CBS NEWS Coverage of Breaking Space News Posted: 07:10 PM, 6/27/09 By William Harwood CBS News Space Consultant Editor's Note... CBS News space exploration status reports also are available via email. SIGN UP NOW! Changes and additions: 06/17/09 (11:20 AM): Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter/Atlas 5 moved to launch pad 06/18/09 (06:20 PM): Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter takes off on moon mission 06/23/09 (07:30 AM): Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter brakes into orbit around the moon 06/27/09 (07:10 PM): GOES weather satellite launched CBS NEWS SPACE EXPLORATION STATUS REPORTS 07:10 PM, 6/27/09, Update: GOES satellite launched Running a day late because of stormy weather, a United Launch Alliance Delta 4 rocket boosted a new GOES weather satellite into space Saturday to serve as an orbital spare for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's fleet of hurricane-tracking weather sentinels. The Delta 4, equipped with two strap-on solid-fuel boosters, ignited with a rush of flame and smoke at 6:51 p.m. and quickly climbed away from launch complex 37B at the Cape Canaveral Air Force Station, arcing to the east and accelerating toward orbit. "Three, two, one and liftoff of the Delta 4 rocket with GOES-O, enhancing quality and reliability of the weather satellite for the forecaster," said NASA launch commentator George DIller. It was the 10th flight of a United Launch Alliance Delta 4 rocket and the second of three launchings planned for this year. A United Launch Alliance Delta 4 rocket carrying NOAA's GOES-O weather satellite roars to life. (Photo: NASA TV) A launch attempt Friday was called off because of thunderstorms and electrical activity near the Cape Canaveral Air Force Station. More of the same was on tap today and forecasters initially predicted a 70 percent chance of a launch delay. Thunderstorms rolled over the launch pad during fueling but conditions improved as the afternoon wore on and after a 37-minute delay to allow a storm cell to move past to the south, NASA and United Launch Alliance proceeded with launch. The Delta 4's first stage performed normally, boosting the vehicle to an altitude of about 90 miles before falling away four-and-a-half minutes after liftoff. The rocket's second stage then lofted the spacecraft into an initial parking orbit before two additional firings needed to place the 7,000-pound GOES-O satellite into an elliptical transfer orbit with a high point of about 21,800 miles and a low point of 4,100 miles. Spacecraft separation was targeted for four hours and 21 minutes after launch. On-board thrusters will be used to put the satellite in its final circular orbit 22,300 miles above the equator. That milestone is expected July 8 and if all goes well, Boeing Space and Intelligence Systems will turn the satellite over to the government on July 18. The shuttle Endeavour, mounted atop pad 39A at the Kennedy Space Center, as the ULA Delta 4 rocket blasts off in the background. (Photo: NASA TV) The Geostationary Operational Environmental Satellite system provides the hemispheric views familiar from television weathercasts. Observations of the Atlantic Ocean, the Gulf of Mexico and the East Coast are provided by the GOES-12 satellite - critical for hurricane tracking - with GOES-11 providing similar coverage of the the West Coast and the central Pacific Ocean past Hawaii. GOES-O will be known as GOES-14 once on station, joining the GOES-13 satellite, launched three years ago, as an orbital spare. "GOES-O will provide another important operational asset to NOAA and will become part of the nation's infrastructure for both weather and environmental forecasting," said Steve Kirkner, GOES project manager at NASA. The latest GOES satellites feature an imaging system and a sounder that collects atmospheric data needed to predict surface and cloud-top temperatures, moisture content and ozone distribution. The imagers produce higher resolution pictures than earlier models, allowing forecasters to more accurately track small-scale features. "The things we're looking for, tornadoes and severe thunderstorms are very small in scale," said Joe Schaefer, director of NOAA's Storm Prediction Center in Norman, Okla. "The increased resolution and accuracy that these satellites will present will help us pinpoint what's happening, and if we know what's happening, we can do a better job of making short-term and long-term forecasts of where it's going to be." Along with saving lives, improved resolution can lower costs as well. "There's an old rule of thumb that if we can evacuate fewer people for a hurricane, for every mile we don't have to evacuate that saves you a million dollars on average," said Tom Wrublewski, technical acquisitions manager for the GOES project. "That translates into savings for you and I ... and being able to know where tornados and other storms are." Like all recent GOES satellites, the two newest models also include space environment sensors to measure energetic particles blown off by the sun, to monitor Earth's geomagnetic field and to look for X-ray and ultraviolet emissions from powerful solar flares that can disrupt communications. "GOES-O is going to better ensure that we have continuous coverage in the decade ahead, it's going to improve our imaging, atmospheric sounding, and our near-Earth space weather environmental measurements that are essential to accurate weather and solar forecasts," said Wrublewski. Along with improve hurricane tracking and forecasting, the new satellites will provide "clearer cloud top and wind products and also better detection of aerosols." "We'll be better able to watch where those volcanic plumes are going and that is very important to airline pilots not to foul their engines," he said. Engineers will check out the new satellite and calibrate its instruments over the next two months to make sure the spacecraft is functioning normally. The first visible-light full-disk image of the Earth is expected around July 28 and an X-ray instrument that will monitor solar flares will send down its initial test image Aug. 6. Once checkout is complete, the satellite will go into storage mode near GOES 13 to await call up as needed. Projections indicate GOES-12 will begin running into fuel-shortage issues late this year, followed by similar issues with GOES-11. The new satellites have a 10-year design life. "We don't really know when we're going to need it," said Marty Davis, an advisor to the GOES project. "We know the two operational satellites that are up there now are not perfect and are becoming less perfect as time goes on. So the next one to be operational will be GOES-13, which was launched three years ago. We don't think we'll have two spares for very long. The prediction is GOES-13 will be made operational by the end of the year." 7:30 AM, 6/23/09, Update: Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter brakes into orbit around the moon Four-and-a-half days after launch, NASA's $504 million Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter fired its main thrusters for 40 minutes early Tuesday, successfully braking into an initial elliptical orbit around the moon. The critical rocket firing began around 5:47 a.m. EDT and ended as planned at 6:27 a.m., putting the spacecraft into an orbit tilted 30 degrees from the moon's poles with a low point of 136 miles and a high point of 1,926 miles. "All stations, this is flight," the mission flight director said. "Congratulations on a successful LOI (lunar orbit insertion) to return NASA to the moon." Over the next five days, the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter will carry out four additional rocket firings to put the spacecraft in its so-called commissioning orbit with a low point of about 18.5 miles above the moon's south pole and a high point of 134 miles above the north pole. The orbit eventually will be circularized at about 31 miles above the moon. "The tracking shows we're essentially where we planned to be, we're at the moon," said LRO project manager Craig Tooley. "It went like clockwork. With a mission like this, we spent literally years practicing for every possible contingency to be ready for this. In the end, it went exactly as planned." LRO will spend two months in its commissioning orbit before maneuvering into the desired 31-mile-high mapping orbit. Equipped with seven state-of-the-art cameras and other instruments, LRO will look for suitable landing sites for future manned missions while creating the most detailed lunar atlas ever assembled. The 4,200-pound solar-powered spacecraft also will measure the solar and cosmic radiation that future lunar explorers will face and map out the surface topology, mineralogy and chemical composition of Earth's nearest neighbor. One year will be spent scouting future landing sites followed by three years of purely scientific observations. LRO was launched by an Atlas 5 rocket from the Cape Canaveral Air Force Station last Thursday along with a companion spacecraft, the $79 million Lunar Crater Observation and Sensing Satellite, or LCROSS. The two spacecraft separated shortly after launch. LCROSS is designed to guide the Atlas 5's spent Centaur second stage to an impact in a permanently shadowed crater near the moon's south pole on Oct. 9. Instruments aboard LCROSS, LRO, the Hubble Space Telescope and at observatories on Earth will study the debris thrown up by the crash to look for evidence of ice. 6:20 PM, 6/18/09, Update: Atlas 5 blasts off on lunar scouting mission An Atlas 5 rocket thundered to life and majestically streaked into space today, boosting two NASA spacecraft toward the moon for an ambitious $583 million mission to scout out landing sites for future manned missions and to search for evidence of hidden ice near its frigid poles. One spacecraft will map the cratered surface from a perilously low 31-mile-high orbit while the other will blast out 350 tons of pulverized rock and soil for chemical analysis, digging a shallow 66-foot-wide crater in a kamikaze crash visible from Earth. "What we're about is taking us all back to the moon," said Cathy Peddie, a deputy project manager at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center. A United Launch Alliance Atlas 5 rocket takes off on a NASA moon mission. (Photo: NASA TV) Delayed 20 minutes by nearby thunderstorms, the United Launch Alliance Atlas 5 rocket's RD-180 first stage engine ignited at 5:32 p.m., slowly pushing the towering rocket away from launch complex 41 at the Cape Canaveral Air Force Station. Shooting through low clouds and quickly disappearing from view, the rocket arced east over the Atlantis Ocean and accelerated toward space. Spectacular rocket cam views showed the Atlas 5's fiery exhaust plume against the cloud-draped limb of planet Earth and the deep black of space. Another camera showed the nose cone fairing falling away, exposing the satellite payload to view. Two firings by the Atlas 5's hydrogen-fueled Centaur second stage successfully boosted the dual-spacecraft payload onto a four-day trajectory to the moon. A rocket cam view from the Atlas 5 as the vehicle climbed into space. (Photo: NASA TV) The $504 million Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter, equipped with seven state-of-the-art cameras and other instruments, will look for suitable landing sites for future manned missions while creating the most detailed lunar atlas ever assembled. The 4,200-pound solar-powered spacecraft also will measure the solar and cosmic radiation that future lunar explorers will face and map out the surface topology, mineralogy and chemical composition of Earth's nearest neighbor. One year will be spent scouting future landing sites followed by three years of purely scientific observations. While its cameras will not be able to detect the footprints of the 12 Apollo astronauts who once walked on the moon, they will be able to see the landing stages, rovers and other equipment that were left behind. LRO's companion, the $79 million Lunar Crater Observation and Sensing Satellite, or LCROSS, faces a much shorter lifetime. With LRO on its own, LCROSS will maneuver the spent Atlas 5's Centaur second stage into a looping four-month orbit back around the Earth. If all goes well, LCROSS will aim itself and the Centaur back at the moon, targeting a permanently shadowed crater near the south pole for a dramatic crash landing Oct. 9. With LRO looking on from lunar orbit, the 5,000-pound Centaur will hit the dark surface at some 5,600 mph, blasting out a 66-foot-wide crater some 13 feet deep. The debris excavated by the impact will be blown high above the lunar surface, some of it above the crater's rim and into sunlight for the first time in two billion years or more. LCROSS, following close behind the Centaur on a virtually identical course, will fly through the debris cloud, spending four precious minutes studying the composition of the material and looking for signs of water ice with a suite of nine instruments. Then it, too, will crash to the moon less than two miles away after dutifully transmitting its data back to Earth. The Hubble Space Telescope will monitor the impact, as will amateur and professional astronomers in the western hemisphere, looking for the flash that will signal the Centaur's demise. The LRO/LCROSS mission is NASA's first trip to the moon since the more modest Lunar Prospector was launched in 1998. The new missions are part of NASA's post-Columbia program to send astronauts back to the moon to establish permanent Antarctica-style research station starting around 2020. The Bush administration approved the new plan and President Obama endorsed the resumption of moon flights during his campaign. But earlier this year, the White House Office of Management and Budget cut $3.1 billion from NASA's projected budgets through 2013 - money needed to begin development of a heavy-life moon rocket - and the president ordered an independent re-assessment of NASA's long-range goals. The review panel held its first public hearing Wednesday and its final report is expected by the end of the summer. Regardless of the ultimate fate of NASA's manned moon program, the two spacecraft launched today promise to greatly advance understanding of the moon's history and evolution, along with making the first serious attempt to identify favorable landing sites for future long-duration visits. Separating from the LCROSS/Centaur shortly after launch, LRO will fly to the moon on its own. After a long rocket firing Tuesday morning to brake into an elliptical orbit, engineers will spend up to two months checking out and calibrating the spacecraft's instruments and maneuvering it into a circular 31-mile-high orbit. For comparison, the orbits used by Apollo command modules were about 70 miles high. "As its name says, LRO is all about doing reconnaissance at the moon," said Craig Tooley, the mission's project manager at Goddard. "Reconnaissance, specifically, to bring us back the data and the information we need to plan and execute the human return to the moon. "An inevitable question I get is 'why do we need LRO? Haven't we done this?' And, indeed, of course, we've been to the moon. But when we went to the moon for Apollo, we went to the equatorial regions and we intentionally planned to not stay for very long. And even at the onset of our renewed commitment to send human beings to the Moon back in 2004, we knew then if we were going to go to the moon with the more ambitious goals we have now of staying longer and perhaps establishing outposts, we were going to go to a different place." Scientists and engineers thinking about future outposts on the moon are focused on the polar regions, where areas in permanent sunlight offer unlimited solar power. Conversely, permanently shadowed craters nearby offer the prospect of ice deposits and along with them, a source of water, oxygen and hydrogen rocket fuel. "We actually have much better maps of Mars than we have of our own Moon's polar regions," Tooley said. "So the job of filling out that information set, making that atlas complete for planning safe and fruitful return to the Moon, that job fell to LRO." The LCROSS mission is much more tightly focused. Earlier lunar probes detected signs of hydrogen in the dark polar regions, an indirect indication of water ice. Scientists believe ice could indeed be trapped in polar craters that never see sunlight, brought in by comet impacts over the billions of years since the moon's formation. The Centaur impact is designed to blast out material in the top few feet of a shadowed crater's floor where ice deposits are suspected. "The impact sounds spectacular, and it will be," said Tony Colaprete, the LCROSS project scientist. "But you have to consider impacts of this size hit the Moon three or four times a month, essentially once a week. What's unique about the LCROSS impact is we know exactly where and when, so we can actually coordinate all of these eyes to look at it. "The actual event will be done in four minutes, meaning the ejecta, the physical material that comes up will be all but settled out in four minutes. It's just like any other natural impact of the Moon, it will not damage the Moon in any way." The amount of hydrogen detected in past missions implies the presence of enough water to possibly fill the Great Salt Lake basin in Utah. But no one knows if ice is really there. "There's data out there which could show it's potentially ice rinks," said LCROSS project manager Dan Andrews. "There's data out there that shows it's blocky. There's data out there that could support the fact that there might not be water ice there," said Dan Andrews, the LCROSS project manager. "So that illustrates the importance of this mission. Let's go see what it is. "The benefit of having water ice there is self-evident. The availability of water right there on the moon, availability of producing oxygen, oxidizer for rocket fuel for other missions, it's very, very interesting if water ice is indeed there." 11:15 AM, 6/17/09, Update: Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter/Atlas 5 moved to pad for Thursday launch With the shuttle Endeavour grounded by a hydrogen leak, a United Launch Alliance Atlas 5 rocket carrying NASA's Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter was hauled to launch complex 41 at the Cape Canaveral Air Force Station today for liftoff Thursday on an ambitious $580 million moon mapping mission. The short trip from ULA's towering processing facility to the pad started at 10:02 a.m. With forecasters predicting a 60 percent chance of good weather, the Atlas team will have three launch opportunities Thursday, at 5:12 p.m. EDT, 5:22 p.m. and 5:32 p.m. A United Launch Alliance Atlas 5 rocket carrying NASA's Lunar Reconnaissance orbiter is hauled to pad 41 at the Cape Canaveral Air Force Station. (Photo: United Launch Alliance TV) The forecast improves to 70 percent go Friday for launch opportunities at 6:41 p.m., 6:51 p.m. and 7:01 p.m. Three final opportunities are available Saturday, the last day in the current launch window. The next four-day launch window opens June 30. The LRO spacecraft is scheduled to map the moon's surface in unprecedented detail from an orbit around the lunar poles just 31 miles above the cratered terrain. The primary goals are to identify possible landing sites for future manned missions and to characterize the composition and topography of the surface. A companion mission, the Lunar Crater Observation and Sensing Satellite, or LCROSS, is designed to look for evidence of water ice and other materials by crashing the Atlas 5's Centaur upper stage into a permanently shadowed crater near the moon's south pole. The small LCROSS spacecraft will aim the spent Centaur stage and monitor its demise, flying through the cloud of debris thrown up by the crash, before following it to a similar fate. Assuming a launch Thursday, the LCROSS mission will end with lunar impacts on Oct. 9. 03:00 AM, 6/10/09, Update: Internal spacewalk begins (UPDATED at 3:20 a.m. with end of spacewalk) Working in spacesuits inside a compartment opened to vacuum, space station commander Gennady Padalka and NASA flight engineer Michael Barratt carried out a short 12-minute internal spacewalk today to finish rigging a port in the Zvezda command module for arrival of a new docking module in November. Padalka and Barratt remained inside the station throughout today's spacewalk and both men's Orlan MK spacesuits were connected to umbilicals. The work began at 2:55 a.m. EDT and ended at 3:07 a.m. But because they were working in vacuum, the activity was considered a spacewalk, the 125th since station assembly began in 1998, the sixth so far this year, the eighth for Padalka and the second for Barratt. A new docking module, known as MRM-2, is scheduled for launch atop a Soyuz rocket on Nov. 10. Once attached to the station, it will add a fourth Russian docking port to support the increased traffic required by a full-time crew of six. During an external spacewalk last Friday, Padalka and Barratt installed antennas as part of a system that will enable the MRM-2 docking module to home in on the station, line up and dock at the zenith port of the Zvezda module. During today's spacewalk inside the evacuated transfer compartment at the forward end of Zvezda, the interior side of the hatchway was equipped with required docking system equipment. The station currently has three Russian docking ports: an Earth-facing port on the forward end of the Zarya module and two on Zvezda, one facing Earth and the other at the rear of the lab complex. One three-seat Soyuz lifeboat is docked at Zarya and another is berthed at Zvezda's aft port. An unmanned Progress supply ship is attached to the Pirs docking module on Zvezda's Earth-facing port. The MRM-2 docking module will go on the zenith port directly above and across from Pirs. Yet another docking module, known as MRM-1, is scheduled for launch next year aboard a space shuttle. It will be attached to Zarya's downward facing port, providing the clearance needed for planned U.S. Orion crew capsules to dock at a downward-facing port in the station's U.S. Unity module. During today's spacewalk, the station crew was split up to make sure everyone had access to a Soyuz lifeboat at all times. Koichi Wakata joined Barratt and Padalka in the Russian segment of the station, with access to the Soyuz docked at the command module's aft port. Frank De Winne, Robert Thirsk and Roman Romanenko remained in the forward segment of the lab, with access to the Soyuz docked to the Zarya module's Earth-facing port. 8:55 AM, 6/5/09, Update: Successful spacewalk ends Michael Barratt, wrapping up his first spacewalk, rode a telescoping boom high above the International Space Station today for a photo survey of newly installed docking antennas. In the process, he beamed down spectacular helmet cam views of the lab's Russian segment and the Earth 220 miles below. "How's the view, Michael?" someone radioed. "The station is so beautiful," Barratt replied. Michael Barratt's helmet cam view of the space station, showing the circular brown upper docking port of the Zvezda module. (Phote: NASA TV) Barratt and Expedition 20 commander Gennady Padalka began the spacewalk at 3:52 a.m., an hour behind schedule because of concern about higher-than-expected carbon dioxide levels in their new Orlan MK spacesuits. Russian engineers ultimately concluded the suits were good to go and the crew was cleared to proceed. Working around the forward end of the Zvezda command module, Padalka and Barratt installed docking system antennas and cabling to permit a Russian docking module, scheduled for launch atop a Soyuz rocket in November, to home in on the station and dock at Zvezda's upward-facing port. The MRM-2 module, similar to the Pirs module attached to Zvezda's Earth-facing port, will serve as a combination airlock and docking module for future visits by Soyuz crew ferry craft and unmanned Progress supply ships. The new module will provide a fourth docking port to support the increased traffic required by a full-time crew of six and permit Progress ships to dock at Pirs more frequently, providing improved roll control for the lab complex. Barratt, on the end of the Russian Strela boom, is moved into place for a photo survey by crewmate Gennady Padalka. (Phote: NASA TV) Padalka and Barratt had no problems installing the antennas needed for the automated rendezvous system. Russian engineers carried out electrical continuity checks to make sure the equipment was properly wired and Barratt, on the end of a Russian Strela boom, carried out a photo survey to make sure they were properly aligned. The spacewalkers then returned to the Pirs module and closed its hatch at 8:46 a.m., ending a four-hour 54-minute spacewalk. Today's excursion, the 124th devoted to station assembly and maintenance, pushed total EVA time to 779 hours and 54 minutes. Padalka and Barratt plan to carry out a short internal spacewalk Wednesday, working in vacuum inside Zvezda's forward compartment to complete the zenith port's outfitting. 6:35 AM, 6/5/09, Update: Spacewalk going smoothly after late start Space station commander Gennady Padalka and flight engineer Michael Barratt are in the process of installing a second set of rendezvous antennas near the Zvezda command module's upper port to pave the way for attachment of a Russian docking module in November. Two hours and 45 minutes into the planned five-and-a-half-hour spacewalk, Padalka and Barratt and working through their timeline with no major problems, installing passive antennas and routing cables. The spacewalk began a bit more than an hour behind schedule because of indications of higher-than-expected carbon dioxide levels in their new Orlan MK spacesuits. But both spacewalkers have said throughout the morning that they feel fine and the suits appear to be operating normally. 3:55 AM, 6/5/09, Update: Station spacewalk begins Running more than an hour late because of spacesuit troubleshooting, cosmonaut Gennady Padalka and NASA flight engineer Michael Barratt opened the hatch of the Pirs airlock module aboard the International Space Station at 3:52 a.m. EDT to officially begin a planned five-and-a-half-hour spacewalk. The goal of the excursion is to mount rendezvous antennas on the upper side of the Russian Zvezda command module. A new docking module is scheduled for launch in November that will use the rendezvous system to home in on the station and dock at Zvezda's upper port. The docking module will be used later as a port for Soyuz crew ferry craft and Progress supply ships. Today's spacewalk began a little more than an hour behind schedule because of readings indicating high carbon dioxide levels in the crew's new Orlan MK spacesuits, being used for the first time. Equipped with new computers and displays, both suits indicated higher-than-expected CO2 levels, but the spacewalkers said they felt fine. "Michael, how are yo feeling? What do you think about the first time working in the suit?" a Russian flight controller called from Moscow. "So far so good," Barratt replied in Russian. "Sizing is good, so it just feels fine." "So do you feel like maybe you can be nauseous, maybe there's not enough air to breathe inside the suit?" "No, I wouldn't say that," Barratt said. "So no discomfort whatsoever?" "Not at all. So far so good," said Barratt, a former NASA flight surgeon. "I'm very familiar with the symptoms of high CO2 levels, but I'm not experiencing any." "Michael, I'm very sorry because we're receiving information from several different sources," the ground surgeon replied. "So if you don't mind, I would like to ask you once in a while about what you're feeling. As a surgeon, I would like you to report to me your symptoms, or how you're feeling, and so on from time to time. ... Are you OK with that?" "Yes of course," Barratt said. "That goes without saying." After assessing the readings on the ground, along with frequent calls to the spacewalkers to make sure both felt normal, Russian flight controllers cleared the crew to depressurize the Pirs airlock module and begin today's spacewalk. For identification, Padalka, call sign EV-1, is wearing a suit with red stripes. Barratt, EV-2, is wearing a suit with blue stripes that is equipped with a NASA helmet camera. This is the 124th spacewalk devoted to station assembly and maintenance since construction began in 1998, the fifth so far this year, the seventh overall for Padalka and the first for Barratt. Going into Friday's excursion, more than 80 astronauts and cosmonauts representing the United States, Russia, Japan, Canada, Germany, France and Sweden had logged 775 hours of space station EVA time. The KURS antennas being installed by Padalka and Barratt are passive elements in a system that will enable the Russian MRM-2 docking module to home in on the station in November. The station currently has three Russian docking ports: an Earth-facing port on the forward end of the Zarya module and two on Zvezda, one facing Earth and the other at the rear of the lab complex. At present, two three-seat Soyuz lifeboats are docked at the station, one at Zarya and the other at Zvezda's aft port. An unmanned Progress supply ship is attached to the Pirs module on Zvezda's Earth-facing port. The MRM-2 docking module scheduled for launch in November will go on the zenith port directly above and across from Pirs. Yet another docking module, known as MRM-1, is scheduled for launch next year aboard a space shuttle. It will be attached to Zarya's downward facing port, providing the clearance needed for planned U.S. Orion crew capsules to dock at a downward-facing port in the station's U.S. Unity module. 01:30, 6/1/09, Update: Station crew says life with six aboard similar to 'herding cats,' but systems working well Orchestrating the work of six full-time astronauts aboard the International Space Station is a bit like "herding cats," a Canadian crew member told reporters Monday, adding that living in the surreal weightlessness of space was like floating in a Salvador Dali painting. And then there's the part about recycling their sweat and urine for drinking and meal preparation. "First of all, the water is great!" NASA flight engineer Michael Barratt said during the expanded crew's first orbital news conference. "It's probably as good as or better than anything you'd buy out of a fancy bottle on the ground. "We try to use our water (regularly) to keep our processors primed and happy and we're all hydrating drinks and hydrating some of our sublimated food and it's a very convenient system. We've got hot water, cold water ... and absolutely no complaints about the water up here." The Expedition 20 crew fields questions from reporters. Front row (left to right): Koichi Wakata, Gennady Padalka and Michael Barratt Back row (left to right) Frank De Winne, Roman Romanenko and Robert Thirsk (Photo: NASA TV) Barratt, space station commander Gennady Padalka and Japanese astronaut Koichi Wakata were joined Friday by three new full-time crew members - cosmonaut Roman Romanenko, European Space Agency astronaut Frank De Winne of Belgium and Robert Thirsk of the Canadian Space Agency. The new crew members arrived aboard a cramped Russian Soyuz capsule launched last Wednesday from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan. Shuttle-veteran Thirsk said the Russians provided first-class transportation. "If you think of the space shuttle as a powerful SUV, then the Soyuz is a nimble sports car," he said. "It did an incredible job getting us into orbit. The ride was quite a bit smoother, I thought, than the shuttle. For the first two minutes of a shuttle flight, it's pretty bumpy, it's impossible to read. But in the Soyuz, it was smooth all the way up. ... I just regard the Soyuz as a miracle." While visiting shuttle crews push the combined crew size even higher, the arrival of Romanenko, De Winne and Thirsk opened a new era of space station operations. With six full-time crew members, the lab's science output is expected to increase dramatically. The station's complex life support systems are working well, including the critical urine recycling system referred to by Barratt, The problems encountered so far, he said, are the minor sort of growing pains one might expect when doing something for the first time. "For me personally, I feel very much at home," Barratt said. "I come from a large family and I'm used to a lot of activity and 'busyness' and a lot of laughter, and we certainly have that now with these guys coming (aboard)." The size of the station helps, he said, given the astronauts can work in three dimensions in a way impossible on Earth. "The station is very large and six people still don't quite fill it, it's a very comfortable venue for six people to work with, I would say, pretty intensive timelines," Barratt said. "And these guys got to work right away, so I can tell you for sure that that's true." Thirsk said the greatest challenge is simply becoming more efficient. "I think for the newer members of the six person crew, it's a little bit like herding cats for Gennady, trying to get us all organized and getting us all to accomplish our tasks in a day," he said. "The learning curve is steep. We've been here, Roman says, five days now. I think we've learned an awful lot, so the working efficiency is coming. "But believe me, this is a surreal world here. I sometimes feel like I'm in the middle of a Salvador Dali painting here. My greatest fear? Astronauts always have fear of injury or death, but our greatest fear is of making a mistake. So I just hope I can get through this six months without making any serious mistakes." Overall, Barratt said, the crew's integration has gone smoothly, with no major hiccups. Sharing meals together, however, has been a bit of a challenge. The galley in the Russian Zvezda command module, their usual place to eat, is a bit cramped for six. "But we've set up another table in (the Unity module)," Barratt said. "Quite frankly, we didn't know how it was going to work until these guys arrived and we tried it out. So we've done a lot of tweaks to our food system and right now we're finding out that it does work pretty well. "So I'd say we're starting out functional and we're going to make it more efficient and a little bit more palatable as we go along. But certainly no show stoppers. It's very comfortable having six people here right now." Another long-term issue for the crew is staying in touch with family members. "For people who have an interest in science and technology, there can't be a better job than astronaut," Thirsk said. "But there is a price to be paid, there is a sacrifice to be made and unfortunately, it's the family that needs to make that sacrifice. It is important to stay in touch. "We communicate every day, we have email, we have an internet protocol, or IP, phone that allows us to phone any phone number in the world, including that of our family. Then once a week, we'll have a planned video conference as well." The station crew faces a busy first few weeks in orbit, gearing up for a pair of spacewalks June 5 and 10 and arrival of the shuttle Endeavour, scheduled for launch June 13. For the first spacewalk, which begins around 2:45 a.m. EDT June 5, Padalka and Barratt plan to route cables and mount an antenna to prepare an upper docking port on the Zvezda command module for eventual use by visiting Soyuz ferry craft. A second, internal spacewalk is planned for June 10 to rig the upper hatch with a docking cone. For the second spacewalk, expected to last about an hour, Padalka and Barratt will remain connected to umbilicals while working in the depressurized transfer compartment between Zvezda and the Zarya module. If all goes well, Endeavour's countdown will begin that same day, targeting a launch at 7:17 a.m. on June 13. Assuming an on-time liftoff, docking with the space station would be expected around 3:50 a.m. on June 15. "With 13 people up here, it'll be a challenge," Barratt said. "Of course, we'll have the added volume of the shuttle added to the stack, it'll be a massive stack. But it'll be busy, and there will be a lot of coordination, a lot of activity, a lot of patience, but these are the guys to do that." 4:00 PM, 5/29/09, Update: NASA managers decide to press ahead with Endeavour launch preparations; June 13 launch target still possible, officials say, despite processing delays NASA managers met Friday and decided to press ahead with work to ready the shuttle Endeavour for launch June 13 on a five-spacewalk space station assembly mission while continuing an analysis of a short circuit that knocked an avionics unit off line during the shuttle Atlantis' liftoff May 11. An executive-level flight readiness review is planned for next Wednesday to assess the status of launch processing and to set an official launch date. While the short circuit analysis is not complete, engineers are optimistic it will have no impact on Endeavour's launch. The weather, however, is another matter. To make the June 13 target, Endeavour must be moved from pad 39B, where it was on stand-by for emergency rescue duty during Atlantis' Hubble Space Telescope servicing mission, to pad 39A on Sunday. Rollover had been targeted for Friday, but it has now slipped to Sunday, primarily because of stormy weather that delayed rollover preparations. With no contingency time left in the processing schedule to handle unexpected problems, another rollover delay - or any other significant issue - likely would delay launch. As it now stands, NASA only has three days to get Endeavour off the ground in June or the flight will be delayed one month. The short window is the result of a conflict with another high-priority mission - launch of NASA's Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter on June 17 - and temperature constraints due to the space station's orbit. If Endeavour misses the three-day June launch window, the flight will slip to around July 11, based on the most recent analysis of the station's trajectory. Along with moving Endeavour to pad 39A Sunday, NASA also plans to begin the shuttle Atlantis's ferry flight back to the Kennedy Space Center from Edwards Air Force Base, Calif., where the orbiter landed last weekend. Because of its diversion to California and the time needed to prepare the ship for its cross country flight atop NASA's 747 transport jet, engineers have not yet gained access to the aft avionics bay where aerosurface actuator No. 1, the unit that failed during launch, is located. Based on telemetry, engineers believe a short circuit in the wiring leading to or from the box triggered the failure, not a problem with the box itself. The unit is part of a redundant system used to move the shuttle's elevons and rudder/speedbrake and its failure had no impact on Atlantis' climb to space or subsequent re-entry. But engineers want to make sure the short is not the result of any kind of fleet-wide wiring problem. As a result, ASA-1 will be pulled from Atlantis after its return to Florida next week and subjected to inspections and electrical tests to help isolate the issue. Built to replace the shuttle Challenger, Endeavour is NASA's newest space shuttle and engineers are confident its wiring is in good shape. But if any problems are found, engineers will re-assess the launch schedule and what, if anything, might be needed to clear the ship for flight. Hoping for the best, Atlantis commander Mark Polansky, pilot Douglas Hurley, flight engineer Julie Payette, David Wolf, Christopher Cassidy, Thomas Marshburn and space station flight engineer Timothy Kopra plan to fly to Florida Tuesday to review launch pad emergency procedures and to participate in a practice countdown Thursday. The primary goals of Endeavour's mission are to attach an external experiment platform to the Japanese Kibo laboratory, to replace batteries on the space station's oldest set of solar arrays, to deliver critical spare parts and to perform a variety of get-ahead tasks for upcoming assembly flights. The space station program achieved a major milestone Friday with arrival of three fresh crew members, boosting the lab's full-time crew to six. Before Endeavour's arrival, Expedition 20 commander Gennady Padalka and Michael Barratt plan to carry out two spacewalks June 5 and 10 - the day Endeavour's countdown is expected to begin - to prepare the Russian Zvezda command module for the attachment of a new docking port. 10:50 AM, 5/29/09, Update: Soyuz TMA-15 docks with space station A Russian Soyuz capsule docked with the International Space Station Friday, doubling the lab's crew to six in a long-awaited milestone intended to boost productivity and science output. With second-generation cosmonaut Roman Romanenko monitoring an automated approach, the Soyuz TMA-15 spacecraft docked with an Earth-facing port on the Russian Zarya module at 8:34 a.m. as the two spacecraft sailed through orbital darkness 218 miles above the Pacific Ocean east of Taiwan. "And now, it's perfectly in the center, all the crosses have aligned," someone said, watching a docking target on the space station as the Soyuz closed in. "We are approaching the center, we are going a little bit lower for pitch and we expect contact. Start the timer... we have contact!" The docking completed a carefully orchestrated rendezvous that began Wednesday when Romanenko, European Space Agency astronaut Frank De Winne of Belgium and Canadian astronaut Robert Thirsk blasted off from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan. After leak checks, hatches between the two spacecraft were opened at 10:14 a.m. and Expedition 20 commander Gennady Padalka, NASA flight engineer Michael Barratt and Japanese astronaut Koichi Wakata welcomed their new crewmates aboard with hugs and handshakes. Expedition 20 commander Gennady Padalka welcomes Roman Romanenko aboard the International Space Station (Photo: NASA TV) "It is wonderful to see all six of you up there, all five partners working together, it's a historic day," radioed Canadian Space Agency President Steve MacLean, a veteran shuttle astronaut who helped build the station. "With eight vehicles coming up during your six-month mission, you're going to be very, very busy. I just want you to know all Canadians will be watching, especially you, Bob, for the next 180 days. Congratulations, great launch the other day, fantastic docking, and enjoy. Enjoy." "I agree, it is a historic day," Thirsk replied from the Zvezda command module. "It's also a very happy day up here, you can't imagine the state of elation the six of us have right now. You know, amongst partners that have a passion for exploration, a proven track record on innovation and a desire to gain new knowledge, we've got an incredible potential for success here. This is going to be something incredible! You ain't seen nothing yet." The wives of Romanenko, Thirsk and De Winne also congratulated their husbands - Romanenko promised to call back Sunday when he will have more time to chat - and Thirsk's mother added, "have a good time, and God bless." "Thanks, Mom." The arrival of Romanenko, De Winne and Thirsk marked a major milestone in the history of the space station project, boosting the lab's full-time crew to six for the first time since assembly began in 1998. Up to this point, research aboard the station has been limited because of ongoing construction and maintenance requirements that have occupied previous two- and three-person crews. With six people on board, the time available for scientific research is expected to more than triple, jumping from 20 hours a week to more than 70. The Expedition 20 crew chats with mission control after docking. From left to right: Frank De Winne, Robert Thirsk, Gennady Padalka, Mike Barratt, Koichi Wakata and Roman Romanenko (Photo: NASA TV) "We've been building the International Space Station for 10 years now and we've finally gotten to a point now where it has some incredible laboratory facilities and six people on board the station to do some science," Thirsk said before launch. "We're going to be doing life science work, we're going to be doing medical operations, plant biology, fluid physics, materials processing, exploiting this weightless environment of space. We're ... doing some great, fundamental science for preparing humans for the next venture into space." At a post-docking news conference, MacLean said the international collaboration that built the space station shows "we can achieve so much more than any one nation." "There is so much potential in this beginning, in this historic milestone, in the sense that in the future, if we continue to collaborate like this, I think it represents what we will be able to achieve ... for the future exploration of space," he said. A crew news conference is planned Monday. 