NASA Administrator Named

Just to follow up on an earlier posting, President Obama has named General Charles Bolden as the new Administrator of NASA. According to the NASA press release, General Bolden has a pretty impressive background:

Gen. Charles Bolden, Nominee for Administrator of NASA Charles Bolden retired from the United States Marine Corps in 2003 as the Commanding General of the Third Marine Aircraft Wing after serving more than 34 years, and is currently CEO of JackandPanther LLC, a privately-held military and aerospace consulting firm. Gen. Bolden began his service in U.S. Marine Corps in 1968. He flew more than 100 sorties in Vietnam from 1972-73. In 1980, he was selected as an astronaut by NASA, flying two space shuttle missions as pilot and two missions as commander. Following the Challenger accident in 1986, Gen. Bolden was named the Chief of the Safety Division at the Johnson Space Center with responsibilities for overseeing the safety efforts in the return-to-flight efforts. He was appointed Assistant Deputy Administrator of NASA headquarters in 1992. He was Senior Vice President at TechTrans International, Inc. from 2003 until 2005. Gen. Bolden holds a B.S. in Electrical Engineering from the U.S. Naval Academy, Annapolis and a M.S. in Systems Management from the University of Southern California.

Of course, none of this says anything about the General's vision for NASA, so we will have to wait a little longer to hear about this.

More on Moon Dust

Brian O'Brien, an Australian physicist, has figured out the secret of moon dust, or what is officially called regolith. Mr. O'Brien worked on the Apollo program back in the 1960s and his curiosity related to the Moon's surface continued all this time. Now it seems the amount of sunlight on the Moon's surface impacts the stickiness of the regolith. It appears the sun's radiation on the surface puts a positive charge on the regolith, causing it to stick to anything from a space suit to NASA instruments. What does this mean for future missions? Well, NASA will need to find a way to overcome this positive charge. Of course, one option is to work on the dark side of the Moon, but I am not sure anyone likes that idea just yet.

In fact, NASA has been running regolith competitions for years to "promote the development of mechanical designs to excavate lunar regolith." NASA keeps adding money to the pot but no one has really come up with a winning design. The 2009 competition will be August 15-16. The rules for competing can be found here. Just think of it as an advance version of the Pinewood Derby.

HD 189733b

Okay, the name is not as memorable as Mars or the ice planet of Hoth, but HD 189733b is the first distant world where traces of carbon dioxide has been detected. And while it might be a fiery giant about 64 light years away, it provides some new insights into another solar system. HD 189733b is said to be about the same size as Jupiter, though it orbits much close to its sun. For more on the specifics of this exoplanet, visit Universe Today.

Who Will be NASA's Administrator?

One of the names that had been bouncing around as the new Administrator is retired Air Force Major General Scott Gration, one of his advisors during the campaign. However, not everyone was happy with this name, including Senator Nelson from Florida.

So, what is the situation today? Well, the Major General will be going to Sudan after being selected as a special envoy. President Obama stated "Standing alongside Secretary Clinton and Ambassador Rice, his appointment is a strong signal of my Administration’s commitment to support the people of Sudan while seeking a lasting settlement to the violence that has claimed so many innocent lives." Interestingly enough, the Major General was born in Congo. This is good news for Sudan, but what about NASA?

Also, maybe this is not where the Major General wants to be. The New Republic notes that "...Gration originally had his heart set on running NASA. Obama tried to put him there until defense lobbyists scotched the idea."

So who else is on the NASA list? Other names have been U.S. Marine Corps Maj. Gen. Charles Bolden, a former space shuttle commander; Charles Kennel, who chairs the National Academy of Science's Space Studies Board; Alan Stern, former NASA associate administrator for science; Scott Hubbard, former director of NASA's Ames Research Center; Wesley Huntress, former NASA associate administrator for space science; and Steve Isakowitz, who was recently reappointed chief financial officer at the Energy Department.

