. His condition remains unknown, but many fear he perished in a crash.

Panel Urges NASA to Study Dark Energy (Source: Space.com)
A proposed NASA mission to study a mysterious force thought to be accelerating the expansion of the universe should be the first in the agency's "Beyond Einstein" program to be developed and launched, the National Research Council recommended today. Beyond Einstein is NASA's research roadmap for five proposed space missions set to begin in 2009 that will study areas in science that build on and extend the work of physicist Albert Einstein. The missions include Constellation-X and the laser Interferometer Space Antenna (LISA), which will measure X-rays and look for hypothetical gravity waves, respectively, as well as the Inflation Probe (IP), the Black Hole Finder Probe (BHFP) and the Joint Dark Energy Mission (JDEM).

Want to Travel to Space? 1st Stop: Sarasota (Source: Bradenton.com)
Admiral Travel Gallery in Sarasota, which specializes in high-end vacations such as photo safaris, has added space to it's roster of fantasy vacations. Ryan Hilton, co-owner of Admiral Travel Gallery of Sarasota and Lakewood Ranch, is among 47 exclusive agents worldwide selling Virgin Galactic's commercial flights into space. The trips aren't for everyone. For one thing, they cost $200,000 for a few minutes of weightlessness. For another, the spacecraft for the flights is still being tested and flights aren't expected to start until 2009.

Diana Cloud, 52, of Sarasota, has signed on for seat number 161 on the six-passenger spaceship to be launched from the Mojave Desert. The spaceship, which sits atop a jet carrier aircraft, flies to 50,000 feet before it leaves the mother ship and continues on to the edge of the atmosphere at 360,000 feet, or nearly 70 miles. Virgin Galactic, owned by billionaire Sir Richard Branson, is offering the space travel. Cloud, who will receive two days of training before the flight, is expected to be on the 30th trip from Earth. "It's very exciting. She's a pioneer," Hilton said.

Lowering Cost Key to Japan's Post-M5 Rocket Success (Source: Yomiuri Shimbun)
The Education, Science and Technology Ministry's Space Activities Commission on Wednesday approved studies by the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency to develop a new type of solid-fuel rocket to be the successor to the M5 rocket series. The development plan aims to lower costs by increasing efficiency. JAXA's introduction of the new solid-fuel rocket is an entirely different approach from Japan's past rocket development projects. About 40 days of launchpad preparations were necessary to launch an M5 rocket. But for the new rocket, JAXA plans to shorten the period to about a week by integrating information technology that includes self-examination functions.