The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) is seeking comments, suggestions and innovative ideas from the public on how to mitigate an anticipated gap in weather satellite data from NOAA’s polar orbiting satellites in the 2016-2017 time frame.

NOAA launched the last of its legacy Polar Operational Environmental Satellites (POES) in 2009.  It is designated NOAA-19.   NOAA is now engaged in the Joint Polar Satellite System (JPSS) program, but the first in that series is not scheduled for launch until 2016 and will require many months of testing and calibration before it can enter operational status in 2017.   NOAA will use data from NASA’s Suomi-NPP satellite, launched last year, as a bridge between NOAA-19 and JPSS-1, but Suomi-NPP was designed as a test satellite and its design life is only three years.  Although satellites often exceed their design lives, NOAA must plan as though the satellite does not last longer than designed.  It is concerned that in the 2016-2017 time frame it will end up with no operational polar orbiting satellites.

DOD has its own polar orbiting weather satellites, as does Europe.  The weather forecasts to which Americans have become accustomed rely on data from a combination of the U.S. and European satellites, which carry different instruments and are in complementary polar orbits:  DOD satellites in the “early morning” orbit, European satellites in the “mid-morning” orbit, and NOAA satellites in the “afternoon” orbit.  (NOAA also has another set of satellites, called GOES, in geostationary orbit.)

NOAA insists that without its polar orbiting satellites in the afternoon orbit, weather forecasts would not be nearly as precise as they are now.

Several recent studies have confirmed concerns about a gap in coverage by NOAA’s polar orbiting satellites.  An Independent Review Team headed by Tom Young, for example, said the projected gap between the end of Suomi-NPP and when JPSS-1 is operational is “at least 18 months.”

In the Federal Register announcement seeking ideas from the public, NOAA says that it is already studying “substitute satellite observations, alternative non-satellite data, weather modeling, and data assimilation improvements.” The announcement reaches out to a broader audience to ensure that the agency can “examine all potential solutions … on how to preserve the quality and timeliness” of its forecasts.

Instructions on how to offer comments are in the Federal Register notice; they are due by December 19, 2012.

NOAA finds itself in this dilemma because an effort to merge the NOAA and DOD polar orbiting weather satellite programs failed.  Called the National Polar-orbiting Operational Environmental Satellite System (NPOESS), it encountered repeated overruns and schedule delays and was terminated in 2010.  JPSS is NOAA’s substitute for NPOESS.  DOD is still deciding how it wants to proceed for satellites to fulfill its needs.  It has two of its legacy satellites — which have different instruments than NOAA satellites — still awaiting launch, so time is not as crucial in that case.

The future of the nation’s human spaceflight program is at the top of the NASA Inspector General’s list of management and performance challenges facing the agency.

In its 2012 Report on NASA’s Top Management and Performance Challenges, the IG’s office identified five areas of concern for the agency overall:

• The Future of U.S. Human Space Flight
• Project Management
• Infrastructure and Facilities Management
• Acquisition and Contract Management
• Information Technology Security and Governance

In a video summary of the report, Deputy Inspector General Gail Robinson notes that several of these are long-standing problems and likely to remain so for the foreseeable future.   A focus of the report, however, is the “rather bleak” and uncertain budgetary future facing NASA that will exacerbate these challenges, though the bottom line is that the IG believes NASA can “make significant strides” in addressing them “with focused and sustained efforts.”

The report does not break new ground, instead summarizing what the IG office and various advisory groups already have identified as concerns.  For example, the human spaceflight section discusses the difficulties of finding time for International Space Station crews to perform scientific research — a primary rationale for building the facility in the first place; reduced funding for the commercial crew program compared to what the President requested, pushing out to 2017 when such services might be available; and budget constraints on the Space Launch System and Orion programs, that, for example, mean developing Orion incrementally instead of working on all its systems concurrently.

The report is required by the Reports Consolidation Act of 2000 for inclusion in NASA’s FY2012 Performance and Accountability Report.

The International Space Station (ISS) is a research laboratory in space, but ISS crews continue to struggle to find time to do that research amidst spacewalks, spacecraft arrivals and departures, and other operational tasks.  At the same time, researchers need to know how long the ISS will be available — only through 2020 or later.  