According to The Washington Post, President Obama said he will make a selection any day now. We shall see, since he had orginally planned to this before the inauguration. The Congress is certainly getting impatient, as the letter below demonstrates.

Bipartisan Letter Expressing Need for an Administrator Who Will Minimize the Spaceflight Gap

Dear President Obama:

We write to you as Members of Congress with an abiding interest in the important contributions of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA). NASA has been a leading catalyst for innovation and technology development and has enjoyed over 50 years of broad public interest and strong bipartisan political support. The agency’s work is linked to larger issues facing our country such as national security, climate change and American competitiveness. Currently, NASA faces numerous time-sensitive challenges and needs decisive leadership.

One of the most important issues facing NASA and our nation is the impending retirement of the Space Shuttle, and the subsequent five year gap in independent U.S. access to the International Space Station before the Ares 1 and Orion systems can be deployed. This issue has been identified by the Government Accountability Office as one of thirteen ‘urgent’ items for your administration to address. As you know, this issue is linked to our economic recovery since the gap could result in layoffs for several thousand highly skilled aerospace engineers and technicians over the next two years.

We believe it is imperative for NASA to have a leader who understands the implications of a five year or longer hiatus in America’s independent access to space. The new NASA Administrator should grasp the broad strategic and international aspects of NASA’s mission, as well as the technical, budgetary and programmatic tradeoffs that lie ahead. We urge you to keep these issues in mind as you search for a NASA Administrator candidate with the right background, integrity and focus on minimizing the spaceflight gap and preserving the agency’s cutting edge science and aeronautics programs. Maintaining a focused policy and providing the necessary funding to allow NASA to succeed are essential to the technological advances and scientific discoveries that benefit all Americans.

We fully recognize the difficult challenges our nation faces, and we believe that a focused and properly funded NASA can aid our national economy and contribute to our shared goals of sustaining our technological edge and competing on a global stage.

We look forward to working with you and a new Administrator to ensure a robust, successful NASA. We stand ready to work together with you and continue providing the nation’s civilian space and aeronautics agency our steadfast support.

Thank you for your attention to this important issue.

Sincerely,

Suzanne Kosmas (D-FL)
Ken Calvert (R-CA)
Robert Aderholt (R-AL)
John Culberson (R-TX)
Al Green (D-TX)
Parker Griffith (D-AL)
Ralph Hall (R-TX)
Sheila Jackson-Lee (D-TX)
Michael McCaul (R-TX)
Pete Olson (R-TX)
Bill Posey (R-FL)
Adam Schiff (D-CA)
Lamar Smith (R-TX)
Debbie Wasserman-Schultz (D-FL)

Source: Office of Rep. Suzanne Kosmas

Where is NASA Going?

As of today, if you review the NASA organizational chart you will see an acting Administrator (Christopher Scolese) and a missing Deputy Administrator. So, when do we see some new leadership at NASA, and will the priorities change? A January article in The Economist magazine called "Mars Rising?" that spelled out a few arguments for a change in the U.S. space policy, including a greater reliance on robots. What concerns me more is a possible Obama Adminstration preference for satellites looking back onto Earth rather than keeping our eyes on the Heavens. I would prefer to place the Earth-focused projects into another agency so NASA's mission can be primarily other-worldly. We have plenty to explore and better understand on this planet, including the oceans that cover most of our world, but we should have the resources to stare back at our navel and reach for distant locations.

Anyway, here is the article in full for those who are interested:

Mars rising?

Jan 22nd 2009
From The Economist print edition

Why NASA should give up its ambitions to send men into space

AS LONG as people have looked up at the night sky, they have wondered whether humanity is alone in the universe. Of places close enough for people to visit, Mars is the only one that anybody seriously thinks might support life. The recent confirmation of a five-year-old finding that there is methane in the Martian atmosphere has therefore excited the hopes of exobiologists—particularly as the sources of three large plumes of the gas now seem to have been located. These sources are probably geological but they might, just, prove to be biological.

