PBS will air “Space Shuttle Columbia: Mission of Hope” beginning January 31.  The program tells the story of the Torah brought along on Columbia’s last mission by crewmember Ilan Ramon of the Israeli Air Force.

This week NASA is observing a period of remembrance for the crews who lost their lives in spaceflight-related accidents:  Apollo 1 (1967), space shuttle Challenger (1986) and space shuttle Columbia (2003).  Ramon was aboard Columbia when it disintegrated during its return from space 10 years ago Friday.

The film details why a “small Torah scroll that survived the Holocaust was entrusted to Israeli astronaut Ilan Ramon as he lifted into space on Columbia’s ultimately ill-fated flight.” 

The PBS website says the program will air January 31 from 9:00-10:00 pm and February 2 from 10:00-11:00 pm, but it will air on other dates in various locations around the country.  The film was originally called “An Article of Hope” and the website anarticleofhope.com describes the story behind the Torah and making of the film.  It has a list of when the program will air by geographic area and PBS station.  In the Washington D.C. area, for example, the first showing is not until February 5 at 9:00 pm on Maryland Public Television.

Government Executive (GovExec) reports that the same company that makes the troublesome lithium-ion (Li-Ion) batteries for Boeing’s 787 Dreamliners is under contract to make them for use on the International Space Station (ISS), too.  NASA says the ISS batteries are a different configuration, however, and rigorously designed.

Bob Brewin of GovExec’s NextGov website wrote yesterday that GS Yuasa Lithium Power Inc. of Roswell, GA, the U.S. subsidiary of Japan’s GS Yuasa, supplies the Li-Ion batteries for Boeing’s 787 Dreamliner jets and is under contract to Pratt & Whitney Rocketdyne to provide Li-Ion batteries for the ISS.  They will replace nickel-hydrogen batteries currently used.

Boeing’s Dreamliners have been grounded worldwide after one of the batteries started a fire in a Japan Airlines jet parked at Boston’s Logan Airport last week and this week a Japanese All Nippon Airways jet had to make an emergency landing in Japan after the pilots smelled something burning.   Preliminary indications reportedly are that one of the batteries was operating at a voltage above its design limit.

In an e-mailed statement to SpacePolicyOnline.com today, NASA confirmed that GS Yuasa is designing and developing Li-ion batteries for use on the ISS under contract to Pratt & Whitney Rocketdyne.   However, NASA public affairs officer Josh Byerly said that “they are a different configuration than those used on the Boeing 787” and “the entire battery assembly has been through a rigorous design and development process for the space environment.  The design has been carefully implemented to mitigate and contain the potential hazards of Li-Ion cells.”

Byerly added that NASA  is in “close communication with Boeing, the FAA, and the cell manufacturer on the ongoing failure analysis, and will apply any relevant lessons learned as appropriate.”

The next International Space Station (ISS) crew is ready to try a four-orbit rendezvous instead of the usual two-day approach when it heads to the ISS in March, but NASA and its ISS partners are still weighing the pros and cons of the shortened trip.

In twin press conferences today, the NASA Johnson Space Center (JSC) officials who oversee ISS operations and the three-man crew of the next ISS mission discussed what is on tap for the next several months of ISS operations.

NASA astronaut Chris Cassidy and Russian cosmonauts Pavel Vinogradov and Alexander Misurkin are scheduled for launch on March 27, 2013.  During an afternoon press conference, Vinogradov, who will command the Soyuz spacecraft, responded to a question about whether the crew is ready to try the new four-orbit rendezvous approach — already practiced by robotic Progress cargo spacecraft — by saying he is confident it would be successful.  He said it really is not new, noting that shorter rendezvous trajectories were used in the U.S. Gemini program and in the early days of the Soviet Union’s human spaceflight program when two spacecraft co-orbited.  The latter apparently is a reference to the Vostok program of the early 1960s where Vostok 3 and 4, launched one day apart, flew in a close co-orbit about four miles from each other.

Throughout the history of the Soviet and Russian space station programs, as well as ISS, however, two-day rendezvous trajectories for the Soyuz spacecraft are the norm.  The Soyuz spacecraft, in use since the 1960s, is cramped, however, and reducing the time needed to reach the ISS is desirable from some aspects of crew comfort.  

Earlier in the day, however, NASA’s ISS program manager, Mike Suffredini, explained the overall pros and cons of the shorter transit time.

On the positive side, he said, the crews would spend less time in Soyuz, and the size of the ground operations crew would be reduced, saving money.   On the other hand, the crew would have to remain buckled in their seats for as many as 10 hours, from the time they get strapped in on the ground until they dock.  “Can they go stretch, can they use the facilities if necessary and … [get] strapped back in” during that time, he asked.  More importantly, with a four-orbit rendezvous ground controllers would have to know in advance more precisely where the ISS would be at the time of launch.  Under the four-orbit rendezvous scenario,  “today If I do a debris avoidance maneuver I have to consider whether that impacts a flight in March,” Suffredini said.  What needs to be decided from an operational standpoint, he explained, is the savings in time versus the impact of “flying the ISS day by day.”   