7:30 AM, 5/27/09, Update: Soyuz TMA-15 takes off on milestone mission to boost space station crew to six A Russian Soyuz rocket roared to life and streaked into orbit Wednesday, setting off after the International Space Station in a long-awaited mission to boost the lab's crew from three to six full-time residents. With Apollo 11 moon walker Buzz Aldrin and a throng or dignitaries and well wishers looking on, the Soyuz TMA-15 spacecraft lifted off at 6:34:53 a.m. EDT and quickly climbed away from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan. Soyuz TMA-15 spacecraft roars to life (Photo: NASA TV) Live television shots from inside the capsule showed Soyuz commander Roman Romanenko, son of a Russian cosmonaut, at the controls in the capsule's center seat, flanked on the left by European Space Agency astronaut Frank De Winne of Belgium and on the right by Canadian Space Agency astronaut Robert Thirsk, a shuttle veteran. All three cosmonauts appeared comfortable and at ease as the spacecraft climbed toward orbit, monitoring checklists and cockpit controls. Nine minutes after liftoff, the Soyuz TMA-15 spacecraft slipped into its planned preliminary orbit and a few minutes later, its solar panels and antennas unfolded and locked in place as planned. Over the next two days, Romanenko will oversee a series of rocket firings designed to bring the spacecraft to within a stone's throw of the space station. If all goes well, the Soyuz capsule will dock at an Earth-facing port on the front end of the space station's Russian Zarya module around 8:36 a.m. Friday. Waiting to welcome their new crewmates aboard will be Expedition 20 commander Gennady Padalka, NASA physician-astronaut Michael Barratt and Japanese astronaut Koichi Wakata. Padalka and Barratt were launched to the station March 26 aboard the Soyuz TMA-14 spacecraft, currently docked to the Zvezda command module's aft port. Wakata was launched aboard the shuttle Discovery on March 15, becoming Japan's first full-time crew member. With the arrival of Romanenko, De Winne and Thirsk, all five of the space agencies building the International Space Station will be represented by full-time crew members for the first time. "Six person crew is a milestone in the history of the International Space Station," Thirsk said before launch. "In a big way, the International Space Station will be able to fulfill it's primary purpose, which is to function as a world-class orbiting laboratory for medical science and materials science." The lab complex has been stocked with enough food to last the expanded crew through October even if subsequent shuttle and unmanned resupply missions get delayed. Oxygen is generated on board by U.S. and Russian systems and fresh water is delivered by shuttle crews and automated Russian supply ships. But in a major milestone, a sophisticated water recycling system was installed late last year and, after startup problems were resolved, the new hardware was cleared for everyday use. The system recycles condensate and urine from a U.S. toilet in the Destiny lab module, generating ultra-pure water for drinking, crew hygiene and oxygen generation. The water recycling system will be critical to sustaining a six-person crew after the space shuttle is retired late next year. "It will be a challenge for everybody to make sure we can sustain six persons on orbit," De Winne said before launch. "Of course, most of the questions (are) about us and how we will work together with six on board, but we (should not) forget that for us to be able to do this work, there are thousands and thousands of people around the globe working to make sure we have everything we need." He said a six-person space station was beyond the capabilities of any one nation and that international cooperation was the key to the project's success. "I think it shows a great example to the rest of the world that if nations want to work together for something great, for something wonderful, for something for the future of our kids, that we can achieve incredible things," he said. Up until now, the station's science output has been limited because assembly was ongoing and the lab's three full-time crew members were busy simply maintaining the growing complex. With a crew of six, the time devoted to scientific research is expected to triple, jumping from 20 hours a week to more than 70. "We've been building the International Space Station for 10 years now and we've finally gotten to a point now where it has some incredible laboratory facilities and six people on board the station to do some science," Thirsk said. "So you're going to see over 1,000 hours (in the near term) of crew time devoted to research and development." More than 100 experiments are planned for the Expedition 20 crew. "We're going to be doing life science work, we're going to be doing medical operations, plant biology, fluid physics, materials processing, exploiting this weightless environment of space," Thirsk said. "We're ... doing some great, fundamental science for preparing humans for the next venture into space." Romanenko and Padalka will bunk in the Russian Zvezda module, which is equipped with two sleep stations and a bathroom. Two more sound-proofed "cabins" are available in the Harmony module that serves as a hub between the European Columbus module, the Japanese Kibo lab and the U.S. Destiny module. An additional U.S. sleep station is scheduled for launch in August. In the near term, one Expedition 20 astronaut will use a temporary sleep station in the Destiny module while another sleeps in Kibo. A second toilet is available in Destiny as well, extending out into the lab's center aisle. While the space station is roomy compared to any previous spacecraft, a full-time crew of six will present challenges. "Everyone knows what it's like to have the in-laws and friends and other family members over for the holidays for several days," Thirsk said. "There are line ups at the bathroom, meals have to be properly coordinated, there are even line ups for use of the phone, and everyone loses their personal space a little bit. But it's something we're willing to go through. "We will have to coordinate amongst ourselves very well, meal preparation, use of the communication loops, more attention to stowage, more attention to trash management, managing the hygiene facilities and making sure we give everyone their personal space. We all have that kind of training ... so we're prepared for that." English is typically used in the U.S. segment of the station while Russian is preferred in the Zvezda command module. All station crew members are able to speak both languages to some extent, but Romanenko said astronauts and cosmonauts had developed their on "space language" over the years. "There is a special language which is a mixture of Russian and English, there are jokes about it in orbit," he said through a translator. "It is so-called 'Renglish.' We, in fact, have invented that language quite well. Moreover, we really know each other very well, we know what to expect from each other and how to be around each other because we have been working together, we have been training together for years now. ... We have been partners for a long time. Thus, we are this big international family, space family." The expanded station crew faces a busy timeline over the next few weeks. Padalka and Barratt plan spacewalks June 5 and 10 to prepare an upward-facing port of the Zvezda command module for attachment of another docking module. Three days after the second spacewalk, NASA plans to launch the shuttle Endeavour on a five-spacewalk assembly mission to attach an experiment platform to the Kibo module and change out batteries on the station's oldest set of U.S. solar arrays. During the period Endeavour is docked, the space station will have to support 13 people. Endeavour also will deliver a fresh crew member - Timothy Kopra - and bring Wakata back to Earth. Another crew swap is planned for a shuttle flight in August when NASA astronaut Nicole Stott replaces Kopra. Stott, a former shuttle engineer at the Kennedy Space Center, said all of the Expedition 20 crew members were comfortable with each other, sharing a professionalism and sense of humor honed by years of training. "Even the guys who are up there in orbit right now, we have spent loads of time with them training here on the ground," she said. "And I think one thing that I can say about everyone we'll be up there with, you've got that balance between the total professional and the humor. "I think when things come right down to it, we know how to manage ourselves and to stay safe and we'll let that carry out through every day that we're up there. And then we also have the humor to keep us happy and working well together. I think it's going to be a great experience." 3:25 PM, 5/26/09, Update: Soyuz TMA-15 set for launch to space station to boost crew size to six In a long-awaited milestone for the International Space Station, a Russian Soyuz rocket scheduled for launch early Wednesday will ferry three fresh crew members to the lab complex, boosting its crew size to six for the first time. The Soyuz TMA-15 spacecraft, mounted atop the same launch pad used by Yuri Gagarin at the dawn of the space age, is scheduled for takeoff from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan at 6:34:49 a.m. EDT. Soyuz commander Roman Romanenko, son of a Russian cosmonaut, will be strapped into the center seat, flanked by European Space Agency astronaut Frank De Winne of Belgium and Canadian Space Agency astronaut Robert Thirsk, a shuttle veteran. "I can't think of three finer gentlemen to help us realize our dream of six permanent crew on orbit," Mike Suffredini, NASA's space station program manager, told the Soyuz crew Tuesday. "So I wish you good luck and Godspeed." Assuming an on-time liftoff, Romanenko plans to oversee an automated approach and docking to an Earth-facing port on the front end of the space station's Russian Zarya module at 8:36 a.m. Friday. Waiting to welcome their new crewmates aboard will be Expedition 20 commander Gennady Padalka, NASA flight engineer Michael Barratt and Japanese astronaut Koichi Wakata. Padalka and Barratt were launched to the station March 26 aboard the Soyuz TMA-14 spacecraft. Wakata was launched aboard the shuttle Discovery on March 15, becoming Japan's first full-time station crew member. With the arrival of Romanenko, De Winne and Thirsk, all five of the space agencies building the International Space Station will be represented by full-time crew members for the first time. "Six person crew is a milestone in the history of the International Space Station," Thirsk said before launch. "In a big way, the International Space Station will be able to fulfill it's primary purpose, which is to function as a world-class orbiting laboratory for medical science and materials science. "But there are also practical issues to consider as well with a crew of six and one of our goals, with our three colleagues on orbit, is to prove that the station can support six people for a long duration." NASA television's public and media channels will carry pre-launch video footage from Baikonur starting at 4:45 a.m. Wednesday, followed by launch coverage beginning at 5:45 a.m. Assuming an on-time liftoff at 6:34:49 a.m., the Soyuz TMA-15 spacecraft should be in orbit by 6:44 a.m. NASA plans to feed a launch day b-roll package at 12 p.m. Here is a generic Soyuz countdown timeline to give readers a sense of when major events are planned (in EDT; best viewed with fixed-width font; some times may be different for the TMA-15 launch): EDT...........EVENT 12:34 AM......Batteries installed in booster 01:04 AM......State commission 'go' 01:34 AM......Tanking begins 02:34 AM......Booster is loaded with liquid oxygen 03:34 AM......1st/2nd stage oxygen fueling complete 03:59 AM......Crew arrives at launch vehicle 04:04 AM......Crew ingress through orbital module side hatch 04:34 AM......Crew in re-entry vehicle 04:49 AM......Re-entry vehicle hardware tested; suits are ventilated 05:04 AM......Hatch sealed and tested 05:34 AM......Launch vehicle control system preps; gyro activation 05:49 AM......Launch pad service structure halves lowered 05:54 AM......Suit leak checks; re-entry vehicle testing complete 06:04 AM......Emergency escape system armed 06:09 AM......Service towers retracted 06:19 AM......Suit leak checks complete; escape system to auto 06:24 AM......Gyros uncaged; on-board recorders activated 06:27 AM......Prelaunch operations complete 06:28 AM......Final launch countdown operations to auto 06:28 AM......Launch complex and vehicle systems ready 06:29 AM......CDR's controls activated; helmets closed; launch key inserted 06:31 AM......Combustion chamber nitrogen purge 06:32:19 AM...Booster propellant tank pressurization begins 06:32:34 AM...Ground propellant feed terminated 06:33:49 AM...Vehicle to internal; 1st umbilical tower sep; auto sequence start 06:34:09 AM...Ground power umbilical to 3rd stage separates 06:34:29 AM...Launch command given; central/side pod engines on 06:34:34 AM...Second umbilical tower separates 06:34:39 AM...Engine turbopumps at flight speed 06:34:44 AM...Engines at maximum thrust 06:34:49 AM...LIFTOFF 06:35:59 AM...Velocity 1,118 mph 06:36:47 AM...Stage 1 strap-on boosters separate 06:36:49 AM...Velocity 3,355 mph 06:37:29 AM...Escape tower/launch shroud jettison 06:39:47 AM...Core booster separates at 105 statute miles 06:42:19 AM...Velocity 13,421 mph 06:43:49 AM...Third stage shutdown; Soyuz separation 10:00 AM, 5/23/09, Update: Charles Bolden to be nominated for NASA administrator Nineteen years after helping launch the Hubble Space Telescope, Charles F. Bolden Jr., a former combat pilot, Marine Corps major general and veteran space shuttle commander, has been selected by the Obama administration to serve as the space agency's next administrator. Lori Garver, a former NASA associate administrator for policy and plans and a space policy advisor to the Obama campaign, will serve as Bolden's deputy. "These talented individuals will help put NASA on course to boldly push the boundaries of science, aeronautics and exploration in the 21st century and ensure the long-term vibrancy of America's space program," Obama said in a statement Saturday. In a moment of improbable symmetry, Bolden, the third African American to fly in space, met with President Obama at the White House Tuesday, the day the space telescope was re-launched from the shuttle Atlantis. The five-spacewalk overhaul marked NASA's fifth and final visit to the storied telescope since Bolden helped launch it in 1990. Charles F. Bolden Jr. shuttle crew photo (Photo: NASA) An announcement naming Bolden as Obama's candidate to head the civilian space agency came four months after the departure of former Administrator Mike Griffin, a rocket scientist appointed by the Bush administration to oversee the shuttle's 2010 retirement and a planned return to the moon. "The president could not have made a better choice," Griffin told CBS News. "Charlie Bolden is an accomplished pilot, a veteran astronaut and an old friend. He has spent his life in the service of his country, and our nation is the better for it. NASA will be in good hands." The Obama administration struggled to find an acceptable replacement after deciding not to ask Griffin to stay on, reportedly considering several candidates before settling on Bolden. Widely respected within NASA for his engineering judgment, leadership skills and no-nonsense approach to thorny technical issues, Bolden's appointment was broadly welcomed by space agency insiders. "I can't imagine anybody that would be a better choice than Charlie," said Jay Honeycutt, former director of the Kennedy Space Center. "He knows the business of flying in space as well as knows how to navigate his way around Washington. He has a good relationship with Congress as well as the guys in the administration." Said John Logsdon, space policy analyst at George Washington University and a member of the Columbia Accident Investigation Board: "I think he's an extremely good choice. First of all, he's not that much of an outsider to Washington. He's been on the Aerospace Safety Advisory Panel and the National Academy of Engineering space board, so he's really up to speed with what's going on with the program." Sen. Bill Nelson, D-FL, flew with Bolden during a 1986 shuttle flight and has been lobbying Obama for weeks to put Bolden in charge of NASA at a particularly critical time in the agency's history. "In all the problems that are facing the president, it's hard to get attention on this one little agency," he told CBS News. "He certainly hears it from me, but he'll hear it then from his own administration (after Bolden is confirmed). And I believe then we've got a chance of getting us really back into the glory days." In a statement released today, Nelson said Bolden will face "budgetary constraints, technical issues, the remaining shuttle launches and the pending retirement of the shuttle program. And, restoring the wonder that space exploration can provide, and to make sure the presidentÕs mission is carried out." "Charlie is the kind of dynamic leader I believe the president was looking for and I know heÕll meet these challenges head on," Nelson said. NASA is struggling to complete the International Space Station during the final eight shuttle missions between now and the end of 2010. At the same time, the agency is trying to develop a new rocket system for the Bush administration's Constellation program, which is aimed at resuming moon flights in 2020. The Constellation architecture, calling for development of a new heavy lift unmanned Ares 5 booster, a lunar lander and a smaller Ares 1 rocket to boost Orion crew capsules into orbit, has come under fire from critics who claim alternative rocket systems can be developed faster at lower cost. Complicating the political picture, the Ares 1/Orion system intended to replace the space shuttle will not be available until 2015, forcing NASA to buy seats on Russian Soyuz spacecraft to ferry U.S. astronauts to and from the space station. Griffin repeatedly warned Congress about this so-called "gap," but the money needed to accelerate development of Ares 1/Orion never materialized. The Obama administration's first budget supported the Constellation program in general, endorsing shuttle retirement in 2010 and a return to the moon by 2020. But the administration's 2010 budget, while boosting near-term NASA funding, slashed spending by $3.1 billion between 2011 and 2013. If that money is not restored, Ares 5 development will suffer and landings on the moon will be delayed if not eliminated. Earlier this month, Obama ordered a 90-day independent review of NASA's manned space program headed by former Lockheed Martin CEO Norman Augustine. Options for how best to proceed will be presented to the administration later this summer. Depending on what the Augustine commission determines, some or all of the lost money could be restored to NASA's long-range budget. Or none at all. Despite the uncertain outlook, Nelson said he doubts Constellation will go away. "That's just not going to happen," he told CBS. "You're not going to throw away four years of work on the Ares. So I'm not concerned about that. I think the Augustine commission will bless the Ares. The thing I am concerned about is to what extent Ares 5 will be rapidly developed so we can end up doing the lunar lander here and all of that on a target for 2020. And a lot of that's going to come out of the Augustine Commission. "Even though we've got this concern, that the numbers are lean in the out years, I still have some optimism about us increasing that," Nelson said. "I think politics will play a part of it, because candidate Obama will be a candidate agin in 2012 and I think Florida will be important. Florida will be bigger then, it will be 29 electoral votes and I believe ... they'll pay attention to us. So I'm concerned, but I'm not paniced about the out years." Even so, Honeycutt cautioned that "I'm not sure anybody can handle this whole deal, but we'll see what comes out of the Augustine review. If they can pretty much stay the course, Charlie can do well with that." Bolden's first space flight came when he and six crewmates, including then-Rep. Nelson, took off aboard the shuttle Columbia on Jan. 12, 1986. It was the last successful shuttle mission before Challenger's fatal Jan. 28 launch. Bolden took off a second time on April 24, 1990, when he served as pilot of the shuttle Discovery to ferry the Hubble Space Telescope into orbit. It is a given in the astronaut office at the Johnson Space Center in Houston that any flight assignment is a good flight assignment. But the Hubble Space Telescope, one of the most expensive civilian satellites ever built, was in a class by itself and Bolden clearly relished a chance to play a role in the showcase mission. "Astronomy captivates everybody," he said in an interview at the time. "A kid in the ghetto, a kid on the farm, everybody at one time or another happens to glance up at the nighttime sky and they see these things we call stars and every once in a while a planet. "You'd just have to be a non-human being not to go 'what the heck is that?' It has a fascination for everybody." Bolden flew in space a third time as commander of the shuttle Atlantis for an atmospheric research mission that took off March 24, 1992. His fourth and final space mission was a historic flight as commander of the shuttle Discovery in 1994, a mission that included cosmonaut Sergei Krikalev, the first Russian to fly on a space shuttle. Bolden (upper right) during his fourth shuttle flight (Photo: NASA) The only other joint U.S.-Russian mission up until that time involved the linkup of an Apollo capsule and a Russian Soyuz spacecraft in 1975, a mission that symbolized the era of detente. "I would imagine there was a lot of effort that went into the science that was conducted, but I think the politics of it probably was the overriding factor back then," Bolden said. "Although politics plays a pretty important part in this one also, I would feel that our primary effort is geared toward pulling the two nations' (space) databases together in order to optimize what we're hoping to do in the future as far as space exploration is concerned. "We think the joint scientific thrust ... is of most significance," he said. "I'd be naive to say the political significance is not there. What we are hoping to demonstrate is that two formerly very strong, rival nations can come together, work together toward a common goal and achieve much more than either could have done alone." Born Aug. 19, 1946, in Columbia, S.C., Bolden earned a bachelor of science degree in electrical engineering from the Naval Academy in 1968 and a master's degree in systems management from the University of Southern California in 1978. He accepted a commission in the Marine Corps following graduation from Annapolis in 1968 and after flight training at Pensacola, Fla., and other bases he was designated a naval aviator in May 1970. In 1973, Bolden flew more than 100 missions into North and South Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia while based at Nam Phong, Thailand. After returning to the United States, Bolden began a two-year tour as a Marine Corps selection officer in Los Angeles. He spent the next three years at the Marine Corps Air Station in El Toro, Calif. In 1979, Bolden graduated from the U.S. Naval Test Pilot School at Patuxent River, Md., and was assigned to the Naval Air Test Center's systems engineering and strike aircraft test directorates. He was selected as a NASA astronaut in 1980, Bolden, who lists his hobbies as racquetball, running and first day cover collecting, is married to the former Alexis Walker of Columbia, S.C.. The couple has two children. He is a member of the Marine Corps Association, the Montford Point Marine Association, the U.S. Naval Institute and he is a lifetime member of the Naval Academy Alumni Association. He is a recipient of the Air Medal, the Strike-Flight Medal, the University of Southern California Outstanding Alumni Award and the NASA Exceptional Service Medal. Bolden left NASA in 1994 and returned to active duty in the Marine Corps. He retired from the corps in 2002. 5:20 PM, 5/20/09, Update: Station crew 'toasts' with recycled urine The three-man crew of the International Space Station explored a strange new world Wednesday, boldly going where no other astronauts have gone before: toasting each other with sips of recycled sweat and urine in a major milestone for the lab complex. With dozens of flight controllers and engineers joining them in a space-to-ground videoconference, station commander Gennady Padalka, flight engineer Michael Barratt and Japanese astronaut Koichi Wakata held a brief toasting ceremony, touching drink bags and sipping recycled water for the first time since laboratory analysis confirmed its purity and cleanliness. "We're just really, really happy for this day and for the team that put this together," said Barratt, floating with his crewmates in the Destiny laboratory module. "I know it took a lot of work and a lot of time and a lot of very smart people. There were a lot of problems to overcome and it's all come to this. This is the kind of technology that'll get us to the moon and further, we hope. We're just really, really happy to be here drinking this today." Before sampling the recycled water, he said "we are happy to have this water work through the system and we're looking forward to working it through our systems and doing it all over again." Former space station science officer Donald Pettit told Barratt "we're getting ready to toast some of yesterday's coffee here with you guys." "That's great to hear," Barratt said. "We're really fat with coffee up here, which is great for me, so we're going to be drinking yesterday's coffee frequently up here, and happy to do it. ... Here's to all of you who made this happen. Here we go, here's to you guys and here's to everybody." The three station fliers then took a ceremonial drink from their water bags. Padalka squeezed out a blob of water and then drank it out of mid air. "The taste is great and as Gennady is showing you, it's perfectly clear and worth chasing in zero G here," Barratt said. "It looks really, really good from down here," said space station Flight Director Courtenay McMillan. "I'm glad yours is only a couple of day old. Our vintage here is about four years old from ground testing at Marshall (Space Flight Center), but it still tastes just fine." The station's $250 million U.S.-built water recycling system was installed during a shuttle assembly flight late last year. But problems with a centrifuge in the unit's vacuum distillation assembly forced the astronauts to extend testing until a replacement unit could be launched on a shuttle mission in March. The new unit worked well and samples were returned to Earth for detailed laboratory analysis. Those tests cleared the way for today's ceremony. The water recycling system is critical to NASA's plans to boost the station's crew size from three to six later this month. It will be especially crucial after the space shuttle is retired next year because Russian, European and Japanese supply ships cannot carry enough water to support six full-time crew members. 4:30 PM, 5/8/09, Update: NASA braces for manned space flight review Reeling from projected budget cuts totaling more than $3 billion through 2013, NASA managers and engineers working to build a post-shuttle rocket system for an eventual return to the moon are bracing for a critical review ordered by the Obama administration that could set the agency on a different course. The chairman of an independent review panel charged with evaluating NASA's post-shuttle manned space program said Friday he will bring an open mind and "go where the facts lead" in assessing the technical and economic feasibility of the space agency's current manned space program. Norman Augustine, former chief executive officer of Lockheed Martin Corp., said the Review of United States Human Space Flight Plans Committee also will assess alternatives, including different rocket systems and alternative targets for exploration. The team's report is expected by August. "We are planning to spend billions of dollars on the human space flight program and it's wise to be sure we're spending that the way we should," he told reporters in a teleconference. "New information becomes available all the time. And similarly, we have a new administration and it would probably be imprudent on their part not to examine this major of a program to be sure such a long term undertaking is still on a course that makes sense to them." The cost of NASA's manned space program - and ongoing efforts by the Office of Management and Budget to cut spending - is at the heart of the review, announced Thursday when the Obama administration's fiscal 2010 budget request was unveiled. "I think what it boils down to is we're being told there's no sense in being unrealistic and putting together a program that can't possibly be afforded, and we've been given some guidance," Augustine said. "I think one of the chronic problems NASA's encountered over the years has been that it usually had more programs than it had money. That can be dangerous when you're doing something as difficult as NASA does. "So as we go through this evaluation, if we were to find there were reasons the budget didn't make sense in any way, I can assure you we would not be bashful about pointing that out, and I suspect the administration would want to know that anyway." The Obama administration is asking Congress for $18.7 billion in funding for NASA in 2010, a watershed year for the civilian space agency as it tries to complete assembly of the International Space Station and retire the space shuttle fleet after just nine more flights. NASA is designing a new rocket, called the Ares 1, and an Apollo-style Orion capsule to replace the shuttle, but the new system will not be ready for routine use until 2015. During the five years between the shuttle's retirement next year and the debut of Ares 1/Orion, NASA will be forced to buy seats on Russian Soyuz rockets to get U.S. astronauts to and from the space station. NASA's long-range goal, set by the Bush administration, is to return to the moon by 2020, using Ares 1/Orion spacecraft to carry astronauts to orbit and then new heavy-lift Ares 5 rockets to boost the astronauts and lunar landers to the moon. The new rocket systems are the central elements of what NASA calls the Constellation program. But funding has been a critical issue from the beginning. Congress and the Bush administration, which put NASA on its current course, did not provide the funding necessary to significantly reduce the gap between shuttle retirement and first flight of Ares 1/Orion. The Obama administration's 2010 budget includes a near-term funding boost of $630 million for Constellation, thanks in part to about $1 billion routed to NASA as part of the economic Recovery Act. But the administration's predicted budgets through 2013 show an overall cut of $3.1 billion for the exploration systems directorate in charge of Constellation, cuts that have sent shock waves through the NASA community. "That's the real story," a senior space manager, who asked not to be named, said of NASA's Thursday budget briefing. "It's like that Sherlock Holmes thing, the real story is the dog that didn't bark in the night. ... If the three-plus billion dollars in the out years, if that cut stands, then there's no moon by 2020 and maybe none at all." NASA officials said Thursday the budget numbers may change depending on the results of the Augustine review. But the agency turned down a request for an interview with Jeff Hanley, Constellation program manager at the Johnson Space Center in Houston, to discuss the potential impacts of the projected cuts. Against this backdrop, the Obama administration ordered the Augustine review of NASA's ongoing Constellation program, prompting speculation that budget pressures could lead to a major change of course. It's not yet known how any such a change might affect the gap between shuttle and any follow-on spacecraft, or whether the moon will even remain NASA's primary target. "I must confess, as an individual I'm not thrilled with the fact that we have a gap," Augustine said. "But we have what we have. ... There are things that could be done, probably, that would shorten the gap, there are some things one might do that would lengthen the gap. But certainly, an objective, I think, of anybody would be to balance the various pros and cons of whatever is proposed against the impact on the gap, among other things, and recognizing that extending the gap is probably not a desirable thing. On the other hand, and I'm not making predictions here because I don't know the outcome, it's not something that's written in stone, either." John Holdren, director of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy, said the administration's objective "is to ensure that these programs remain on a strong and stable footing well into the 21st Century, and this review will be crucial to meeting that goal." An OSTP statement said Augustine's panel will "assess a number of architecture options, taking into account such objectives as: 1) expediting a new U.S. capability to support use of the International Space Station; 2) supporting missions to the Moon and other destinations beyond low Earth orbit; 3) stimulating commercial space flight capabilities; and 4) fitting within the current budget profile for NASA exploration activities." Augustine said he planned to assemble a team of experts with a broad range of space experience to evaluate the Constellation program and alternative architectures "both from an economic and a technical standpoint." "We have a rather short time period to conduct our review, to be completed in August, and because of that we're drawing heavily on prior work and on our own experience as well as analyses ... from NASA and possibly others." He said the panel's instructions are "to take a fresh, independent look at the human spaceflight program and go where the facts lead. And that's what we'll try to do. Obviously, the U.S. has excelled in the exploration and utilization of space for a long time. It's a source of great pride to our nation as well as, I might say, to myself. "I also have long believed it should be a balanced program that includes both robotics and human involvement. Our focus will be on the human spaceflight aspect. The president has made rather clear he's very supportive of human spaceflight, he believes it's important from an economic and technical and scientific leadership standpoint. I certainly share that view and I believe this is an important task and I look forward to leading it." 6:30 PM, 5/7/09, Update: Obama orders independent review of manned space operations; NASA 2010 budget unveiled The Obama administration's fiscal 2010 NASA budget request includes $630 million in additional near-term funding for development of follow-on rockets and spacecraft needed for the agency's post-shuttle moon program, officials said Thursday. But most of the increase is from the administration's economic stimulus package and projections through 2013 show a $3.1 billion reduction in overall funding for the program compared with 2009 projections. Unveiling NASA's $18.7 billion 2010 budget today, acting Administrator Chris Scolese said the Obama administration had ordered an independent review of NASA's plans to replace the space shuttle with a combination of manned and unmanned Ares rockets, Apollo-style Orion capsules and lunar landers needed to establish research stations on the moon by the early 2020s. The new rockets are the central elements of what NASA calls the Constellation program. "You can expect a new administration coming in wants to understand where we're at and is this the best way to go forward," Scolese said. "That's the purpose of the review, to understand that. Clearly if we're on the wrong path we should change. If you're asking me do I think we're on the wrong path, no, I don't. We need to go off and demonstrate that. The review team needs to look at it and understand what we're doing and offer suggestions on how we could do it better." The review is expected to be completed by August. In the meantime, NASA will continue work on the Ares 1 rocket and Orion capsules the agency hopes to begin flying in March 2015. But contracts needed for initial development of the unmanned Ares 5 heavy lift booster needed for NASA's planned return to the moon are on hold pending the results of the review. NASA's $18.7 billion budget request includes $1 billion in Recovery Act money and funds the addition of one shuttle flight to deliver an already-built physics experiment to the International Space Station. Including next week's launch of the shuttle Atlantis on a fifth and final mission to service the Hubble Space Telescope, NASA plans nine more shuttle flights through Sept. 30, 2010, the end of the fiscal year. If one or two flights slip beyond that target, NASA will need additional funding but the Obama administration has indicated it would support such a request if needed. "What does this budget represent? I was surprised, in the last month I've seen the president three times," Scolese told reporters Thursday. "And I think that's an indication that NASA is something that this administration really cares about. The fact that we were highlighted in the budget discussions today with the (president's) science advisor is another indication of that. And I think you see it in this first bullet here, a $630 million increase to exploration, a $456 million increase to science and a $264 million increase to aeronautics. Those are significant increases." Even so, the picture is much less rosy in the out years. Projections through 2013 in the fiscal 2010 budget package feature an asterisk after totals for the Exploration Systems Mission Directorate responsible for space station operations and development of the Constellation program. The asterisks mean those numbers may change based on the results of the upcoming manned spaceflight review. But as of this writing, exploration faces $3.1 billion in cuts through 2013. "We're up this year and next by about $630 million," said Douglas Cooke, associate administrator for the Exploration Systems Mission Directorate at NASA headquarters. "Over that time period, it's down about $3.1 (billion)." Former NASA Administrator Mike Griffin said in a recent speech the projected funding shortfalls threaten America's leadership in manned space flight. "In the last five years two presidents and two Congresses have provided the top-level direction necessary to ensure that the root cause of ColumbiaÕs loss - the lack of a guiding strategic vision for NASA - never happens again," Griffin said. "But apparently something more is needed. We're not matching the words with the necessary actions at the staff level. How soon we forget. "Let me be clear. In a democracy, the proper purpose of the OMB (Office of Management and Budget) is not to find a way to create a Potemkin Village at NASA. It is not to create the appearance of having a real space program without having to pay for it. It is not to specify to NASA how much money shall be allocated for human lunar return by 2020. The proper purpose of the OMB is to work with NASA, as a partner in good government, to craft carefully vetted estimates of what is required to achieve national policy goals. The judgment as to whether the stated goals are too costly, or not, is one to be made by the nation's elected leadership, not career civil service staff." Griffin said "no one can wrest leadership in space from the United States. We're that good. But we can certainly cede it, and that is the path we are on." Sen. Bill Nelson, D-FL, said he believes Obama understands the value of space exploration and "I believe that's why the president has committed to finishing all nine space shuttle missions, regardless of how long it takes; and, to make full use of the International Space Station." "This is a step in the right direction," he said. "But down the road the administration's budget does not match what candidate Obama said about the future of our space program. Still, he's assured me these numbers are subject to change, pending a review he has ordered of NASA." The Constellation program was born in the wake of the 2003 Columbia disaster. The Bush administration decided in January 2004 to finish the international space station and to retire the shuttle in 2010. At the same time, NASA was told to begin development of a replacement system that could ferry astronauts to and from the space station and eventually, on to the moon, a system that would be safer and less expensive to operate than the shuttle. The long-range goal was establishment of Antarctica-type lunar research stations where astronauts can live and work for months at a time. The Constellation program marked a radical departure from the world of shuttle operations. Instead of one rocket designed to carry astronauts and heavy payloads, two rockets were envisioned: the manned Ares 1, designed to boost Orion crew capsules to low-Earth orbit; and the unmanned Ares 5, a huge heavy lift rocket that would carry a four-person lunar lander into space. For a moon shot, the Ares 5 would be launched from pad 39A at the Kennedy Space Center, followed a few hours later by launch of the crew in an Orion capsule atop an Ares 1. After linking up in Earth orbit, the Ares 5 upper stage would propel the Altair lunar lander and astronauts in the attached Orion capsule to the moon. The entire crew then would descend to the lunar surface in the lander and, when its mission was complete, blast off, rendezvous with the orbiting Orion capsule and return to Earth for an ocean splashdown. The Bush administration did not give NASA much in the way of additional funding to pay for initial Constellation development and the agency has been forced to cut back in other areas to kick start the new program. After station assembly is complete and the shuttle is retired in 2010, NASA plans to divert more than $4 billion a year into Constellation that currently goes into shuttle and station operations. But given the lack of funding up front, technical problems and changing requirements, NASA will not be ready to begin initial operations with Ares 1 until March 2015. During the five-year gap between the end of shuttle operations and the debut of Ares 1/Orion, NASA will be forced to buy seats on Russian Soyuz spacecraft to ferry U.S. and international astronauts to and from the space station. Almost from the beginning, critics have complained about the Constellation architecture. Some believe NASA should look into modifying heavy lift Atlas or Delta rockets - evolved expendable launch vehicles, or EELVs - for manned flights. Others believe it makes more sense to eliminate the Ares 1, which requires development of a new five-segment solid-fuel booster, and instead rely on a modified version of the Ares 5, using four-segment boosters, to launch crew and cargo. The independent review announced Thursday will look into all aspects of the Constellation architecture. "We were requested to conduct a more detailed study of human spaceflight capabilities," Scolese said. "We want to fully utilize the international space station, that's a decision that needs to be factored into this review, we need to consider the workforce and the transition requirements as we retire the shuttle and move on to the next system and we need to look at what the gap means and how to best utilize the commercial and international capabilities that are out there. "So the president's science advisor has asked us, and we're forming a review team, a blue ribbon team, that will be headed by Norm Augustine, which we anticipate being done in the next 60 to 90 days. So by August we're prepared to make any budget adjustments that may need to be made." Cooke said he does not believe a switch to another rocket system would narrow the gap between the end of the shuttle program and the debut of a new system. "I don't personally see one," he told CBS News. "We have looked at other possibilities in anticipation of questions. I think we've got a plan that gets there as quickly as we know how. If we could come up with one that's better, we'd do it." He said the biggest single reason he has favored Ares 1 over competing designs is crew safety. "The biggest difference is in the risk," he said. "We can argue numbers all day long in terms of cost and schedule and that sort of thing and they have different levels of maturity so you're never actually comparing equivalent numbers. But in terms of the risk numbers we've seen and calculated - and I usually look closest at loss of crew numbers - the Ares 1 approach has always been at least two times better than these other approaches comparing EELVs and the Direct 2.0." That's in part due to the Ares 1 first stage, an extended five-segment shuttle booster. Two four-segment boosters are used for every shuttle flight and in 125 missions to date - 250 booster flights - only one booster has ever failed, the one that doomed Challenger. "I personally believe the risk is lower for the crew on this vehicle and that to me is the bigger of the discriminators," Cooke said. While NASA will proceed with work on the Ares 1 program while the external review is underway - an unmanned test flight is planned for later this year - contracts for initial work on the heavy lift Ares 5 have been put on hold. "I've been inclined to hold off on them because I don't want to presume an answer out of this review," Cooke said. "I think we really need to see where we end up in terms of recommendations there before we start new contracted activity. We're going to continue on our current contracted activities, but to start a new one right now, I'm not sure we've fully developed that thought process. I'm inclined to hold off." 12:45 PM, 4/15/09, Update: Station crew says lab ready for six full-time crew members The International Space Station's power, life support and emergency systems are in good condition and ready for the arrival of three additional crew members in late May, the commander said Wednesday. Michael Barratt, a NASA astronaut and flight surgeon making his first flight, said the crew has been cleared to use processed urine and condensate for personal hygiene and expects permission to begin drinking the recycled water in the next few weeks. Barratt also told CBS News he looked forward to "running on Colbert" when a new treadmill, named after comedian Stephen Colbert, is delivered to the station later this year. Colbert recently urged viewers to vote for him in a NASA competition to name a new space station module. His choice - the Colbert module - came in first, but NASA announced on his show Tuesday that the module would instead be named Tranquility. Astronaut Sunita Williams, a space station veteran, told the comedian a new treadmill would be known as the Combined Operational Load Bearing External Resistance Treadmill, or COLBERT. Asked today what he thought of the gesture, Barratt said "I think the more people we reach, the better, and Mr. Colbert does a great job. I'm just looking forward to running on Colbert and living in Tranquility." Exercise