On November 19, the American Astronautical Society will host a panel discussion on Capitol Hill on international cooperation in space.  Representatives of NASA and four non-U.S. space agencies will share their views.

NASA has been engaged in international space cooperation since it was created in 1958.  The National Aeronautics and Space Act encourages NASA to cooperate with other countries and it has been a hallmark of NASA programs throughout the decades.   NASA’s best known international cooperative project is undoubtedly the International Space Station (ISS) in which the United States, Russia, Canada, Japan and 11 European countries cooperate.  That is only one example, however.   The vast majority of NASA’s space and earth science missions are joint with other countries. 

Budget constraints in the United States and other space-faring countries make international cooperation almost essential for any space activity of any size.  Although it is generally accepted that international cooperation increases the cost of any particular project because of the increased coordination required, the portion that each country pays is less than if it attempted the project alone.

The discussion, Celebrating International Cooperation in Space and Looking to the Future, is from 11:30-1:30 pm ET in 2325 Rayburn House Office Building.  Brown bag lunches will be provided, so it’s important to RSVP.   The panel will be moderated by Susan Irwin, President of the U.S. office of Euroconsult; RSVPs should be sent to ahmadu@euroconsult-na.com no later than tomorrow, November 13.

Panelists are:

• Kent Bress, NASA
• Micheline Tabache, European Space Agency (ESA)
• Masahiko Sato, Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA)
• Bill Mackey, Canadian Space Agency (CSA)
• Philippe Hazane, Centre National d’Etudes Spatiales (CNES — the French space agency)

UPDATE, November 11, 2013, 9:15 pm EST:   ISRO reports that the supplementary burn was successful and the spacecraft’s apogee is now 118,642 km.

ORIGINAL STORY, November 11, 2013, 3:23 pm EST:   India’s Mars Orbiter Mission (MOM) suffered a slight setback yesterday when the fourth of six planned engine burns did not go as planned.  The Indian Space Research Organization (ISRO) will conduct a supplemental burn around 6:30 pm this afternoon Eastern Standard Time (EST).

MOM, also called Mangalyaan, was launched into Earth orbit on November 5, 2013.   A series of six orbit raising maneuvers were planned to raise the spacecraft’s apogee (highest point in its orbit) before sending it on its way to Mars on December 1.   The first three engine burns took place without incident, but the fourth yesterday failed to impart the needed velocity to increase the apogee from 71,623 kilometers (km) to the desired 100,000 km.  Instead, its apogee now is only 78,276 km.

ISRO plans a supplemental engine firing at 6:30 pm EST today (05:00 tomorrow, November 12, Indian Standard Time, which is 10 hours and 30 minutes ahead of EST) to compensate.

ISRO explained that the failure took place during a test in which two redundant coils in the liquid engine were activated simultaneously and somehow disrupted the flow of fuel.   Smaller attitude control thrusters were automatically activated when the spacecraft detected insufficient thrust, but they were not sufficient.   The BBC reports, however, that an unidentified expert it contacted found that explanation puzzling.

This is India’s first attempt to send a probe to Mars.  As every country that has made the journey knows, it can be a perilous trip.

Three International Space Station (ISS) crew members returned to Earth tonight in their Soyuz TMA-09M spacecraft.   Six colleagues remain aboard the orbiting laboratory.

NASA’s Karen Nyberg, Russia’s Fyodor Yurchikhin and the European Space Agency’s (ESA’s) Luca Parmitano landed on the steppes of Kazakhstan at 9:49 pm Eastern Standard Time (8:49 am Monday, November 11, local time at the landing site), completing a 166 day mission.  Perhaps the most memorable moment of the mission was Parmitano’s spacesuit filling with water while he was on a spacewalk on July 16.  He later gave chilling details of the incident in a blog post.  NASA is still trying to determine exactly what went wrong.

Among the cargo the crew returned to Earth tonight was the Olympic torch, which is making its way to the Winter Games in Sochi, Russia.  The torch was delivered to the ISS on Thursday by the Soyuz TMA-11M crew.   The two Russian members of the Soyuz TMA-10M crew took it on a spacewalk yesterday, and the Soyuz TMA-09 crew brought it home today.  Yurchikhin was the first crewmember removed from the Soyuz (as Soyuz commander he sits in the center seat, the first to be extracted). The Olympic torch was also removed quickly by recovery personnel and handed to Yurchikhin for photo opps like this one.

Photo credit:  NASA

Having three three-person crews aboard the ISS at once is unusual, and with the departure of the Soyuz TMA-09M crew, ISS is now back to its normal complement of six:  NASA astronauts Michael Hopkins and Rick Mastracchio; Russian cosmonauts Oleg Kotov, Sergey Ryazanskiy, and Mikhail Tyurin; and Japan’s Koichi Wakata.   Wakata will become the first Japanese to command the ISS later in his mission.  This is Wakata’s fourth space mission — three space shuttle missions plus a long duration tour on ISS in 2009.