There is agreement to try it once or twice to show that it is possible, he continued, but whether it will be a long term strategy remains to be seen, adding that the good news is that it is easy to transition from a four-orbit rendezvous to the traditional two-day rendezvous if needed.

Separately, Suffredini declined to provide any specifics on the cause of the engine failure on the last SpaceX flight to the ISS.  Although the mission was an overall success for NASA, delivering the Dragon spacecraft to ISS, one of the Falcon 9’s nine engines failed during ascent and a secondary payload was not placed in the proper orbit.   SpaceX has not made the root cause of the failure public and Suffredini said that NASA is precluded from doing so because the information is proprietary.   He said the investigation is “not completely closed,” but NASA was “deeply involved” in reviewing the anomaly.  While it is “hard to find the smoking gun,” the failure appears to be related to amount of testing to which the engine was subjected prior to launch.  He said there are no reasons he knows of that the next launch will not take place on schedule on March 1, and the engines for that vehicle are all new, having been through acceptance testing only.

NASA and the European Space Agency (ESA) provided more details today of their agreement for ESA to provide the service module for NASA’s Orion spacecraft.

ESA Director General Jean-Jacques Dordain announced the plan following ESA’s ministerial meeting in November.  Dordain extolled its significance both in terms of demonstrating ESA’s commitment to partner with NASA in human exploration of space beyond low Earth orbit and in NASA allowing other countries to be in the “critical path” of the U.S. human spaceflight program.

At a press conference today, NASA and ESA officials continued to tout the importance of the agreement, although as details emerge it seems less dramatic than at first glance.  

The agreement is part of a barter arrangement between the two space agencies through which ESA compensates NASA for common systems operating costs on the International Space Station (ISS).  Except for Russia, there is no exchange of funds between NASA and its ISS partners.  Instead, the partners reimburse NASA for the costs of providing life support, electrical power and other basic needs on ISS through offsets, such as providing spacecraft to take cargo to the ISS.  In ESA’s case, it is launches of the Automated Transfer Vehicle (ATV). 

Under this new agreement, ESA will compensate NASA for future common systems operating costs by using ATV hardware for the service module for one of NASA’s Orion spacecraft.  The service module provides electrical power, propulsion and storage for consumables. 

Orion, also called the Multi-Purpose Crew Vehicle (MPCV), is being designed by NASA to take astronauts to destinations beyond low Earth orbit, such as asteroids, the Moon and Mars and their environs.   It will be launched on the Space Launch System (SLS) also under development by NASA.  

In 2014, Orion prime contractor Lockheed Martin will launch a test version of Orion to the distance of the Moon to obtain data on its characteristics as it reenters Earth’s atmosphere.  That launch will be on a Delta IV.  The next flight of Orion will be in 2017 atop the SLS.  Orion will not have a crew aboard for either of those flights.  The first Orion flight with a crew, using SLS, is scheduled for 2021.

The agreement is for ESA to provide some of the service module systems for the 2017 flight.  It will also provide spare parts.  If the spare parts are not required, they will be used for the 2021 flight. That is the extent of the agreement at this point.   NASA will be provided with the intellectual property to enable U.S. companies to build whatever systems are needed for Orion service modules after that.

At today’s press conference, NASA Associate Administrator for Human Exploration and Operations Bill Gerstenmaier said that the decision to put ESA in the critical path was not taken “lightly” and NASA and ESA carefully identified the interfaces between the U.S.- and European-built hardware.  He added, however, that as humans push further out into the solar system the missions certainly will be international “and this is the first step.”  He is “not 100 percent comfortable, but I’m never 100 percent comfortable, so that’s OK, and we’ve done it smartly.”  Later he added that if he was 100 percent comfortable, people should wonder why considering the challenges that lie ahead.  “We’re not foolish” and “I know it won’t be easy,” he stressed.

Gerstenmaier sidestepped a question about the destinations for the 2017 and 2021 flights in light of recent press reports that an outpost at the Earth-Moon L2 Lagrange point or capturing an asteroid and bringing it to cis-lunar space (between the Earth and the Moon) are under consideration.  He said somewhat wryly that a number of missions are being studied by a variety of stakeholders and he is not taking a position on any of them and “then I won’t be disappointed.“

Thomas Reiter, director of ESA Human Spaceflight and Operations, was asked if an ESA astronaut might be on the 2021 mission.   He replied that ESA is focused on the technical work ahead right now, but that future human space exploration would be international “and that kind of international crew would testify to that as it does today on the ISS.”  He also acknowledged that ESA committed to only 60 percent of the necessary funding at the November ministerial meeting, but he is confident the remaining 40 percent will be approved at the next ministerial meeting in 2014.