The possibility of life on Mars is too thrilling for mankind to ignore. But how should we explore such questions—with men, or machines? Since America is the biggest spender in space, its approach will heavily influence the world’s. George Bush’s administration strongly supported manned exploration, but the new administration is likely to have different priorities—and so it should.

Bug-eyed monsters

Michael Griffin, the boss of American’s National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), a physicist and aerospace engineer who supported Mr Bush’s plan to return to the moon and then push on to Mars, has gone. Mr Obama’s transition team had already been asking difficult questions of NASA, in particular about the cost of scrapping parts of the successor to the ageing and obsolete space shuttles that now form America’s manned space programme. That successor system is also designed to return humans to the moon by 2020, as a stepping stone to visiting Mars. Meanwhile, Mr Obama’s administration is wondering about spending more money on lots of new satellites designed to look down at the Earth, rather than outward into space.

These are sensible priorities. In space travel, as in politics, domestic policy should usually trump grandiose foreign adventures. Moreover, cash is short and space travel costly. Yet it would be a shame if man were to give up exploring celestial bodies, especially if there is a possibility of meeting life forms—even ones as lowly as microbes—as a result.

Luckily, technology means that man can explore both the moon and Mars more fully without going there himself. Robots are better and cheaper than they have ever been. They can work tirelessly for years, beaming back data and images, and returning samples to Earth. They can also be made sterile, which germ-infested humans, who risk spreading disease around the solar system, cannot.

Humanity, some will argue, is driven by a yearning to boldly go to places far beyond its crowded corner of the universe. If so, private efforts will surely carry people into space (though whether they should be allowed to, given the risk of contaminating distant ecosystems, is worth considering). In the meantime, Mr Obama’s promise in his inauguration speech to “restore science to its rightful place” sounds like good news for the sort of curiosity-driven research that will allow us to find out whether those plumes of gas are signs of life.

Keep Track of the New Planets

Now that the Kepler spacecraft is on its way, we need some way to keep track of all the new planets we hope to discover. Well, do not fear because The Planetary Society is here to help. The Society has set up a new Catalog of Exoplanets to store information on all the new discoveries. This Catalog will include essential information about each exoplanet, such as : (1) planet's location and home star; (2) mass; (3) orbital period; (4) method by which it was detected; and (5) date of discovery.

The Society notes that

Researchers have discovered more than 300 exoplanets to date. Most are gas giants hundreds of times the mass of the Earth, many orbiting very close to their home stars. But as the sensitivity of the search and the range of detection methods have increased, so has the variety of known exoplanets. Planetary systems composed of as many as five planets have been discovered, some of them sharing similarities with our own solar system. Planet-hunters are also detecting smaller and smaller planets, as small as twice the diameter of the Earth. As detection techniques improve, scientists are closing in on the exoplanet we are all waiting for: an alien “Earth” orbiting a distant star.

Life on Other Planets?

It's good to hear NASA's Kepler spacecraft is safely on its way into its 6-year mission to study the heavens and find other Earth-like planets. The Delta II rocket carried Kepler aloft on March 6th with no problems. Kepler is expected to study between 100,000 and 170,000 sunlike stars in the Milky Way galaxy in the hopes of finding orbiting planets. To do this, Kepler will analyze shifts in each star's brightness.

According to NASA, the mission is as follows:

The scientific objective of the Kepler Mission is to explore the structure and diversity of planetary systems. This is achieved by surveying a large sample of stars to:

1. Determine the percentage of terrestrial and larger planets there are in or near the habitable zone of a wide variety of stars;
2. Determine the distribution of sizes and shapes of the orbits of these planets;
3. Estimate how many planets there are in multiple-star systems;
4. Determine the variety of orbit sizes and planet reflectivities, sizes, masses and densities of short-period giant planets;
5. Identify additional members of each discovered planetary system using other techniques; and
6. Determine the properties of those stars that harbor planetary systems.

