SpacePolicyOnline.com correspondent Laura M. Delgado shares her reaction to visiting the space shuttle Discovery at the Smithsonian’s Udvar-Hazy Center this weekend in this commentary, updated with photos of Discovery taken during her visit.
During a panel discussion on defense and industry perspectives on international space security and sustainability measures on Tuesday, Peter Marquez, former White House director of space policy in both the George W. Bush and Barack Obama administrations, said that the proposed Code of Conduct for Outer Space Activities (CoC) evokes the definition of a “sarlacc,” a fictional creature from the Star Wars movies. Marquez quoted another Star Wars character, C-3PO, as saying that in the sarlacc’s Great Pit of Carkoon “you will find a new definition of pain and suffering as you are slowly digested over a thousand years.”
Marquez, now vice president of strategy and planning at Orbital Sciences Corporation, said that while the CoC may have good principles, it is already in the middle of a process with no daylight at the end of it. He cautioned against taking solely normative measures to advance space sustainability and security when these are not matched with intelligence and economic measures. Without investing in capabilities to make space secure, he said, normative security is a “space utopia.”
Marquez added that defining red lines without capabilities is “nothing but dangerous” and said that leadership is needed in this area. Referencing criticisms made about the stance of the Bush Administration regarding space security measures, Marquez agreed that it had been “absent from the international community.” Yet he thinks that the Obama Administration’s change in tone is also insufficient; “saying yes to everything isn’t really leadership either.” “Change is easy, leadership is hard,” he said and added that Congress should also be advancing this issue.
Panelists from the Department of Defense (DoD), the Aerospace Industries Association (AIA) and the Satellite Industry Association (SIA), joined Marquez in the panel discussion, which was hosted by the Secure World Foundation and the Space Foundation.
Industry representatives emphasized the role of their community in engaging and providing input in the development of these measures, which they said directly impact their activities. In particular, they mentioned ITAR reform as a priority. ITAR stands for the International Traffic in Arms Regulation that implement the Arms Export Control Act. Currently, satellites and related technologies are governed by the DoD’s “munitions list” under ITAR and its strict export control rules. Many industry advocates have called for ITAR reform, which they believe has negatively impacted U.S. competitiveness in the space sector.
Sam Black, SIA director of policy described ITAR reform as the “single most important way of boosting international cooperation.” While Black said he remained hopeful that progress could be made in the next few years, AIA Vice President for Space Systems Frank Slazer was more optimistic. He expects that work on ITAR reform could be done before the end of the year. The “circumstances have changed,” he explained — “the market has changed as well as the policies.”
On July 25, daredevil Felix Baumgartner completed the second and last practice jump before his attempt to be the first human to break the speed of sound in freefall from a high altitude balloon at 120,000 feet.
According to the website of Red Bull Stratos, sponsoring the feat, Baumgartner jumped from 96,640 feet and reached 536 miles per hour while spending 3 minutes and 48 seconds in freefall before deploying his parachute and landing in Roswell, New Mexico. “So picture yourself flying the same speed as a 737 jet, only without the aircraft body,” read an announcement following the jump.
A test run earlier this year involved a jump from more than 71,500 feet in the stratosphere, during which Baumgartner, who was wearing a specialized spacesuit, reached a top speed of 364 mph before deploying his parachute.
These tests are the latest developments in preparation of a so-called commercial “spaceflight” jump from “the edge of space” as Red Bull Stratus proclaims. In addition to setting several new records, including longest freefall, the stunt aims to contribute medical and scientific data that could support future human spaceflight missions, including the development of next generation space suits and of protocols for high altitude and high acceleration exposure.
Although the specific date for the jump has not been announced, an article on Fox News quotes the team as saying it will take place “shortly after the completion of the final manned test jump.” That presumably is the test jump that just took place, so could occur anytime.
Two new studies add to the mounting evidence refuting the controversial claim that NASA-funded scientists had isolated a bacterium that could thrive on arsenic.
In a December 2010 paper, a team led by NASA astrobiology research fellow Felisa Wolfe-Simon announced that a microbe dubbed GFAJ-1 could thrive in the presence of arsenic, incorporating the toxic substance in its DNA in the place of phosphorous, one of the six elements of life. The results were made public in a NASA press conference that drew attention to the finding’s implications on the agency’s quest for life in other parts of the universe.
But in two papers published online in Science last Sunday, the findings are once more refuted. In the first study, a team from the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich concludes that the bacteria “lacked the ability to grow in phosphorus-depleted…arsenate-containing medium,” and concludes that GFAJ-1 is “an arsenate-resistant, but still a phosphate-dependent bacterium.” In the second paper, a team from Princeton University finds that the toxin did not contribute to growth in the bacterium and was unable to find detectable traces of the substance in its DNA.