Two Russian cosmonauts took part in the Olympic torch relay today as the torch makes its way to Sochi, Russia for the Winter Olympics.  The cosmonauts, Oleg Kotov and Sergey Ryazanskiy, were on a spacewalk outside the International Space Station (ISS) at the time.

The torch was delivered to the ISS on Thursday by the Soyuz TMA-11M crew and will return to Earth with the Soyuz TMA-09M crew tomorrow (Sunday, November 10, Eastern Standard Time; Monday, November 11, local time at the landing site in Kazakhstan).  Kotov and Ryazanskiy, along with NASA astronaut Michael Hopkins, comprise the Soyuz TMA-10M crew.  All three three-person crews are aboard ISS right now, the first time in several years that nine people have been on the ISS at the same time.   A typical ISS crew complement is six, but that usually dips to three during crew rotations as one crew returns to Earth and a week or more passes until a replacement crew is launched.

That rhythm was disrupted for this crew rotation so the Olympic torch could have its day in space and return to Earth to continue its journey in a timely manner.  A video of the spacewalking handover is posted on YouTube and a still picture is below.

Russian cosmonaut Sergey Ryazanskiy’s spacesuited hand can be seen in the foregound as he transfers the Olympic torch to his spacewalking colleague, Oleg Kotov, outside the International Space Station on November 9, 2013. The view is from Ryazanskiy’s helmet camera.   Image credit:  NASA TV

The Winter Olympics begin on February 7, 2014.  According to tradition, the torch relay begins in Olympia, Greece for all Olympic games.  After crossing Greece, the torch is taken to the host country and then relayed over a large part of that country, in this case Russia.  According to the Sochi Olympics website, the relay will take 123 days and be carried by 14,000 torchbearers.  All nine ISS crewmembers presumably count as torchbearers since they took turns passing the torch through all parts of the ISS — unlit, of course.

Russian cosmonaut Fyordor Yurchikhin is the Russian member of the Soyuz TMA-09M crew that is returning the torch to Earth tomorrow and will hand it over to the next torchbearer.

UPDATE, November 7, 2013:   The Soyuz TMA-11M crew docked at 5:27 am Eastern Standard Time.

ORIGINAL STORY, November 6, 2013: Soyuz TMA-11M launched on time at 11:14 pm Eastern Standard Time (EST) tonight, November 6 (10:14 am November 7 local time at the launch site in Kazakhstan).   The crew is taking the expedited route to the International Space Station (ISS) with docking in just about six hours.

The three crew members are NASA’s Rick Mastracchio, Japan’s Koichi Wakata, and Russia’s Mikhail Tyurin.  Wakata will become the first Japanese astronaut to command the ISS later in his mission.

These three crew members will join six crew already aboard the ISS: the Soyuz TMA-09M crew (Karen Nyberg, Luca Parmitano and Fyodor Yurchikhin) and the Soyuz TMA-10M crew (Oleg Kotov, Michael Hopkins, and Sergey Ryazanskiy).  

The Olympic torch that is on its way to the Winter Games in Sochi, Russia is aboard Soyuz TMA-11M.   Kotov and Ryazanskiy will make a spacewalk with the torch on Saturday, and it then will be returned to Earth on Sunday by the Soyuz TMA-09M crew.

Docking is scheduled for 5:31 am EST tomorrow morning (November 7).

India successfully launched its first mission to Mars early this morning.  The Mars Orbiter Mission (MOM) is now in Earth orbit and will conduct a series of orbit raising maneuvers before setting off on the journey to Mars on December 1.

The mission, also called Mangalyaan, lifted off from India’s Sriharikota launch site at 4:08 am Eastern Standard Time (EST) today (2:48 pm Indian Standard Time, which is 10 hours 30 minutes ahead of EST) aboard India’s Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle (PSLV).  Arrival at Mars is expected September 24, 2014. 

MOM is primarily a technology demonstration mission to prove that India can get a spacecraft to Mars, but it also carries five scientific instruments, including one that will search for methane in the Martian atmosphere.

The United States, Soviet Union/Russia and Europe have all successfully placed spacecraft into Martian orbit.  A Japanese Mars probe launched in 1998 (Nozomi) suffered several failures along the way and did not achieve Mars orbit.  A small Chinese satellite (Yinghuo-1) piggybacked on a Russian Mars probe launched in 2011, but that spacecraft, Phobos-Grunt, failed to leave Earth orbit and reentered. 