This is quite a mission and it should be interesting to read about the results in the years to come.

$70 Million Per Astonaut?

Last month NASA awarded a $3.5 billion cargo contract to Orbital Sciences Corp. and Space Exploration Technologies (SpaceX). This should help get the United States through the 2010-2015 period when the shuttles are offline and a new system is being developed. However, to get our astronauts to the International Space Station (ISS) during this same period the Russians will be charging $70 million per astronaut. That is one expensive trip. I would rather we consider a private firm such as Space Adventures, which successfully placed Richard Garriott onto the ISS in October 2008. Given the current budget situation, we should be partnering as much as possible with the private sector. We will need the creativity and ingenuity of all interested parties to meet all of the expected challenges.

Note: The image above is the SpaceX Dragon to be used to carry cargo. The craft has also been designed to carry crew, though that is not the mission at this time.

NASA Will Be Part of Parade

Well, while we do not know where the space program fits into the Obama budget priorities (see my earlier posting), at least we know that NASA will be part of the inaugural parade on Tuesday. According to a NASA press release, "The crew of NASA's recent STS-126 space shuttle mission and other agency officials will join representatives from across the country and our armed forces in this historic parade down Pennsylvania Avenue in Washington following swearing-in ceremonies on the steps of the Capitol." A protype rover related to the 2020 Moon mission will also be present for the celebration. Maybe this is the reminder the President will need, though for some reason the President may have a few additional items on his mind.

Other 2008 Events - India

On October 22nd of this year the Indian Space Research Organization (ISRO) launched its first probe to our Moon - the Chandrayaan-1. This 2,875-pound spacecraft is scheduled to spend up to two years mapping lunar terrain and studying the satellite's minerals from an orbit about 62 miles high. The probe carries 5 scientific payloads from Indian institutions and another 6 from other countries, including the United States.

This artist's concept shows the Indian lunar mission Chandrayaan 1. Credit: ISRO

NASA's Moon Mineralogy Mapper is aboard the Chandrayaan-1. This device, called the M3, is a 15-pound imaging spectrometer from the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif. The M3 will map the moon's mineral resources (including water at the poles) through high resolution visible and near-infrared wavelengths. NASA officials will then use these maps to plan future Moon mission landing sites.

Other instruments include:

• C1XS - an Europen Space Agency (ESA)-funded payload jointly developed by the U.K. lab, the University of Helsinki and ISRO. C1XS will survey the chemical compounds on the moon by detecting the X-ray signature of surface elements.
• RADOM - a Bulgarian radiation detector.
• SIR 2 - a German near-infrared spectrometer. Financed by ESA, this device will provide information similar to the M3 but on a much narrower spectral band.
• MiniSAR - a U.S. payload from the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory, specifically planned to accompany M3 to look for signs of water ice near the Moon's poles.
• SARA - an ESA-funded probe, which includes component parts from Sweden, Switzerland, Japan and India. The probe will monitor solar wind particles impacting the lunar surface.

One of India's own devices is a 64-pound impactor to be dropped from the orbiting spacecraft for a nosedive into the moon. Hopefully, this crash landing will also provide valuable data on the Moon's composition.

So, the race is on and luckily the United States is part of this Indian mission so it can plan for it own return to the Moon. And India joins a small club of countries that have been to the Moon - the U.S., Russia, ESA, Japan and China. Rumors are that India plans to put a rover on the moon in 2011 and possibly follow this with a manned mission.

Time to Take a Look Again...

Okay, I have been gone for awhile, so now that I am back and we have a new President, we must be back on track for Mars, right? Let's take a look. How many times is Mars mentioned in President-Elect Obama's Plan for America? I went to his Change.gov and visited the "Technology" section but could not find a single sentence on the Moon or Mars. In fact, I searched the entire site and could not find anything on Mars. Does this mean we are Earth-bound for another generation? This is not clear, but it appears stem cells and patent protection will be more important in the near future than exploring the great unknown. Fortunately, the plan has one section called Invest in the Sciences stating his Plan would "Double federal funding for basic research over ten years, changing the posture of our federal government to one that embraces science and technology." I guess we can fit the space program in there somewhere. I am not sure how that will do against other topics such as addressing the dropout crisis and diverse media ownership, but we shall see.