These findings echo the conclusions reached by a researcher last February, which found that trace levels of phosphorous were the cause of the reported growth in the original study.
According to a BBC article covering the story, Science has not retracted the original article, but accompanied the recent studies with the following statement:
“In conclusion, the new research shows that GFJA-1 does not break the long-held rules of life, contrary to how Wolfe-Simon had interpreted her group’s data. The scientific process is a naturally self-correcting one, as scientists attempt to replicate published results.” (Editor’s Note: One must be a subscriber to Science to read the journal’s actual statement.)
Michael New, who works for NASA’s planetary science division, issued a statement saying that the new papers “challenge some of the conclusions” of the 2010 announcement, but neither “invalidates” the original “observations of a remarkable micro-organism that can survive in a highly phosphate-poor and arsenic-rich environment toxic to many other micro-organisms. What has emerged … is an as yet incomplete picture of GFAJ-1 that clearly calls for additional research.”
UPDATE: Government Executive magazine reports that the House Appropriations Committee approved the $36 million reprogramming on June 27.
ORIGINAL STORY: A National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) internal investigation that discovered the illegal reprogramming of millions of dollars in appropriated funds at its National Weather Service (NWS) found no evidence of financial personal gain, but these actions were “very clever” and “hidden,” according to Dr. Jane Lubchenco, NOAA administrator.
Speaking at a hearing of the House Appropriations Committee’s Subcommittee on Commerce, Justice, Science (CJS) on Thursday, Lubchenco stated that before November 29, 2011, she had no knowledge of the alleged financial misconduct that resulted in the reprogramming of 4 percent of the NWS budget without congressional approval. Within 48 hours of learning about the allegations, she set in motion 12 corrective actions and launched the internal investigation that culminated in May, she stated.
Summarizing the results of the investigation into the unauthorized reprogramming of funds in FY2010 and FY2011, Lubchenco made a point to say that these actions were carried out by three individuals within the NWS, while stressing that its mission was not compromised. Still, she described it as “very wrong and, in my view, gross misconduct.”
To delve more deeply into the issue, the agency will release a contract for an independent study — a “deeper dive” — she said, to identify the true extent and motivations of these actions. She reiterated that there was no external indication that something was wrong, “no red flags” or “obvious warning.”
CJS Chairman Frank Wolf (R-VA) described the findings as “very serious and disturbing” and expressed repeated concerns that NOAA’s missions to protect life and property were suffering. He said that the mission of the NWS remains “one of the highest priorities” and that if the Department of Commerce (DOC), of which NOAA is part, had requested help, “we would have worked with you.”
NOAA is requesting congressional approval to officially reprogram $36 million in the current fiscal year ((FY2012) to allow NWS core services to continue. Otherwise there will be unavoidable furloughs for NWS employees. The CJS subcommittee submitted 65 questions for the record and tasked Lubchenco with responding to them by Monday at 5:30 pm in order not to hold up the process to consider the request.
In the meantime, Senate appropriators announced that they will approve the reprogramming.
Looking beyond NOAA, several House CJS subcommittee members expressed frustration that the NWS action was, in their view, just one more of recent examples of agency misconduct. Representatives Jo Bonner (R-AL) and John Culberson (R-TX) asserted that this kind of mismanagement is not limited to NOAA or even the DOC. Alluding to the Secret Service scandal, Bonner said that the NWS issue was “part of a pattern” and another example of an Administration with an “attitude of just ignoring Congress when it pleases those in a position to do so.” Culberson agreed that “this is the tip of the iceberg…it’s bigger than just NOAA.”
Rep. Chaka Fattah (D-PA), ranking member of the CJS subcommittee, retorted that it was “slightly tainted” to blame the Obama Administration when the responsibility rests on the three individuals involved who likely came into the agency during a previous, Republican, administration.
While saying that this was not a partisan issue, Wolf noted that there has been a shift in attitudes and “the agencies really don’t like Congress.” Therefore, he said, dealing with the misconduct at the NWS would send a message to the rest of the federal government of the importance of following the law.
Last week, NASA and the X Prize Foundation announced that the Google Lunar X Prize will recognize NASA guidelines to protect U.S. lunar artifacts of historic and scientific value. With the voluntary guidelines designating varying “keep-out” zones, this means that the vehicles of the 26 teams vying for the $30 million in prizes will not have free room to rove.