is a critical element of life aboard the space station and keeping six people fit will be an ongoing challenge. NASA and its international partners hope to boost the lab's crew size to six in late May when cosmonaut Roman Romanenko, European Space Agency astronaut Frank De Winne and Canadian Space Agency astronaut Robert Thirsk join Barratt, Expedition 19 Commander Gennady Padalka and Japanese astronaut Koichi Wakata. "Space station is really in a good operational condition," Padalka told CBS News. "All ECLSS (environmental control and life support) systems in the Russian segment are operational and in great condition. ... We're ready to get six-person crew on board." Barratt said he did not anticipate any major problems, primarily because "the station is huge, and it really needs six people to man it and get as much work out of it as it was designed to provide." "This is a huge station, and it's more than big enough to accommodate six people and their productive work," he said. "We worry a little bit about the consumables and the resources to support six people continually - the food, water, the communications resources and everything to make the people who live up here as productive as possible. But no, there's plenty of room for six people. During shuttle dockings, by the way, we'll be up to 13 for a period of 10 to 12 days. So we're big enough, I think, to accommodate the full crew of six." To support six people, the station's life support system must be able to recycle condensate and urine for drinking, crew hygiene, food preparation and oxygen generation. The water recycling system initially had problems with a vacuum distillation unit centrifuge that was installed late last year. But the crew of the most recent shuttle assembly mission delivered a replacement and the system appears to be operating normally. Samples returned aboard the shuttle currently are undergoing laboratory analysis to make sure the water is safe to use. "We have already been given a go to use the water for hygiene and we do a little bit of that," Barratt said. "We're expecting an answer, probably within the next couple of weeks, on using it for potable water. So far, everything has been looking fairly positive, but we're waiting for the definitive answer." As a flight surgeon, Barratt brings a unique perspective to monitoring his own body's adaptation to weightlessness. "It is an adaptation over time," he said today. "You're definitely not at your best the first couple of days of space flight, especially as a first-time flier. Every system adapts at a slightly different rate. Some of it you feel, and some of it you don't feel. Some of it is just very difficult to quantify. Fluids tend to shift to your face and you feel a little bit flushed and puffy and over a period of a week to two weeks, that starts to go down. "Other things, like just learning to fly through the station gracefully and keep kind of a three-D image in your head while you're doing it and not bump into anything that is really expensive or might hurt you if you bump it back. In general, everything gets better as the days go on and right now, after a little over two weeks on orbit, I feel great. From what I understand from reading and talking to other people, people go on from this and several weeks later they say they even feel better. So I think it's a continual process." NASA and its international partners are making the jump to six-person crew as the space station nears completion and the shuttle program enters its final stages. It is a critical period for NASA, but the Obama administration has not yet named an administrator to replace Mike Griffin, whose tenure ended on inauguration day. Barratt said "it may be critical that we get an administrator as soon as possible, but I would say it's a wonderful time for NASA because we do have this facility up here, we've almost finished building it and we're starting to realize the productivity out of it we had always planned." "We have new ships on the drawing board and a lot of smart people that design the station, that operate it day to day and really make the daily process of NASA work. They are still in place and are not going anywhere anytime soon. So I feel very confident in the infrastructure, that we'll be able to continue operating. "We'd like an administrator soon - sooner is better, certainly - but I think we're on a course and I think we'll stay that course right now with station and hopefully the new vehicle will come in its allotted time." 5:55 PM, 4/13/09, Update: NASA plans to stop work protecting option for shuttle extension past 2010 deadline; will focus on nine flights between now and end of calendar 2010 Facing a tight budget, a 2010 deadline to end space shuttle operations and a lack of concrete political support to fund additional flights or stretch out the current manifest, NASA managers are meeting this week to discuss the impact of ending efforts that have been keeping open the possibility of extending the shuttle program past the current deadline. In a note to shuttle managers and engineers last week that was obtained by CBS News, shuttle Program Manager John Shannon outlined the issues in stark terms, reflecting the lack of any political action to fund shuttle flights past the end of 2010. "You have heard me say that 'hope is not an effective management tool' on many occasions," he wrote. "It is my position that we cannot continue to spend money to retain the capability to fly additional space shuttle missions, hoping that someone will recognize the national assets we are giving up. "We have to take our destiny in our own hands and manage within the limited budget we have been given and ensure that we will fly the full manifest and leave the International Space Station in the best configuration possible." NASA's most recent authorization act included language that directed the space agency to take no action that "would preclude the continued safe and effective flight of the space shuttle after fiscal year 2010" if the next president - Barack Obama, as it turned out - decided to delay the orbiter's planned retirement. Depending on how one does the accounting, that directive had the potential to cost the agency nearly $90 million. The Obama administration has expressed support for the addition of one shuttle flight to carry the Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer, an already-built, high-priority physics experiment, to the International Space Station. But the Office of Management and Budget said the administration is sticking with the 2010 shuttle retirement date. The Bush administration's deadline was the end of fiscal 2010, or Sept. 30, 2010. The Obama administration has since told the space agency the deadline is the end of calendar 2010. Between now and then, NASA has nine shuttle flights planned, including the AMS mission. But only eight missions are currently funded. Money for the AMS flight has not yet been appropriated. "If we're going to make this thing work, we've got to focus 100 percent on those nine flights and make sure we get them done," said a senior NASA manager who spoke on background and asked not to be identified. "We can no longer continue to split our attention both ways. We're going to have to have a hard discussion with our folks ... we're going to have to make those nine flights real. And that's what we're going to go do." The Obama administration has offered little visible guidance beyond support for the AMS flight and the shuttle deadline clarification. The president has yet to name a replacement for former NASA Administrator Mike Griffin, the Bush-administration appointee whose tenure ended with Obama's inauguration. Griffin inherited the job of overseeing the post-Columbia decision to complete the space station and retire the shuttle by the end of 2010 and to develop a new spacecraft to replace the shuttle. That vehicle, the Apollo-like Orion capsule and its Ares 1 rocket, is intended to ferry astronauts to and from the space station and, eventually, on to the moon. But the Orion/Ares system will not be ready for use until 2015. During the five-year gap between the shuttle's retirement and the debut of the new rocket, NASA and it's international partners will have to hitch rides to the space station aboard Russian Soyuz spacecraft. Concern about reliance on the Russians has prompted several key lawmakers to lobby for additional funding to extend shuttle operations, stretching out the current manifest to close or narrow the gap. Rep. Bill Posey (R-FL), whose district includes the Kennedy Space Center, and Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz (D-FL) introduced legislation earlier this month to extend shuttle operations beyond 2010 and to accelerate development of the Ares/Orion spacecraft. But so far, no such funding has been approved or even money to cover the costs of simply keeping the extension option open. Complicating the picture for NASA planners, there is a very real possibility that one or two of the final shuttle missions currently envisioned will slip into the October-December 2010 timeframe, i.e., the first quarter of fiscal 2011. There is no money in NASA's projected 2011 budget for any shuttle operations beyond $300 million or so intended for retirement activities. As a result, NASA now plans to terminate work that kept open the option of a shuttle extension when the current legislation expires at the end of the month. "We don't have enough money to keep carrying various options to extend and add additional flights," said the NASA manager who spoke on condition of anonymity. "We don't have funding right now for that first quarter of 2011. So we've got to save money out of '10 to roll into that first quarter of fiscal year 2011. "So that's what John's kind of saying in his note to the troops, that we can no longer carry options, we've got to make some hard decisions if we want to try to get these nine remaining flights flown. Where we were kind of slowing things down and we were buying some extra spare parts and kept some subs (subcontractors) around and stuff, it's now time we've got to start making those hard decisions to really start trying to save money so we ... can support all the way to the end of calendar year 2010." Shuttle program managers were scheduled to meet Tuesday and Wednesday at the Kennedy Space Center for a quarterly budget review. The final missions on NASA's shuttle manifest are critical flights to deliver spare parts and supplies to the International Space Station and NASA managers don't want to risk losing one because money that could have helped cope with technical problems or launch delays had been diverted to building hardware for flights that are not expected to be approved. "It's not cut and dried," said the NASA manager. "Even though we're going to start ramping back down again, we still haven't really lost capability. I've still got this hardware sitting around and if someone has some great idea this summer that we want to goÊdo this and they give us a ton of money, we could probably figure out a way to get the thing flying again. But we can't protect for that option." In his email last week, Shannon said "here is our dilemma: Do we keep up the 'do not preclude' strategy, spending at a level that is inconsistent with our current budget line, in the hopes that someone will come along with additional funding to allow us to fly the full manifest? Or do we make the difficult decisions to cut core future capability in order to fly the current manifest within our current budget marks?" After stating his position that NASA must protect the existing manifest in the absence of any concrete political support and funding for extending shuttle operations, he said "unfortunately, it will be extraordinarily painful to let go of the team members that have ensured our success for 28 years - the testing teams, the manufacturing teams, the teams that integrate, ship and assemble the most complex and capable rocket in history. "I ask that you put aside the emotions, and concentrate on what is known," Shannon concluded. "We have a limited budget and a clear mission - fly through STS-134 (the final shuttle mission) safely and successfully." 3:40 AM, 4/8/09, Update: Soyuz TMA-13 lands in Kazakhstan Dropping to Earth under a huge parachute, a Russian Soyuz spacecraft carrying outgoing space station commander Mike Fincke, flight engineer Yury Lonchakov and space tourist Charles Simonyi settled to a jarring landing in Kazakhstan today after a descent from the International Space Station. With Lonchakov at the controls, the central descent module of the Soyuz TMA-13 spacecraft touched down at 3:16 a.m. EDT northeast of Dzhezkazgan, coming to rest on its side. A few minutes later, Lonchakov was out, reporting the crew was in good condition. Soyuz TMA-13 at the moment of touchdown in Kazakhstan Russian recovery forces were staged nearby to assist the returning space fliers as required and by 3:30 a.m., all three were resting comfortably in reclining chairs near the descent module, smiling and chatting with flight surgeons and technicians. "It landed just a few kilometers long of its intended site, but essentially a dead-on, spot-on, bullseye landing for Mike Fincke, Yury Lonchakov and Charles Simonyi," said NASA commentator Rob Navias from the landing site. "The Soyuz landed on its side, that is very typical for a Soyuz landing, it is breezy out here today, the wind caught the chutes, pulled the capsule over. But it was a very quick extraction out of the top hatch for the three crew members. They all look to be in excellent shape." The Soyuz TMA-13 crew (left to right): Charles Simonyi, Yury Lonchakov, Mike Fincke Landing came one day later than originally planned because of soggy conditions at the normal landing zone north of Arkalyk. The Soyuz TMA-13 spacecraft undocked from the international Space Station at 11:55 p.m. Tuesday. Lonchakov carried out a four-and-a-half-minute deorbit rocket firing at 2:24 a.m., slowing the ship by about 258 mph and putting it on the proper trajectory for landing. Just before atmospheric entry, Russian flight controllers lost contact with the spacecraft, but the three modules making up the Soyuz TMA-13 spacecraft apparently separated as planned and the central descent module carrying the crew made a normal re-entry. Communications were restored a few minutes before the craft's braking parachute was deployed and Lonchakov reported "nominal" conditions on board. "We're happy to say one more space flight mission is now in the history books," an unidentified Russian observed. U.S. flight controllers then called the space station, informing Expedition 19 commander Gennady Padalka, flight engineer Michael Barratt and Koichi Wakata that their crewmates had made a safe landing. "Hey guys, just in case you didn't have good video and audio during that, the Soyuz landed safely, the crew reported they feel fine. SAR forces are on the scene," called the spacecraft communicator. "We did get that and thanks so much for the video. We saw it and hurrah for the 18 crew and Charles Simonyi and welcome them back to Earth," replied Barratt. Touchdown ended a 178-day voyage for Fincke and Lonchakov, who were launched to the station last Oct. 12 as the core members of the lab's 18th full-time crew. Fincke's time in space through two space station expeditions now stands at 366 days, putting him third on the list of most experienced U.S. astronauts behind Peggy Whitson with 377 days and Mike Foale with 374 days. Lonchakov's total for three space missions stands at 201 days while Simonyi's 13-day station visit boosted his two-flight total to 27 days. Simonyi, a Hungarian-born U.S. software developer, is the first space tourist to make two privately financed trips to the space station. His wife, Lisa, was standing by at the recovery zone to welcome him back to Earth with a kiss. Lisa Simonyi welcomes husband Charles back to Earth "It was a difficult decision for me to fly for the second time and now, looking back, I'm so glad that I've done it," Simonyi said Tuesday during a brief farewell ceremony aboard the station. "It was a great trip, thank you everyone. I'm looking forward to get home, to my wife, but it was a fantastic trip. Thank you." An inflatable tent was set up at the landing site for initial medical checks before helicopter flights back to Karaganda and then a three-hour flight to the Gagarin Cosmonaut Training Center in Star City near Moscow where friends and family members will be waiting. Fincke will be welcomed home in Kazakhstan by NASA space station Program Manager Mike Suffredini, chief astronaut Steve Lindsey and a NASA flight surgeon, Steve Hart. Fincke's family will be waiting in Star City. 2:30 AM, 4/8/09, Update: Soyuz braking rockets fired Braking rockets on the Soyuz TMA-13 spacecraft fired as planned early today to drop the ship out of orbit for a landing in Kazakhstan. The four-and-a-half-minute deorbit burn began on time at 2:24 a.m., slowing the ship by about 258 mph and putting it on the desired trajectory for atmospheric entry. After falling to an altitude of about 87 miles, the three modules making up the Soyuz TMA-13 spacecraft will separate and the central descent module will enter the discernible atmosphere at an altitude of about 62 miles at 2:52 a.m. If all goes well, the module's main parachute will deploy shortly after 3 a.m. for a rocket-assisted touchdown at 3:16:29 a.m. 12:15 AM, 4/8/09, Update: Soyuz TMA-13 undocks from space station With cosmonaut Yury Lonchakov at the controls, Russia's Soyuz TMA-13 spacecraft undocked from the International Space Station late Tuesday, pulling away from a port on the Zarya module to set up for a Wednesday landing in Kazakhstan. Lonchakov, Expedition 18 commander Mike Fincke and space tourist Charles Simonyi bid farewell to the Expedition 19 crew Tuesday evening and floated aboard the Soyuz around 8:45 p.m. With Fincke seated to Lonchakov's left and Simonyi to his right, the TMA-13 spacecraft undocked at 11:55 p.m. as the space station sailed 223 miles above Mongolia. "All the best, Gennady, all the best to you, we are already missing you," one of the departing crew members radioed Expedition 19 commander Gennady Padalka as the Soyuz pulled away. "Very, very smooth backout," someone said. "All the best, guys. Good luck." View of the International Space Station from the departing Soyuz TMA-13 spacecraft If all goes well, Lonchakov will fire the Soyuz ferry craft's braking rockets at 2:24 a.m. to put the ship on a trajectory to touchdown in Kazakhstan around 3:16 a.m. Here is the remainder of today's re-entry timeline (in EDT and mission elapsed time; dV: change in velocity): EDT........DDD...HH...MM...EVENT 04/07/09 11:52 PM...177...20...51...Undocking command 11:55 PM...177...20...54...Physical separation (11:55:30 PM; dV: 0.3 mph) 11:58 PM...177...20...57...Soyuz separation burn 1 (15 sec; dV: 1.2 mph) 04/08/09 12:00 AM...177...20...59...ISS maneuver to duty attitude 12:08 AM...177...21...07...Russian ground station loss of signal 12:23 AM...177...21...22...Sunset 01:24 AM...177...22...23...Russian-to-U.S. attitude control handover 02:24 AM...177...23...23...Soyuz deorbit burn start (2:24:26 AM; dV: 257.7 mph) 02:27 AM...177...23...26...Sunrise 02:29 AM...177...23...27...Deorbit burn complete (2:28:47 AM) 02:49 AM...177...23...48...Separation of modules (87 miles) 02:52 AM...177...23...51...Atmospheric entry (62.5 miles) 02:54 AM...177...23...53...Entry guidance start (50.1 miles) 02:59 AM...177...23...58...Maximum G-load (23.8 miles) 03:01 AM...177...23...60...Command to open parachute (6.6 miles) 03:16 AM...178...00...15...Landing (3:16:29 AM; 1:16 PM local) 10:03 AM...178...07...02...Sunset at landing site View of the departing Soyuz TMA-13 spacecraft from inside the International Space Station 1:30 PM, 4/7/09, Update: ISS-18 crew, space tourist prepare for landing (UPDATED at 9:15 p.m. with farewell ceremony; hatch closure) Outgoing space station commander Mike Fincke, flight engineer Yury Lonchakov and space tourist Charles Simonyi bid farewell to the Expedition 19 crew Tuesday and boarded a Soyuz ferry craft for re-entry and landing Wednesday in Kazakhstan. Fincke and Lonchakov, launched to the International Space Station last Oct. 12, are wrapping up a 178-day stay off planet as the core members of the lab's 18th full-time crew. Simonyi, a wealthy software developer making his second paid trip to the station, took off March 26 with Expedition 19 commander Gennady Padalka and flight engineer Michael Barratt. After a busy day of packing and readying the Soyuz TMA-13 spacecraft for re-entry, Fincke, Lonchakov and Simonyi shared hugs and handshakes with Padalka, Barratt and Japanese astronaut Koichi Wakata before floating into the ferry craft around 8:45 p.m. EDT. Hatches were closed a few moments later to set the stage for undocking just before midnight. Landing is expected around 3:16 a.m. Wednesday. In a brief farewell ceremony earlier Tuesday, Fincke thanked his crewmates for a successful mission and said he looked forward to re-entry in the Russian Soyuz, "a great, reliable transport vehicle, up and down. ... It's going to be an interesting and fun ride back." "I think the coolest thing in my life, outside of being married to a beautiful woman and having three kids, is to work with the international partners, all of us, the United States, Canada, the European Space Agency, Japan and of course, Russia," he said. "We do everything together, we're humanity's bright hope for the future. "So we're handing you over a station with all that," he told Padalka, Barratt and Wakata. "The pressure's on, guys! ... Good luck to you." "Well, from where I stand, I think humanity got a wonderful space station in the International Space Station," said Simonyi, the only space tourist to make two trips to the lab complex. "Maybe the only thing that is more remarkable than the size and the effectiveness of this space vehicle is the people serving on board. ... It was a difficult decision for me to fly for the second time and now, looking back, I'm so glad that I've done it. ... It was a great trip, thank you everyone. I'm looking forward to get home, to my wife, but it was a fantastic trip. Thank you." Padalka then took the microphone, saying in English, "thank you very much, guys, for (leaving) a space station in great, safe condition for us. (We're) ready to accept space station command and ready to continue our research and to prepare space station for six-person crew. Honestly, we'll be missing you. You'll be always in our hearts and we'll be looking forward to seeing you again as soon as possible. But not earlier than in six months!" Padalka, Barratt and Wakata plan to welcome three additional crew members in late May - cosmonaut Roman Romanenko, European Space Agency astronaut Frank De Winne of Belgium and Canadian Space Agency astronaut Robert Thirsk - as the station project transitions to a six-person crew for the first time. Fincke, Lonchakov and Sandra Magnus, who returned to Earth aboard the shuttle Discovery March 28, completed final preparations for the long-awaited crew increase, hooking up and testing a complex water recycling system and accepting delivery of a fourth and final set of solar arrays. "The can-do crew came through and we all worked together," Fincke radioed flight controllers Tuesday during his final daily planning conference. "So we're very proud of that, especially today." The Soyuz TMA-13 re-entry originally was planned for Tuesday, but rain, snow and soggy terrain in the normal landing zone northeast of Arkalyk, Kazakhstan, prompted Russian mission managers to delay the crew's return by one day to move the landing zone about 190 miles to the southeast where conditions were more favorable. Lonchakov will serve as commander of the Soyuz spacecraft, sitting in the center seat of the central descent module, with Fincke, serving as flight engineer, to his left and Simonyi on his right. Undocking from the downward-facing port of the Russian Zarya module is targeted for around 11:55 p.m. Tuesday. After moving a safe distance away and reaching the proper point in their orbit, Lonchakov will oversee a planned four-minute 21-second rocket firing at 2:24 a.m. that will slow the craft by about 258 mph and put it on the proper re-entry trajectory. After falling to an altitude of about 87 miles, the three modules making up the Soyuz TMA-13 spacecraft will separate and the central descent module will enter the discernible atmosphere at an altitude of about 62 miles at 2:52 a.m. If all goes well, the module's main parachute will deploy shortly after 3 a.m. for a rocket-assisted touchdown at 3:16:29 a.m. Here is an updated re-entry timeline (in EDT and mission elapsed time; dV: change in velocity): EDT........DDD...HH...MM...EVENT 04/07/09 09:59 PM...177...18...58...U.S.-to-Russian attitude control handover 10:16 PM...177...19...15...Russian ground station acquisition of signal 10:28 PM...177...19...27...ISS maneuver to duty attitude 10:33 PM...177...19...32...Russian ground station loss of signal 11:22 PM...177...20...21...ISS maneuver to undocking attitude 11:24 PM...177...20...23...Sunrise 11:49 PM...177...20...48...Russian ground station acquisition of signal 11:51 PM...177...20...50...ISS to free drift 11:52 PM...177...20...51...Undocking command 11:55 PM...177...20...54...Physical separation (11:55:30 PM; dV: 0.3 mph) 11:58 PM...177...20...57...Soyuz separation burn 1 (15 sec; dV: 1.2 mph) 04/08/09 12:00 AM...177...20...59...ISS maneuver to duty attitude 12:08 AM...177...21...07...Russian ground station loss of signal 12:23 AM...177...21...22...Sunset 01:24 AM...177...22...23...Russian-to-U.S. attitude control handover 02:24 AM...177...23...23...Soyuz deorbit burn start (2:24:26 AM; dV: 257.7 mph) 02:27 AM...177...23...26...Sunrise 02:29 AM...177...23...27...Deorbit burn complete (2:28:47 AM) 02:49 AM...177...23...48...Separation of modules (87 miles) 02:52 AM...177...23...51...Atmospheric entry (62.5 miles) 02:54 AM...177...23...53...Entry guidance start (50.1 miles) 02:59 AM...177...23...58...Maximum G-load (23.8 miles) 03:01 AM...177...23...60...Command to open parachute (6.6 miles) 03:16 AM...178...00...15...Landing (3:16:29 AM; 1:16 PM local) 10:03 AM...178...07...02...Sunset at landing site "The Russian search and recovery forces ... are putting the final touches on their landing plans for this homecoming in the southeastern region of Kazakhstan," NASA landing commentator Rob Navias said early Tuesday. "Late tonight U.S. time, as the Soyuz undocks from the International Space Station, the recovery team will begin to make their way to the airport here in Karaganda, where seven Mi-8 helicopters and two fixed-wing aircraft will be standing by to take off for an hour-and-40-minute flight to the landing zone." Four helicopters will fly directly to the planned landing site 134 miles northeast of Dzhezkazgan while three will be stationed midway between the planned landing site and the so-called "ballistic" landing area where the Soyuz could end up if a problem of some sort causes a steeper-than-usual re-entry. Assuming a normal touchdown, recovery forces will be on hand within minutes to assist the returning crew. "One of the first helicopters to land will contain medical personnel to place the crew into reclining chairs so they can begin to acclimate themselves to Earth's gravity, particularly Fincke and Lonchakov, who have been off the planet for a half year," Navias said. Assuming an on-time landing, Fincke will have logged 178 days in space, pushing his total through two space station expeditions to 366 days, third on the list of most experienced U.S. astronauts behind Peggy Whitson (377 days) and Mike Foale (374 days). Lonchakov will have logged 178 days in space on this flight for a total time of 201 days over three missions. Simonyi's total will be 13 days in space for this flight, 27 including his first station visit in 2007. An inflatable tent will be set up at the landing site for initial medical checks before helicopter flights back to Karaganda and then a three-hour flight to the Gagarin Cosmonaut Training Center in Star City near Moscow where friends and family members will be waiting. Fincke will be welcomed home in Kazakhstan by NASA space station Program Manager Mike Suffredini, chief astronaut Steve Lindsey and a NASA flight surgeon, Steve Hart. Fincke's family will be waiting in Star City. 03:35 PM, 4/3/09, Update: Soyuz TMA-13 re-entry delayed one day due to poor conditions at planned Kazakhstan landing site; Space Adventures CEO vows additional tourist flights Snow and soggy conditions at the primary landing site in Kazakhstan have prompted Russian flight planners to order a 24-hour delay, from April 7 to 8, for the return of a Soyuz capsule carrying outgoing space station commander Mike Fincke, flight engineer Yury Lonchakov and space tourist Charles Simonyi. The mission had been scheduled to conclude with a touchdown on April 7 northeast of Arkalyk, Kazakhstan, but the landing zone has been moved to a backup site about 180 miles to the southeast where conditions may be more favorable. Touchdown now is targeted for 3:15 a.m. EDT on April 8. Fincke and Lonchakov were launched to the international space station aboard the Soyuz TMA-13 spacecraft Oct. 12. Their replacements - Expedition 19 commander Gennady Padalka and flight engineer Michael Barratt, a NASA physician-astronaut, were launched March 26 aboard the Soyuz TMA-14 spacecraft. They were joined by Simonyi, a Hungarian-born U.S. software developer making his second privately funded trip to the space station. During a change-of-command ceremony Thursday, Fincke formally handed the station over to Padalka, saying "all systems are in order and Yury and I can now take a little bit of a rest and get ready, along with Charles, to come back to the planet." "Thank you very much, my best friend," Padalka replied. "Expedition 19 is very happy to get space station in great operational condition. ... We're ready to work on behalf of all our space agencies and ... all human beings." If all goes well, Fincke, Lonchakov and Simonyi will say farewell to Padalka, Barratt and Japanese astronaut Koichi Wakata the evening of April 7, sealing hatches between the Soyuz TMA-13 spacecraft and the downward-facing port of the Russian Zarya module around 8:45 p.m. Undocking is planned for 11:55 p.m. with a 22-second deorbit rocket firing expected at 2:24 a.m. on April 8. The three modules making up the Soyuz spacecraft will separate just before atmospheric entry at 2:52 a.m. and the central crew module carrying Fincke, Lonchakov and Simonyi will descend to a parachute-and-rocket-assisted touchdown at 3:15 a.m. Assuming an on-time landing, Fincke will have logged 178 days in space, pushing his total through two space station expeditions to 366 days, third on the list of most experienced U.S. astronauts behind Peggy Whitson (377 days) and Mike Foale (374 days). Lonchakov will have logged 178 days in space on this flight for a total time of 201 days over three missions. Simonyi's total will be 13 days in space for this flight for a total of 27 including his first station visit in 2007. Simonyi's visit was arranged through Space Adventures, a Vienna, Virginia-based company that has brokered seven space tourist flights using available seats on Russian Soyuz capsules beginning in 2001 with U.S. businessman Dennis Tito. But plans to boost the station's crew size from three to six in late May could mean a hiatus in tourist flights, at least in the near term. While one seat on a Soyuz flight scheduled for launch this fall apparently has opened up, it's not yet clear whether the Russians will fill the slot with a professional cosmonaut or allow Space Adventures to book one of its clients who has gone through training as a backup. "There is a possibility that one of Space Adventures' clients could launch on Soyuz TMA-16, which is currently scheduled for launch this Sept. 30," Eric Anderson, CEO of Space Adventures, told reporters today. "We have learned from Roskosmos (the Russian space agency) that the third seat aboard Soyuz TMA-16 may not, in fact, be used by the cosmonaut from Kazakhstan and if that seat is not used ... Roskosmos is considering both the possibility of another spaceflight participant opportunity for Space Adventures or using the seat for a professional Russian cosmonaut." Esther Dyson, a respected high-tech journalist, entrepreneur and Space Adventures investor, trained as Simonyi's backup and attended his launch at the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan. But it's not clear whether she could fly on such short notice or whether she could complete required training in time. There are no other known clients who are thought to have a realistic shot at the September flight. Even so, Anderson expressed optimism that additional seats will open up occasionally and he said the company is pressing ahead with plans for privately funded Soyuz missions starting in 2012 that would include a Russian commander and two tourists per mission. But it's not yet known whether the Russians can build enough Soyuz capsules and rockets to support expanded space station operations as well as tourist flights. Between the end of shuttle operations in 2010 and the debut of its replacement in 2015, the Soyuz flight rate will have to double to support six-person crew operations aboard the space station. "I am aware of the questions that have been raised regarding the ability of the Russian space industry to supply an increased number of Soyuz missions," Anderson said. "Building rockets is a complicated business, it's certainly challenging, but ... I'm confident by 2012, for example, the prospect of adding a fifth Soyuz is something that is reasonable." But tickets to space, assuming the seats are available, will be increasingly expensive. Tito's ticket reportedly cost $20 million. It has since gone up to around $35 million, according to Simonyi. In a pre-launch telephone interview with CBS News, Simonyi said the future of commercial spaceflight is "certainly not my concern." But, he added, "my feeling is the commercial pressures will be toward resolving this and have more flights." Even at the current list price, he said, the experience of flying in space is worth it for those who can afford the cost. "The price is going up," Simonyi said. "Future seats that NASA has bought are even more expensive. This has to be put into perspective because other means of getting to space are even more expensive. So this one is actually quite cost effective at the current state of technology." 4:40 PM, 3/27/09, Update: Former shuttle commander recalls wing damage, communications breakdown The exhaustive attention NASA now devotes to making sure shuttle heat shields are damage-free and safe for re-entry is a direct result of the 2003 Columbia disaster. But a blacked-out military flight 21 years ago still stands out as a warning to astronauts, engineers and managers, a frightening "close call" that had the potential to bring the shuttle program to an early end. It was that close. "I will never forget, we hung the (robot) arm over the right wing, we panned it to the (damage) location and took a look and I said to myself, 'we are going to die,'" recalled legendary shuttle commander Robert "Hoot" Gibson. "There was so much damage. I looked at that stuff and I said, 'oh, holy smokes, this looks horrible, this looks awful.'" He was seeing the worst tile damage any shuttle had ever experienced. But a perfect storm of poor communications, caused in part by military restrictions that prevented the crew from downlinking clear images showing scores of chipped and broken tiles, ultimately resulted in a flawed analysis on the ground that indicated the crew had nothing to worry about. Flight controllers were not convinced the shuttle was seriously damaged at all. Some engineers apparently believed the astronauts had been misled by poor lighting conditions and grainy TV images. The crew knew better. The images were crystal clear on the shuttle, and definitely alarming. But the astronauts reluctantly accepted the judgment of mission control and went on about their business. The mission still stands out as an example of how assumptions, poor communications and an unwillingness to challenge authority can put people in danger in high-risk endeavors like spaceflight. Shuttle Atlantis lands at Edwards AFB, Dec. 6, 1988; Extensive tile damage is visible on the ship's underside "There was a big failure to communicate," Gibson recalled in an interview this week. "When you talk about crew resource management, or cockpit resource management or any of that resource management stuff, it's real easy to be talking and not communicating. In order to be really communicating, you've got to say 'here is what's on my mind.' I think I was doing that to a major degree, but maybe I fell short by not arguing with them. But they really did not tell us what was on their minds." Gibson, a former Navy test pilot, "Top Gun" graduate, chief astronaut and veteran of five shuttle missions, was at the controls when the shuttle Atlantis blasted off Dec. 2, 1988, on the second post-Challenger mission. Carrying a top-secret spy satellite, the mission was fully classified and all communications with the astronauts were blacked out. But 85 seconds after launch, a piece of insulation on the tip of the shuttle's right-side solid-fuel booster broke away and struck Atlantis' right side. The impact was not noted on NASA television at the time and after landing, NASA engineers said that while the shuttle had suffered more tile damage than usual, "it isn't something that's of a major concern." But as it turned out, the damage was, in fact, extensive. More than 700 heat shield tiles were damaged. One tile on the shuttle's belly near the nose was completely missing and the underlying metal - a thick mounting plate that helped anchor an antenna - was partially melted. In a slightly different location, the missing tile could have resulted in a catastrophic burn through. It was the most extensive shuttle heat shield damage ever recorded until Columbia took off on its final voyage. Years later, Gibson would be asked to brief the Columbia Accident Investigation Board about his experiences aboard Atlantis and as the tale was told, "their jaws dropped," he said. Crewmate Mike Mullane devoted a chapter to the mission in his book "Riding Rockets: The Outrageous Tales of a Space Shuttle Astronaut," writing that as entry approached, "the anxiety was exhausting." "I finally gave in to Hoot's solution. The day before (entry), as he floated to the windows to do some sightseeing, he said, 'no reason to die all tensed up.' I would do my best to relax and enjoy the sights." Even so, he wrote, during Atlantis' descent "I had visions of molten aluminum being smeared backward like rain on a windshield." Gibson, Mullane, pilot Guy Gardner, Jerry Ross and William Shepherd had no idea Atlantis had been hit during ascent. It was not until the next day that mission control called up with an unusual request. The crew was asked to use Atlantis' robot arm to inspect the shuttle's heat shield on the ship's right side. Mullane, the arm operator, dutifully carried out a procedure to maneuver the arm into position so a black-and-white television camera on the end could "see" the tiles in question. "As I moved the arm lower the camera picked up streaks of white," he wrote in "Riding Rockets." "There was no mistaking what they were. ... As I continued to drop the arm lower we could see that at least one tile had been completely blasted from the fuselage. The white streaking grew thicker and faded aft beyond the view of the camera. It appeared that hundreds of tiles had been damaged and the scars extended outboard toward the carbon-composite panels on the leading edge of the wing. Had one of those been penetrated? If so, se were dead men floating." Gibson, who flew for Southwest Airlines for years after retiring from NASA, recalled his impressions as the images snapped onto TV monitors in Atlantis' cockpit and his immediate "we are going to die" reaction. "So I get on the mic and I call Houston and I tell them, Houston, we are seeing a whole lot of damage on the right wing, in the chine area and back on the right wing in the tiles. ... The ground comes back and says well, you know what, we need you guys to send us secure TV." Because the mission was classified, no pictures or television were being downlinked, even to mission control. When the decision was made to send down TV images of the tile damage, the video had to be encrypted." "So we send them secure TV," Gibson said. "The problem with secure TV is, it takes a frame, it encrypts it, it ships that frame, it takes the next frame, it encrypts it, it ships the next one, so you get a frame about every three seconds." While the astronauts beamed down the images, Gibson was thinking the worse. "I think the words 'we're in deep doo doo' were said in the cockpit, this could be a problem, guys, you know? This looks bad. Now you know, I didn't really think at that instant, yep, we're as good as dead, write our wills and all that stuff. But I did look at it and say 'holy smokes, we are going to die' to myself.'" The astronauts anxiously waited for mission control's assessment. And they were stunned when the ground called back. "We've looked at the images and mechanical says it's not a problem," the mission control CAPCOM said, according to Mullane. "The damage isn't that severe." "We couldn't believe what we were hearing," Mullane wrote. "MCC was blowing us off." Gibson then chimed in, saying "Houston, Mike is right. We're seeing a lot of damage." But mission control repeated the engineering assessment that the damage was not that severe. "I'm just perplexed at this point," Gibson said. "Because I'd never seen anything like this before. Never seen anything even close, and I'd been there since before day one. ... He came back and he said 'Hoot, they've looked at it and they've determined that it's not any worse than what we've seen on other flights.' And I am just perplexed. I think I was silent for maybe 30 seconds, because I didn't know what to say. And I came back and I said something to the effect that well, all right. It looks pretty bad to us, but you guys are the experts, so OK. "And I honestly believed at that point, the rest of my crew said, 'Oh, OK, great, no problem.' I did not. I did not believe them. I didn't want to argue with them, I didn't want to have a long drawn-out argument over the air, but I suppose I was probably remiss to some degree because I didn't quiz them some more." Of course, it's not clear what, if anything, could have been done if engineers had realized the severity of the problem. There were no tile repair tools on board the shuttle and no techniques for even getting an astronaut to the damage site. Changes to the shuttle's re-entry orientation and trajectory could have been attempted, Gibson said, but whether anything like that would have worked is an unknown. The real issue for Gibson - and the same issue was faced Columbia's crew - was that no one took the extra step to make sure the problem was fully resolved. "NASA does amazing things when they've got their back against the wall," he said. "Like Apollo 13. I've seen us work out some really dramatic things in some of the missions when we had on-orbit problems and we did in-flight maintenance and things like that. You never know what you could have done because you didn't try." Hoping for the best, Gibson and Gardner fired Atlantis' twin braking rockets on Dec. 6 to begin the shuttle's fiery descent to a landing at Edwards Air Force Base, Calif. The astronauts did not discuss any fears they may have had, but as the shuttle fell into the discernible atmosphere, Gibson kept his eyes on a gauge that showed how much the elevons at the back of each wing were deflected. "I knew that what would happen was, if we started to burn through we would change the drag on that wing," he said, "which is exactly what happened to Columbia. We would change the drag on the right wing and what we'd see happening is, we'd start seeing right elevon trim, you'd start seeing right aileron, if you will, trim, which means putting down the left elevon, moving the left elevon down. "I knew we would start developing a split (between right and left wing elevon positions) if we had excessive drag over on the right side. The automatic system would try to trim it out with the elevons. That is one of the things we always watched on re-entry anyhow, because ... if you had half a degree of trim, something was wrong, you had a bunch of something going on if you had even half a degree. Normally, you wouldn't see even a quarter of a degree of difference on the thing. "So I knew that that's what I was going to see if it started to go," Gibson said. "And therefore, that told me that I'd have at least 60 seconds to tell mission control what I thought of their analysis." But as it turned out, Atlantis did not suffer a burn through and Gibson guided the shuttle to a smooth landing at Edwards. Gathered on the runway after touchdown, the astronauts, engineers and NASA managers were astonished at what they saw. Astronauts and managers inspect heat shield damage on the runway "The damage was much worse than any of us had expected," Mullane wrote. "Technicians would eventually count 700 damaged tiles extending along half of Atlantis's length. It was by far the greatest heat shield damage recorded to date." During debriefing after the mission, Gibson finally learned why the engineering community had not taken the crew's descriptions of the damage more seriously. "Their conclusion, which they did not pass back to us, was 'oh, you know what? That's not tile damage, those are just lights and shadows we're seeing in this video.' So in other words, the resolution on the encrypted video was that bad that they based a conclusion on it that was in gross error. ... If I had said hey, I think this is important enough for us to break the encryption and send you guys clear video, oh, it would have been pandemonium down there at DOD. But in hindsight, oh man, that's what we should have done. Because they were drawing an incorrect conclusion from it and they were not telling us what their conclusion was." Wayne Hale, a veteran ascent-entry flight director and former shuttle program manager at the Johnson Space Center, agreed engineers were caught off guard by the severity of the damage when they finally saw the shuttle on the runway. "We were struggling in those days to try to maintain the security classification, so on and so forth," Hale said in a telephone interview. "When the crew reported they saw this stuff, we had a long negotiation as I recall with the customer to say well, can we look at the TV? Because we weren't supposed to see any TV from on orbit. (They said) absolutely not. Could we look at the bottom side of the shuttle? That was the agreement, that we could, but we used this special slow-scan TV. And it was grainy. "People were concerned, I suppose, but not nearly at the level that we would be today. And STS-27 has always been the worst tile damage flight we ever had. It set all the reference marks. It's interesting that there is enough capability in that thermal protection system to take that kind of damage and survive." Metal under a missing heat-shield tile is partially melted Reflecting on what Hale agreed "was a real close call," Gibson said he believes NASA came close to losing the crew and along with it, the shuttle program. STS-27 was only the second flight after the Challenger disaster and unlike Columbia, the shuttle re-entered over the Pacific Ocean for a descent to Edwards. Had Atlantis been lost, most of the wreckage would have sunk and engineers might never have discovered the cause. "We had spent all that money and all that time rebuilding and revamping and we launched one successful mission, we lost the very next one," Gibson said. "I think the Congress would have said OK, that's the end guys, we just don't need to do this again. I think that just would have been the end of it." 01:10 PM, 3/12/09, Update: Space debris passes station; crew told to exit Soyuz, re-enter station Space station commander Mike Fincke, flight engineer Yury Lonchkov and Sandra Magnus evacuated to the lab's Russian Soyuz spacecraft today because of a predicted close encounter with debris from a spent upper stage booster rocket. But the space junk streaked harmlessly past the station around 12:39 p.m. and the crew was cleared to re-enter the lab complex. "OK guys, based on all the confirmations, most likely the object passed us by," a Russian flight controller said, according to a translator. "So you are go to egress Soyuz. Yury, also please tell us are you ready to start the leak check?" "And Houston, space-to-ground 1, can you hear us?" Fincke called over the NASA communications circuit. "We have you loud and clear Mike, on space-to-ground 1," a controller in Houston replied. "OK, we understand we're clear (to) ingress back to the USOS (U.S. segment of the station)," Fincke said. "And we're all very happy the (debris) has passed with no impact," Houston replied. "That's great news." According to a NASA statement, the station crew members evacuated to the Soyuz as a precautionary measure "due to space debris that has been determined to be within the range where a collision is possible. News of the close approach came too late for flight controllers to coordinate an avoidance maneuver. A portion of a spent satellite motor is within the distance of the station's debris avoidance maneuver requirement 'box.' "Crew members are entering their Soyuz TMA-13 capsule and soft-locking the hatches, in case the debris should affect the space station and they are required to undock. The closure of the hatches ensures the safety of the crew and the ability to quickly depart the station in the unlikely event the debris collided with the station causing a depressurization." Time of closest approach was 12:39 p.m. EDT. It was not immediately known just how close the debris from the spent payload assist module, or PAM-D, upper stage rocket motor came to the international space station. But all objects in low-Earth orbit are traveling at 5 miles per second and impacts are potentially catastrophic. A 0.4 inch-wide sphere of aluminum moving at orbital speeds packs the same punch as a 400-pound safe moving at 60 mph. There are more than 18,000 pieces of space junk in low-Earth orbit the size of a baseball and larger. U.S. Strategic Command prioritizes radar tracking to protect manned spacecraft first, followed by high-priority military and civilian payloads. Normally, the station's rocket thrusters are used to change its orbit slightly when close encounters are predicted. Putting the crew in the station's Soyuz lifeboat with little warning is unusual and it was not immediately clear why an alert about today's close encounter was not delivered or received in time to carry out a course change. 