Those were two of the messages from ISS program manager Mike Suffredini and NASA’s Associate Administrator for Human Exploration and Operations Bill Gerstenmaier during a two-day meeting of the NASA Advisory Council’s Human Exploration and Operations Committee.  Suffredini spoke yesterday.  Gerstenmaier briefed the committee this morning.

Suffredini pointed out that ISS operations require 15-17 flights per year and “then sprinkle in EVAs, it’s hard to find time to do research.”   EVA refers to extravehicular activity, or spacewalks.  NASA has a goal of performing 35 hours of research per week, but the current average is 26.13 hours.  He is trying to find ways to “buy back crew time” and looking forward to the era of commercial crew when the typical ISS crew complement will be seven instead of six.

Today, the crew size varies between three and six depending on Soyuz launch schedules.  Russia’s Soyuz spacecraft is the only way to transport crews back and forth now that the U.S. space shuttle program is over.  Astronauts and cosmonauts remain in space for about six months and then are replaced by new crewmembers.  The plan has been for three ISS crew to return to Earth, leaving three on the ISS, and about two weeks later, three new crewmembers launch, restoring the crew size to six.   Thus, the periods of time when the facility is staffed by only three people are relatively brief.    Delays in Soyuz launches in the past year extended those periods, however, reducing the number of hours that can be devoted to research. 

EVAs also eat into crew time.   This fall, two unplanned EVAs were needed.  One was to complete a planned EVA that ran into problems when a recalcitrant bolt would not slide into place.  Another was needed to repair an ammonia leak in one of the radiators.

Suffredini showed a chart illustrating that the weekly average of 26.13 hours of research per week he mentioned is actual and projected time during the period September 2012 to March 2013.   The types of research conducted by the ISS partners — the United States, Russia, Europe, Japan and Canada — span the fields of biology and biotechnology, earth and space science, educational activities, human research, physical science, and technology.

Gerstenmaier expanded on the research being conducted on ISS and the need for NASA to get the word out that it is “starting to become a productive research facility” and encourage researchers to publish their results.  In response to a question, he confirmed that NASA is offering free launches, free power and free crew time to researchers, something that apparently is not well known. He agreed with Suffredini, however, that crew time is a major concern.  One of Gerstenmaier’s slides states that:

• “Scheduled crew time oversubscribed (>100%),
• “Crew as human subjects oversubscribed (multi-year queue carefully managed by HRP, a big issue for our partners, limits CASIS research, and
• “NASA and CASIS users are soon going to compete for this limited resource unless we are able to expand availability.” 

HRP is the Human Research Program, which is part of NASA’s Human Exploration and Operations Mission Directorate.  CASIS is the Center for Advancement of Science in Space, which manages research on the “U.S. National Laboratory” portion of the ISS. 

Gerstenmaier also said that “real estate” available for research both inside and outside the ISS is filling up more quickly than expected.  His statistics are:

• “Racks 71% occupied
• “EXPRESS 60% occupied, expect 80% by the end of 2014
• “External Sites 35% occupied, expect 75% by end of 2014
• “Best external sites (best viewing with good Nadir or Zentith [sic] views) are mostly claimed though 2020.”

One of his messages was that a decision needs to be made sooner rather than later as to how long the ISS will operate because that could affect researchers’ plans.  Currently the international partners have agreed to operate it through 2020, but some discussions have been held about extending that to 2028 — 30 years after the first ISS modules were launched.  Gerstenmaier suggested that instead of looking at a fixed date for ending ISS operations, thought should be given to what criteria should be used to determine the “transition point” — a reference to transitioning to a focus on other exploration programs.   He stressed that ISS is part of the exploration program not separate from it.   He also reassured the committee that a plan already exists for deorbiting the space station whenever the time comes.  The plan was requested by and is being reviewed by NASA’s Aerospace Safety Advisory Panel (ASAP), he said.

A range of other ISS topics were discussed by Suffredini and Gerstenmaier in their briefings.  Among them were investigations into a number of problems that arose during the most recent SpaceX Dragon mission, and, separately, Russia’s use of a new rendezvous profile for its robotic Progress cargo spacecraft that allows them to dock after only 4 orbits instead of two days.   This profile was used successfully for the last two Progress missions and Russia plans to begin using it for crewed Soyuz missions beginning in March 2013.    Suffredini indicated it is a mixed blessing for crews.  Soyuz is a rather cramped spacecraft and not very comfortable to spend two days in waiting to reach the ISS, so four orbits instead of two days is good news.   On the other hand, it makes for a very long day for the crew, “and if you have to stay in your seat bucket, a miserably long day,” he said. 