NASA spacecraft on the Moon and items transported there by the Apollo crews, just like the samples returned to Earth by the astronauts, remain the property of the U.S. Government. Similarly, the Luna spacecraft and Lunokhod robotic rovers sent to the Moon by the Soviet Union are the property of the Russian government. Under the terms of the 1967 Outer Space Treaty, however, no government can claim sovereignty over the Moon itself, so there are no legally binding rules about what can or cannot be done at the landing sites or along the routes that the U.S. astronauts or Soviet robotic rovers traversed.
The guidelines were developed by NASA in an attempt to preserve U.S. sites, at least, for historical purposes as other countries and companies plan new lunar missions and could be a step towards international guidelines. The announcement last week was made as part of the Global Space Exploration Conference (GLEX) organized by the International Astronautical Federation and the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics,
NASA released the guidelines in July 2011 after assembling data from previous lunar studies, and analysis of samples of NASA’s Surveyor 3 spacecraft returned by the Apollo 12 crew. Surveyor 3 was one of seven U.S. robotic spacecraft sent to soft-land on the Moon in the late 1960s as precursors to the Apollo missions. Apollo 12 landed close enough to Surveyor 3’s landing site that the crew was able to visit it and retrieve some of its components for study back on Earth.
Apollo 12 astronaut Charles “Pete” Conrad stands next to Surveyor 3 on lunar surface, with Apollo 12 lander Intrepid in background. Photo Credit: NASA Apollo 12 astronaut Alan Bean.
http://grin.hq.nasa.gov/ABSTRACTS/GPN-2000-001316.html
The guidelines were developed under the leadership of Rob Kelso, a former shuttle flight director who is now NASA Johnson Space Center’s manager for lunar commercial services, and involved experts in history, science and flight planning. According to the document, these will serve as interim recommendations for lunar vehicle design and mission planning teams until a more formal U.S. government guidance or a multilateral approach is developed.
The guidelines apply to a variety of artifacts and sites on the Moon, including Apollo lunar surface landing and roving hardware, specific indicators of U.S. robotic or human-robotic lunar presence (e.g. footprints), and impact sites. One section is devoted to the issue of mobility and details recommended exclusion zones and their rationale for specific sites. For example, the Apollo 11 and 17 sites, which “carry special historical and cultural significance” would be roped off completely “by prohibiting visits to any part of the site and that all visiting vehicles remain beyond the artifact boundaries … of the entire site.” These boundaries have a radial extent of 75 meters for Apollo 11 and of 225 meters for the Apollo 17 site. Greater access is recommended in turn for the Apollo 12, 14, 15 and 16 sites to allow for the close inspection of their individual components, considered ongoing experiments in space weathering as they are exposed to the harsh environment on the lunar surface.
In the joint announcement, the X Prize Foundation said it will take these guidelines into consideration as it judges the mobility plans of the teams participating in the competition. According to the release, “NASA and the next generation of lunar explorers share a common interest in preserving humanity’s first steps on another celestial body and protecting ongoing science from the potentially damaging effects of nearby landers.”
On March 15, daredevil Felix Baumgartner jumped from more than 71,500 feet in the stratosphere, in a practice run for his attempt to be the first human to break the speed of sound in freefall from a high altitude balloon at 120,000 feet.
Last week’s test is the latest development in the Red Bull Stratus project which was temporarily halted last year as a result of a multi-million dollar lawsuit that has since been settled. Red Bull Stratus announced that Baumgartner, who was wearing a specialized spacesuit, reached a top speed of 364 mph before deploying his parachute and landing in Roswell, New Mexico. According to the press release, Baumgartner is now the third person to have ever jumped from above 70,000 feet.
The test is the latest in the final stages of a so-called commercial “spaceflight” jump from “the edge of space” as Red Bull Stratus proclaims. In addition to setting several new records, including longest freefall, the stunt aims to contribute medical and scientific data that could support future human spaceflight missions.
The team may be collecting data already. In a statement made following the test, Baumgartner commented on the extreme cold he felt – as low as minus 94í_F – before stepping out of the balloon. “I could hardly move my hands. We’re going to have to do some work on that aspect,” he is quoted by Space.com as saying.
Meanwhile, the creator of the Red Bull energy drink, Thai billionaire Chaleo Yoovidhya, reportedly died of natural causes on Saturday.
The Subcommittee on Oceans, Atmosphere, Fisheries, and the Coast Guard hearing was convened to review the FY2013 budget requests for the Coast Guard and NOAA, and most of the Senators’ attention was focused on proposed cuts to the Coast Guard budget and on non-space-related NOAA programs.
Rep. Andy Harris (R-MD), chairman of the House Science, Space and Technology subcommittee that oversees the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), expressed “extreme disappointment” that NOAA’s FY2013 budget request puts a priority on satellites and climate research.