12:20 PM, 3/12/09, Update: Station astronauts told to board Soyuz spacecraft as precaution due to possible close approach with space debris Space station commander Mike Fincke, flight engineer Yury Lonchkov and Sandra Magnus were told to board the lab's Russian Soyuz spacecraft because of a possible close approach by a piece of space debris. At 12:15 p.m., Fincke was told to be inside the Soyuz ferry craft in the next 20 minutes. Russian flight controllers recommended leaving the Soyuz hatch open and Fincke concurred, saying the crew would make sure it could be quickly closed if necessary. A NASA source said the debris in question was listed as "PAM-D" debris, an acronym implying it was a spent payload assist module solid-fuel motor used to boost payloads to higher orbits. It was not immediately clear if that was, in fact, what the debris might be. There are more than 18,000 pieces of space junk in low-Earth orbit the size of a baseball and larger. U.S. Strategic Command prioritizes radar tracking to protect manned spacecraft first, followed by high-priority military and civilian payloads. Normally, the station's rocket thrusters are used to change its orbit slightly when close encounters are predicted. Putting the crew in the station's Soyuz lifeboat is unusual. It was not immediately clear why a maneuver was not carried out today or whether the alert came in too late. Additional details will be posted as they become available. 11:00 PM, 3/6/09, Update: Kepler launched on planet-finding mission (UPDATED at 12:30 a.m. with spacecraft separation) Lighting up the night sky, a Delta 2 rocket roared to life and vaulted away from the Cape Canaveral Air Force Station late today, boosting a powerful space telescope into orbit around the sun for a $591 million mission to search for Earth-like planets orbiting distant stars. "I think people everywhere want to know whether, with all the stars out there, do they have planets that are Earth-sized?" said principal investigator William Borucki of NASA's Ames Research Center. "Are Earths frequent or are they rare? And this gives us that answer. It's the next step in mankind's exploration of the galaxy." The Kepler spacecraft's three-and-a-half-year mission began on time at 10:49:57 p.m. with a crackling roar and a torrent of fire that briefly turned night into day along Florida's space coast. Putting on a spectacular weekend sky show, the United Launch Alliance Delta 2 rocket quickly climbed from its sea-side launch pad and arced away to the east over the Atlantic Ocean as it streaked toward space. Just over one minute after launch, six solid-fuel strap-on boosters that were ignited at liftoff to assist the Delta's first-stage engine burned out and fell away while a final set of three ignited for another one-minute burn. The first-stage engine shut down as planned four-and-a-half minutes after launch and the ascent continued on the power of the Delta's compact second stage. Two second-stage burns were required before Kepler and its solid-fuel third stage motor were released for a final one-and-a-half-minute firing to boost the craft out of Earth orbit. Spacecraft separation came on time at 11:52 p.m. At that point, Kepler was moving out at a blistering 6.2 miles per second. This was the 339th Delta rocket launched since 1960, the 141st upgraded Delta 2, and the 86th successful Delta launch in a row dating back to January 1997. The Delta 2 record now stands at 139 successful missions against just two failures. "And now we have plenty of handshakes going on here in the mission director's center because we have confirmation of spacecraft separation," said NASA launch commentator George Diller. "It did occur on time at 61 minutes 49 seconds. ... So at this point, the Kepler team now really gets to work." Engineers will spend about two months checking out and calibrating Kepler's complex systems before the mission begins in earnest. Trailing the Earth in its orbit around the sun, Kepler will aim a 95-megapixel camera on a patch of sky the size of an out-stretched hand that contains more than 4.5 million detectable stars. Of that total, the science team has picked some 300,000 that are of the right age, composition and brightness to host Earth-like planets. Over the life of the mission, more than 100,000 of those will be actively monitored by Kepler. The spacecraft's camera will not take pictures like other space telescopes. Instead, it will act as a photometer, continually monitoring the brightness of candidate stars in its wide field of view and the slight dimming that will result if planets happen to pass in front. By studying subtle changes in brightness from such planetary transits - comparable to watching a flea creep across a car's headlight at night - and the timing of repeated cycles, scientists can ferret out potential Earth-like worlds in habitable-zone orbits. The probability of finding sun-like stars with Earth-like planets in orbits similar to ours - and aligned so that Kepler can "see" them - is about one-half of 1 percent. Given the sample size, however, that still leaves hundreds of potential discoveries. But it will take three-and-a-half years of around-the-clock observations to capture the repeated cycles needed to confirm detection of an Earth-like world in an Earth-like orbit. "There's a lot of desire in the science community to understand extra-terrestrial planets, not just find them," said Ed Weiler, NASA's associate administrator for space science. "We've already found 300 or so, mostly from the ground. But now we're entering the stage of going beyond just proving that they exist. It's how many are out there, and perhaps the most important question of all, are there any Earth's out there? "So far, even though we've discovered (more than) 300 planets, we haven't discovered any that are the size of the Earth in the so-called habitable zone, that is, a planet close enough to the star where it's warm enough for water to be liquid, not frozen, or not too close to the sun where it would boil off. So Kepler is going to be the first mission that starts to answer that question, are there any Earth's out there?" Named in honor of Johannes Kepler, the 17th century German astronomer who formulated the laws of planetary motion, NASA's newest science satellite weighs 2,320 pounds and measures 15.3 feet from top to bottom. It is equipped with four solar panels capable of generating 1,100 watts of power, a radiation-hardened PowerPC flight computer and a Ka-band communications link to relay science data back to Earth. The spacecraft was built by Ball Aerospace of Boulder, Colo. Kepler will pass the moon's orbit in just two days as it heads into a 371-day orbit around the sun, separating slowly from Earth. It will aim itself at a patch of sky near the left wing of Cygnus the Swan, midway between the stars Deneb and Vega. And then, Kepler will simply stare at the same stars for three-and-a-half years. "An Earth-like planet passing in front of a sun-like star is going to cause the brightness of that star to dim by only 1 part per 10,000," said Natalie Batalha, a Kepler co-investigator at San Jose State University. "That's like looking at a headlight from a great distance and trying to sense the brightness change when a flea crawls across the surface. But the Kepler instrument is designed to detect such small changes in brightness." Kepler is capable of detecting Earth-like planets around stars ranging from 600 to 3,000 light years away. The science team is particularly interested in planets that may orbit within a star's habitable zone, the region around a star where water on a planet can exist as a liquid. Habitable zones vary in location depending on a star's size and brilliance. By timing changes in a star's light as a transit occurs, scientists can figure out the size of a presumed planet's orbit and thus whether it falls in that star's habitable zone. "The habitable zone is where we think water will be," Borucki said. "If you can find liquid water on the surface, we think we may very well find life there. So that zone is not too close to the star, because it's too hot and the water boils. Not too far away where the water's condensed and ice-covered, a planet covered with glaciers. It's the goldilocks zone, not too hot, not too cold, just right for life." Weiler said Kepler is a pathfinder of sorts for more sophisticated missions that may one day study the atmospheres of Earth-like planets to look for signs of biological - or even industrial - activity. "A lot of scientists out there would like to immediately go out and build very large telescopes, not just to find Earth-like planets but to study their atmospheres, to search for clues that there might be life on those planets," Weiler said. "The trouble is, most of these proposals start at about $5 billion and work upwards from there. "Before we actually take the next step, looking for signs of life on Earth-like planets, we've got to be sure there are at least a few Earth-like planets out there. And that's why Kepler is so important. It's a rather small mission, a moderate mission, around ($600 million), and it's really a pathfinder for future large space telescopes that will go after the question that we all have, are we alone in the universe?" 5:50 PM, 3/6/09, Update: Kepler set for launch NASA's Kepler spacecraft, the centerpiece of a $591 million mission to find out how common - or rare - Earth-like planets might be in the Milky Way, is poised for blastoff this evening atop a United Launch Alliance Delta 2 rocket. Liftoff from the Cape Canaveral Air Force Station is targeted for 10:49:57 p.m. A second three-minute window is available at 11:17:44 p.m. if needed. As of this writing there are no technical problems of any significance at launch complex 17B, officials say, and forecasters are predicting good weather. The Kepler spacecraft is equipped with a 95-megapixel camera attached to a Schmidt telescope with a 55-inch primary mirror. Trailing Earth in its orbit around the sun, Kepler will aim its camera at a single point in the sky for at least three-and-a-half years. By monitoring subtle changes in the brightness of more than 100,000 stars, scientists hope to identify Earth-like planets as they pass in front of their parent suns. Based on the type of star in question, and how long it takes for an unseen planet to complete an orbit, scientists should be able to tell if any Earth-like worlds are present in a star's habitable zone where water, essential to life as we know it, can exist in liquid form. "Kepler is designed to find hundreds of Earth-size planets, if such planets are common around stars, dozen of these planets, if they are in the habitable zone," said William Borucki, Kepler principal investigator at NASA's Ames Research Center. "If we find that many, it certainly will mean that life may well be common throughout our galaxy because there's an opportunity for life to have a place to evolve. If, on the other hand, we don't find any, that will be another profound discovery. It will mean that Earths must be very rare, we might be the only life in our Universe." Here is a timeline of tonight's launch through spacecraft separation (in HH:MM:SS and EST): EVENT...................................T+H:MM:SS.....EST Liftoff...................................0:00:00.0...10:49:57 PM Mach 1....................................0:00:32.7 Maximum Dynamic Pressure..................0:00:47.6 Six Solid Motors Burnout..................0:01:03.1 Three Solid Motors Ignition...............0:01:05.5 Jettison Three Solid Motors...............0:01:06.0 Jettison Three Solid Motors...............0:01:07.0 Three Solid Motors Burnout................0:02:08.8 Jettison Three Solid Motors...............0:02:11.5 Main Engine Cutoff (MECO).................0:04:23.3 Vernier Engine Cutoff (VECO)..............0:04:29.3 First- and Second-Stage Separation........0:04:31.3...10:54:28 PM Second-Stage Ignition.....................0:04:36.8...10:54:34 PM Jettison Fairing..........................0:04:41.0 First Cutoff - Second Stage (SECO 1)......0:09:56.0...10:59:53 PM Begin Reorientation Maneuver..............0:12:30.0 End Reorientation Maneuver................0:17:30.0 Begin BBQ Maneuver........................0:17:50.0 End BBQ Maneuver..........................0:44:57.0 Begin Reorientation Maneuver..............0:50:02.0 End Reorientation Maneuver................0:50:20.0 Second-Stage Restart Ignition.............0:53:10.0...11:43:07 PM Second Cutoff - Second Stage (SECO 2).....0:54:13.8...11:44:11 PM Begin Reorientation Maneuver..............0:54:19.8 End Reorientation Maneuver................0:54:52.8 Third-Stage Spin-up.......................0:54:53.8 Second- and Third-Stage Separation........0:54:56.8...11:44:54 PM Third-Stage Ignition - NCS Enable.........0:55:33.8...11:45:31 PM Third-Stage Burnout (TECO)................0:57:00.1...11:46:57 PM Disable NCS Ð Initiate Yo-Yo Despin.......1:01:43.8 Kepler Separation.........................1:01:48.8...11:51:46 PM This status report will be updated after spacecraft separation, or as conditions warrant. 3:50 PM, 3/5/09, Update: Kepler camera will scan starlight for signs of Earth-like planets in pioneering mission In a galaxy of 200 billion or more stars, one could argue planets like Earth - orbiting suitable stars in habitable "Goldilocks" zones where water exists in liquid form and the temperature is not too hot or too cold - must be common. After all, if only a tiny fraction of the Milky Way's stars harbor such planets, one could still expect untold thousands, if not millions, of potentially habitable worlds. And with numbers like that,Êit's not at all unreasonable to suppose life arose on at least some of them.ÊExtending that argument to the countless galaxies populating the observable universe, one could easily assume the cosmos must be teeming with life. But statistics alone prove nothing about how solar systems might be constructed. While more than 340 planets have been detected orbiting other stars, the limitations of Earth-based observations mean, with a few exceptions, only huge, Jupiter-class gas giants have been identified to date, many of them orbiting hellishly close to their parent stars. Whether such seemingly strange solar system architectures are common or whether they are simply easier to detect using current methods, is not yet clear. Whether Earth-like planets are common or rare is simply unknown.ÊBut it is a question with profound implications, one at the heart of any debate about the possibility of life elsewhere in the universe. NASA plans to take a major step toward answering that question, one way or the other, with launch of a Delta 2 rocket Friday carrying a sophisticated solar-powered satellite called Kepler that is equipped with one of the most powerful digital cameras ever built for space. The $591 million mission is scheduled for liftoff from the Cape Canaveral Air Force Station at 10:49:57 p.m. EST. "To this point in time, if you asked me are there other earth's out there, I'd say absolutely, there have to be, we can't be so special," said NASA science chief Ed Weiler. "But if you ask me to prove it, I can't." The Kepler mission "very possibly could tell us that earths are very, very common, that we have lots of neighbors out there. Or, it could tell us that earth's are really, really, really rare, perhaps we're the only Earth," Weiler said. "I think that would be a very bad answer because I for one don't want to live in an empty universe where we're the best there is. That's a scary thought to many of us! But Kepler will tell us that answer, and it will tell us soon." Trailing the Earth in its orbit around the sun, the Kepler spacecraft will aim a 95-megapixel camera on a patch of sky the size of an out-stretched hand that contains more than 4.5 million detectable stars. Of that total, the science team has picked some 300,000 that are of the right age, composition and brightness to host Earth-like planets. Over the life of the mission, more than 100,000 of those will be actively monitored by Kepler. The spacecraft's camera will not take pictures like other space telescopes, rather it will act as a photometer and continually monitor the brightness of candidate stars in its wide field of view and the slight dimming that will result if planets happen to pass in front. By studying subtle changes in brightness from such planetary transits - comparable to watching a flea creep across a car's headlight at night - and the timing of repeated cycles, computer analysis can ferret out potential Earth-like worlds in habitable-zone orbits. The probability of finding sun-like stars with Earth-like planets in orbits similar to ours - and aligned so that Kepler can "see" them - is about one-half of 1 percent. Given the sample size, however, that still leaves hundreds of potential discoveries. But it will take three-and-a-half years of around-the-clock observations to capture the repeated cycles needed to confirm detection of an Earth-like world in an Earth-like orbit. "Kepler is designed to find hundreds of Earth-size planets, if such planets are common around stars, dozen of these planets, if they are in the habitable zone," said William Borucki, Kepler principal investigator at NASA's Ames Research Center. "If we find that many, it certainly will mean that life may well be common throughout our galaxy because there's an opportunity for life to have a place to evolve. If, on the other hand, we don't find any, that will be another profound discovery. It will mean that Earths must be very rare, we might be the only life in our Universe. In fact, it will mean there will be no Star Trek." But he quickly added: "We are hoping to find hundreds, of course. ... Although Kepler will not find E.T., it is hoping to find E.T.'s home." Jon Morse, director of astrophysics at NASA headquarters in Washington, described Kepler as "our planetary census taker." "We're going to get the full sweep of the types of planets in different types of orbits around different types of stars through a big cross-section of our galaxy," he said. "It is going to shape the way that we formulate our plans for future missions on our quest to find Earth-like planets and study their atmospheres and look for the bio-markers like the types of molecules in our atmosphere that may indicate life." Said Michael Bicay, director of science at the Ames Research Center: "The ramifications of the results of this mission, whatever those results are, are going to be significant in our understanding of the frequency of Earth-size planets in the local galaxy and the habitable zones." Named in honor of Johannes Kepler, the 17th century Copernican astronomer who formulated the laws of planetary motion, NASA's newest science satellite weighs 2,320 pounds and measures 15.3 feet from top to bottom. It is equipped with four solar panels capable of generating 1,100 watts of power, a radiation-hardened PowerPC flight computer and a Ka-band communications link to relay science data back to Earth. The spacecraft was built by Ball Aerospace of Boulder, Colo. Following launch from Complex 17B at the Cape Canaveral Air Force Station, Kepler will pass the moon's orbit in just two days as it heads into a 371-day orbit around the sun, separating slowly from Earth. It will aim itself at a patch of sky near the left wing of Cygnus the Swan, midway between the stars Deneb and Vega. And then, Kepler will simply stare at the same stars for three-and-a-half years. The science team will check in twice a week to check the spacecraft's health and upload commands. Once a month, Kepler will look away from its target area, point is high-gain antenna toward Earth and downlink stored data. Every three months, the spacecraft will rotate 90-degrees around its long axis to keep its fixed solar panels face on to the sun and its radiator pointed toward deep space. Kepler's single science instrument is built around a 55-inch mirror and a 37-inch corrector plate that represents a modified Schmidt telescope design. Light from the primary mirror comes to a focus on an assembly of charge coupled devices, or CCDs, similar in operation to the chips used in commercial video and still cameras. But unlike commercial cameras, Kepler's Focal Plane Array is made up of 42 CCDs, each one measuring 2.32 inches by 1.1 inches and containing 2,200 by 1,024 picture elements, or pixels, for a total of 95 million pixels. The focal plane will be maintained at minus 121 degrees Fahrenheit to improve sensitivity and minimize electrical "noise" in the system. Special lenses will smear out the starlight slightly to make slight changes in brightness more easily detectable. "An Earth-like planet passing in front of a sun-like star is going to cause the brightness of that star to dim by only 1 part per 10,000," said Natalie Batalha, a Kepler co-investigator at San Jose State University. "That's like looking at a headlight from a great distance and trying to sense the brightness change when a flea crawls across the surface. But the Kepler instrument is designed to detect such small changes in brightness." Kepler will be aimed at the same spot in the sky, measuring 10 degrees by 10 degrees, for the life of the mission, actively observing more than 100,000 candidate stars. In contrast, the moon's apparent angular diameter is 0.5 degrees. The Hubble Space Telescope focuses on areas the size of a rice grain held at arm's length. A planetary transit will cause the light from a target star to dim, or wink, on timescales of one to 12 hours, depending on the type of star and the size of the planet's orbit. For a planet like Earth passing in front of a star like the sun, the star's light would dim by just 84 parts per million, or less than 1/100th of 1 percent. Kepler is capable of detecting Earth-like planets around stars ranging from 600 to 3,000 light years away. The Kepler team is particularly interested in planets that may orbit within a star's habitable zone, the region around a star where water on a planet can exist as a liquid. Habitable zones vary in location depending on a star's size and brilliance. By timing changes in a star's light as a transit occurs, scientists can figure out the size of a presumed planet's orbit and thus whether it falls in that star's habitable zone. "The habitable zone is where we think water will be," Borucki said. "If you can find liquid water on the surface, we think we may very well find life there. So that zone is not too close to the star, because it's too hot and the water boils. Not too far away where the water's condensed and ice-covered, a planet covered with glaciers. It's the goldilocks zone, not too hot, not too cold, just right for life." Brief changes in a star's light output imply an extremely hot planet orbiting close to its parent. Longer transits imply planets at greater distances. "We are interested in finding planets that are not too hot, not too cold, but just right," Borucki said. In its first year of operation, Kepler is expected to discover Jupiter-class super planets orbiting close to their parent stars with periods of just a few days. The Kepler team requires multiple transits to make sure the photometer is not seeing some other phenomenon, like the passage of an unseen companion star or a major disturbance in the target star's appearance. Ground-based astronomers then will be asked to attempt confirmation and only then will results be announced. "After several months of data processing and confirmation by ground-based telescopes, scientists hope to announce their first results approximately in December 2009 at NASA Headquarters ... about giant planets found in short-period orbits," NASA said in its Kepler press kit. "Discovery of Earth-size planets in Earth-like orbits requires nearly the full lifetime of the 3.5-year mission, although in some cases three transits are seen in just a little more than two years. Other results that require the full 3.5 years of data are: Planets as small as Mars in short period orbits, which utilizes the addition of dozens or more transits to be detectable; and the detection of giant-inner planets that do not transit the star, but do periodically modulate the apparent brightness due to reflected light from the planet." The first announcement of any Earth-like planets orbiting stars like the sun is not expected before December 2012. "What I'm hoping, expecting to see as a community scientist is in the first six months to a year, the big, massive hot Jupiters are going to roll off the Kepler assembly line," said Debra Fischer, astronomy professor at San Francisco State University and a veteran exoplanet observer. "This is exciting because these are bizarre planets. We don't really understand the statistics, how they form, how they moved into their current position and just the sheer number of these objects that Kepler will find is going to help us learn a lot about the systems. "And then the next class of planets I think will roll out will be perhaps the hot Neptunes," she said. "Significantly smaller than Jupiter, these objects are thought to exist around something like 30 percent of stars like our sun and low-mass stars. And if that is correct, then Kepler should see quite a few of these very large, something like 17 times the mass of the Earth, orbiting." "And then the hardest detection and by far the most exciting is going to be the detection of bona fide Earths - small, rocky planets, Earth-size planets." While such planets are often thought of as terrestrial "rocky" worlds, "I think that the science fiction writers are going to be challenged to imagine the diversity that we could expect to find, even in this type of planets," Fischer said. "They may not be rocky worlds, they may be water worlds without plate tectonics that force the landmass up above the oceans. These could be worlds that, in fact, have life like our oceans, OK? But perhaps not sending radio signals to us." 3:55 PM, 2/26/09, Update: NASA budget overview shows Obama support for one additional shuttle flight, return to moon The Obama administration's proposed 2010 budget provides $18.7 billion for the National Aeronautics and Space Administration. Including $1 billion that went to NASA from the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009, the new budget proposal represents a $2.4 billion increase over 2008 funding levels, according to the White House Office of Management and Budget. The budget blueprint continues to support the Bush administration's directive to finish the space station and retire the shuttle in 2010 and to return astronauts to the moon around the end of the next decade. "NASA's astronauts and robotic spacecraft have been exploring our solar system and the universe for more than 50 years," according to an OMB budget overview. "The agency will create a new chapter of this legacy as it works to return Americans to the moon by 2020 as part of a robust human and robotic space exploration program. "NASA also will send a broad suite of robotic missions to destinations throughout the solar system and develop a bold new set of astronomical observatories to probe the mysteries of the universe, increasing investment in research, data analysis, and technology development in support of these goals." In a short statement, acting NASA Administrator Christopher Scolese said "the $18.7 billion budget proposal for 2010 is fiscally responsible and reflects the administration's desire for a robust and innovative agency aligned with the president's goals of advancing our nationÕs scientific, educational, economic and security interests." "This budget ensures NASA maintains its global leadership in Earth and space research, and it advances global climate change studies, funds a robust program of human and robotic space exploration, allows us to realize the full potential of the international space station, advances development of new space transportation systems, and renews our commitment to aeronautics." The budget also endorses research on global climate change, saying NASA will use National Research Council recommendations to guide development of new environmental research satellites and sensors "to ensure continuity of measurements that have long-term research applications benefits." "I think it's a strong statement on the part of the Obama administration that they want a success-oriented space program, that they're committed to a vision of exploration," John Logsdon, professor emeritus at George Washington University and founder of the Space Policy Institute, told CBS Radio. "They are intending to retire the shuttle in 2010 and conduct a balanced program. So I think it's a very strong budget." In the wake of the 2003 Columbia disaster, the Bush administration ordered NASA to finish the space station and retire the shuttle by 2010. At the same time, the agency was told to begin development of a new, safer manned spacecraft that could carry astronauts to and from low-Earth orbit and eventually, on to the moon. The Constellation program that eventually was approved calls for development of a new rocket called Ares 1 that is made up of a five-segment shuttle solid-fuel booster and an advanced Apollo-era hydrogen-fueled upper stage. The Ares 1 would be used to boost new Orion crew capsules into orbit. A much more powerful, unmanned rocket called the Ares 5 would be developed later to launch lunar landers and to propel landers and Orion capsules on to the moon. The Ares 1 will not be operational before late 2014 or early 2015. Between the retirement of the shuttle in 2010 and the debut of Ares 1/Orion, NASA astronauts will be forced to hitch rides to and from the space station aboard Russian Soyuz rockets. Obama said during the presidential campaign that he hoped to narrow the five-year gap, but it's not clear how the new budget addresses that issue. "That's a situation we put ourselves in by a decade or more of decision making," Logsdon said. "And there's really not a band-aid that can fix it." Critics have attacked the Constellation architecture on a variety of fronts, arguing other designs offer more flexibility, comparable safety and lower costs. The OMB's 2010 budget overview does not mention Ares rockets by name or indicate whether the new administration supports the current architecture beyond endorsing a return to the moon. While few details were included in the overview released today, the new budget reflects President Obama's campaign promise to look into adding one additional shuttle flight in 2010, presumably to carry a sophisticated physics experiment called the the Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer to the space station. "NASA will fly the space shuttle to complete the international space station and then retire the shuttle in 2010; an additional flight may be conducted if it can safely and affordably be flown by the end of 2010," the overview stated. "Funds freed from the shuttle's retirement will enable the agency to support development of systems to deliver people and cargo to the international space station and the moon." As for the space station, "NASA will continue to assemble and utilize the international space station, the permanently crewed facility orbiting Earth that enables the agency to develop, test, and validate critical space exploration technologies and processes. NASA also will continue to coordinate with international partners to make this platform available for other government entities, commercial industry, and academic institutions to conduct research." Said Logsdon, "President Obama has delivered, between the stimulus package and this proposed increase in the budget, on his promise to up the NASA budget by $2 billion. It's a little disappointing that the out years don't show any additional increase above inflation. But this is a pretty substantial budget." 5:40 AM, 2/24/09, Update: NASA's Orbiting Carbon Observatory fails (UPDATED at 9:15 a.m. with news conference) NASA's $273 million Orbiting Carbon Observatory satellite crashed into the ocean near Antarctica shortly after launch today from Vandenberg Air Force Base, Calif., atop an Orbital Sciences Corp. Taurus XL booster. Telemetry indicated a protective nose cone fairing failed to separate early in the climb to space, weighing the rocket down and preventing the spacecraft from reaching orbit. "It's a huge disappointment to the entire team that's worked very hard over years and years and really did their best to see it through," said NASA launch manager Chuck Dovale. "The reason not everyone is able to do this is, it's hard. And even when you do the best you can, you can still fail. It's a tough business." Said John Brunschwyler, manager of the Taurus rocket program for Orbital Sciences: "Our whole team, at a very personal level, are disappointed in the events of this morning. It's very hard and, as I said, at a very personal level, (we're) upset with the results." The 986-pound satellite's four-stage solid-fuel Taurus XL rocket blasted off at 4:55:30 a.m. EST and roared away from its Vandenberg launch pad about five minutes behind schedule because of a minor technical glitch. The ascent appeared normal and telemetry indicated all systems were working as planned through the first stage burn, stage separation and second stage ignition. Seven seconds after the second stage fired up, the satellite's protective clamshell nose cone was commanded to separate. The 63-inch-wide carbon composite fairing is designed to separate in two pieces and fall away using small pyrotechnic devices that are activated by a series of electrical pulses. "We have confirmation that the correct sequence was sent by the software," said Brunschwyler. "We had good power going into this event and we also had a healthy indications of our electronics box that sent the signal. Once that time had passed, which was about three minutes into the flight, we observed various pieces of telemetry that, of course, we then try to correlate because at first, being humans, we don't necessarily believe one piece of data." While engineers were studying telemetry, the Taurus XL's third and fourth stage motors ignited as planned. But it soon became clear the fairing was still in place and that its weight was preventing the rocket from accelerating normally. "The fairing has considerable weight relative to the portion of the vehicle that's flying," Brunschwyler said. "So when it separates off, you get a jump in acceleration. We did not have that jump in acceleration. As a direct result of carrying that extra weight, we could not make orbit. The initial indications are the vehicle did not have enough delta V (velocity) to reach obit and landed just short of Antarctica in the ocean." The Orbiting Carbon Observatory was designed to study natural and man-made carbon dioxide emission and absorption to help scientists assess how the greenhouse gas might be contributing to global warming. "OCO was an important mission to measure critical elements of the carbon cycle," said Michael Freilich, director of NASA's Earth sciences division at agency headquarters. "Over the next several days, weeks and months, we're going to carefully evaluate how to move forward and advance that science given our evaluation of the assets that are on orbit now, the assets of our international partners and the existence of flight spares in order to thoughtfully put together a program, as rapidly as possible, to pick up where OCO left off." But Freilich said it was too soon to say whether a follow-on mission might be approved or how long that process might take. In the near term, NASA plans to name an investigation board to determine what went wrong with today's launching and what might be needed to ensure no similar problems happen on future flights. A Taurus is scheduled to launch another NASA environmental research satellite - Glory - later this year. Officials said today it's too early to say how the mishap might affect those plans. This was the eighth launch of a Taurus XL rocket and the second mission failure. It was NASA's first mission using the solid-fuel rocket after a certification process intended to ensure safety and reliability. A sticker on the ill-fated nose cone called attention to that certification, signifying what Brunschwyler described before launch as a process "to ensure it's the lowest risk possible for these valuable payloads." 4:30 PM, 2/18/09, Update: NASA plans to pursue flagship-class dual-orbiter Jupiter mission with European Space Agency NASA and the European Space Agency hope to launch two flagship-class orbiters to Jupiter in the 2020 timeframe to study the giant planet in unprecedented detail before slipping into orbits around the icy moons Ganymede and Europa for close-up inspections. Both moons may harbor vast oceans under their frozen crusts that make them high-priority targets for extended exploration. Representatives of both space agencies agreed last week to focus on Jupiter in the near term but to continue studies of a proposed mission to Saturn to study the ringed planet's cloudy moon Titan with a NASA orbiter, a European lander and a research balloon. "We have determined a prioritization," said Jim Green, director of the planetary science division at NASA headquarters in Washington, told reporters today. "We believe that the Europa Jupiter System Mission is more technically ready than the Titan Saturn System Mission and therefore will be our next outer planet flagship effort." NASA's proposed 11,000-pound Europa-Jupiter orbiter would launch aboard an unmanned Atlas 5 rocket in 2020 and reach Jupiter after a six-year voyage. With an expected price tag of $2.5 billion to $3 billion, the spacecraft first would orbit Jupiter for three years or so before maneuvering into orbit around Europa. The European Space Agency's Ganymede orbiter would cost in the neighborhood of $1 billion, Green said. The two spacecraft would be launched independently, but arrive at roughly the same time. A coordinated suite of instruments and investigations would be designed to produce complementary data. Six previous U.S.