Note: To be fair, in his December 20, 2008 YouTube address, he did use the word "Moon" once, as shown below: 

Right now, in labs, classrooms and companies across America, our leading minds are hard at work chasing the next big idea, on the cusp of breakthroughs that could revolutionize our lives. But history tells us that they cannot do it alone. From landing on the moon, to sequencing the human genome, to inventing the Internet, America has been the first to cross that new frontier because we had leaders who paved the way: leaders like President Kennedy, who inspired us to push the boundaries of the known world and achieve the impossible; leaders who not only invested in our scientists, but who respected the integrity of the scientific process.

Let the Space Race Continue!

Once again we are looking to private initiative to find a new way into space, and $30 million is a nice incentive. Launched in September 2007, the Google Lunar X PRIZE is an international competition to safely land a robot on the surface of the Moon, travel 500 meters over the lunar surface, and send images and data back to the Earth. Teams must be at least 90% privately funded and must be registered to compete by December 31, 2010. The first team to land on the Moon and complete the mission objectives will be awarded $20 million; the full first prize is available until December 31, 2012. After that date, the first prize will drop to $15 million. The second team to do so will be awarded $5 million. Another $5 million will awarded in bonus prizes. The final deadline for winning the prize is December 31, 2014.

And the interest is impressive. Dr. Peter H. Diamandis, Chairman and CEO of the X PRIZE Foundation, announced the teams at Google Headquarters in Mountain View, California. “I’m very pleased to welcome our first 10 fully registered teams to the Google Lunar X PRIZE. Only 6 months after the announcement of this competition, the response has been incredible – we’ve received over 560 expressions of interest from more than 53 nations."

With the U.S. government, China, Japan and others pushing for the moon as well, it is a positive sign to see a truly open international competition to open up the moon. Just as we had our period of settling the western spaces in America, it seems the new slogan could be "Go up, young man".

Why the Moon?

If you have asked yourself that question, then you are the prime audience for NASA's poster "Why the Moon?" You can get a copy here.

News on Mercury!

On January 14, the MESSENGER spacecraft (MErcury Surface, Space ENvironment, Geochemistry, and Ranging) flew by Mercury and took a unique picture showing a side of the planet we have never seen. The image shown was taken 18 minutes after close approach, when MESSENGER was about 3,000 miles away from the planet. The image is about 125 miles across.

Launched in the summer of 2004, the MESSENGER spacecraft is expected to go into orbit around Mercury in 2011 after a 4.9-billion mile journey that includes 15 trips around the sun. MESSENGER is only the second spacecraft sent to Mercury - Mariner 10 flew past it three times in 1974-75.

Spacefest 2007

I bumped into an ad for the Spacefest 2007 conference in Mesa, Arizona. It actually looks like an interesting weekend of events. For instance, speakers include author David Levy, astronaut John Young, and director Louis Friedman from the Planetary Society. The event will also include a space auction (wait, they are not selling Moon plots just yet), including items such as this Gemini 10 mission patch. Moreover, a variety of astronauts will be on hand to sign autographs (sometimes for a fee). It could be a fun few days.

Rain, Sleet, or Snow...Oh, Wait!

Yes, our invincible, intergalactic fleet has been grounded again by snowballs. Okay, hail, but still pretty sad. The Atlantis shuttle is still grounded in Florida since the hailstorm back in February. At the time of the event NASA reported that

"a severe thunderstorm with golf ball-size hail caused what could be 1,000 to 2,000 divots in the giant tank's foam insulation and minor surface damage to about 26 heat shield tiles on the shuttle's left wing. Further evaluation of the tank is necessary to get an accurate accounting of foam damage and must be done in the Vehicle Assembly Building, where the entire tank can be more easily accessed."