The House Science, Space and Technology Committee’s Space and Aeronautics subcommittee will hold a hearing at the end of the month on the recently released National Research Council Decadal Survey on solar and space physics, or heliophysics.

The solar and space physics Decadal Survey is the last in the most recent set of Decadal Surveys that lay out the top science priorities in various space science disciplines roughly every 10 years (a decade).  The NRC released Decadal Surveys for earth science and applications from space in 2007, astronomy and astrophysics in 2010, planetary science in 2011, and biological and physical sciences in space in 2011. 

Solar and Space Physics:  A Science for a Technological Society was released in August 2012.  The report was chaired by Dan Baker from the Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics (LASP) at the University of Colorado-Boulder.  A “town hall” meeting to present the results of the study to the solar and space physics community will be held at LASP this Friday.

Baker will testify at the hearing along with Chuck Gay, NASA’s deputy associate administrator for the Science Mission Directorate.  Additional witnesses may be added later.

The hearing will be on November 28, 2012 at 10:00 am ET in 2318 Rayburn House Office Building.

Anyone interested in the future of National Research Council (NRC) Decadal Surveys may want to tune in to the webcast of a workshop being held next week that will discuss how those highly influential studies could be improved.

The workshop, sponsored by the NRC’s Space Studies Board, will be held on Monday and Tuesday at the NRC’s Beckman Center in Irvine, CA.  The meeting is open to the public, but to expand its reach, the NRC also will webcast it.  The webcast can be viewed at http://gracefulcreationsmedia.com/events/201211_Beckman.html.

Decadal Surveys are one of the most preeminent products of the NRC.   Conducted about every 10 years (a decade) to prioritize the most important scientific questions to try and answer over the next 10 years, Decadal Surveys have been around since the 1960s when the first was performed for the field of astronomy and astrophysics.

Decadal Survey study committees bring together the top scientists and engineers in a particular scientific discipline who, over an approximately two-year period, use a consensus-based approach to identify the key science questions and mission concepts to find answers.   For NASA, the NRC now performs Decadal Surveys for five science disciplines:   astronomy and astrophysics, planetary science, solar and space physics (heliophysics), earth science and applications from space, and biological and physical sciences in space.  The first four are for NASA’s Science Mission Directorate (NASA/SMD); the last is for the Human Exploration and Operations Mission Directorate.

The NRC has just completed the most recent set of NASA-related science Decadal Surveys, which were published between 2007 and 2012.  Changes in how the studies are conducted were introduced during that period, perhaps most notably after Congress required in the 2008 NASA Authorization Act that they include independent cost estimates of recommended missions.  Previously, the NRC relied on estimates from NASA or project teams that often turned out to be far too low.

Even with independent cost estimates, however, NASA is struggling to implement the missions recommended by several of the most recent Decadal Surveys because budgets are much more constrained than expected.   NASA provides each Decadal Survey committee with an estimate of how much money the agency will have to spend on that discipline over the next 10 years, which guides the committee when making its mission recommendations.   For astronomy and astrophysics, and planetary science, however, the actual budgets have turned out to be much smaller either because of overruns on existing missions (e.g. the James Webb Space Telescope) or changing national priorities.

The NRC will look at lessons learned from the recent Decadal Surveys to avoid such pitfalls in future studies.  Among other things, the NRC wants to ensure that the time of the hundreds of scientists and engineers who volunteer to serve on the committees is not wasted and that NASA has a sound set of missions to pursue.  By law, the NRC must also conduct “mid-term reviews” of each Decadal Survey half way through the decade covered by the report.  The workshop will discuss how the mid-term reviews also might be improved.

As the agenda shows, the two-day workshop brings together scientists and engineers who led current and past Decadal Surveys that were conducted for NASA/SMD, NASA and other government officials who implement them, and members of the relevant scientific communities who serve on these committees and whose careers are heavily influenced by their recommendations.