-led missions flew past Jupiter and its moons - Pioneers 10 and 11, Voyagers 1 and 2, the Ulysses solar probe and the Saturn-bound Cassini - but only one, NASA's Galileo spacecraft, went into orbit around the huge planet, arriving in 1995 and plunging into its atmosphere in 2003. During 12 flybys of Europa, Galileo sent back pictures showing cracked and jumbled ice rafts in a frozen surface nearly devoid of craters. By precisely measuring the moon's gravitational pull on Galileo, scientists came to believe a vast ocean of liquid water is likely hidden beneath the icy crust. "Europa is just a tremendously exciting water world," Green said. "It has an underground ocean with probably more water in it than the Earth does. Everything that we know about Europa has really come from 12 flybys of Galileo." The Galileo mission is considered an extraordinary success, even though its main antenna never unfolded properly and the spacecraft was only able to beam back a fraction of the data scientists originally expected. The new Europa Jupiter spacecraft would build on those results and resolve a host of unanswered questions. "The Europa orbiter will do a lot more than Galileo did for us," said Curt Niebur, program scientist at NASA headquarters. "It will be a much more capable spacecraft with more advanced instruments and a larger instrument suite as well. But most importantly, it will be able to transmit a tremendous amount of data back to Earth, something which Galileo could not do because of its antenna problem. Because of that, we expect that this mission will increase our knowledge of Jupiter and Europa well beyond what Galileo did for us." The proposed orbiter "will be able to monitor Jupiter for multiple years and provide movies of the cloud dynamics and the formation mechanisms of the Great Red Spot, the white ovals and how they interact, something that Galileo was able to do only in a very limited fashion. We'll be able to keep up that monitoring on a daily basis for up to three-and-a-half years." "Orbiting Europa, we'll be able to get a global map of the surface," Niebur said. "In fact, we'll create four global maps in various colors. One of those maps will be stereo, we'll get complete topography of Europa's surface, the entire surface, something Galileo did not do. We will get compositional information on the surface so we understand what it's made of. And we'll also probe the interior of Europa. There will be a ground-penetrating radar on board that we will use to determine the ice shelf thickness and structure and we also hope to probe deeply enough to detect the ocean directly." The Europa orbiter will use three independent techniques to study the presumed ocean, including gravity measurements. "We all firmly believe there's an ocean under the ice at Europa," Niebur said. "This mission is going to verify that using three different lines of inquiry, three independent lines of inquiry, so that we can very well understand the nature of it." Green said measurements of surface composition will help scientists understand how the hidden ocean affects the surface. "It's clear that the surface of Europa is relatively new," he said, "it's not cratered, it's been resurfaced, probably much like (Saturn's moon) Enceladus where there's been major (geyser-like) plume activity and resurfacing going on. We expect that ocean to have communicated in some manner with the surface." Asked why a lander wasn't considered for the proposed mission, Niebur said scientists simply don't know enough about the moon's surface. "Before you're able to land on a body, you need to first understand the surface and we don't have sufficient data on what the surface of Europa is like in terms of boulders, crevices, things like that, to be able to safely design a lander that would survive landing," he said. "So the Europa orbiter mission will map the surface just as we've mapped Mars and then we will better characterize the surface so we can land at some future date." 6:10 PM, 2/15/09, Update: Fireball reported over Texas; FAA warned of possible satellite debris Saturday The Federal Aviation Administration issued a warning to pilots and aircrews Saturday advising them to be on the lookout for possible "re-entry of satellite debris," presumably from an unprecedented satellite collision in space last week. Today, there were reports in Texas of at least one fireball and sounds of an explosion - possibly a sonic boom - but an FAA spokesman said it was not yet known whether the sightings involved satellite debris and if so, whether it came from either destroyed spacecraft. "Late this morning, people started reporting to law enforcement there was a quote-unquote fireball and some people reported an explosion, which we suspect was probably a sonic boom," said Roland Herwig, a spokesman for the FAA's Southwest Region. "We had put out, the FAA had put out a notice to airmen, called a NOTAM, yesterday morning for pilots, for air crews to be on the lookout for space debris re-entering and and if they see anything to let the FAA know the location, the direction of travel, anything else they could about that. The notice to airmen says we suspect, we don't know, that this debris is from the two satellites that collided last week." The actual NOTAM, however, does not mention the space collision Wednesday between a commercial Iridium telephone satellite and a defunct Russian communications station known as Cosmos 2251. In any case, Herwig told reporters today there was no immediate "evidence of damage, no evidence of injuries, no evidence of anyone yet finding a chunk of satellite." "We told the sheriff's departments, police departments, that people should be cautious around any debris that they do find," he said in a 5:30 p.m. EST teleconference. "But we have not gotten feedback on any debris. Nor have any aircrews reported anything." He said until someone recovers actual debris, it may be impossible to tell whether the sightings involved wreckage from the Iridium-Cosmos crash, some other satellite or debris from a meteor. He said the Limestone County sheriff's office reported contact from someone who claimed to have a picture of the fireball and a smoke trail and a Plano, Texas, police cruiser may have capture images from a dashboard camera. The collision between the Iridium-33 satellite and Cosmos 2251 occurred over northern Siberia at an altitude of about 490 miles around noon Wednesday. It was the first such collision in space history. An analysis of the orbits by Analytical Graphics Inc. concluded the spacecraft crashed into each other at some 15,000 mph, creating two large clouds of debris that continued along each spacecraft's orbital track. The Cosmos ground track did not appear to cross the United States earlier today, but the Iridium's orbit did, according to widely available satellite tracking software. Whether any debris from the relatively small satellite could have re-entered from the initially high altitude and caused the sort of fireball reported in Texas was not known. Here is the NOTAM that was posted Saturday by the FAA: "FDC 9/5902 FDC .. SPECIAL NOTICE .. EFFECTIVE IMMEDIATELY UNTIL FURTHER NOTICE. AIRCRAFT ARE ADVISED THAT A POTENTIAL HAZARD MAY OCCUR DUE TO REENTRY OF SATELLITE DEBRIS INTO THE EARTHS ATMOSPHERE. FURTHER NOTAMS WILL BE ISSUED IF MORE INFORMATION BECOMES AVAILABLE. IN THE INTEREST OF FLIGHT SAFETY, IT IS CRITICAL THAT ALL PILOTS/FLIGHT CREW MEMBERS REPORT ANY OBSERVED FALLING SPACE DEBRIS TO THE APPROPRIATE ATC FACILITY TO INCLUDE POSITION, ALTITUDE, TIME, AND DIRECTION OF DEBRIS OBSERVED." Herwig said he did not know what prompted the NOTAM or whether it originated with U.S. Strategic Command, which tracks satellites and space debris, or some other organization. "It's usually something that's passed on to us by law enforcement or some other agency to create a notice," he said. "The notice is open ended, it says 'effective immediately until further notice, a potential hazard may occur due to re-entry of satellite debris.'" 03:30 PM, 2/11/09, Update: Satellite collision assessed (UPATED at 5 p.m. with Iridium statement; UPDATED at 5:30 p.m. with Stratcom interview) In an unprecedented space collision, a commercial Iridium communications satellite and a defunct Russian satellite ran into each other Tuesday above northern Siberia, creating a cloud of wreckage, officials said today. The international space station does not appear to be threatened by the debris, they said, but it's not yet clear whether it poses a risk to any other military or civilian satellites. "They collided at an altitude of 790 kilometers (491 miles) over northern Siberia Tuesday about noon Washington time," said Nicholas Johnson, NASA's chief scientist for orbital debris at the Johnson Space Center in Houston. "The U.S. space surveillance network detected a large number of debris from both objects." Air Force Brig. Gen. Michael Carey, deputy director of global operations with U.S. Strategic Command, the agency responsible for space surveillance, said initial radar tracking detected some 600 pieces of debris. He identified the Russian spacecraft as Cosmos 2251, a communications relay station launched in June 1993, and said the satellite is believed to have been non-operational for the past 10 years or so. "As of about 12 hours ago, I think the head count was up (to around) 600 pieces," Carey told CBS News late today. "It's going to take about two days before we get a solid picture of what the debris fields look like. But you, I think, can imply that the majority of that should be probably along the same line as the original orbits." He said U.S. STRATCOM routinely tracks about 18,000 objects in space, including satellites and debris, that are 3.9 inches across or larger. Tracking priority and "conjunction analysis" - identifying which objects may pose a threat to manned spacecraft - is the first priority. "It's going to take a while" to get an accurate count of the debris fragments, Johnson said. "It's very, very difficult to discriminate all those objects when they're really close together. And so, over the next couple of days, we'll have a much better understanding." Asked which satellite was at fault, Johnson said "they ran into each other. Nothing has the right of way up there. We don't have an air traffic controller in space. There is no universal way of knowing what's coming in your direction." Iridium Satellite LLC operates a constellation of some 66 satellites, along with orbital spares, to support satellite telephone operations around the world. The spacecraft, which weigh about 1,485 pounds when fully fueled, are in orbits tilted 86.4 degrees to the equator at an altitude of about 485 miles. Ninety-five Iridium satellites were launched between 1997 and 2002 and several have failed over the years. "Yesterday, Iridium Satellite LLC lost anÊ operational satellite," the company said in a statement. "According to information shared with the company by various U.S. government organizations that monitor satellites and other space objects (such as debris), it appears that the satellite loss is the result of a collision with a non-operational Russian satellite. "Although this event has minimal impact on IridiumÕs service, the company is taking immediate action to address the loss. The Iridium constellation is healthy, and this event is not the result of a failure on the part of Iridium or its technology. While this is an extremely unusual, very low-probability event, the Iridium constellation is uniquely designed to withstand such an event, and the company is taking the necessary steps to replace the lost satellite with one of its in-orbit spare satellites." Johnson said the collision was unprecedented. "Nothing to this extent (has happened before)," he said. "We've had three other accidental collisions between what we call catalog objects, but they were all much smaller than this and always a moderate sized objects and a very small object. And these are two relatively big objects. So this is a first, unfortunately." As for the threat posed by the debris, Johnson said NASA carried out an immediate analysis to determine whether the space station faced any increased risk. The station, carrying three crew members, circles the globe at an altitude of about 220 miles in an orbit tilted 51.6 degrees to the equator. "There are two issues: the immediate threat and a longer-term threat," he said. "It turns out, when you have a collision like this the debris is thrown very energetically both to higher orbits and to lower orbits. So there are actually debris from this event which we believe are going through the space station's altitude already. Most of it is not, most of it is still clustered up where the event took place. But a small number are going through station's altitude. "Yesterday, we did an assessment of what the risk might be to station and we found it's going to be very, very small. As time goes on, those debris will (come down) some over months, most over years and decades and as the big ones come down they'll be tracked, we'll see them and the worst-case scenario, we'll just dodge them if we have to. It's the small things you can't see are the ones that can do you harm." Asked if other satellites might be at risk, Johnson said "technically, yes. What we're doing now is trying to quantify that risk. That's a work in progress. It's only been 24 hours. We put first things first, which is station and preparing for the next shuttle mission." Most, if not all, of the debris is expected to eventually burn up in Earth's atmosphere. 9:40 PM, 1/13/09, Update: Space.com reports Gration to replace Griffin as NASA administrator Space.com reports that President-elect Barack Obama plans to name retired Air Force Maj. Gen. Scott Gration, a decorated fighter pilot, as the next administrator of NASA, replacing Mike Griffin at the helm of the U.S. space agency. The web site reports an announcement "is expected as soon as Wednesday." Speculation about who might replace Griffin has dominated space news in recent weeks, with former shuttle commander Charles Bolden and Charles Kennel, chairman of the National Academy of Science's Space Studies Board, mentioned as possible candidates. Gration is a virtual unknown in the space community, but not to Obama. According to Newsweek magazine, Gration accompanied Obama on a tour of Africa and stumped for the presidential candidate during the campaign. His Air Force biography states he retired from active duty on Oct. 1, 2006. As Director of Strategy, Plans and Policy with U.S. European Command, Stuttgart-Vaihingen, Germany, Gration was "responsible for formulation and staff direction of the execution of basic military and political policy, as well as planning for command activities involving relations with other U.S. Unified Commands, allied military and international military organizations and subordinate commands." He also served as director of Capabilities and Assessments and was "responsible for the development of force structure requirements; conducting studies, analyses and assessments; and for evaluating military forces, plans, programs and strategies," the Air Force web bio said. "The general was raised in Africa and entered the Air Force in 1974 through the Air Force ROTC program at Rutgers University. He has previously served as a White House Fellow, operations group commander and two-time wing commander. Prior to assuming his current position, the general served as Assistant Deputy Undersecretary of the Air Force for International Affairs, Office of the Under Secretary of the Air Force, Headquarters U.S. Air Force. "General Gration is a command pilot with more than 5,000 flight hours, including more than 2,000 hours as an instructor pilot. He has extensive combat experience in the Middle East and served as the Commander of Task Force West during Operation Iraqi Freedom. General Gration's aerial combat experience includes 274 combat missions over Iraq, with 983 hours of combat time." A NASA spokesman reached late Tuesday said he did not know whether Gration was, in fact, a candidate to replace Griffin. 11:57 AM, 1/9/09, Update: Griffin awaits word from Obama administration NASA Administrator Mike Griffin, answering questions from Johnson Space Center workers during an all-hands meeting today, said he has not yet heard from the incoming Obama administration about whether - or when - he will be replaced as the agency's leader. But he made it clear he does not expect to be asked to stay on and barring words to the contrary from the new administration, Griffin will be out of a job Jan. 20. "I think we all are aware we have a political transition almost upon us, and the odds are in a couple of weeks I won't be in this position," Griffin told a packed auditorium. "We don't know yet, and I certainly don't want to make presumptions about what the president elect will do. But those are the realities." Asked what insights he could share from encounters with Obama's transition team, Griffin said there was not much to tell. "If I knew, it would probably be inappropriate for me to share, but I can't because I don't know," he said. "I had a couple of very brief sessions with the NASA transition team and that was it. There just wasn't any discussion of goals and priorities. So I really, honestly don't know any more than you know." 01:25 PM, 12/30/08, Update: NASA unveils post-Columbia crew survival study (UPDATED at 5:30 p.m. with quotes from teleconference) NASA released a detailed engineering study Tuesday outlining lessons learned about astronaut survival based on an analysis of the 2003 Columbia disaster. The study does not provide any significant new details about the fate of Columbia's crew - investigators earlier concluded the seven astronauts died of sudden oxygen loss and blunt force trauma as the crew module broke up - but a new timeline provides a wealth of data showing the pilots attempted to troubleshoot a cascade of problems in the final moments before the spacecraft's computers lost control. The timeline also shows, in grim detail, the forces acting on the shuttle's crew module in the final seconds before it broke apart, subjecting the astronauts to a sudden loss of air pressure that occurred so rapidly they did not have time to close their helmet visors. The study, the most detailed astronaut survival analysis ever conducted, includes 30 recommendations for improving crew safety on future flights based on a review of the safety equipment and procedures used during Columbia's mission. "I call on spacecraft designers from all the other nations of the world, as well as the commercial and personal spacecraft designers here at home to read this report and apply these hard lessons, which have been paid for so dearly," said former shuttle Program Manager Wayne Hale, now serving as a NASA associate administrator. "This report confirms that although the valiant Columbia crew tried every possible way to maintain control of their vehicle, the accident was not ultimately survivable." As part of its support for the Columbia Accident Investigation Board, NASA set up a Crew Survival Working Group in the wake of the Feb. 1, 2003, disaster that later evolved into the Spacecraft Crew Survival Integrated Investigation Team. The crew survival team began its study in October 2004 with the goals of expanding the earlier working group analysis and making recommendations to improve safety on future vehicles. The Columbia breakup was not survivable, but the new report sheds light on how various shuttle safety systems performed and what sort of changes may be needed to improve safety in future spacecraft like the Orion capsules that will replace the shuttle after the fleet is retired in 2010. The report was completed earlier this month, but its release was delayed "out of respect for the Columbia crew families," said veteran shuttle commander Pam Melroy, deputy project manager of the investigation. "At their request, we released it after Christmas but while the children were still out of school and home with their family members so they could discuss the findings and the elements of the report with some privacy. That's what drove the timing of today." Columbia was destroyed by a breach in the leading edge of the shuttle's left wing that was caused by the impact of foam insulation from the ship's external tank during launch 16 days earlier. The wing melted from the inside out and eventually failed, either folding over or breaking away. The shuttle's flight computers then lost control and the crippled spacecraft went into a catastrophic spin. The nose section housing the crew module ripped away from the fuselage relatively intact, but the module broke apart within a few moments due to thermal stress and aerodynamic forces. The analysis of Columbia's breakup identified five "lethal events:" Depressurization: Shortly after Columbia's flight computers lost control due to the failure of the shuttle's heat-damaged left wing, the crew module broke away from the fuselage. The astronauts are believed to have survived the initial breakup. But within a few moments, the crew module lost pressure "so rapidly that the crew members were incapacitated within seconds, before they could configure the (pressure) suit for full protection from loss of cabin pressure," the new study concluded. "Although circulatory systems functioned for a brief time, the effects of the depressurization were severe enough that the crew could not have regained consciousness. This event was lethal to the crew." Recommendations: Improve crew training to increase emphasis on the transition between problem solving and survival operations; future spacecraft must integrate pressure suit operations into the design of the vehicle. Exposure of the unconscious or deceased astronauts to unexpected rotating forces without sufficient upper body restraints and helmets: When Columbia lost control, the resulting motion was not violent enough, in and of itself, to be lethal. The crew module separated from the fuselage "and continued to rotate," the study concluded. "After the crew lost consciousness due to the loss of cabin pressure, the seat inertial reel mechanisms on the crews' shoulder harnesses did not lock. As a result, the unconscious or deceased crew was exposed to cyclical rotational motion while restrained only at the lower body. Crew helmets do not conform to the head. Consequently, lethal trauma occurred to the unconscious or desceased crew due to the lack of upper body support and restraint." Recommendations: Re-evaluate crew procedures; future seats and suits should be "integrated to ensure proper restraint of the crew in off-nominal situations." Separation of the crew from the crew module and the seat: "The breakup of the crew module and the crew's subsequent exposure to hypersonic entry conditions was not survivable by any currently existing capability," the study says. ... "The lethal-type consequences of exposure to entry conditions included traumatic injury due to seat restraints, high loads associated with deceleration due to a change in ballistic number, aerodynamic loads, and thermal events. Crew circulatory functions ceased shortly before or during this event." Recommendation: Optimize future spacecraft design for "the most graceful degradaton of vehicle systems and structure to enhance chances for crew survival." Exposure to near vacuum, aerodynamic acceleration and low temperatures: Shuttle pressure suits are certified to a maximum altitude of 100,000 feet and a velocity of about 560 knots. "It is uncertain whether it can protect a crew member at higher altitudes and air speeds," the study says. Recommendation: Pressure suits should be evaluated to determine weak points; improvements should be made as warranted. Ground impact: The current parachute system requires manual action by the astronauts. Recommendation: "Future spacecraft crew survival systems should not rely on manual activation to protect the crew." The new study also made recommendations to improve future crew survival investigations. "The SCSIIT investigation was performed with the belief that a comprehensive, respectful investigation could provide knowledge that would improve the safety of future space flight crews and explorers," the group wrote. "By learning these lessons and ensuring that we continue the journey begun by the crews of Apollo 1, Challenger and Columbia, we help to give meaning to their sacrifice and the sacrifice of their families. it is for them, and for the future generations of explorers, that we strive to be better and go farther." The 400-page report is posted on line at: http://www.nasa.gov/reports One striking aspect of the initial 2003 accident board study was similarities between how the shuttle Challenger broke up during launch in 1986 and how Columbia met its fate during re-entry in 2003. In both cases, the reinforced crew modules broke away from the shuttle fuselage relatively intact. And in both cases, the astronauts are believed to have survived the initial breakup. In an appendix to the Columbia accident board report, investigators concluded "acceleration levels seen by the crew module prior to its catastrophic failure were not lethal. LOS (loss of signal) occurred at 8:59:32 (a.m. EST). The death of the crew members was due to blunt force trauma and hypoxia. The exact time of death - sometime after 9:00:19 a.m. Eastern Standard Time - cannot be determined because of the lack of direct physical or recorded evidence." "Failure of crew module was precipitated by thermal degradation of structural properties that resulted in a catastrophic sequential structural failure that happened very rapidly as opposed to a catastrophic instantaneous 'explosive' failure," the report said. "Crew module separation from the forward fuselage is not an anomalous condition in the case of a vehicle loss of control as has been the case in both 51-L (Challenger) and STS-107 (Columbia)." But the shuttle crew module, on its own, has no power and no systems were present that could have saved either crew after breakup occurred. Even so, "it is irrefutable, as conclusively demonstrated by items that were recovered in pristine condition whose locations were within close proximity to some crew members, that it was possible to attenuate the potentially hostile environment that was present during CM (crew module) break-up to the point where physically and thermally induced harmful effects were virtually eliminated," the CAIB concluded. "This physical evidence makes a compelling argument that crew survival under environmental circumstances seen in this mishap could be possible given the appropriate level of physiological and environmental protection." The CAIB went on to recommend that NASA "investigate techniques that will prevent the structural failure of the CM due to thermal degradation of structural properties to determine the feasibility for application. Future crewed vehicles should incorporate the knowledge gained from the (Challenger) and (Columbia) mishaps in assessing the feasibility of designing vehicles that will provide for crew survival even in the face of a mishap that results in the loss of the vehicle." Columbia blasted off on mission STS-107 on Jan. 16, 2003. On board were commander Rick Husband, pilot William "Willie" McCool, Michael Anderson, David Brown, Kalpana Chawla, Laurel Clark and Ilan Ramon, the first Israeli to fly in space. Some 81.7 seconds after liftoff, a briefcase-size chunk of foam insulation broke away from Columbia's external tank. Long-range tracking cameras showed the foam disappearing under the left wing and a cloud of debris emerging an instant later. No one knew it at the time, but the foam had hit the underside of the left wing's reinforced carbon carbon leading edge, punching a ragged hole four to six inches across. During re-entry 16 days later, superheated air entered the breach and melted the wing from the inside out. In the moments leading up the catastrophic failure, telemetry from the damaged shuttle indicated problems with the left wing, including loss of data from hydraulic line sensors and temperature probes and left main landing gear pressure readings. The astronauts - Husband, McCool, Chawla and Clark strapped in on the upper flight deck, Anderson, Brown and Ramon seated on the lower deck - presumably were unaware of anything unusual until just before the left wing either folded over or broke away and the vehicle's flight computers lost control. The final words from Columbia's crew came at 8:59:32 a.m. when Husband, presumably responding to a tire alarm acknowledgement from mission control, said "Roger, uh, buh..." At that point, the shuttle was nearly 38 miles above Central Texas and traveling at 18 times the speed of sound. No more voice transmissions were received. But telemetry, some of it garbled, continued to flow for a few more moments. That data, combined with stored telemetry on a data recorder that was found in the shuttle's wreckage and analysis of recovered debris, eventually allowed engineers to develop a rough timeline of events after the initial loss of signal. In the new study, data show the crew received multiple indications of problems in the minute prior to loss of control, which probably occurred right around the time of Husband's last transmission. Fifty-eight seconds before that event, the first of four tire pressure alert messages was displayed. Thirty-one seconds before loss of control, the left main landing gear indicator changed state. Seven seconds before LOC, a pulsing yaw thruster light came on as the jets began firing continuously to keep the shuttle properly oriented. Less than one second before LOC, aileron trim exceeded 3 degrees. "For the crew, the first strong indications of the LOC would be lighting and horizon changes seen through the windows and changes on the vehicle attitude displays," the report says. "Additionally, the forces experienced by the crew changed significantly and began to differ from the nominal, expected accelerations. The accelerations were translational (due to aerodynamic drag) and angular (due to rotation of the orbiter). The translational acceleration due to drag was dominant, and the direction was changing as the orbiter attitude changed relative to the velocity vector (along the direction of flight). "Results of a shuttle LOC simulation show that the motion of the orbiter in this timeframe is best described as a highly oscillatory slow (30 to 40 degrees per second) flat spin, with the orbiter's belly generally facing into the velocity vector. It is important to note that the velocity vector was still nearly parallel to the ground as the vehicle was moving along its trajectory in excess of Mach 15. The crew experienced a swaying motion to the left and right (Y-axis) combined with a pull forward (X-axis) away from the seatback. The Z-axis accelerations pushed the crew members down into their seats. These motions might induce nausea, dizziness, and disorientation in crew members, but they were not incapacitating. The total acceleration experienced by the crew increased from approximately 0.8 G at LOC to slightly more than 3 G by the CE (catastrophic event). "The onset of this highly oscillatory flat spin likely resulted in the need for crew members to brace as they attempted to diagnose and correct the orbiter systems. ... One middeck crew member had not completed seat ingress and strap-in at the beginning of this phase. Seat debris and medical analyses indicate that this crew member was not fully restrained before loss of consciousness. Only the shoulder and crotch straps appear to have been connected. The normal sequence for strap-in is to attach the lap belts to the crotch strap first, followed by the shoulder straps. Analysis of the seven recovered helmets indicated that this same crew member was the only one not wearing a helmet. Additionally, this crew member was tasked with post-deorbit burn duties. This suggests that this crew member was preparing to become seated and restrained when the LOC dynamics began. During a dynamic flight condition, the lap belts hanging down between the closely space seats would be difficult to grasp due to the motion of the orbiter, which may be why only the shoulder straps were connected." Recovered cockpit switch panels indicate McCool attempted to troubleshoot hydraulic system problems. Either Husband or McCool also returned the shuttle's autopilot to the automatic setting at 9:00:03 a.m. after one of the two hand controllers apparently was inadvertently bumped. "These actions indicate that the CDR or the PLT was still mentally and physically capable of processing display information and executing commands and that the orbiter dynamics were still within human performance limitations," the study concludes. "It was a very short time," Hale said. "We know it was very disorienting motion that was going on. There were a number of alarms that went off simultaneously. And the crews, of course, are trained to maintain or regain control in a number of different ways and we have evidence from (recovered debris that they) were trying very hard to regain control. We're talking about a very brief time, in a crisis situation, and I'd hate to go any further than that." Said Melroy: "I'd just like to add we found that those actions really showed the crew was relying on their training in problem solving and problem resolution and that they were focused on attempting to recover the vehicle when they did detect there was something off nominal. They showed remarkable systems knowledge and problem resolution techniques. Unfortunately, of course, there was no way for them to know with the information they had that that was going to be impossible. But we were impressed with the training, certainly, and the crew." From the point the crew cabin broke away from the fuselage to the point where depressurization occurred "can be narrowed to a range of 17 seconds, from between GMT 14:00:18 (9:00:18 a.m.) to GMT 14:00:35," the report states. "Crew module debris items recovered west of the main crew module debris field were 8 inches in diameter or smaller, were not comprised of crew module primary structure, and originated from areas above and below the middeck floor. This indicates that the crew module depressurization was due to multiple breaches (above and below the floor), and that these breaches were initially small. "When the forebody separated from the midbody, the crew members experienced three dramatic changes in their environment: 1. all power was lost, 2. the motion and acceleration environment changed; and 3. crew cabin depressurization began within 0 to 17 seconds. With the loss of power, all of the lights and displays went dark (although each astronaut already had individual chem-lights activated). The intercom system was no longer functional and the orbiter O2 system was no longer available for use, although individual, crew worn Emergency Oxygen System (EOS) bottles were still available. "As the forebody broke free from the rest of the orbiter, its ballistic number underwent a sharp change from an average ballistic number of 41.7 pounds per square foot (psf) (out of control intact orbiter) to 122 psf (free-flying forebody). The aerodynamic drag of the forebody instantaneously decreased, resulting in a reduction in the translational deceleration from approximately 3.5 G to about 1 G." As experienced by the astronauts, the change from a normal re-entry to loss of control and separation of the crew module from the fuselage "all occurred in approximately 40 seconds. Experience shows that this is not sufficient time to don gloves and helmets." "Histological (tissue) examination of all crew member remains showed the effects of depressurization. Neither the effects of CE nor the accelerations immediately post-CE would preclude the crew members who were wearing helmets from closing and locking their visors at the first indication of a cabin depressurization. This action can be accomplished in seconds. This strongly suggests that the depressurization rate was rapid enough to be nearly immediately incapacitating. The exact rate of cabin depressurization could not be determined, but based on video evidence complete loss of pressure was reached no later than (NLT) GMT 14:00:59 (9:00:59 a.m.), and was likely much earlier. The medical findings show that the crew could not have regained consciousness after this event. Additionally, respiration ceased after the depressurization, but circulatory functions could still have existed for a short period of time for at least some crew members." For background, here are the results of the original Crew Survival Working Group's assessment, as reported in "Comm Check: The Final Flight of Shuttle Columbia" by Michael Cabbage and William Harwood (Free Press, 2004; some of the conclusions may change based on the new study): The study concluded the shuttle's heavily reinforced crew module and nose section broke away from the fuselage relatively intact, separating at the bulkhead that marks the dividing line between the cargo bay and the forward fuselage. Challenger's crew module had also broken away in one piece when the shuttle disintegrated during launch 17 years earlier. As with Challenger, the forces acting on Columbia's crew during this period were not violent enough to cause injury, and investigators believe the astronauts probably survived the initial breakup of the orbiter. Presumably, the cabin maintained pressure. But there was no electrical power. The shuttle's fuel cells were located under the floor of the cargo bay, and even though it wouldn't have helped at this point, Husband had no way to contact Mission Control. The lights were out on the lower deck, and without power, the intercom system no longer worked. Like Challenger's crew, the Columbia astronauts met their fates alone and the details will never be known. Clark presumably was still videotaping on the flight deck when the alarms began blaring and the shuttle yawed out of control. But the outer portions of the tape Ð the portions that might have shown at least the initial moments of the shuttle's destruction Ð were burned away. To determine what happened after the module broke away from Columbia's fuselage, investigators analyzed recovered cabin wreckage and calculated the trajectories the debris items must have followed based on weight and other factors. A sophisticated computer program then used those data to run those trajectories back in time to the point where they intersected, the point where the cabin must have started breaking apart. Columbia Accident Investigation Board chart detailing critical events during shuttle breakup (CAIB Report Volume 1, page 77) On the basis of those data, investigators concluded the module fell intact for 38 seconds after main vehicle breakup, plunging 60,000 feet to an altitude of 26 miles before it began to disintegrate from the combined effects of aerodynamic stress and extreme temperatures. From the debris analysis, investigators believe the module was probably destroyed over a 24-second period beginning at 9:00:58 a.m. During that period, or window, the module fell another 35,000 feet, to an altitude of 19 miles or so. Investigators believe the module began breaking up at the beginning of that window. If any of the astronauts were still alive at that point, death would have been instantaneous, the result of blunt force trauma, including hypersonic wind blast, and lack of oxygen. Pathologists found no evidence of lethal injuries from heat. "The most western piece of crew equipment found was a helmet from the mid-deck," according to an appendix to the CAIB report. "The breakdown as to the location of the remaining crew equipment showed that the mid-deck crew equipment was the farthest west and the flight deck crew equipment was at the eastern end of the debris field. Therefore, it seems reasonable to conclude that the crew equipment on the mid-deck separated from the CM [crew module] before the flight deck equipment." About 45 percent of the crew module was recovered near Hemphill, Texas, including pieces of the forward and aft main bulkheads, the frames from the forward cockpit windows, the crew airlock, and all of the hatches. About three quarters of the flight deck instrument panels were found, along with 80 percent of the mid-deck floor panels and numerous parts from the crew's seats and attached safety equipment. Wreckage from the ship's galley was recovered, along with parts of the toilet, bailout equipment, tools, one of the crew's sleeping compartments and items that had been stored in middeck lockers. Remarkably, the wristwatch Dave Brown had carried aloft as a belated birthday present for Kennedy engineer Ann Micklos was found, its faceplate missing and its hands frozen at 9:06 a.m. Condition of the items varied from "highly melted, twisted and torn to near pristine," investigators concluded, noting that crew module debris "experienced noticeably less aerodynamic heating than other portions of the vehicle." From an analysis of pressure suit components and helmets, investigators concluded three astronauts had not yet donned their gloves when breakup began and one was not wearing his or her helmet. In the end, however, having sealed pressure suits would have made no difference. Additional details about the Challenger and Columbia accidents can be found on the CBS News space pages: http://www.cbsnews.com/network/news/space/SRH_Disasters.htm 5:30 PM, 12/23/08, Update: SpaceX, Orbital Sciences win key commercial launch contracts for space station resupply Orbital Sciences Corp. and Space Exploration Technologies - SpaceX - today won NASA contracts valued at up to $1.9 billion and $1.6 billion respectively for 20 unmanned space station cargo flights to deliver experiment hardware, crew supplies and replacement components after the space shuttle is retired. "This is a pretty monumental thing for us, this is a contract that we really need to keep space station flying and to service space station," Bill Gerstenmaier, NASA's chief of space operations, told reporters in an afternoon teleconference. "I think it's exciting we're doing this from the commercial side. We've got some good proposals and we've chosen the two winners." A NASA news release said the "fixed-price indefinite delivery, indefinite quantity contracts will begin Jan. 1, 2009, and are effective through Dec. 31, 2016. The contracts each call for the delivery of a minimum of 20 metric tons of up-mass cargo to the space station. The contracts also call for delivery of non-standard services in support of the cargo resupply, including analysis and special tasks as the government determines are necessary. "NASA has set production milestones and reviews on the contracts to monitor progress toward providing services," the release said. "The maximum potential value of each contract is about $3.1 billion. Based on known requirements, the value of both contracts combined is projected at $3.5 billion." In a statement, David Thompson, Orbital's chairman and chief executive officer, said: "We are very appreciative of the trust NASA has placed with us to provide commercial cargo transportation services to and from the international space station, beginning with our demonstration flight scheduled in late 2010. "The CRS (Commercial Resupply Services) program will serve as a showcase for the types of commercial services U.S. space companies can offer NASA." Said Elon Musk, CEO and CTO of SpaceX: "The SpaceX team is honored to have been selected by NASA as the winner of the Cargo Resupply Services contract. This is a tremendous responsibility, given the swiftly approaching retirement of the space shuttle and the significant future needs of the space station." Losing out in today's contract award was PlanetSpace, a partnership between Boeing, Lockheed Martin and Alliant Techsystems Inc., or ATK. PlanetSpace proposed building a new rocket called the Athena 3, made up of a scaled-down shuttle booster and solid-fuel upper stages. Orbital Sciences is developing a two-stage Taurus 2 booster equipped with Russian-built liquid-fueled first stage engines and a solid-fuel upper stage, along with a new cargo carrier called Cygnus. SpaceX proposed its Falcon 9 rocket and a new cargo carrier called Dragon. The Taurus and Falcon rockets are in various stages of development, thanks in part to earlier NASA funding under the Commercial Orbital Transportation Services program, or COTS, but have not flown any complete missions yet. "We're looking at potentially 12 flights from SpaceX valued at $1.6 billion," Gerstenmaier said. "And we're looking at eight flights from Orbital Space Corp. valued at about $1.9 billion. ... This includes return cargo, it includes both pressurized cargo that flies on the inside of the modules as well as cargo that's on the outside." "In terms of the specific equipment that'll be on the flights, we haven't defined that yet," he said. "We have a template to work with the providers as we get closer to the launch date to add in the right mix of cargo. But it'll be a variety of things, from science experiments to basic crew supplies to orbital replacement units that may have failed on board space station. It'll be a whole variety of cargo." He said NASA evaluated the proposals from SpaceX, Orbital Sciences and PlanetSpace "from a technical standpoint, how well they meet our needs, how well do the vehicles supply what we need, how likely is this vehicle to be ready to be certified, how technically ready is it, is their test program sound, are their schedules right, those kinds of things." "We also look at the management structures of the individual companies to see how they're put together, do they have the right management structure that can deliver to the schedule?" Gerstenmaier said. "And then we look at cost. We take those factors, evaluate those and these two contractors came out superior when I go look at those three factors combined." The contracts were awarded now, ahead of flight tests for the new rocket systems, because "this is cargo capability we really need starting in 2010 for space station." "If we waited until all these things were proven and known, the development lead time for these new vehicles was so long we couldn't get the cargo to space station that we needed," Gerstenmaier said. "So we didn't really have much choice but essentially to go into this procurement right now to have a chance of having the cargo available when we need it. So we needed to essentially take companies we thought had a good chance of making it, had good sound plans, good technical proposals, good management structures and ... enable them to go deliver cargo to station." NASA currently plans to retire the space shuttle in 2010, after finishing assembly of the international space station. The agency is developing a new Ares 1 rocket system using shuttle- and Apollo-derived systems, along with a large crew capsule called Orion. But the new manned launch system will not be available until 2014 or 2015 at the earliest and it will not be able to carry much in the way of cargo. To keep the space station operational, NASA is trying to secure alternative launch services on a commercial basis. 01:00 AM, 12/23/08, Update: Spacewalkers install probe, one of two experiment packages (UPDATED at 1:40 a.m. with end of spacwalk) Expedition 18 commander Mike Fincke and flight engineer Yury Lonchakov, carrying out a five-hour 38-minute spacewalk, successfully installed an electrical probe on the Russian Pirs airlock module, retrieved a space exposure experiment and mounted instrumentation on the Zvezda command module that will monitor disturbances in the ionosphere. But the spacewalkers ran into problems getting a second experiment package, designed to expose biological samples to the space environment, properly plugged into the station's power and data system. After extensive troubleshooting, Russian flight controllers ordered Fincke and Lonchakov to disconnect the EXPOSE-R experiment and return it to the airlock, foregoing a few minor maintenance chores. "It's a pity we had to bring EXPOSE-R back in," someone said. "Well, there's nothing we can do now." The hatch to the Pirs module was closed at 1:29 a.m., officially ending a tedious five-hour 38-minute spacewalk. This was the 119th spacewalk devoted to station assembly and maintenance since construction began in 1998, the 19th this year, the fifth for Fincke and the first for Lonchakov. Station EVA time now stands at 751 hours and seven minutes. "It's a pity we did not manage to complete the timeline in full," one of the spacewalkers lamented. "The problem was with those connectors. I don't believe we made any mistakes because we did it, both of us tried demating and remating those connectors. We double checked and triple checked everything. "Yes, we understand," a flight controller replied. 