As of today, NASA states the Atlantis may get of the ground in June. Miss this window and we will be into hurricane season - what fun.

Who do we blame? NASA for wimpy construction, or Al Gore for not predicting this in his film? We may want to follow the example of the Europeans and more our space launch sites closer to the equator. If it is not hail it will be a rising sea overtaking Cape Canaveral. How about floating platforms, similar to the private sector space industry? Then not even Global Warming can stop our attempts to resettle on Mars before everything Earth-side is gone.

Oh well, keep your fingers crossed.

Note: The image above is a refurbished North Sea oil platform owned by Sea Launch, a private sector firm. The launch platform provides accommodations for 68 crew and launch system personnel.

Katsuura , We Have a Problem

Japan has announced that its long delayed Moon mission may be scrapped. According to a MSNBC story, the Lunar-A probe, designed to place two seismic sensors on the lunar surface for the purpose of learning more about the origins of the Moon, has been delayed for more than a decade. The Japanese still have plans to put a man on the Moon by 2025. Maybe he/she can visit our new trailer park.

A Little Place on the Moon

NASA hopes to have humans landing on the Moon by 2020 and occupying the surface by 2024, at least for a week at a time. The base would be located on one of the lunar poles to allow for almost continuous solar energy (and access to the limited water below the surface). And we would allow other nations to visit and/or participate in the project.

Of course, the Moon would also operate as a staging ground for a trip to Mars, the strongest argument for setting up there in the first place.

"Using the space station and building an outpost on the moon to prepare for the trip to Mars are critical milestones in America's quest to become a truly spacefaring nation," Griffin writes. "I think that we should want that. I want that. I want it for the American people, for my grandchildren, for my great-grandchildren."

I still say we should have a new race to the moon, but this time by commercial companies. This does not mean a new homesteading program, but NASA could be a partner in some innovative projects. The Moon project will take considerable funding, so all options should be explored.

Besides, the International Space Station is not exactly the most successfully model. It seems to represent PR for space more than real science. Of course, the ISS could prove useful in that the space station modules might be reconfigured for placement on the Moon. Yes, NASA is creating a trailor park on the Moon's surface. But its a start. Did you expect the Jetsons?

For more, visit NASA's Moon site.

Also, take a look at the Space Foundation's publication "The Case for Space." This document offers some good support for the Moon and Mars missions.

Weird Tales from NASA

While some of us are concerned about water on Mars, the Great Space Race with China, and other mighty issues, the press seems to be quite concerned about astronauts in diapers and the latest boyfriend of Martha Stewart.

I suppose this is to be expected in a country where reality TV is still the rage, but maybe it is not such a bad thing. The more the austronauts seem like the rest of us the more we can relate to them. Maybe we are not looking for super people anymore. And the expansion of commercial space represents the movement towards the regular folks reaching the heavens.

I was even surprised to recently read that the circulation of National Geographic (8.5 million) is more than twice that of People magazine (3.7 million). So maybe we like our gossip, but we also like our science (and by extension, our scientists).

Save Our Science

The Planetary Society continues with its SOS campaign. According to the Society's site, they recently delivered a petition containing more than 5,000 signatures to the White House calling on President Bush to restore funding for space science and exploration in his 2008 budget proposal to the U.S. Congress. The Society is concerned about cuts in astrobiology programs and solar system research. White House cut also include a Europa mission to investigate a possible habitat for life beyond Earth and the Terrestrial Planet Finder, a search for Earth-like worlds elsewhere in the galaxy. In addition, the Administration earlier in the year cut all work on a Mars Sample Return mission and precursor activities for human exploration of the Red Planet. While we have heard a lot of talk about upcoming manned missions, let's remember that most of the real work (and science) is done by the less glorious yet more capable robotic missions. Maybe we need to increase the funding for our space program rather than eliminating the science. Follow SOS events by clicking here.