If this mission succeeds, India thus will become the first Asian country to place a spacecraft in orbit around Mars, but as every country that has attempted this feat knows, it’s a long treacherous journey and launch is merely one step.

NASA Astrophysics Division Director Paul Hertz painted a bleak picture of NASA’s FY2014 astrophysics budget today and forecast a future filled with uncertainty.  The James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) may be secure, but the rest of NASA’s astrophysics program could have tough sailing ahead.

Hertz stressed that the country spends quite a bit of money on NASA’s astrophysics portfolio – a total of $1.3 billion “and you can’t plead poverty when there’s $1.3 billion on the table.”  Roughly half of that is for JWST, however, which is managed separately from the rest of NASA’s astrophysics programs.

Hertz manages NASA’s Astrophysics Division (APD), everything except JWST.   APD includes operations of existing space telescopes (Hubble, Spitzer, Chandra, Kepler and Fermi), astrophysics Explorer missions (Astro-H, NICER, and TESS), suborbital (balloon and airborne) missions, and development of future missions.  While he was speaking to the National Research Council’s Committee on Astronomy and Astrophysics (CAA), new findings from Kepler were being announced at the Kepler Science Conference II.

Congress appropriated $659 million for APD in FY2013, Hertz said, but that was reduced by $42 million because of sequestration and rescissions.   By contrast, JWST is an agency priority and was spared any cuts; other parts of NASA’s science budget had to make up the difference, he noted.

On paper, Hertz’s current budget is $642 million (the President’s FY2014 request) of which about $14 million is for institutional costs, leaving $628 million for science “content” – performing scientific research using instruments aboard suborbital and orbital platforms and analyzing the resulting data.  In reality, NASA is now funded under a Continuing Resolution (CR) that lasts until January 15, 2014.  Hertz said that if the agency is kept at that level for all of FY2014, he will have to cut 6.5 percent (about $35 million) from the $628 million, which could rise to 10 percent (about $50 million) if the sequester remains in place.

CAA provides strategic advice on science priorities for astronomy and astrophysics programs at NASA and the National Science Foundation.   Hertz told the committee that he is always looking for good advice on how to manage his budget most effectively, especially in these constrained circumstances.

CAA member Tom Young, a retired industry executive often called upon to lead studies of why government space programs go awry and former director of NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, commented that the overall problem is that “there is too much program” for NASA’s budget.  He believes NASA should anticipate getting total funding in the $16-17 billion range.   

At that level, he argued, a decision needs to be made to eliminate “a thing” from the NASA portfolio or to fund everything at a “malnutrition” level.    Hertz rejoined that if he knew for certain that his APD budget would be reduced by 10 percent for many years, he would make choices with out-year budget savings, but the administration’s guidance is that this is a temporary situation and the sequester will not remain in force.  It is very different, he said, to make decisions based on “a one year cut and a forever cut.”

Young reiterated that “cuts will happen” and the only question is how the cut is distributed.  While acknowledging that Young might be correct, Hertz added “that’s not what I hear.”

Other notable points from presentations by Hertz and JWST Acting Program Director Eric Smith included:

• NASA will not implement the reorganization of government STEM education programs proposed in the President’s FY2014 budget request.  However, the funding was removed from NASA’s science programs in the FY2014 budget request, so now it must be found somewhere else within NASA’s science program.
• JWST remains on schedule despite the 16-day government shutdown; though some tests were delayed, the program has 14 months of schedule reserve, so the October 2018 launch date is unaffected.
• NASA continues to plan for a new large astrophysics mission after JWST using the NRC’s Decadal Survey as guidance.  The NRC recommended a Wide-Field Infrared Space Telescope (WFIRST) and NASA is assessing whether 2.4 meter telescopes given to NASA by the National Reconnaissance Office can be used to implement that mission cost effectively (a concept called AFTA).  However, APD cannot be sure decision-makers will agree to another large mission and therefore has created Science Definition Teams for a couple of medium-sized missions so those concepts are ready instead if needed.
• If the sequester remains in place, the estimated FY2014 budget for all of NASA would be $16.25 billion, compared to the $17.7 billion request.
• The APD program was affected by the government shutdown in a number of ways:
  • The 2013-2014 Antarctic Long Duration Balloon campaign was cancelled
  • The Stratospheric Observatory for Infrared Astronomy (SOFIA) aircraft-based astronomy platform cancelled 9 science flights with U.S. experiments
  • An instrument for the NASA-JAXA Astro-H mission could not be tested, resulting in a 5-week delay in its shipment to Japan for integration into the spacecraft and increased costs
  • Other projects had schedule hits including a one-month delay for the ISS-CREAM experiment
  • There will be delays in sending out research funding