7:55 PM, 12/22/08, Update: Spacewalk begins Running about 40 minutes behind schedule, space station commander Mike Fincke and flight engineer Yury Lonchakov opened the outer hatch of the Pirs airlock module tonight at 7:51 p.m., officially kicking off a planned six-hour 10-minute spacewalk devoted to external experiment servicing and minor maintenance. The spacewalkers also plan to install an electrical probe on the hull of the Pirs compartment to help characterize the charged plasma environment around the Russian part of the lab as part of an investigation into what caused explosive bolts to fail on two recent Soyuz spacecraft after they left the station. Engineers suspect arcing caused by the lab's interaction with the space environment caused a specific bolt to malfunction, triggering Soyuz module separation problems during re-entry that led to steep, off-course descents. After the Langmuir probe is installed near the Pirs hatch, Fincke and Lonchakov will install two experiment packages, one devoted to studying disturbances in the ionosphere and the other to exposing biological samples to the space environment for a full year. They also plan to retrieve an experiment package, cut away some errant straps near the Pirs docking port and carry out a few other minor maintenance chores. If time is available, they will take photographs of a rendezvous antenna on a recently docked Progress supply ship that failed to operate properly during final approach. This is the fifth spacewalk for station-veteran Fincke, the first for Lonchakov and the 19th and final space station excursion planned for 2008. Overall, it is the 119th EVA devoted to station assembly and maintenance since construction began in 1998. 10:45 AM, 12/22/08, Update: Station astronauts gear up for spacewalk Space station commander Mike Fincke and flight engineer Yury Lonchakov plan to carry out a six-hour 10-minute spacewalk Monday night to install an instrument to measure the electrical environment around the station; to install and remove space exposure experiments; and to conduct minor maintenance on the Russian segment of the lab complex. Flight engineer Sandy Magnus will monitor the excursion from inside the space station. Floating in the Russian Pirs airlock module, Fincke and Lonchakov plan to begin the spacewalk around 7:10 p.m. EST. This will be the 119th spacewalk devoted to station assembly and maintenance since construction began in 1998, the 19th this year, the fifth for Fincke and the first for Lonchakov. For identification, Lonchakov will be wearing a Russian suit with blue stripes and go by the radio call sign EV-1. Fincke's suit will have red markings and he will use the call sign EV-2. After exiting the airlock, the spacewalkers will install a Langmuir probe on the compartment's hull, just to one side of the airlock hatch. The probe will measure electron density, temperature and the plasma potential around the station, part of an ongoing investigation to pin down what might have caused explosive bolts to malfunction during two recent Soyuz re-entries. Fincke and Lonchakov then will mount two experiments on the Zvezda command module's hull. One, called EXPOSE-R, is a joint Russian-European Space Agency experiment to expose a variety of biological samples to the space environment for a full year. Among the samples are seeds, bacteria spores and fungi. The other experiment, called IMPULSE, will investigate ionospheric disturbances in the electrically charged plasma environment around the station. The spacewalkers then will re-orient a space exposure "witness plate" that apparently was bumped out of its normal orientation earlier. They also plan to remove a Biorisk experiment canister, cut away some loose straps near the Pirs docking port and secure an insulation flap. If time is available, the spacewalkers will carry out photo documentation of the station's Russian segment, paying special attention to a navigation antenna on a docked Progress supply ship that failed to operate normally. The Langmuir probe is part of an ongoing Russian investigation into what caused an explosive bolt on two recent Soyuz spacecraft to malfunction during re-entry, delaying separation of the modules making up the spacecraft and resulting in steep, off-course descents. "Our Russian colleagues have spent an enormous amount of time, a very structured effort, to create a fault tree and then work off the fault tree to come to a most probable cause," Mike Suffredini, NASA space station program manager, told reporters in late September. "They have concluded the most probable cause to be related to the (electrically charged) plasma environment and the (difference in) potential between the plasma environment, the environment around space station, and the space station itself. "The way the space station is wired together, there actually is a voltage, a delta voltage potential, between the environment around the ISS and the ISS itself and what happens over time is occasionally that potential tries to equalize. And when it tries to equalize, you get what essentially is a spark to the ISS. This is an environment we've been living in since we starting flying ISS, it's why (NASA has) what we refer to as the plasma contactor units that we operate during (spacewalks) to prevent that from occurring during EVAs." The plasma contactor units use xenon gas to equalize electrical potential around the station. The xenon supply is limited and the PCUs are only operated during spacewalks to prevent any chance of arcing while astronauts are working outside. Testing showed no obvious threat to the station's systems when the PCUs were turned off. "What our Russian colleagues have determined is because of the very specific configuration of the pyros ... on the Soyuz, where it's failed to separate each time, they've determined that there's been some arcing, if you will, or equalizing of voltage in this area," Suffredini said. "And this over time has caused the pyros to be ineffective." The culprit apparently involves insulation on the Soyuz near the pyro in question that includes an ungrounded aluminized layer. The huge U.S. solar arrays that provide most of the station's power affect the electrically charge plasma around the lab. The recent Soyuz problems occurred after a major change in the configuration of the arrays. Another major change is expected in February, when a fourth and final set of arrays is added to the starboard side of the station's main power truss. While some NASA engineers are not convinced the evidence supporting the arcing theory is conclusive, "it's a plausible scenario," Suffredini said. "The space station's this big, old, huge chunk of metal flying through a magnetic field," deputy program manager Kirk Shireman said last week. "So measuring the potential at one point doesn't necessary tell you what the potential is at another point. We can do that by calculations, but it's also good to get a measurement closer to where the environment is where these bolts were living. That's why the Russian community wanted to have this probe in place." The Langmuir probe will be mounted on the Pirs module, just above a Soyuz docking port. "There's an electron cloud, if you will, flowing around the station at all times," Shireman said. "And then the station itself generates electricity. The way the U.S. solar arrays are grounded, we actually put a charge on board the space station structure. In fact, we go to great pains to make sure that every piece of structure we've added to the ISS is grounded with very low resistance so the current can flow freely back and forth through not only the truss, but also through the pressurized modules. "It's a phenomenon we've known about for decades," Shireman said. "On sunrise, there's a big rise in potential. And the potential I'm talking about is between the metal structure of the ISS and the surrounding electron cloud, if you will. And that changes over the orbit period. ... In darkness, it tends to be near zero. It tends to be highest right at sunrise, it comes down and then levels off to a standard level during most of the (daylight pass) and then goes to zero in the darkness. It also turns out that when you have a big metal bar and you run it through a magnetic field you get a current along that bar. So it's really the sum of those two effects that we have." The potential is different along the station's solar power truss, which extends at right angles to either side of the lab's pressurized modules. Engineers initially predicted a peak voltage of around 140 volts. With the current electron density and plasma temperature in low-Earth orbit, Shireman said the actual potential is less than 40 volts. When the plasma contactors are turned on for spacewalks, it drops to less than 5 volts. "We've designed the station so every metal part on the ISS would have the same potential with respect to the surrounding plasma," Shireman said. "But because we're this huge metal structure and we go through the magnetic field, the potential relative to the surrounding plasma is different along the truss. Along the pressurized section, it tends to be about the same." Russian engineers are evaluating an explosive bolt that was removed from a Soyuz during a spacewalk in July and returned to Earth. Data from the Langmuir probe will be assessed and folded into the investigation. 01:30 PM, 12/21/08, Update: Awaiting guidance from Obama, NASA prepares for Ares 1-X test flight As the incoming Obama administration considers whether to accelerate development of the Ares 1 rocket that will replace the space shuttle - or possibly change course and switch to a different system or even extend shuttle operations - NASA is pressing ahead with plans to launch a critical sub-orbital test flight next year to show off the new rocket and collect valuable engineering data. The goals of the unmanned Ares 1-X mission are to help engineers resolve questions about launch vibration, roll control, aerodynamic forces and thermal effects, as well as test stage separation systems and recovery of the spent first stage using new 150-foot-wide parachutes. The flight also will serve as a pathfinder for Kennedy Space Center engineers and technicians modifying facilities and developing new processing procedures after nearly four decades of shuttle operations. Equally important, perhaps, the test flight will give American taxpayers their first real glimpse of the new Constellation program and the towering, slender rocket intended to replace the space shuttle after it is retired in 2010. "One test is worth a thousand expert opinions," said Jon Cowart, a ground systems manager at the Kennedy Space Center. "It's brand new, it's a long, thin rocket. We want to make sure we can guide this thing. Balance a broomstick on the end of your finger, you'll get some idea of what we're dealing with here." Because the unmanned test rocket features a dummy upper stage and a less-powerful version of the shuttle-heritage solid-fuel first stage intended for the eventual manned rocket, some space insiders say the $330 million test flight is little more than an expensive show. But don't try telling that to the managers, engineers and technicians busy building the rocket and modifying the Kennedy Space Center's launch processing infrastructure to support it. "It's showing ... the next rocket's coming, we're real serious about putting something together and being able to get back to the moon and to Mars," said Carol Scott, deputy mission manager for the Ares 1-X project at Kennedy. "While everybody says 'this is a show,' it is not a show. "We have gone through PDRs, preliminary design reviews, for a new vehicle. We are telling the long-term vehicle, hey, here are the lessons we've learned, this is the stuff you've got to have solved. What all the other folks don't realize is, this rocket here, the first test objective is flying the rocket, you know, are we going to be able to control it? "The other one is validating those models, making sure we actually fly what we predicted we can fly," Scott said. "Ares needs to know when they put their models together and they make their predictions that this rocket is going to fly the way they want it to fly. That gives you huge confidence when you're putting this rocket together. So it's a big deal to get that piece of data." Jeff Hanley, Constellation program manager at the Johnson Space Center in Houston, said critics "grousing about (the test flight) are misinformed." "I would remind folks about how many flight tests did Apollo do, and all the launches that preceded the first crewed Mercury, Gemini and Apollo flights," Hanley said in an interview. "There was a considerable amount of unmanned testing. And the very first Apollo didn't look anything like the Saturn 5. "In this case, we're trying to fly something that is dynamically similar. We have the power of the computer today to do a lot of the testing and simulation under various conditions that the Apollo team didn't have. And so, that's to our benefit, that means we don't have to have as robust a flight test program, we can actually do some of that, at least, in the computer. But we need to anchor it in reality and that's what 1-X is all about." The ground-shaking test flight, currently scheduled for launch in mid July, will only last a few minutes. But engineers are counting on it to generate the data they need to make sure they understand the flight environment and the forces that will be acting on the real rocket before the design is locked down in a critical design review scheduled for early 2010. "It's a flight whose purpose is to validate the computer models, it doesn't have to be exactly like Ares 1," said NASA Administrator Mike Griffin. "It has to be close, but what it has to do is show that the analysis we're doing, the predictions we make, match what's going on in the real world. And it will do that." The Constellation program was born in the wake of the 2003 Columbia disaster. The accident review board recommended that if NASA chose to fly the shuttle past 2010, the agency should re-certify the spacecraft. Re-certification would have required re-examining the engineering rationale that went into every aspect of the shuttle's design to identify areas that needed improvements to boost safety. Instead, the Bush administration decided in January 2004 to finish the international space station and to retire the shuttle in 2010. At the same time, NASA was told to begin development of a replacement system that could ferry astronauts to and from the space station and eventually, on to the moon, a system that would be safer and less expensive to operate than the shuttle. The long-range goal is establishment of Antarctica-type lunar research stations where astronauts can live and work for months at a time. The Constellation program is a radical departure from the world of shuttle operations. Instead of one rocket designed to carry astronauts and heavy payloads, two rockets are now envisioned: the manned Ares 1, designed to boost Apollo-like Orion crew capsules to low-Earth orbit; and the unmanned Ares 5, a huge heavy lift rocket that will carry a four-person lunar lander into space. NASA will modify its two shuttle launch pads and the cavernous Vehicle Assembly Building at the Kennedy Space Center to assemble and launch the new rockets. For a moon shot, the Ares 5 will be launched from one pad, followed a few hours later by launch of the crew in an Orion capsule atop an Ares 1. After linking up in low-Earth orbit, the Ares 5 upper stage will propel the Altair lunar lander and astronauts in the attached Orion capsule to the moon. The entire crew will descend to the lunar surface in the lander and, when its mission is complete, blast off, rendezvous with the orbiting Orion capsule and return to Earth for an ocean splashdown reminiscent of the Apollo program. The Bush administration did not give NASA much in the way of additional funding to pay for initial Constellation development and the agency has been forced to cut back in other areas to kick start the new program. After station assembly is complete and the shuttle is retired in 2010, NASA plans to divert more than $4 billion a year into Constellation that currently goes into shuttle and station operations. But given the lack of funding up front, NASA will not be ready to begin initial operations with Ares 1 until late 2014 or early 2015 at best. During the five-year gap between the end of shuttle operations and the debut of Ares 1/Orion, NASA will be forced to buy seats on Russian Soyuz spacecraft to ferry U.S. and international astronauts to and from the space station. During the presidential campaign, President-elect Barack Obama promised to look into adding one or more shuttle flights and spending additional money to reduce the gap between shuttle and Ares operations. Anticipating questions from the new administration, NASA has conducted studies to find out what would be required to fly additional shuttle flights or stretch out the current schedule to ease reliance on the Russians for space station crew rotation flights. NASA also has conducted an analysis of options for accelerating Ares/Orion development, but the agency has not yet revealed what could be done or how much it might cost. An Obama transition team currently is reviewing shuttle operations, the Constellation architecture and alternatives. "The role of the agency review teams is not to make recommendations on any of the issues they are reviewing," said Nick Shapiro, a transition team spokesman. "They are fact finding and preparing the full range of options for consideration by the incoming appointees." Almost from the beginning, critics have railed against the Constellation architecture. Some believe NASA should look into modifying heavy lift Atlas or Delta rockets - evolved expendable launch vehicles, or EELVs - for manned flights. Others believe it makes more sense to eliminate the Ares 1, which requires development of a new five-segment solid-fuel booster, and instead rely on different versions of a single large rocket, using current four-segment shuttle boosters, to launch crew and cargo. Griffin, brought in by the Bush administration to oversee the shuttle retirement and the new moon program, has made no secret of his belief that a switch away from the current Ares 1/Ares 5 architecture would drive up costs, increase the current five-year gap between the end of the shuttle and the debut of its replacement and reduce the scope of planned lunar exploration. That argument doesn't sit well with critics who point to development problems with the Ares 1 rocket, fueling an on-going internet debate that "has been surprising, amusing and irritating at different times to me," Griffin told CBS News in a recent interview. "I don't get it. The development project is going very well. Anyone who has been part of any aerospace development project can cite comparable examples at the same stage where things were in much more difficulty than we are with Ares 1. There's actually no significant difficulty with the program at all. The little nits that come up, we've got work-arounds for. It's very solid from a technical point of view. I have taken pains to examine those issues myself, I think that's where I do add value as an administrator, I am knowledgeable of these issues. Politics may be difficult for me, but rocketry's not. And the vehicle and the plan and the program are in solid shape. So I don't get it. "I think it may be due to the fact that everybody likes to play space architect," he said. "We get an enormous amount of input from people who think that NASA would be better if we would use this technical approach rather than that technical approach. And the truth is, some of them would work. But just because they would work, doesn't mean the approach we've chosen won't. At some point, you have to make a selection and go. And our selection was based first and foremost on crew safety and second on economics. And that's what drove us in the direction we are in and we're still happy with it." A certain amount of friction apparently has developed between Griffin, a straight-talking rocket scientist who flies his own plane, holds five master's degrees and a doctorate in aerospace engineering, and Obama transition team members who served in the Clinton era and whose academic backgrounds are less technical. Sources say the transition team has asked about EELVs as a Constellation alternative and expressed concern about Griffin allegedly telling NASA civil servants and contractors not to freely discuss Constellation issues and alternatives with the Obama team. Reliable NASA sources said no such directions were ever issued and checks with NASA's major contractors found no evidence to the contrary; company representatives adamantly denied any such guidance from Griffin or any of his representatives. "That's ludicrous," one company official told CBS News. Griffin insists that any switch to EELVs would be a major mistake. Boeing's Delta 4, for example, could be pressed into service launching a smaller Orion-type capsule to low-Earth orbit, but he said that would require major modifications and development of a new abort system. In addition, the booster would have to be "man-rated," a costly process designed to maximize safety margins. Even if the Obama administration ordered a change of course, United Launch Alliance, the new Boeing-Lockheed Martin partnership that builds and launches Delta and Atlas rockets, might have problems supporting a major new initiative. "DOD (Department of Defense) faces numerous uncertainties in the EELV program and ULA transition related to the reliability of the launch vehicles, the amount of work remaining in the ULA transition, and program budget decisions based on preliminary data," the Government Accountability Office study said in a September report. "I'm not knocking the EELVs," Griffin said in a recent interview. "I've flown payloads that I personally was close to on both vehicles. I'm not knocking EELVs at all, they're great vehicles. What I have tried to say is that if we're designing an architecture capable of taking people back to the moon, and that's what our enabling legislation requires us to do, then the EELVs don't serve well in that role. "Either we would have to downgrade our requirements enormously, and I don't know how to do that, or we would have to upgrade the EELVs, In which case, they would no longer be existing EELVs, we've got a new vehicle family. So that path doesn't work for us in terms of meeting the requirements for a human lunar return." Regardless of how the transition team's fact finding plays out, presidential-level decisions will be needed in the next few months to avoid additional costs and delays. Among the space-related issues requiring immediate attention: A decision on whether to extend shuttle operations with one or more additional flights. A decision is needed within the next few months, managers say, to keep hardware deliveries stay on track. Obtaining long-term funding to pay the Russians for seats on Soyuz spacecraft during the gap when a U.S. launch vehicle is unavailable. As it now stands, U.S., European, Canadian and Japanese astronauts only have confirmed seats on Soyuz ferry craft through the spring of 2013. Deciding how long to support space station operations in general. NASA's current budget projections include no money for station operations past 2015, an issue that concerns the space agency and its international partners. Deciding whether to provide additional money to accelerate development of the Ares 1, whether to stick with current plans or whether to switch to a different architecture. "A decision that must be made soon whether to retire the space shuttle in 2010, as currently planned, or to extend its life in view of limited options for supporting the international space station," the GAO wrote in a report listing "urgent issues" facing the incoming administration. "However, extending the shuttle could also have significant consequences on the future direction of human spaceflight for the United States. Specifically, NASA is counting on the retirement of the shuttle to free up resources to pursue a new generation of space flight vehicles that is anticipated to come online in 2015." "According to NASA, reversing current plans and keeping the shuttle flying past 2010 would cost $2.5 billion to $4 billion per year," the GAO wrote. "On the other hand, the new administration may well decide to extend the shuttle and defer development of new transportation vehicles in light of budgetary constraints." Obama has expressed support for NASA on several occasions and the space agency has been invited to participate in the inauguration parade. But as of this writing, Obama has not indicated whether he will ask Griffin to stay on or whether a replacement will be brought in, perhaps to chart a different course. In the meantime, NASA is pressing ahead with Constellation and plans for a dramatic first test flight next year. "We will have a new administration in place and together with Congress, they will set our path for the coming years," Doug Cooke, deputy associate administrator of NASA's Exploration Systems Mission Directorate, told reporters during an end-of-year teleconference. "We don't know yet exactly what that will be or if there are changes to what we're doing. But of course, we'll adapt and support (their) direction." TEST FLIGHT CRITICAL TO NEW ROCKET DESIGN The Constellation program represents the first new American manned rocket since development of the space shuttle began in the early 1970s. As currently envisioned, the 33-story Ares 1 rocket will be made up of a five-segment solid-fuel shuttle booster and a new second stage powered by a hydrogen-fueled Apollo-era J-2X engine. The Orion capsule will sit atop the second stage, equipped with a solid-fuel abort rocket designed to pull a crew to safety at any point during the climb to space. The slender rocket, its second stage wider than the first, stands twice as tall as a space shuttle "stack." Its pencil-thin appearance quickly led to a somewhat derisive nickname: the "stick." NASA currently is modifying launch complex 39B at the Kennedy Space Center to support Ares 1 rockets. Three huge lightning rod towers are being built around the pad and the current fixed and rotating service structures in place for the space shuttle eventually will be removed. Pad 39A will be modified to support the Ares 5 heavy lift rocket after the shuttle is retired. Using a "clean pad" concept, the Ares 1 rocket will be hauled to the pad atop a modified shuttle launch platform equipped with its own support gantry. Engineers envision rolling the rocket to the pad about four days prior to launch for final preparations. The Ares 1 development program currently calls for four large-scale test flights: Ares 1-X in 2009; Ares 1-Y in 2012; and then two Ares/Orion test flights in 2013. If all goes well, the new rocket will be operational starting in late 2014 or shortly thereafter. For the first test flight - Ares 1-X - NASA will use a standard four-segment shuttle booster with an empty fifth segment and new 150-foot-diameter parachutes to lower the spent rocket to the ocean for recovery. A dummy second stage loaded with ballast and topped off with a make-believe Orion capsule and abort rocket will be bolted to the top of the first stage. Engineers are in the process of building the dummy second stage in the Vehicle Assembly Building, stacking "tuna can" segments and bolting them together from the inside. The second stage will be attached to the first stage motor after it is assembled, or "stacked," in the VAB next spring. The Ares 1-X first stage will be mounted on a modified shuttle launch platform, held in place by four explosive bolts just like shuttle boosters. Until just few hours before launch, the towering rocket will be stabilized by two swing arms mounted on the shuttle's fixed service structure. Of the $330 million budgeted for the Ares 1-X test flight, about $50 million is going to pay for facilities and processing modifications at the Kennedy Space Center. "A couple of years ago, when we all started looking at having a test flight, and a test flight program, we came up with a concept ... that would be minimal modifications to the existing facilities here, because we wanted to be low cost," Scott said. "You don't want to go do a lot of modifications for a one-time use. "These guys came up with a very clever concept for the upper stage, which has all the access for stacking and doing the work putting these tuna cans together, all the access is on the inside. So (when stacking is going on) his folks are going to be inside this vehicle and they're going to do it all from the inside." The test rocket is rigged with more than 800 sensors - 377 on the first stage and 446 on the second - to record an enormous amount of engineering data on all phases of flight, from launch through motor burn out two minutes later, through stage separation, parachute deployment and ocean impact. At least four video cameras will be mounted on the rocket, two on the first stage looking up and two on the second stage looking down. "The big issue with a big, tall, skinny rocket on the dynamics and the controllability of it, we're using existing hardware but it's a different environment," said Billy Stover, a ground systems manager for Ares 1-X. "There are a lot of unknowns. We have a lot of models, but we don't have a lot of data to verify the models. So we've got to go get some data, is it really going to go fly the way you think it is and the only way to do it is (fly it)." At launch, Ares 1-X will stand 327.2 feet tall and weigh 1.8 million pounds, generating some 2.6 million pounds of thrust. Unlike the space shuttle, which operates under fairly restrictive weather constraints, the Ares system is being designed to launch in less-than-ideal weather. One area of concern is worst-case winds from the south, which could push the rocket close to its launch gantry as it climbs away. Decades of weather records indicate worst-case conditions would only be expected less than 1 percent of the time and in any case, engineers say the rocket's guidance system can easily steer the vehicle away from any close encounters with its gantry. Alternatively, NASA could simply impose shuttle wind constraints and not launch on days when worst-case winds are expected. For Ares 1-X, a modified Atlas countdown will be used, along with Atlas-heritage avionics software and hardware. Because it's a maiden voyage of sorts, NASA managers have decided launch will only occur when there is not a space shuttle on nearby pad 39A. One wild card in NASA's planning is what to do about shuttle flight STS-125, a delayed mission to service and upgrade the Hubble Space Telescope. Launch from pad 39A currently is targeted for May 12. Because the Hubble crew cannot reach safe haven aboard the international space station in case of an emergency, NASA will process a second shuttle in parallel to serve as a rescue vehicle. For the Hubble crew's first launch campaign earlier this Fall, the rescue shuttle was processed on pad 39B. Agency planners are considering a plan that would free up pad 39B for Ares 1-X by processing the rescue shuttle in the Vehicle Assembly Building. If single-pad processing is approved for the Hubble mission, Ares 1-X could fly as early as July 11 or 12, although engineers say the timeline is tight. If the agency sticks with dual-pad operations for Hubble, launch would slip to next Fall. As of this writing, it appears more likely NASA will stick with dual-pad operations because of problems with payload bay door moisture-absorption that might occur if the rescue shuttle is kept inside the Vehicle Assembly Building for an extended period. Mission managers plan to make a decision one way or the other after a Jan. 23 meeting to review shuttle processing options and Ares X-1 hardware deliveries. While the Constellation program would like to get the flight off as soon as possible, a launch anytime next year would still let the team meet its goal of collecting flight data from Ares 1-X well ahead of the Ares 1 critical design review in early 2010. Whenever it goes, the rocket should put on quite a show. Accelerating to a peak velocity of nearly five times the speed of sound, the first stage will burn for about two minutes, reaching an altitude of around 130,000 feet, or 25 miles. When the rocket's thrust falls to less than 40,000 pounds of push, the first and second stages will separate. The ballistic trajectory will carry the dummy second stage to a maximum altitude of about 150,000 feet before it begins arcing over and plunges back to Earth. The first stage will make a controlled descent to the Atlantic Ocean under three huge parachutes. The spent booster will be towed back to Cape Canaveral for detailed inspections, but there are no plans to recover the dummy upper stage. Among the areas of special interest are thrust oscillations, roll control, stage separation and the performance of the new parachutes, designed to help slow and stabilize the larger five-segment booster when it falls back to Earth from a higher altitude. For roll control, Ares 1-X will be equipped with two thrusters on each side of the rocket near the base of second stage. To keep costs down, the system was borrowed from the Peacekeeper ICBM program. "There's a flow circulation as the flow comes out through the nozzle," said Charles Precourt, a former shuttle commander who serves as vice president of space launch systems for ATK, builder of the shuttle/Ares solid-fuel boosters. "I'm going to use a real crude analogy, but when water goes down the drain you know how it circulates? Well, in a similar fashion, you get a torque force generated by the flow coming out the motor. We understand what it is, we've measured it and we've sized that for this roll control system on 1-X." The magnitude of the roll force varies a bit from rocket to rocket, but it begins with motor ignition and continues through burnout. "There's a torque that will vary a little bit in magnitude, but it is essentially there during the flow of the exhaust out through the nozzle," Precourt said. "The roll control system will have to pulse to counter that. We understand, to the degree the analysis allows, we've been able to understand how much will be required, but this will be validation of that. It's not going to be spinning the vehicle at a high rate, it's just going to cause it to want to turn. And so we're going to control how much it turns." Like the space shuttle, Ares 1-X will execute a "roll program" to put it in the proper orientation as it arcs to the East and climbs toward space. The roll torque phenomenon can either help or hinder the roll program. "Let's say it causes you to roll in the direction you want to go in, then you may need less of a pulse from your RCS (reaction control system thrusters) to get the roll you have asked for," Precourt said. "If it's against you, you may need more of a pulse to go the other way." Data collected during the Ares 1-X flight will help engineers better understand the roll torque phenomenon and design a suitable roll control system for the Ares 1 rocket. Another major question mark is thrust oscillation and vibration, the result of vortices forming inside the booster as part of the complex supersonic exhaust flow. Engineers are designing dampers to "de-tune" the first stage booster and the upper stage/Orion components to minimize amplification effects that might otherwise occur toward the end of the first stage burn. No such dampers will be in place on the Ares 1-X rocket. Instead, sensors will characterize the thrust oscillation present in a four-segment motor to help engineers properly model the sort of acoustic environment present in a five-segment booster. "This is a four segment motor, but it's got a fifth segment simulator and the mass and size of the vehicle is representative," Precourt said. "So the data will be instructive. We really won't have real flight data of what the crew will ride, for vibration purposes, until Ares 1-Y. That'll be the first time we see everything that is essentially identical to what the crew will see. (But) we will collect a great amount of data to help us further understand what we're dealing with." Solid-fuel rocket motors are hollow and, like a bottle rocket, burn from the inside out. Moving from a four-segment booster to one with five segments changes the frequency of the vibrations produced by the burning propellant. "If you've got a longer pipe, the frequency drops, just like when you whistle over a Coke bottle, the more full it is the higher the pitch and the more empty it is, the lower the pitch," Precourt said. "Well, that's what's happening here. As the motor gets longer, the frequency changes and when the frequency changes relative to what we've had in the past, we just need to understand where it ends up relative to the natural resonance of the structure that's sitting on top of it. We want to separate the resonance frequency of the structure on top as far as we can from the frequency this motor is creating." The problem is not just the vibrations of the first stage motor. It's how those vibrations are amplified by the rest of the structure, much like a tuning fork sounds louder when its base is pressed to a solid surface. "The motor as it burns hasn't got a continuous amount of vibration," Precourt said. "This oscillation that we get is a little more random in that it comes and goes. Part of that is due to the fact that as we burn the propellant off, the flow is causing some vortices to form as it's coming out of the motor and those vortices will attach and unattach inside, it's all this complex flow inside, it's not a turning piece of hardware machinery, it's propellant burning and coming out the back at a very high rate. But it's got some random oscillations in it that tend to be the most noticeable from a thrust oscillation standpoint in the last few seconds of the motor's burn." Precourt said the sort of up-and-down jarring shuttle crews experience at launch illustrates the sort of forces that get transmitted through the vehicle from the boosters and "we certainly wouldn't want it to get a lot worse than that." "When the frequency of the motor changes and you happen to build a structure that's sitting on top of it that is at that same resonant frequency, in other words, its size and shape and mass and stiffness all say that if it is introduced to the same frequency as the motor, it will resonate and it will amplify that frequency," he said. "In the case of the shuttle, it doesn't do much amplification because the structures aren't that close to the frequency of the motor. But in the case of Ares 1, there's a potential that when you add the crew vehicle on top, the upper stage and our motor, the frequencies could be close enough that you get more amplification. And that amplification is an upward and downward movement of the structure that can be translated into a G force. And if that G force gets too high, then of course, the crew is in a bad environment. So that's what we're trying to do, to make sure that G level stays down to about a quarter of one G." Based on data collected during launch of the shuttle Endeavour in November, engineers no longer think they will need to add active dampers to move the frequencies away from each other or dampen the amplitude of the effect. Instead, passive spring-mounted weights are envisioned to counteract the effects of thrust oscillation. Additional data will be collected during upcoming shuttle flights. "There's also a structural thing we can do just above our motor that is a what we call a C-clamp isolator," Precourt said. "That will tend to move the frequencies of the structure above and the motor below apart, away from each other a little bit. So we're looking at all of those things. The latest data suggest that the amount of amplification we're going to get may not be as severe as we initially were looking at. So we'll just continue to work it. It's well within our ability to mitigate so we hit the target structural result." The coupling of vibration frequencies is not linear and a slight separation in frequencies will result in a significant reduction in vibration. Precourt said engineers won't know exactly how the resonance phenomenon works until NASA launches Ares 1-Y with a five-segment motor. But the Ares 1-X flight will pave the way to better modeling. "What you won't have on this, obviously, is the fifth segment and the upper stage J-2," he said. "Rather than waiting and doing it all at once, we've taken an incremental approach that retires risks that can be retired as quickly as possible. "We don't need to do any of this if you want to take the approach that the outsiders are suggesting, just wait until the very end, build it all at once and go fly it. But (that approach ignores) the mantra and principle of many, many years of flight test, both in rockets and in other flight vehicles and aircraft, that you do a build-up approach and you depart from a known and you move towards an unknown in incremental fashion. And this is a really good first incremental test." Hanley agreed, saying he sees two primary benefits for the Constellation program. "The first, of course, is the engineering value we'll get out of it," he said. "We've had issues like thrust oscillation that have come up over the last year, which is the kind of thing we can be interrogating with real hardware under real flight conditions. That kind of data is like gold to engineers. We test to be able to better improve our understanding of the flight hardware behavior and the way that we model. ... The computer models are only as good as the real life data you have to base them on. And so Ares 1-X, we expect it to be a dynamically similar system to Ares 1. "The other half of it is really being a pathfinder to help us both train our team and understand and appreciate what it takes to process a system like this at this scale, using new, more modern techniques and systems. We started with the way shuttle does business. But we are going to, to a great extent, lean that out. Because what we want to do is end up with a system that is as low cost and efficient as we've ever achieved in human spaceflight." 5:30 PM, 12/4/08, Update: Hubble servicing mission officially retargeted for May 12 NASA managers today officially re-targeted shuttle mission STS-125 - the final planned flight to service and upgrade the Hubble Space Telescope - for launch May 12, 2009. The long-awaited mission originally was planned for October, but the flight was put on hold after an electronic component aboard the observatory failed Sept. 27. Instead, NASA pressed ahead with the just-complete STS-126 space station assembly mission. Hubble managers initially held out hope for a launch in February, after tests and checkout of spare computer gear to replace the system that failed in orbit. But that schedule proved to be too optimistic and NASA managers decided to proceed with the next station assembly flight Feb. 12. Engineers now believe the Hubble computer gear will be ready in time for a launch attempt May 12. 