At Tuesday’s hearing of his Energy and Environment Subcommittee, he also chastised NOAA for failing to deliver the detailed budget justification documents that help explain the rationale behind such decisions in a timely manner. “We’re simply unable to provide a complete assessment of the request,” he asserted, adding that a House Appropriations subcommittee had to cancel its hearing on NOAA last week for that reason.
The agency’s failure to provide the documents fuels a perception on Capitol Hill that “the Administration is not being a good steward of taxpayer money,” he continued. Apologizing for the delay, NOAA Administrator Dr. Jane Lubchenco explained that it was the result of lateness in finalizing the FY2012 spending plan, which affected the baseline of many programs. She promised to deliver the documents to the committee by March 14.
Harris chided the overall increase for NOAA, which would receive $5.1 billion under the President’s request, a 3.1 percent increase from FY2012, as inconsistent with budget reality. He further criticized the Administration for prioritizing its “political environmental agenda” ahead of core science needs, with climate research being a “big winner,” in addition to satellites, which account for over 40% of the total request. This emphasis, according to Harris, suggests that the Administration has prioritized understanding climate conditions “decades from now” over predicting weather conditions tomorrow, a misplaced proposal that “should be rejected by Congress.”
To correct the assumption that climate research would be useful only decades from now, Lubchenco explained in her testimony that understanding how the climate system works directly connects with helping people prepare for “what will happen in the months ahead, years ahead and decades ahead; all of those.”
Several Members of the subcommittee expressed concern over cuts to NOAA’s National Weather Service (NWS), which issues critical weather warnings and forecasts. Ranking Member Brad Miller (D-NC) worried that “we are eating our seed corn” through cuts that may sacrifice services the public relies upon, such as weather forecasting.
Lubchenco explained that NOAA’s Weather-Ready Nation initiative – which covers data collection, modeling and forecasting, as well as the ability of communities to act in response to these messages – demonstrates that continuing and improving these capabilities remains critical to the agency’s mission. Furthermore, she said that the increase in satellite funding and the decrease in NWS, mostly in administrative efficiencies, is not a contradiction. The requested increase for satellites is due precisely to their importance because they provide 90 percent of the data that feeds into numerical models used by the NWS, she explained.
She emphasized the need to fully fund the Joint Polar Satellite System (JPSS) not just this year but on a sustained basis to minimize the duration of the expected gap between operations of the recently launched Suomi NPP satellite and the launch of JPSS-1 in 2017. The Administration’s “aggressive” calls for sustained funding of the program stem from the fact that there are no “viable alternative options” to obtain equivalent data during the projected gap. “These satellites are too important to not be on the path to success,” she emphasized.
After being halted by a multi-million dollar lawsuit last year (see our story), daredevil Felix Baumgartner’s attempt to be the first human to break the speed of sound in freefall from a high altitude balloon is slated to take place this year.
Wearing a pressurized suit, Baumgartner will jump from a balloon in the stratosphere at an altitude of 120,000 feet — from “the edge of space” as his sponsor Red Bull Stratos proclaims. In addition to the publicity value, the venture seeks to provide medical and scientific data that may be relevant for future human spaceflight missions. Baumgartner not only wants to be the first human to break the speed of sound in free-fall, but aims to break three records that Red Bull Stratos asserts have remained in place for fifty years: highest “manned” balloon flight, highest skydive and longest skydive. Baumgartner plans to skydive for 5 minutes 30 seconds. Red Bull Stratos states that the current records were set by Col. Joseph Kittinger, Jr. in August 1960, when he came close to breaking the speed of sound. He serves as an advisor and a mentor to Baumgartner on the project.
During that flight, Kittinger jumped from a balloon at an altitude of 102,800 feet, freefell for four-and-a-half minutes and reached speeds up to 614 miles per hour according to the U.S. Centenntial of Flight Commission.
The Commission, however, credits Malcolm Ross and Victor Prather with the highest altitude flight during a 1961 mission when they reached 113,740 feet. Prather completed the flight, but died after falling from the sling of the rescue helicopter. The FAI, the French organization that keeps official records for aviation and related fields, credits Ross with the altitude record.
Baumgartner and his team are in the final preparations of their project after completing testing in a vacuum chamber in Texas and moving on to the location of the jump in Roswell, New Mexico.
The success of the venture may well depend on Baumgartner’s only protection from the extreme conditions of the stratosphere, a pressurized suit that, according to the BBC, is similar to but tougher and more mobile than a NASA astronaut space suit.
RedBull.com says “This mission is all about pioneer work. Maybe one day people will look back and say it was Felix Baumgartner and the Red Bull Stratos team that helped to develop the suit that they’re wearing in space. We want to do something for posterity.”