02:30 PM, 12/4/08, Update: Mars Science Laboratory launch delayed to 2011 Launch of NASA's showcase Mars Science Laboratory, a nuclear-powered rover the size of a small car, will be delayed from 2009 to 2011 because of ongoing development problems, agency officials said today. The cost of the delay through end of mission will add some $400 million to the project's price tag, pushing the projected cost from $1.88 billion to around $2.2 billion. "We're going to re-phase MSL for a 2011 launch," said Ed Weiler, NASA's associate administrator for space science. "This will allow for careful resolution of any remaining technical problems, proper - and thorough - testing and avoiding a mad dash to launch. "Failure is not an option on this mission," he said. "The science is too important and the investment of American taxpayer dollars tells us to be absolutely certain we have done everything possible to ensure the success of this flagship planetary mission." Joining NASA Administrator Mike Griffin in announcing the delay, Weiler also told reporters that NASA and the European Space Agency agreed this week, based on initial discussions last July, to work together on future Mars missions, including an eventual robotic flight to collect soil and rock samples and return them to Earth for analysis. Such a mission likely would cost between $6 billion and $8 billion, Weiler said, and would not be feasible until the 2020s. "In the future, NASA and ESA are going to work together to come up with a European-U.S. Mars architecture," Weiler said. "That is, missions won't be NASA missions, they won't be ESA missions, they will be joint missions. We need to work together. We'll never, ever do a sample return mission unless we work together. We both have the same goals scientifically, we want to get our science communities together and start laying out an architecture." Mars launch opportunities come around every two years and the delay for the Mars Science Laboratory to 2011 will have downstream impacts on other upcoming Mars missions and possible impacts on flights to other destinations as well. So far, Weiler said, no outright cancellations are expected. But the delay will provide an early window of opportunity for NASA and ESA to begin planning for joint missions starting as early as 2016. "We now have that time, for all the wrong reasons, but we now have that time, we don't have to rush to come up with some idea for 2016," he said. "They've got some ideas, we've got some ideas. Let's work together. ... This makes eminent sense to both of us and we committed to each other to get our communities to start working toward that goal." In the near term, MSL is the flagship of Mars exploration, one of the most complex spacecraft ever built for planetary exploration. Designed to drop to the surface of Mars on elevator-type cables suspended from a rocket-powered descent stage called a "sky crane," the one-ton Mars Science Laboratory will be equipped with the most sophisticated suite of instruments ever placed on the surface of the red planet to help determine if Mars ever did, or still does, support microbial life. MSL dwarfs NASA's solar-powered Spirit and Opportunity rovers, which tipped the scales at 384 pounds each, carried just 35 pounds of science instruments and could only operate in daylight. MSL will weigh 1,929 pounds and include a science payload of 183 pounds. Its radioisotope thermoelectric generator, or RTG, will allow it to operate around the clock for two years or more. But the mission has encountered a steady stream of technical problems that have stretched out development and driven up costs. The latest, the one that triggered the launch delay, involves subtle issues with complex actuators that do everything from driving the rover's six wheels to moving its robot arm. The MSL project was initially budgeted at $1.63 billion in August 2006. By mid 2007, the cost had risen to $1.88 billion. Earlier this fall, officials concluded an additional $200 million would have been required to make the 2009 launch window. With the launch delay to 2011, the life cycle cost is projected to increase $200 million beyond that, to between $2.2 billion and $2.3 billion. The additional $400 million is required for testing, resolution of ongoing technical problems and the normal pre-launch work that would be required for any mission. It includes money for operations in years beyond what was originally budgeted assuming a launch in 2009. "We've determined that trying for '09 would require us to assume too much risk, more than I think is appropriate for a flagship mission like Mars Science Laboratory," said Griffin. "If we could delay the launch for a few months, we would, and that would probably take care of it. But launch opportunities for Mars don't allow that, they come every 26 months, and so we either go in 2009 or 2011. We're meeting with all of you today because we're aware that MSL has been much in the news lately. A mission like this ranks just behind a manned mission in importance and we want to be straightforward and open with you when we have news to report, whether it's good or bad." In early October, NASA completed a review of MSL's status and concluded "we had a solid chance of making a 2009 launch if we could extend the launch window about three weeks, which we did, and if we could add about $200 million to cover the additional manpower to maintain schedule," Weiler said. "We could have made the decision at that time to delay for 26 months, but making that decision then would have automatically added much more cost in the out years of the program. But, and this is very important, we did not give an unrestricted go-ahead to launch in 2009. We put in place a major progress review with the administrator on Jan. 5, 2009. Why that timeframe? If we had not made sufficient progress to that point, we could then make the decision to slip, slow down the project and live within the current 2009 budget and thus not incur the additional $200 million in costs. "But Mike and I went further than that," Weiler said. "To ensure the goal of staying within that 2009 budget if we decided to slip, we had the project provide us with a series of milestones, week by week in November and December, that we could monitor to judge whether we were making the required progress toward that January meeting. As of yesterday, the project, the program, the independent review team and the JPL independent technical authority all agreed unanimously that MSL could not make the 2009 launch schedule." The actuators at the heart of the current discussion are complex motor-gearbox assemblies, some with more than 500 parts each. MSL is equipped with 31 such actuators and in recent months, engineers have run into workmanship issues, problems with encoders that track motion and as-yet-unresolved questions about the braking mechanism. The actuators are ""absolutely crucial to the success of this mission," said Doug McCuistion, director of Mars exploration at NASA Headquarters. "If we get to the ground, we can't move, we can't put the arm out and we can't sample, we basically have a metric ton of junk on the surface. So actuators are absolutely crucial to any landed mission." The 2009 launch window opened Sept. 15 and ultimately was extended to Oct. 28. The 2011 launch window has not yet been pinned down, but it will run from October through December. 3:30 PM, 11/14/08, Update: In CBS News interview, Griffin offers guarded response to questions about future at NASA NASA Administrator Mike Griffin told CBS News today he has not yet been contacted by the incoming Obama administration about whether or not he will be replaced as head of the civilian space agency. In an "all hands" meeting at the Kennedy Space Center on Thursday, Griffin told NASA and contractor workers he was not optimistic about staying on. Expanding on those comments today, Griffin said simply that most new administrations bring in new managers but if he is asked to stay, he will. Here is a transcript of Griffin's conversation with CBS News space analyst William Harwood: CBS News: Yesterday, you said you didn't expect to be asked by the Obama administration to stay on as the administrator of NASA. Obviously, as you say, you serve at the discretion of the president. Have you gotten any indication from anyone on the transition team or anywhere else that you will or won't be asked? Have you gotten any guidance at all? Griffin: No, the transition team hasn't yet shown up at NASA and in any case, I think we all need to remember that the transition team is not government, they're not making those kinds of decisions. So I have not had any indication from the president-elect or his folks as to what they would want to do with NASA. It's kind of funny, I've been asked that question - if I would stay on into a new administration - for almost the entire three-and-a-half years I've been at NASA. And the answer has never varied. I gave the same answer yesterday and it made headline news in some newspapers. So, I thought that had a certain humor value. CBS News: You've always said if you were asked, you'd be happy to stay on and serve. But yesterday you also added a line I hadn't heard, which was that you didn't expect to be asked. Griffin: Well, I have, in fact, always said it was not customary for presidential appointees in a given administration to be asked to stay on in a successive one. There are several thousand such political appointees, some more visible than others, and each administration asks a few to stay on, a very few. And I've never seen any reason why I would be singled out to be one of those few. I've certainly enjoyed serving. Under the right circumstances I would be pleased to be asked to stay on, but it really is, the first day you take the job, you understand that it is a position filled at the discretion of the president. CBS News: But it has happened before. One could make the argument that if you're in a storm-tossed sea, that's not the time to change captains. Griffin: You could (laughing). CBS News: I guess I don't want to leave it quite at that. Do you really want the job? Saying you would do it if the president asks you to, well, of course. But do you want the job? Griffin: That's a difficult question to answer. Because it implies that I make judgments like that based on personal desire and what's pleasurable to do. There's a subtlety there that's difficult to convey. It's a very difficult job to do. It is draining. It is not one that brings a lot of day-to-day satisfaction. But it's an extremely important job, if you believe, as I believe, in the importance of the space program and our activities in space to the nation. So it's an important job. My highest desire is that it be done well by whoever holds the job. That is number one and there's nothing even in number two position. If it is believed that I'm the best person to hold the job, then I'd be happy to do it. I don't want anyone, ever, to think that these kinds of positions do not involve a lot of personal sacrifice. They do. There's an enormous amount of personal sacrifice to hold this kind of a position in government. But people make much greater sacrifices, much, much greater sacrifices for the country. And if I were thought to be the right person to continue to head the agency then I would be happy to do it. CBS News: You said yesterday that policy wise, NASA was in good shape based on supportive comments made during the presidential campaign by both candidates. Griffin: I was thrilled to see the comments made by both candidates during the campaign and their recognition that to do what we've been asked to do, NASA really needs a little bit more money. CBS News: I don't know if you can answer this question, but are you happy with the way the election turned out? From the perspective of a NASA administrator? Griffin: Yeah, I am, strictly from the perspective of the NASA administrator. Frankly, I think I would have been happy either way it turned out because both candidates have made such positive statements on behalf of the agency. I couldn't be more pleased with that. CBS News: Our time is limited, so I'm going to shift gears and touch on a variety of topics. We were in the Vehicle Assembly Building this week looking at the Ares 1X upper stage components. How confident are you they can get that test off in time to provide the data you need to validate computer modeling before the critical design review next year? Griffin: It's a flight whose purpose is to validate the computer models, it doesn't have to be exactly like Ares 1. It has to be close, but what it has to do is show that the analysis we're doing, the predictions we make, match what's going on in the real world. And it will do that. We want to get the flight off as soon as possible to inform the design codes as soon as possible, clearly, but there's no specific date. Now, what, of course, it does hinge on is the shuttle flow, and in particular the launch-on-need (rescue mission) for the Hubble Space Telescope mission. So what we're looking at is how best to prepare for that launch-on-need option for the Hubble while still allowing, if you will, a clear path through the VAB and through the pad flow for Ares 1X and we're grappling with that. Right now, we're looking at July or August of next year as the date when Ares 1X could go. And we're still working that. CBS News: What is your philosophical bent when it comes to requiring two pads for the Hubble mission? If you could do Hubble and the rescue mission with one pad, obviously that would ease the pressure on Ares 1X. They could start converting pad 39B for Ares and save some time. Griffin: We are looking at an option to have the launch-on-need vehicle fully fueled, well, with PRSD, not with liquid hydrogen and oxygen in the tank. But we're looking at the option of keeping a ready vehicle in the VAB and then rolling it out if launch on need is necessary. And we want to scrub that very carefully. The goal for launch on need is not to have some symbolic vehicle on the pad as a figurehead. The goal is, if we need the launch-on-need vehicle, to get it to the crew who needs it in time. And if we can accomplish that goal just as readily by storing it in the VAB and thus freeing up the pad flow on the other pad for Ares 1X, then we would do that. We're not to the point of being able to make that determination yet. That's honestly just work in progress. When we have an answer, meaning we've vetted it through the crew office, the safety office and everybody else, we'll tell you. It's not something we're keeping secret, it's just an option we're looking at. CBS News: Yesterday, you restated your obvious support for the Constellation program architecture and the Ares rockets that will replace the shuttle. You also mentioned the Evolved Expendable Launch Vehicle program in the context of those rockets - Atlas and Deltas - don't fit into that architecture. Some readers interpreted that as criticism of those rockets. Griffin: I'm not knocking the EELVs. I've flown payloads that I personally was close to on both vehicles. I'm not knocking EELVs at all, they're great vehicles. What I have tried to say is that if we're designing an architecture capable of taking people back to the moon, and that's what our enabling legislation requires us to do, then the EELVs don't serve well in that role. Either we would have to downgrade our requirements enormously, and I don't know how to do that, or we would have to upgrade the EELVs, In which case, they would no longer be existing EELVs, we've got a new vehicle family. So that path doesn't work for us in terms of meeting the requirements for a human lunar return. That's all I've said and all I've ever said. We expect to continue just as we have been doing, we expect to continue to launch our robotic spacecraft on EELV. The time may come when a commercial entity offers us the option to launch uncrewed, unmanned cargo resupply to the station using EELV. We'd be happy to do it. I'm not knocking the EELV in any way. I'm simply saying the capabilities of that fleet, as it exists today, don't meet what we need to return to the moon. So then the choice that confronted NASA was, what's the cheapest, most architecturally robust path to get back to owning a system that CAN take us to the moon? And that turned out to be the use of shuttle-derived systems by and large, some Apollo-derived systems, to form the Ares 1 vehicle and the Ares 5. CBS News: The Ares program and really the Constellation architecture seems to generate a fair amount of antagonism in the space community. Coverage of technical issues seems to blow them out of proportion as soon as they come to light. All new rocket systems have problems at this stage, obviously. What is it about this rocket that seems to get everyone spun up? Griffin: I don't know. That has been surprising, amusing and irritating at different times to me. I don't get it. The development project is going very well. Anyone who has been part of any aerospace development project can cite comparable examples at the same stage where things were in much more difficulty than we are with Ares 1. There's actually no significant difficulty with the program at all. The little nits that come up, we've got work arounds for. It's very solid from a technical point of view. I have taken pains to examine those issues myself, I think that's where I do add value as an administrator, I am knowledgeable of these issues. Politics may be difficult for me, but rocketry's not. And the vehicle and the plan and the program are in solid shape. So I don't get it. I think it may be due to the fact that everybody likes to play space architect. We get an enormous amount of input from people who think that NASA would be better if we would use this technical approach rather than that technical approach. And the truth is, some of them would work. But just because they would work, doesn't mean the approach we've chosen won't. At some point, you have to make a selection and go. And our selection was based first and foremost on crew safety and second on economics. And that's what drove us in the direction we are in and we're still happy with it. CBS News: The 10th anniversary of the start of station construction is coming up Nov. 20. You're finally on the verge of expanding to six crew members. What's the significance of the anniversary? Griffin: We lost several years, of course, with the loss of Columbia and there have been other delays in the station program from the first and those are not good things. We need to do a better job of keeping our programs on schedule. But it is a a milestone. The station is a step toward permanent human occupancy in space. It's an outpost on the frontier as I've characterized it, that's what it really is. We'll do some good science, we'll learn a lot. But what it is, it's a step outward on the frontier. We are aiming for a crew of six starting next year and I think we have a plan in place using the Russian Soyuz transportation system to get us through the gap between shuttle and Ares and Orion. And then, of course, there's also the possibility - and I would characterize it as a probability - that at some point, U.S. commercial human space transportation capability will show up and be available for purchase. And when it does, we will. So we've got some tough times coming up, we do, and I never want to minimize that. But we also have some amazing opportunities. We're building a system that gives us the opportunity to get out again beyond low-Earth orbit, to go back to the moon, to put an Antarctic-style lunar base there that humans can staff permanently, to go to the more interesting near-Earth asteroids, to go to Mars. We have this opportunity now. Everybody talks about the retirement of the shuttle and the gap as problems. They are. But they are problems we can solve, we have a path to solving them and when we get through them, we have this enormous opportunity starting, you know, out around a decade from now, that I think everybody who loves the space program and the space business should just be thrilled about. We have to show a little bit more than the average American capacity for deferred gratification. We Americans are not good at deferred gratification, about doing hard things today in order to get benefits tomorrow. When our back is against the wall, over and over again we've seen that there's no nation and no people like Americans to rally and win. But when we have to just slog along, yard by yard, through a difficult swamp to get where we want to go, that's harder for us. And that's what we need to do now. We don't have a crisis. We just have a lot of hard work in front of us to get the space program back where it needs to be. We just need to keep that in mind. CBS News: Are you satisfied with where the station is after 10 years? Griffin: Satisfaction is something that has to take into account the circumstances in which we find ourselves. The space station has been the subject of a lot of political turmoil. We certainly had the greatest trauma you can have in the program when we lost Columbia. And still we managed to hang on to continued occupancy of the space station with the help of our Russian partners. And now we're going gangbusters building it, outfitting it, resupplying it and adding crew, all within the next few months. It's finally taking shape. We have a 500-ton facility that's in the last stages of taking shape on orbit, the most complex thing human beings have ever built. Yeah, I'm satisfied. 03:20 PM, 11/13/08, Update: Griffin says he expects Obama administration to replace him as head of NASA NASA Administrator MIke Griffin, answering questions from Kennedy Space Center workers during an "all hands" meeting today, said he does not expect the Obama administration to keep him on as head of the nation's civilian space agency. Widely respected for his technical expertise, Griffin, a private pilot who holds a doctorate in aerospace engineering and five master's degrees in engineering, business administration and applied physics, said he would gladly continue to serve if asked, but not if the new administration orders a radical change in direction. Brought in by the Bush administration in the wake of the 2003 Columbia disaster, Griffin has been responsible for overseeing a complex plan to finish the international space station and retire the shuttle in 2010 while developing a new family of safer, lower-cost rockets and manned spacecraft that will service the space station and eventually return American astronauts to the moon. One major issue is the expected five-year gap between the end of shuttle operations and the debut of the Orion capsule that will replace it. In the interim, NASA will be forced to buy seats on Russian Soyuz spacecraft to ferry U.S. astronauts to and from the international space station. Whether the incoming Obama administration will act to narrow that gap - or add additional shuttle missions to reduce reliance on the Russians - remains to be seen. Griffin clearly enjoys his role as administrator, but he said today he doubts the new administration will keep him on as head of the agency. "I serve at the pleasure of the president," Griffin said. "There are different kinds of political appointments, there are fixed terms, the FBI is six years, Federal Reserve is seven, you know, FAA is five. NASA is an 'at the pleasure of.' So if the next president wants to ask me to continue, I'd be happy to do it. I doubt that that will happen. It would need to be under the right circumstances. "We're in a good policy direction right now. NASA, in my view, for the first time since (the) Nixon administration terminated Apollo, NASA is now doing the right things. We're also doing things right, but we're doing the right things. If somebody wanted me to stay on but said 'now, we need to go over here,' well, do it with somebody else. We're operating with about as little budget as we could effectively operate. Our budget declined in real dollars about 20 percent in the Clinton years, (but) no content was removed. The Bush administration halted the decline, but didn't fix it. We certainly can't get by on any less than we're doing and I don't want to be a figurehead for claiming we can do something we can't do. "The Bush administration did not pick any members of my team for me," Griffin continued. "It's a mutual process, there's a veto on both sides, but I didn't have anybody crammed down my throat. I think we've done the experiment at NASA to see whether or not people who don't know anything about the space business can run NASA. It didn't work, and I don't want to be party to doing it again, I need to be able to keep around me the kind of team I've got. Otherwise, I'll fail, because I don't actually do anything, I just pick people. And if I can't pick the right people... I know how to fail, just pick the wrong people and you're doomed. "So we'll see. I expect that the new administration will have plenty of talent to choose from in picking a NASA administrator and I just hope whoever they pick loves it as much as I do, loves the agency and loves what we do as much as I do." During a town hall meeting near the Kennedy Space Center in August, Obama vowed strong support for NASA, saying he favored at least one shuttle flight beyond the 10 missions left on the agency's manifest. Obama also said he would work to close the gap between the end of shuttle operations in 2010 and the debut of the Orion spacecraft that will replace it and said earlier reports that he would divert money from NASA's next manned spacecraft to education were unfounded. Asked today if NASA might receive additional funding to shorten the gap or extend shuttle oeprations, Griffin said he did not know, adding "I really don't think they've made a determination." "I thought we got some very positive statements on more than one occasion from President-elect Obama on NASA and its roll in society in the future during the campaign," Griffin said. "I hope those statements come true. Now, how we would most appropriately use additional funding for NASA, I can't say right now. I would hope that we would do the intelligent combination of accelerating Constellation (the shuttle replacement program). "It's possible it might make sense to fly shuttle a bit longer. The closer we look at that, the harder that is to do. I mean, the reason why I've asked study teams under John Shannon and separately, Jeff Hanley, the shuttle and Constellation program managers, is to get the facts on what it takes and what's possible with regard to narrowing the gap in both cases. I'd rather make decisions based on facts rather than something we studied three or four years ago or on my suppositions. "So my first hope is that the comments made by President-elect Obama during the campaign were campaign promises that he and his administration hope to fulfill," Griffin said. "And then of course, our next task will be to present to the new administration and the new Congress - remember, presidents propose, but Congress DISposes - we need to propose to them how we would most effectively utilize the money. But man, give me that problem! That's a problem I'd like to have, wouldn't you? So let's hope that occurs." Griffin, who has long argued the gap between the end of the shuttle and the debut of Oriaon is "unseemly," said today he believes the Russians will honor their space commitments even if relations between the two countries sour on other fronts. "The current state of relations between Russia and the United States is not as bad as it has sometimes been, but not as good as it has been, either. And we all worry about that. When we were engaging on just this topic with our congressional leaders and policy makers in the White House, what I said was you know, we cooperated with Russia in space even at the height of the Cold War and they did what they said they would do, even at the height of the Cold War. They are hard negotiators on what they will and won't do as part of the space station partnership and you don't want to leave them any loopholes ... but when the negotiation is done and you've shaken hands, the Russians have never failed to do what they said they would do. They were a little late delivering the first pieces of the space station, but we've been a little late delivering pieces of space station. "Both of us on both sides have had some schedule problems (but) the Russians have always done what they said they would do when the negotiating was done. And so I believe, absent evidence to the contrary, that they will continue to do, on space station as a partner, what they say they will do. I personally believe it's better for the United States and for the world for us to be partners on station than not. I wish the state of relationships between the U.S. and Russia were better. I really like our Russian colleagues, I really do." 6:30 PM, 11/10/08, Update: Phoenix lander in deep freeze on Mars; mission operations cease NASA's Phoenix lander, already struggling to keep its batteries charged in the increasingly cold, dim martian winter, was buffeted by an unexpected dust storm Oct. 27 that sharply reduced the amount of power its solar panels could provide to run critical heaters. Waking up later and later to phone home via satellite, Phoenix failed to wake up at all on Nov. 2, prompting NASA managers to reluctantly cease science operations. "At this time, we're pretty convinced the vehicle is no longer available for us to use," said Barry Goldstein, Phoenix project manager at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif. "So we are actually ceasing operations, declaring an end to mission operations at this point." He said NASA's orbiting Mars Odyssey and Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter spacecraft will continue to listen for calls from Phoenix just in case it somehow manages to store enough energy to wake up and check in, but engineers are not optimistic. In all likelihood, the $475 million mission is over. Unlike the space agency's hardy Spirit and Opportunity rovers, still operating after five years in the more benign equatorial regions of Mars, mission managers said from the beginning that Phoenix would be lucky to survive to the end of the year at its extreme northern latitude. The spacecraft landed May 25 and operated for two full months beyond its 90-day mission design lifetime. "We always knew with Phoenix that five years was not in the cards," Goldstein said. "It's rather tough living up north above the Arctic Circle. So we always knew the end would be coming for us." Spirit and Opportunity, located on opposite sides of Mars, have been studying the local geology to help scientists understand the role of water in the red planet's past. The rovers have confirmed that water existed on Mars earlier in its history. Pictures from Mars orbiters clearly show huge channels and other features on the surface that almost certainly were carved by flowing water and there is evidence that Mars once featured a vast ocean in the northern hemisphere. Mars today is cold and dry, the presumed victim of an environmental catastrophe of some sort in the remote past. But the Mars Odyssey orbiter, equipped with an instrument that can detect evidence of water up to three feet below the surface, discovered vast amounts of ice locked in the soil of the planet's polar regions, ice that could be the remnant of an ancient sea. Phoenix, equipped with a robot arm and a suite of ovens and other instruments to assess soil chemistry, landed on that frigid surface May 25, making NASA's first successful rocket-powered descent since the Viking landers in the 1970s. Peter Smith, the Phoenix principal investigator at the University of Arizona at Tucson, told reporters today the mission was a complete success. "What have we done? The first thing was to discover ice," he said. "When we landed, we looked around, we saw a field of dirt and rock that was spread out to the horizon and we didn't see ice right away. It wasn't until we looked under the spacecraft that we found out we were standing on it. This was quite a thrill for everybody. "Studying that ice has kept us busy for the past five months. We've excavated to the ice, we know its depth, how it changes over the surface, we've seen different types of ice. Really, the mission was all about water and it's going to keep us busy for some time now as we try to understand what we've got." Cameras aboard Phoenix snapped some 25,000 pictures, ranging from high-resolution panoramas to high-power microscope views of collected soil samples. Its sophisticated instruments analyzed soil and ice samples to help scientists characterize the past and present habitability of the landing site. "We noticed that the soil was alkaline and its filled with carbonates and clays," Smith said. "On Earth, we would conclude immediately there was liquid water in this soil. For Mars, we have to be a little more careful and we're going to develop this story as we interpret our data. But definitely liquid water has been a part of this soil. "We also see salts and the perchlorate molecule, which is totally unexpected. It has profound implications for Mars. Perchlorate, of course, is an energy source for microbes on the Earth, its easily soluable, it's something you have to worry about in your drinking water, it has implications for human health. So we've seen nutrients and energy sources. So that leads to the question, is this a habitable zone? Have we found such a thing on Mars?" The jury is still out. Smith said scientists have not yet completed their analysis of data from Phoenix and he would not rule out the possibility that organic compounds may yet be found. Phoenix already was struggling to stay alive in the harsh northern environment and mission managers were planning their final "high power" experiment runs when a dust storm cropped up Oct. 27. The storm cut the lander's life short by about three weeks, Goldstein said. "We were executing what we thought would be the last of what we call our high-power science days," he said. "Those are days on Mars that we dedicate a significant amount of energy to do science. We were planning at that point to turn off the heaters on some of the electronics and then move into a more dormant state where we were going to do some weather monitoring, maybe the occasional image. Unfortunately, Murphy had a little problem for us ... and threw a dust storm at us. It just came out of the blue for us." "So immediately the team ... went to work really hard to try to shed load, to turn unnecessary power off the vehicle to keep it from going into a power starvation mode. Unfortunately, the end of the mission was coming. We knew this would happen eventually, but we were unsuccessful in keeping the batteries from browning out. What I mean by browning out is, we always go to sleep every night on Mars and ever since the sun's been going down, it's become more imperative. At night, we rely on our batteries to keep the vehicle warm. When the batteries reach zero, kind of like your laptop computer running out of juice when you're on an airplane, the vehicle would just shut down." For a few days, Phoenix struggled to stay alive. "The vehicle would brown out, it would die, the sun would come up the next morning and then as the sun came up, the power would come out of the solar arrays, the vehicle would wake up and for a couple of (days) there actually communicated with us, told us what it was doing," Goldstein said. But the dust lingered "and it became increasingly harder and harder for the vehicle to wake up, and therefore increasingly colder and colder each morning," Goldstein said. "So much so that on Nov. 2, last Sunday, was actually the last time we heard from Phoenix." Next April, the sun will drop below the horizon at the Phoenix landing site for about three months. The spacecraft will be covered in carbon dioxide ice and "overnight" temperatures will plunge below minus 300 degrees Fahrenheit. Circuit board coatings and even the solar panels themselves might crack or even break off. By next October, the sun will be high enough once again to provide the energy needed, in theory at least, to wake Phoenix up. NASA will listen, but Goldstein said there is little chance the lander will revive. "This has been a great mission," he said. "I think we have had a huge success." 6:20 PM, 10/30/08, Update: Hubble servicing mission delayed to at least May, possibly longer A shuttle mission to service and upgrade the Hubble Space Telescope, originally scheduled for mid October and then delayed to at least Feburary by trouble with an electronic component aboard the observatory, will be delayed until next May at the earliest because of problems preparing a replacement unit for flight, officials said today. A detailed update will be posted following a 6:30 p.m. EDT news conference with senior shuttle program managers. 6:00 PM, 10/23/08, Update: Soyuz TMA-12 capsule makes on-target landing (UPDATED at 8:20 p.m. with undocking; UPDATED at 11:40 p.m. with landing) Two Russian cosmonauts and an American space tourist undocked from the international space station and plunged back to Earth late today in a problem-free re-entry. Unlike the two previous Soyuz descents, which were marred by module separation problems that led to steep, off-course touchdowns, the Soyuz TMA-12 spacecraft landed on target northeast of Arkalyk, Kazakhstan, at 11:37 p.m. EDT. Russian recovery forces stationed nearby watched the final stages of the descent and reached the capsule a few minutes after touchdown to assist Expedition 17 commander Sergey Volkov, flight engineer Oleg Kononenko and U.S. space tourist Richard Garriott. All three will be flown back to Star City near Moscow for more extensive medical checks and debriefing. "The Soyuz TMA-12 has landed, just about on target," said NASA mission control commentator Rob Navias at the Johnson Space Center in Houston. "The landing clock at 10:37 p.m. Central Time, just about right on time as well as right on target, perhaps a kilometer or two off the ground track, but essentially well within the landing zone. The crew reports it's feeling well." Kononenko and Volkov, son of Russian cosmonaut Alexander Volkov and the first second-generation space flier, were launched aboard Soyuz TMA-12 on April 8. Garriott, son of former Skylab and shuttle astronaut Owen Garriott, was launched aboard the Soyuz TMA-13 spacecraft Oct. 12, along with Expedition 18 commander Mike Fincke and flight engineer Yury Lonchakov. Garriott, a successful computer game developer, was the sixth tourist to visit the space station, paying some $30 million - the bulk of his personal fortune - for a 10-day stay aboard the lab complex. He joined Volkov and Kononenko for the ride home, leaving Fincke, Lonchakov and NASA flight engineer Gregory Chamitoff behind aboard the station. "This has met and in many ways exceeded my expectations," Garriott told reporters Monday. "There's no question, I've already begun to think about the next trip up. With this trip, I was trying to study and analyze how private citizens might be able to contribute to the success here in space. And I'll have a lot more thoughts on that when I come back down." With Volkov at the controls, the TMA-12 spacecraft was released from the station's Pirs docking module at 8:16 p.m. EDT Thursday. A four-minute 22-second rocket firing beginning at 10:45:19 p.m. slowed the ship enough to drop it out of orbit. Twenty five minutes later, the Soyuz spacecraft's three modules separated normally and the returning station crew entered the atmosphere heat shield first as planned. Landing was uneventful. Here is a timeline of today's re-entry events (in EDT and mission elapsed time): DATE/EDT...DD....HH...MM...EVENT 10/23/08 06:19 PM...198...11...03...US-to-Russian motion control system handover 07:42 PM...198...12...26...ISS maneuvers to undocking attitude 08:05 PM...198...12...49...Russian ground station radio contact 08:06 PM...198...12...50...Sunrise 08:11 PM...198...12...55...ISS to free drift 08:12 PM...198...12...56...Undock command 08:15 PM...198...12...59...Physical separation (dV: 0.3 mph) 08:18 PM...198...13...02...Soyuz separation burn 1 (dV: 1.2 mph) 08:20 PM...198...13...04...ISS maneuver to normal orientation 08:28 PM...198...13...12...Russian ground station loss of signal 09:54 PM...198...14...38...Russian-to-US motion control system handover 10:45 PM...198...15...29...Deorbit burn start (dV: 257.7 mph) 10:49 PM...198...15...33...Deorbit burn complete 11:10 PM...198...15...54...Separation of modules (alt: 87 miles) 11:13 PM...198...15...57...Entry interface (alt: 63 miles) 11:15 PM...198...15...59...Entry guidance start (alt: 50 miles) 11:20 PM...198...16...04...Maximum G-load (alt: 20 miles) 11:21 PM...198...16...05...Command to open parachute (alt: 6.6 miles) 11:36 PM...198...16...20...Landing "From a personal joy standpoint, the whole journey, frankly even before launch, the opportunity to train for and work with these amazing astronauts and all the very capable people on the ground that pull off this amazing orchestra that it takes to keep all of this up in space, that was really fulfilling even before launch day," Garriott said. "Of course, it's been great icing on the cake to actually take the rocket ride, which was very exciting, and of course, the view from up here is spectacular. So I've really enjoyed all of my time here so far, both in serious science and educational work as well as things like the earth observation photography, which is always a joy." Garriott's father, Owen, chatted with his son on a daily basis during the station flight and flew from Moscow to Kazakhstan to be on hand for landing. "That's been a real joy, not just talking to him from space but this whole year we've actually spent working together for this flight," Richard Garriott said. "It's been a great opportunity for us to bond, so to speak, as adults in ways we haven't had a chance to do in many years." The Soyuz TMA-12 re-entry generated more interest than usual because the previous two Soyuz entries were marred by module separation problems that led to steep, "ballistic" trajectories resulting in off-course landings that subjected the crews to extreme vibrations and G forces. The Soyuz spacecraft is made up of two pressurized modules and an aft propulsion module. Just before atmospheric entry, the aft propulsion and forward orbit modules separate from the central descent module carrying the crew. Only the descent module is equipped with a heat shield and parachutes. The other two modules burn up in the atmosphere. In the previous two Soyuz entries, the propulsion modules failed to separate properly from the crew capsules and the vehicles entered the atmosphere connected, in a nose-forward orientation. Atmospheric stress and heat eventually caused the modules to separate. During a spacewalk July 10, Volkov and Kononenko removed one of five explosive bolts that normally fire to ensure separation of the descent and propulsion modules. The bolt in question is believed to have malfunctioned during the previous two entries and it was returned aboard the TMA-12 vehicle for a detailed engineering analysis. Russian engineers were confident the modules would separate normally. Playing it safe, however, a software patch was developed to re-orient the craft if necessary to ensure a quick separation. But there were no problems and the modules broke apart normally a few minutes before atmospheric entry. "We removed this pyrobolt that our experts thought was the cause of the previous two ballistic re-entries," Volkov said in English during a news conference Monday. "During the re-entry, our engineers will add special software program patch that will move our vehicle to another attitude that will allow us, in case of non-separation on time, go into the atmosphere in right attitude. The atmosphere will help us separate and stay in the normal attitude." Garriott said he had no concerns, adding the crew trained in a centrifuge that simulated high-G ballistic entries. "Of course, I've paid close attention to the last two ballistic re-entries and watched all the reports and analyses as to what was the cause and what was done to repair it," he said. "But I have no concerns about re-entry. Even if there was a ballistic re-entry, that's still a normal mode of re-entry, really, and so I'm excited about the trip home regardless." Russian space program recovery forces were staged to assist the crew after a normal landing northeast of Arkalyk or a ballistic entry, which would result in a landing 300 miles or so short of the normal touchdown point. "Our Russian colleagues have spent an enormous amount of time, a very structured effort, to create a fault tree and then work off the fault tree to come to a most probable cause," Mike Suffredini, NASA space station program manager, told reporters in late September. "They have concluded the most probable cause to be related to the (electrically charged) plasma environment and the (difference in) potential between the plasma environment, the environment around space station, and the space station itself. "The way the space station is wired together, there actually is a voltage, a delta voltage potential, between the environment around the ISS and the ISS itself and what happens over time is occasionally that potential tries to equalize. And when it tries to equalize, you get what essentially is a spark to the ISS. This is an environment we've been living in since we starting flying ISS, it's why we have what we refer to as the plasma contactor units that we operate during EVAs to prevent that from occurring during EVAs." The plasma contactor units use xenon gas to equalize electrical potential around the station. The xenon supply is limited and the PCUs are only operated during spacewalks to prevent any chance of arcing while astronauts are working outside. Testing showed no obvious threat to the station's systems when the PCUs were turned off. "What our Russian colleagues have determined is because of the very specific configuration of the pyros ... on the Soyuz, where it's failed to separate each time, they've determined that there's been some arcing, if you will, or equalizing of voltage in this area," Suffredini said. "And this over time has caused the pyros to be ineffective." The culprit apparently involves insulation on the Soyuz near the pyro in question that includes an ungrounded aluminized layer. The huge U.S. solar arrays that provide most of the station's power affect the electrically charge plasma around the lab. The recent Soyuz problems occurred after a major change in the configuration of the arrays. Another major change is expected next year, when a fourth and final set of arrays is added to the starboard side of the station's main power truss. While some NASA engineers are not convinced the evidence supporting the arcing theory is conclusive, "it's a plausible scenario," Suffredini said. 3:45 PM, 10/23/08, Update: Hubble engineers restart payload computer; gear up for instrument power up in wake of glitches last week Engineers believe they understand what caused isolated problems during restart of the Hubble Space Telescope's science instruments last week in the wake of an earlier electrical glitch. They have successfully restarted Hubble's B-side payload computer, officials said today, and hope to bring the first of the telescope's science instruments back on line this weekend. The Hubble trouble began Sept. 27 when the telescope's control unit and science data formatter, or CU/SDF-A, suffered a "hard" failure, preventing ground controllers from receiving data from the science instruments. The A and B channels of the redundant science instrument data handing system are located on the same electronics tray and NASA managers decided to replace the entire unit with a flight spare to restore lost redundancy. But the flight spare must be tested and recertified, forcing NASA to delay the shuttle Atlantis' launch on Hubble Servicing Mission 4, or SM-4, from mid October to mid February at the earliest. In the meantime, Hubble managers wanted to restart the telescope's science instruments by reconfiguring six components in the observatory's data management system and five in the science instrument command and control system. Several of the components in question had not been turned on since launch in 1990. The initial stages of the complex restart procedure went smoothly last week and the B-side science instrument computer powered up normally. But hours later, during re-activation of the Advanced Camera for Surveys solar blind channel, seemingly improper voltage levels triggered an abort. Later, the B-side science computer and science data formatter suffered simultaneous resets for unknown reasons. At the time, engineers did not know if the two events were related. Art Whipple, manager of the Hubble Systems Management Office at the Goddard Space Flight Center, said today engineers believe they understand what happened - and why - and after a thorough review, managers gave the engineering team permission to attempt another restart. "One week ago, Hubble experienced two anomalous events at the end of an otherwise nominal reconfiguration to bring on line several backup components to restore our ability to take data with the science instruments," Whipple said. "The first event was the suspension of the Advanced Camera for Surveys on the afternoon of Oct. 16. The second event was the safing of the science payload later that evening. We've spent the last week supporting a detailed review of all data related to both events as well as a thorough assessment of all other systems on the spacecraft. And we're now ready to resume recovery of the science payload and if successful, science operations. The Advanced Camera for Surveys, installed in 2002, suffered an earlier failure that knocked out its visible light wide-field and high-resolution cameras. Only its solar blind channel, which is sensitive to ultraviolet light, is still in operation. The Atlantis astronauts hope to repair the ACS during the upcoming servicing mission. Whipple said the ACS solar blind channel power-up abort "was caused by a software test that runs in the ACS microprocessor and it tripped before a parallel data collection application had time to collect sufficient valid data." "The engineering data clearly shows there were no actual problems with the ACS power supply at the time of the suspension," Whipple said. "Relative timing of these two software processes has always been tight and recent changes to the software to support the planned SM-4 ACS repair, as well as resetting of the onboard master clock that was a part of last week's reconfiguration, just made the timing too tight. The team will correct this problem by changes to the timing of the activation of the ACS software and will use this revision for all future ACS observations. We expect to resume science observations with the ACS solar blind channel later next week. "Safing of the science payload was caused by a transient electrical event that simultaneously caused the reset of the (B-side) command unit science data formatter and the NASA standard spacecraft computer in the science instrument command and data handling system. That event was most likely caused by a momentary short or open circuit subsequently cleared. Events of these kind are not uncommon in electrical components that have been powered off for long periods of time and it is possible we may see another event of this type in the future." Whipple said as far as the engineering team can tell from telemetry, "there does not appear to be any permanent damage. There was no harm done by this event to any other systems on the spacecraft." "Following detailed review of these events, as well as the risk and benefits of resuming recovery of the science payload,, approvals were given ... to bring the SIC&DH back up on the B side," Whipple said. "This was accomplished today, shortly after 1 p.m. Eastern time. The NSSC is back up and running. If the NSSC continues to operate normally, science operations will resume with Wide Field Planetary Camera 2 this weekend and ACS later (next) week." As of this writing, NASA is working toward a possible launch of Atlantis around Feb. 17. But that assumes the spare science instrument computer hardware undergoing tests at Goddard checks out and no other major problems crop up. Other possible launch targets include March and May. Bill Gerstenmaier, chief of NASA space operations, and Ed Weiler, director of space science, plan to meet Nov. 5 to review testing and launch readiness. A firm launch target date is expected shortly thereafter. 4:15 PM, 10/21/08, Update: Engineers not yet sure what to do about Hubble glitches After a weekend of troubleshooting, engineers at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center have not yet pinned down the cause of two glitches last week that prevented restart of the Hubble Space Telescope's science instruments, officials said today. The restart, switching instrument control to a backup payload computer and components, was required because of a failure in the A channel of the telescope's control unit and science data formatter, or CU/SDF-A, on Sept. 27. To restore the lost redundancy, NASA managers decided to delay the shuttle Atlantis' planned Oct. 14 launch on a final Hubble servicing mission, known as SM-4. That flight now is targeted for no earlier than mid February. In the meantime, Hubble managers wanted to restart the telescope's science instruments by reconfiguring six components in the observatory's data management system and five in the instrument command and control system. Several of the components in question had not been turned on since launch in 1990. The initial stages of the complex restart procedure went smoothly, but improper voltage levels were seen in one of the instruments, aborting the startup sequence. Later, the data management subsystem computer also suffered an unexpected glitch. "On Monday, October 20, engineers at NASAÕs Goddard Space Flight Center met to discuss their next steps toward resolving two anomalies which caused the B-side of the Science Instrument Control and Data Handling System (SI C&DH-B) and the Advanced Camera for Surveys (ACS) Solar Blind Channel (SBC) to return to a 'safe hold' status on October 16," NASA said today in a status report. Over the weekend, "the Hubble team continued detailed reviews of all the data available when last weekÕs anomalies occurred. A suspect 8-volt power source within the SBC's low voltage power supply (LVPS) reached its nominal output value just after failure of an internal check monitoring its health. Hubble engineers are evaluating alternative procedures and determining whether another attempt to restart the LVPS presents a risk to the instrument or to the planned SM-4 repair of ACS's other cameras." The Advanced Camera for Surveys, installed in 2002, suffered an earlier failure that knocked out its visible light wide-field and high-resolution cameras. Only its solar blind channel, which is sensitive to ultraviolet light, is still in operation. The Atlantis astronauts hope to repair the ACS during the upcoming servicing mission. In the meantime, before engineers can restart the solar blind channel - assuming they can resolve the voltage anomaly - they must first coax the B-side science instrument command and data handling system back into operation. "Intensive study of the SI C&DH-B shutdown also continues," today's status report said. "Analyses done thus far suggest that an electrical event of unknown origin and characteristics caused a reset of both the Control Unit/Science Data Formatter-B (CU/SDF-B) and the NASA Standard Spacecraft Computer-1 (NSSC-1) Central Processing Module-B (CPM-B). Both of these modules were activated on-orbit for the first time on October 15. Additional analyses and a risk assessment of SI C&DH-B reactivation have begun." 12:45 PM, 10/17/08, Update: Initial Hubble reboot goes smoothly but anomalies interrupt reactivation (UPDATED at 5:45 p.m. with quotes and details from media teleconference) Work to switch the Hubble Space Telescope to a backup science data management system after a component failed last month has been interrupted by a pair of on-board glitches during the restart process, officials said today. Engineers do not yet know if the anomalies are related, whether any actual hardware failures are involved or even whether the data management reconfiguration played a role. But they are hopeful analysis of telemetry and computer logs will help them resolve the issue and resume normal science operations. "The operations team is working diligently to understand the cause and options for proceeding," said Jon Morse, director of the astrophysics division at NASA headquarters. "We remain optimistic at this time for recovering full science operations. But even the best laid plans can encounter some unanticipated difficulties." The original failure occurred Sept. 27 as NASA was preparing to launch the shuttle Atlantis Oct. 14 on a long-awaited servicing mission. Channel A of the telescope's control unit science data formatter, or CU/SDF-A, began acting erratically and the telescope's main flight computer, following pre-programmed instructions, "safed" the payload computer and science instruments. An attempt by ground controllers to reset the formatter was not successful and engineers quickly determined the box had suffered a "hard" failure. With the formatter out of action, data from Hubble's operational science instruments could not be relayed to the ground. The shuttle flight was delayed to mid February at the earliest to give engineers time to flight qualify a spare science instrument control and data handling system, a box that contains both A- and B-side electronics. In the meantime, engineers at the Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md., decided to switch Hubble over to its current B-side data management system to restore science operations. Those components have not been powered up since launch in 1990. The switchover began Wednesday. Telemetry from the telescope indicated the initial transition went smoothly. Wednesday night, engineers turned on the B-side science instrument control and data handling system, which includes the B-side data formatter. They then confirmed the Wide Field Planetary Camera 2, the one operational channel of the Advanced Camera for Surveys and the Near Infrared Camera and Multi-Object Spectrometer, or NICMOS, were able to communicate with the B-side SI C&DH system. The instruments then were put back in safe mode pending commands to switch control to the SIC&DH. Thursday, engineers tried to bring the science instruments back on line. That's when the first of two problems developed. "On Wednesday, engineers at the Goddard Space Flight Center reconfigured six components of the Hubble data management system and five components in the science instrument command and data handling system to use their redundant, or what we sometimes call the B side," said Art Whipple, manager of the Hubble Systems Management Office at Goddard. "This work was to work around a failure that occurred on Sept. 27 in the side-A science data formatter, which is a part of that SIC&DH system. It resulted in a cessation of all science observations except for astrometry, which are done with the fine guidance sensors that don't go through the SIC&DH. "The reconfiguration proceeded nominally and the Hubble resumed the science timeline at noon Eastern time on Thursday. The first activities out of that onboard science timeline were the commanding of the science instruments from their 'safe' to 'operate' mode. This occurred nominally for the Wide Field Planetary Camera 2 and for the Near Infrared Camera and Multi-Object Spectrometer (NICMOS). However, an anomaly occurred during the last steps of the commanding to the Advanced Camera for Surveys." The Advanced Camera for Surveys, installed in 2002, suffered an earlier failure that knocked out its visible light wide-field and high-resolution cameras. Only its solar blind channel, which is sensitive to ultraviolet light, is still in operation. The Atlantis astronauts hope to repair the ACS during the upcoming servicing mission. "At 1:30 p.m. Eastern (Thursday), when the low-voltage power supply to the ACS solar blind channel was commanded on, software that was running in the microprocessor in ACS detected an incorrect voltage level in the SBC and suspended ACS," Whipple said. "Then, at 5:14 p.m., the Hubble spacecraft computer, the 486, sensed the loss of a keep-alive signal from the NASA standard spacecraft computer in the C&DH and correctly responded by safing the SIC&DH and the science instruments. "At this time, it's not known if these two events were related. The investigation into both anomalies is underway. All the data's been collected and it's being analyzed here at Goddard. The science instruments will remain in safe mode until the SIC&DH issue is resolved. All other systems on the spacecraft are performing nominally." Asked if the telemetry had shed any light on what sort of problem - hardware failure, commanding error or some sort of misconfiguration - might be responsible, Whipple said "we're in the early stages of going through a mountain of data that has been downloaded over the last 24 hours." "At this point, we are fairly certain, although nothing's been 100 percent ruled out, but we're fairly certain it is not a configuration or a commanding error," he said. "We are not to the point where we can rule out either transient issues or, for that matter, hard failure. We're just not there yet." The initial fault in the Advanced Camera for Surveys occurred when a computer inside the instrument failed to detect the required 8 volts from the low-voltage power supply. Several hours later, the 486 flight computer, which constantly monitors the status of the payload computer, detected an apparently loss of keep-alive power in the B-side SIC&DH computer. Whipple said the actual transition to Hubble's B-side science data management system went smoothly, with no apparent problems. "There really are no changes that we're seeing in any of our other telemetry," he said. "The behavior of those six data management system components we switched over has been absolutely perfect so far." But, he added, "we changed a number of things in the configuration of the spacecraft. It was not unexpected that there might be issues. This is, in fact, one of the contingency cases we thought a great deal about ahead of time and we're not totally unprepared for. ... We expect we will work through it, we will be back up and doing science between now and the servicing mission. The team is doing well. I can't tell you they'll get the entire weekend off, but we're cognizant of the fact that this is a marathon, not a sprint. It's important that we do things right, rather than fast." 3:35 PM, 10/14/08, Update: Engineers gear up for critical commanding to switch Hubble to backup electronics After two weeks of engineering reviews and discussions, NASA managers have decided to press ahead with plans to put the Hubble Space Telescope into electronic hibernation Wednesday to carry out what amounts to long-distance neurosurgery. To work around the failure of a science data formatter that shut down science operations late last month, the engineering team will reconfigure Hubble to work with redundant data management subsystem components that have not been powered up since launch some 18 years ago. "It is obviously a possibility that things will not come up," said Art Whipple, manager of the Hubble Space Telescope Systems Management office at the Goddard Spaceflight Center in Greenbelt, Md. That's the bad news. The good news is "there is very little aging that goes on with an unpowered component in space." "It's actually a very benign storage environment," he said. "We have very good confidence this will work. In addition, we have contingency plans built in at each step of the transition where if something does not go the way we expect it to, we'll be able to back out and go down an alternate path." NASA was in the process of preparing the shuttle Atlantis for launch - the target date was today - when channel A of the telescope's control unit science data formatter, or CU/SDF-A, began acting erratically. The telescope's flight computer, following pre-programmed instructions, then acted to "safe" the payload computer and science instruments. An attempt by ground controllers to reset the formatter was not successful and engineers quickly determined the box had suffered a "hard" failure. While a backup system was available, NASA managers decided to postpone Atlantis' launch on mission STS-125, also known as Hubble Servicing Mission 4, until mid February at the earliest to give engineers time to test and certify a spare unit, used for ground testing, that will be added to the shuttle manifest. Whipple said ongoing paperwork reviews have not turned up any show stoppers. Vibration, thermal-vacuum and electromagnetic testing will begin next week and engineers should have a good idea by early November whether February is a real possibility for launch. In the meantime, program managers decided to go ahead and attempt a switchover to side B of the telescope's data management subsystem to restore normal science operations. "The Hubble team has developed and tested the process for switching the Hubble Space Telescope observatory over to its side B and received the necessary approvals for proceeding," Jon Morse, director of NASA's astrophysics division, told reporters today. "The process will commence tomorrow morning and it's expected to take a couple of days to bring the observatory back to science operations. "Switching to side B accomplishes two main things. One is to recover Hubble's science productivity using its main science instruments, especially the Wide Field and Planetary Camera 2 and the solar blind channel of the Advanced Camera for Surveys. It will also give the team the opportunity to restart the NICMOS cryo cooler, to bring that NICMOS infrared camera back to operational status. Another benefit is to test the side B functionality of the observatory in order to verify HST's redundancy. Restoring that redundancy was the main reason for delaying STS-125." The transition to side B will involve 40 to 50 engineers at Goddard. Commanding will begin around 6 a.m. Wednesday, with the most critical phase between 8:30 a.m. and 11 a.m. After that, the team will work to bring Hubble out of an induced coma, or "safe mode." If all goes well, Hubble should be back in normal science mode early Friday. Here's how Whipple described the initial failure and the transition procedure: "On Sept. 27, just a little over two weeks before the planned October 14th launch of SM-4, the main flight computer on Hubble detected an error signal from the science instrument command and data handling subsystem and correctly responded by putting the SIC&DH and the four science instruments into protective safe mode. The failure was quickly isolated to a hard failure in one of the science data formatters in the SIC&DH. There are two formatters in that unit, one that failed and a second that has been kept as an unpowered backup since Hubble was launched in April 1990. "There are no indications that this failure affected any other components in the SIC&DH, the science instruments or, in fact, anywhere else on the spacecraft. In its current configuration, Hubble can perform all of its normal health, safety and housekeeping functions but it can only perform astrometry science with the fine guidance sensors, since they do not communicate through the SIC&DH. "Starting on Wednesday, we will reconfigure Hubble to use the redundant science data formatter in the SIC&DH and six redundant associated components in the spacecraft data management system to restore science operations. Five of the six redundant components in this data management system that will be brought on line have also not been powered since 1990. The command procedures to accomplish this transition have been thoroughly tested. ... So beginning early tomorrow morning, engineers at Goddard will start commanding the reconfiguration and we expect to see the first science data by midnight on Thursday with Hubble back in its science mode on Friday morning." "Over the last few weeks, the HST operations team has worked hard to be sure the procedures are in place to accomplish an efficient and safe transition. We are confident that all preparations are complete and the team is ready to go." Because of the way Hubble was designed in the 1970s, it isn't possible to simply power up the B side data formatter and add it to the A side electronics. Instead, ground controllers must power down the telescope and switch over a half-dozen other components as well. "When we talk about bringing up the B side of the science data formatter, it's actually in a component with the control unit," Whipple said. "You sometimes see people refer to the CU/SDF, that's the box that will be on the B side. That involves the redundant power bus into the SIC&DH and with that comes the use of the redundant computer in that SIC&DH. You can actually run either computer from either bus, but the most straight forward configuration is running it straight through the B side. So that's how the SIC&DH will be configured. "Because of the way the science payload is wired to the spacecraft bus and the whole data management system on the spacecraft, there are six other boxes that have nothing to do with the science payload - it's a telemetry format control module, a timing interface module, a communications module, a command data interface module, a data interface unit interface and then data interface unit No. 5 - all of those boxes, just because of the way the architecture was designed in the 1970s, are not fully cross-strapped. ... so those six boxes need to come over with the CU/SDF." Assuming the switchover works, the telescope will again be able to downlink photos from the Wide Field Planetary Camera 2 and the infrared NICMOS camera. The observatory's other two major instruments, the partially operational Advanced Camera for Surveys and the Space Telescope Infrared Spectrograph, are awaiting repairs during the upcoming servicing mission. During the five-spacewalk mission, the Atlantis astronauts also plan to install two new science instruments, six new batteries, six stabilizing gyroscopes, a fine guidance sensor and replacement insulation. The upgrades are expected to extend Hubble's life at least five years. It's not yet clear where the computer unit swap out needed to restore redundancy in the science data management subsystem will be inserted in the timeline. Shuttle engineers are currently planning for a possible launch around Feb. 17. But space station operations, the readiness of the new computer unit and a variety of other factors could force NASA to delay Hubble Servicing Mission 4 to early May. "We think in the first week or two in November we will have a much better handle on the actual state of the hardware," Whipple said. "The paperwork says February should be supportable, but we should have much higher confidence (in November)." 5:25 AM, 10/14/08, Update: Soyuz TMA-13 docks with space station (UPDATED at 6:30 a.m. with hatch opening; crew news conference Soyuz commander Yury Lonchakov and his two crewmates, NASA astronaut Mike Fincke and space tourist Richard Garriott, docked with the international space station Tuesday to close out a two-day orbital chase. The Soyuz TMA-13 spacecraft docked at the central Zarya module's downward facing port at 4:26 a.m. EDT as the two spacecraft sailed 215 miles above Kazakhstan. "We have capture, we have indicated capture," a Russian translator reported as the small capsule's docking system engaged its counterpart on the station. Video from the space station showed the Soyuz TMA-13 vehicle slowly approaching and then gently bumping into the docking port. A few moments later, hooks and latches closed, damping out residual motion and firmly locking the two spacecraft together. After about an hour and a half of leak checks, hatches were opened and the Soyuz crew floated into the station. Fincke, Lonchakov, Garriott and the station's Expedition 17 crew - commander Sergey Volkov, Oleg Kononenko and Gregory Chamitoff - gathered in the Zvezda command module a few moments later for a teleconference with family members, along with U.S. and Russian space officials in mission control near Moscow. "Welcome to your new home," Kirk Shireman, deputy manager of NASA's space station program, radioed. "We wish you all the best and look forward to seeing you either at home in a few days or in six months. So congratulations." Fincke will replace Volkov while Lonchakov will take over flight engineer duties from Kononenko. Volkov, Kononenko and Garriott plan to return to Earth on Oct. 23 aboard the Soyuz TMA-12 spacecraft that carried the two cosmonauts into orbit last April. The station's third crew member, NASA flight engineer Gregory Chamitoff, will remain aboard the lab complex with Fincke and Lonchakov as part of the Expedition 18 crew until his own replacement, Sandra Magnus, arrives next month aboard the shuttle Endeavour." Garriott, a computer game designer and son of former shuttle astronaut Owen Garriott, paid the Russians some $30 million for a visit to the space station. He is the sixth person to book a commercial flight to the station through Space Adventures Ltd. Volkov, son of Russian cosmonaut Alexander Volkov, is the first second-generation space flier. Garriott is the first second-generation American to fly in space. Both fathers were present at a post-docking news conference at Russian mission control near Moscow. "I unwillingly had tears in my eyes," Volkov said. "Not so long ago, waking up one day in the morning, I thought to myself, 'why not fly to space one more time?' Just kind of came to me on a whim. So if the team makes that decision, I'm ready to make another spaceflight." Owen Garriott, sitting to Volkov's right, said "perhaps we are not old enough yet!" "Many thanks to Roskosmos, Energia and all the contractors who made this beautiful flight possible," Garriott said. "We look forward to completion in another 10 days and thank you all very much." During the post-docking teleconference, Alexander Volkov radioed congratulations to the station and Soyuz crews gathered in the Zvezda module. "Congratulations to all of you," he said. "Congratulations to the crew that just arrived on board the space station. We're glad to see all of you together after the new crew spent two days in the coldness and the crowdedness of the Soyuz capsule. Congratulations on your meeting in space and I wish you all the best." Fincke's wife and three children also were on hand. "We're very proud of you, we're proud of the entire crew and we love you very much and hope you have a great mission," Renita Fincke radioed. "Chandra wants to say hi." "Hi dad," Fincke's seven-year-old son called. "Hi dad." "Hi, Chandra. I'm very happy to hear you and I'm very happy to hear your mom. I love you and I love your sisters very, very much. And I love your mom so much. I'm glad to be here. Thanks for letting me come to space station. I'm doing great." After Fincke's mother and father said hello, Owen Garriott radioed "congratulations to the (Soyuz) crew. We saw your entry, you've done well and we're looking forward to 10 more days of Richard." "Hi, Peter Pan," someone else in the Garriott party radioed. "Ah, very good, thank you Pop," Garriott replied from space. "Hey thanks, I can fly!" "You can fly. Peter Pan is on the space station! I love you." Over the next 10 days, Volkov, Kononenko and Chamitoff will brief Fincke and Lonchakov on the intricacies of station operation. Fincke spent six months aboard the lab in 2004 as a flight engineer and Lonchakov made two short-duration visits in 2001 and 2002. But the station has grown considerably since then with the addition of European, Japanese and American modules. "It'll be easier for him to come on board for the second time," Chamitoff said of Fincke. "I won't have to worry about showing him all the ropes, he'll know most of everything. But since he was here, we've added many modules to the space station. Everything behind me, actually, is brand new since he was here. Two spectacular laboratories. ... So there's a lot to show him, how we do everything and what's going on in those laboratory. There's plenty of us to talk about." In a pre-launch interview, Fincke said serving as commander brought a different set of challenges. "The first time around, I really focused on doing my own job correctly," he said. "And now I'm asked to play a slightly bigger picture role to make sure everything's going smoothly for all my colleagues, who are extremely well trained and extremely competent. But this way, I can help smooth over any bumps along the way in operations and guarantee NASA and all our international partners a good and safe mission. it's definitely a different way of looking at things. ... Being a space station commander definitely does not come with a manual." 03:15 AM, 10/12/08, Update: Soyuz TMA-13 blasts off A Russian Soyuz spacecraft rocketed into orbit and set off after the international space station Sunday, carrying two fresh crew members and a U.S. computer game designer who paid some $30 million for a chance to follow in his astronaut father's footsteps. Mounted on the same launch pad Yuri Gagarin used for the first manned spaceflight nearly five decades ago, the Soyuz TMA-13 vehicle took off on time at 3:01:29 a.m. EDT (1:01:29 p.m. local time) and quickly climbed away through a clear afternoon sky at the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan. Nine minutes later, the capsule entered its planned preliminary orbit. On board are Soyuz commander and Expedition 18 flight engineer Yury Lonchakov, Expedition 18 commander Mike Fincke and Richard Garriott, the sixth space tourist to book a flight to the international space station. Garriott, the son of former Skylab and shuttle astronaut Owen Garriott, is the designer of a series of successful multiplayer computer games. He said before launch "this price tag is the majority of my wealth." "The reason why it's worth it to me is in many ways, this is the goal I've been working towards for a significant portion of my adult life," he said. "(My crewmates) gave pursued this as their profession and invested their professional life in achieving this goal. Though the path that has led me here has been quite different, I share with them the desire and joy and motivation to reach orbit." Television views from inside the Soyuz TMA-13 capsule durirng the climb to space showed Garriott in the right seat, Lonchakov in the center and Fincke to his left. All three appeared in good spirits, smiling and waving at the camera from time to time. Lonchakov even fielded a few casual questions from mission control. "How do you feel?" a Russian space official asked as the ship accelerated toward space. "Wonderful," Lonchakov replied. "How are your crewmates, to your left and to your right?" "They are absolutely great guys," Lonchakov said. "They are real space explorers." Fincke, Lonchakov and Garriott are scheduled to dock with the international space station around 4:30 a.m. Tuesday. They will be welcomed aboard by Expedition 17 commander Sergey Volkov, flight engineer Oleg Kononenko and Gregory Chamitoff, a NASA astronaut. Garriott will join Volkov and Kononenko for their trip back to Earth on Oct. 23, using the Soyuz TMA-12 spacecraft that carried the two cosmonauts into space last April. Chamitoff, launched aboard the shuttle Discovery on May 31, will remain aboard the station with Fincke and Lonchakov until late next month when the shuttle Endeavour delivers his replacement, astronaut Sandra Magnus. Garriott, known as Lord British in his computer game Ultima, grew up near the Johnson Space Center in Houston and was disappointed when doctors told him poor vision would rule out any chance of joining the astronaut corps. "That just set me on the path of saying wait a minute, you can't tell me no," he said. "Literally, throughout my entire professional career, I've been investing in the privatization of space, everything from companies like Spacehab, which flew hardware on the shuttles, to a number of suborbital spaceplane companies down through Space Adventures, the company with which I'm flying, helping to unlock the gates to private space travel. "My father, he was not shocked at all to see me pursuing this. In fact, he has helped put together some of those companies I've invested in down through the years towards the privatization of space. So I would like to believe, anyway, that I've been a modest player in opening the doors to allow a broader cross section of citizens to be able to participate in activities like this." In a reversal of fortune, Owen Garriott, one of the first astronauts to make ham radio calls from space, will chat with his son using ham gear later in the mission. "We've worked quite hard together in preparation for my flight," said Richard Garriott. "He has been my chief scientist, helping me put together all my science and educational activities for orbit. He will be at mission control in Moscow during my flight and so I'll get a chance to speak with him directly via the VHF radio links every day as part of my daily planning. "My father took the first ham radio to space with him on (shuttle mission) STS-9 and made the first contact from space almost exactly 25 years ago. So we didn't want to miss the opportunity to make the connection in reverse. He was calling down from space to me 25 years ago and so he's going to actually leave mission control to go to a ham radio facility specifically so that we can make that reverse contact from me to him." Garriott will spend about 10 days aboard the station before returning to Earth Oct. 23. Fincke Lonchakov and Chamitoff will turn their attention to preparing the station for the arrival of Endeavour around Nov. 16. Along with bringing Magnus to the station, Endeavour's crew also plans to deliver a second space toilet, two astronaut sleep stations, a galley and two racks of processing gear designed to recycle urine and condensation to supplement station drinking supplies. Up to this point, the station has primarily relied on the shuttle to deliver the bulk of the lab's fresh water. But the shuttle is scheduled to be retired in 2010 and on-board recycling is required. If the equipment delivered aboard Endeavour works as planned, NASA and the Russians hope to increase the station's crew size to six next year. But it will take months to verify the system is, in fact, operating normally and producing pure water. "Our biggest question now is to get our life support systems working so that we have enough for six people," Fincke said. "Right now, we're running kind of a water deficit and it's being supplemented by the shuttle. Without the shuttle flying, we really have to manage our water, so our water racks are going to be really important to us so we can recycle a lot of our water. That's going to be key. "We have a 90-day test period to see if they're going to actually be able to use that water. That water is also going to be used not just for drinking and food preparation but also for oxygen generation, which is a key component in life support. Because I think we're all pretty much addicted to breathing!" 03:15 PM, 10/11/08, Update: Soyuz countdown/rendezvous timeline Engineers at the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan are making final preparations for the planned Sunday launch of a Soyuz rocket carrying a space tourist and two long-duration crew members to the international space station. Expedition 18 commander Mike Fincke, flight engineer Yury Lonchakov and Richard Garriott, a computer game designer and son of former shuttle astronaut Owen Garriott, are scheduled for liftoff at 3:01:29 a.m. EDT Sunday from the same pad used by Yuri Gagarin. If all goes well, Lonchakov will guide the Soyuz TMA-13 spacecraft to a docking at the downward port of the central Russian Zarya module around 4:30 a.m. Tuesday. Here is a timeline of major events through rendezvous and docking with the space station. The pre-launch timeline is simply a generic Soyuz countdown synched to the actual launch time of Soyuz TMA-13. As such, some events may be off by a few minutes. It is provided to give readers a "ballpark" idea of when critical events are scheduled to occur. EDT...........EVENT 10/11/08 09:01 PM......Batteries installed in booster 09:31 PM......State commission 'go' 09:46 PM......Crew arrives at site 254 10:01 PM......Tanking begins 10:41 PM......Spacesuit donning 11:01 PM......Booster is loaded with liquid oxygen 11:21 PM......Crew meets delegations 11:51 PM......Reports to the state commission 11:56 PM......Transfer to launch pad 12:01 AM......1st/2nd stage oxygen fueling complete 12:26 AM......Crew arrives at launch vehicle 12:31 AM......Crew ingress through orbital module side hatch 01:01 AM......Crew in re-entry vehicle 01:16 AM......Re-entry vehicle hardware tested; suits are ventilated 01:31 AM......Hatch sealed and tested 02:01 AM......Launch vehicle control system preps; gyro activation 02:16 AM......Launch pad service structure halves lowered 02:21 AM......Suit leak checks; re-entry vehicle testing complete 02:31 AM......Emergency escape system armed 02:36 AM......Service towers retracted 02:46 AM......Suit leak checks complete; escape system to auto 02:51 AM......Gyros uncaged; on-board recorders activated 02:54 AM......Prelaunch operations complete 02:55 AM......Final launch countdown operations to auto 02:55 AM......Launch complex and vehicle systems ready 02:56 AM......Onboard systems switch to onboard control; 02:56 AM......CDR's controls activated; helmets closed 02:56 AM......Launch key inserted in launch bunker 02:58 AM......Combustion chamber nitrogen purge 02:58:59 AM...Booster propellant tank pressurization begins 02:59:14 AM...Ground propellant feed terminated 03:00:29 AM...Vehicle to internal power; 1st umbilical tower separates 03:00:49 AM...Ground power umbilical to 3rd stage separates 03:01:09 AM...Launch command given; central/side pod engines on 03:01:14 AM...Second umbilical tower separates 03:01:19 AM...Engine turbopumps at flight speed 03:01:24 AM...Engines at maximum thrust 03:01:29 AM...LIFTOFF 03:02:39 AM...Velocity 1,118 mph 03:03:27 AM...Stage 1 strap-on boosters separate 03:03:29 AM...Velocity 3,355 mph 03:04:09 AM...Escape tower/launch shroud jettison 03:06:27 AM...Core booster separates at 105 statute miles 03:08:59 AM...Velocity 13,421 mph 03:10:29 AM...Third stage shutdown; Soyuz separation 06:36 AM......DV1 rendezvous rocket firing (dV: 44.2 mph) 07:28 AM......DV2 rendezvous rocket firing (dV: 17.0 mph) 10/13/08 04:01 AM......DV3 rendezvous rocket firing (dV: 4.5 mph) 10/14/08 12:24 AM......ISS US-to-Russian motion control system handover 02:06 AM......Automated rendezvous and docking start 02:22 AM......ISS maneuvers to docking attitude 02:28 AM......AR&D DV4 impulse 1 (dV: 47.5 mph) 02:50 AM......AR&D impulse 2 (dV: 2.6 mph) 02:53 AM......Soyuz/KURS-A rendezvous nav activation 02:55 AM......Zvezda/KURS-P activation 03:13 AM......AR&D DV5 impulse 3 (dV: 49.3 mph) 03:14 AM......Range: 62 miles 03:18 AM......Good KURS-P data at 50 miles 03:39 AM......KURS short test at 9.3 miles 03:47 AM......Range: 5 miles; Soyuz TV activation 03:55 AM......AR&D impulse 4 (dV: 15.3 mph) 03:56 AM......AR&D ballistic targeting point 04:00 AM......AR&D impulse 5 (dV: 7.9 mph) 04:03 AM......AR&D impulse 6 (dV: 3.3 mph) 04:04 AM......AR&D fly around mode start 04:13 AM......AR&D stationkeeping start 04:20 AM......Russian ground station AOS 04:23 AM......AR&D final approach start 04:32 AM......DOCKING 04:37 AM......Russian ground station LOS 04:52 AM......Sunset 04:52 AM......Soyuz hooks closed; ISS to LVLH 06:04 AM......ISS Russian-to-U.S. motion control system handover 01:00 PM, 10/10/08, Update: Soyuz, new station crew and space tourist set for Sunday launch (UPDATED 10/11/08; subs Yury for Yuri) A Russian Soyuz spacecraft was hauled to the launch pad at the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan Friday, setting the stage for blastoff early Sunday on a critical flight to the international space station. The Soyuz TMA-13 capsule will ferry Expedition 18 commander Mike Fincke, a NASA astronaut, and Russian flight engineer Yury Lonchakov to the station for work to prepare the lab complex for next year's planned crew expansion from three to six. They will be joined for launch by space tourist Richard Garriott, a computer game designer and the son of former shuttle astronaut Owen Garriott, who paid some $30 million for a 10-day visit to the space station. "To be frank, this price tag is the majority of my wealth," said Garriott, the first second-generation American space flier. "The reason why it's worth it to me is in many ways, this is the goal I've been working towards for a significant portion of my adult life. (My crewmates) gave pursued this as their profession and invested their professional life in achieving this goal. Though the path that has led me here has been quite different, I share with them the desire and joy and motivation to reach orbit." Liftoff is targeted for 3:01:29 a.m. EDT Sunday. If all goes well, Lonchakov will guide the Soyuz spacecraft to a docking at the downward-facing port of the station's central Zarya module around 4:30 a.m. Tuesday, five weeks shy of the lab's 10th anniversary. "Mike's experienced, he's done this before, Yuri's experienced as well, although this will be his first long-duration flight," Brent Jett, director of flight crew operations at the Johnson Space Center in Houston, said today from Baikonur. "But they know what's ahead of them, they're prepared. They're doing some final things, tweaking up their flight data file, but they're ready to go." Here is a timeline of major events in the rendezvous sequence (in EDT and mission elapsed time): DATE/TIME..DD...HH...MM...EVENT 10/12/08 03:01 AM...00...00...00...17 Soyuz TMA-13 launch 03:10 AM...00...00...09...Orbital insertion 06:36 AM...00...03...35...DV1 rocket firing (dV: 44.2 mph) 07:28 AM...00...04...27...DV2 rocket firing (dV: 17.0 mph) 10/13/08 04:01 AM...01...01...00...DV3 rocket firing (dV: 4.5 mph) 10/14/08 12:24 AM...01...21...23...ISS US-to-Russian motion control system handover 02:06 AM...01...23...05...Automated rendezvous and docking start 02:22 AM...01...23...21...ISS maneuvers to docking attitude 02:28 AM...01...23...27...AR&D DV4 impulse 1 (dV: 47.5 mph) 02:50 AM...01...23...49...AR&D impulse 2 (dV: 2.6 mph) 02:53 AM...01...23...52...Soyuz/KURS-A rendezvous nav activation 02:55 AM...01...23...54...Zvezda/KURS-P activation 03:13 AM...02...00...12...AR&D DV5 impulse 3 (dV: 49.3 mph) 03:14 AM...02...00...13...Range: 62 miles 03:18 AM...02...00...17...Good KURS-P data at 50 miles 03:39 AM...02...00...38...KURS short test at 9.3 miles 03:47 AM...02...00...46...Range: 5 miles; Soyuz TV activation 03:55 AM...02...00...54...AR&D impulse 4 (dV: 15.3 mph) 03:56 AM...02...00...55...AR&D ballistic targeting point 04:00 AM...02...00...59...AR&D impulse 5 (dV: 7.9 mph) 04:03 AM...02...01...02...AR&D impulse 6 (dV: 3.3 mph) 04:04 AM...02...01...03...AR&D fly around mode start 04:13 AM...02...01...12...AR&D stationkeeping start 04:20 AM...02...01...19...Russian ground station AOS 04:23 AM...02...01...22...AR&D final approach start 04:32 AM...02...01...31...ISS Docking at Zarya nadir 04:37 AM...02...01...36...Russian ground station LOS 04:52 AM...02...01...51...Sunset 04:52 AM...02...01...51...Soyuz hooks closed; ISS to LVLH 06:04 AM...02...03...03...ISS Russian-to-U.S. motion control system handover Fincke is making his second long-duration station flight after a six-month stint as flight engineer in 2004. Lonchakov has visited the station twice himself, once with a shuttle crew and once as a short-duration Soyuz crew member. "To go the first time was absolutely wonderful and it was my fondest desire to get a chance to fly again," Fincke told reporters this summer. "As far as the American side goes, only Mike Foale and Peggy Whitson have flown twice on long-duration missions and this is a great chance to do something I really felt comfortable doing. "The first time around it was really nice, I flew with (cosmonaut) Gennady Padalka and he showed me a lot, just by example, how it is to be a good commander. He made that mission everything I wanted it to be and he brought out the best in me. So that's the kind of thing I think about this time. Not just being responsible for the lives of my crewmates, because in many respects, we're all responsible for each other. But also just so I can help with my knowledge and experience, make this mission as successful as we had on Expedition 9, if not even better. And with this crew I'm sure we can get there." Fincke, Lonchakov and Garriott will be welcomed aboard the space station next Tuesday by Expedition 17 commander Sergey Volkov, flight engineer Oleg Kononenko and U.S. flight engineer Gregory Chamitoff. Volkov and Kononenko were launched to the station aboard the Soyuz TMA-12 spacecraft on April 8. Chamitoff was launched aboard the shuttle Discovery on May 31. After a week-and-a-half of joint handover activity, Volkov, Kononenko and Garriott plan to strap into the Soyuz TMA-12 vehicle and undock from the station Oct. 23. Landing in Kazakhstan is targeted for around 11:36 p.m. that night. The most recent two Soyuz landings ended with module separation problems and steep "ballistic" re-entries that led to off-course landings and a rougher-than-usual descent for the returning crew members. Russian engineers believe the problems were caused by electrical shorts in space that affected a specific pyro bolt in the module separation system. The arcing, engineers believe, was the result of the charged environment around the station and an ungrounded aluminum insulation blanket on the docked Soyuz spacecraft. Volkov and Kononenko staged a spacewalk in July to remove the pyro bolt in question on the TMA-12 vehicle. They plan to bring it back to Earth for a detailed analysis. In the meantime, engineers say the TMA-12 spacecraft should perform normally when Volkov and Kononenko return and Fincke said he's confident his own spacecraft, TMA-13, will operate as expected. "Our Soyuz, TMA-13, it's been really well tested," he said. "To help find the smoking gun, or what the problem was with the previous two Soyuzes, they really extensively tested ours. ... The good news is it passed all its tests and they haven't run into any trouble. So we're really confident we're going to be launching on a safe vehicle that's going to act the way we expect it." Chamitoff will remain aboard the station with Fincke and Lonchakov when Volkov, Kononenko and Garriott depart, officially joining the Expedition 18 crew. Chamitoff, in turn, will be replaced next month by astronaut Sandra Magnus, who is scheduled for launch Nov. 14 aboard the shuttle Endeavour. Garriott is the sixth tourist to book a seat on a Soyuz crew rotation mission through Space Adventures Ltd. The flights cost between $20 million and $30 million and require months of training at Star City near Moscow. Garriott's father flew as a NASA astronaut aboard the Skylab space station and later, aboard the space shuttle. As such, Richard Garriott grew up in a neighborhood surrounded by astronauts and space engineers. "I think everyone probably goes through a period of time in their life when they desire or believe that they might one day grow up to be an astronaut," he said. "But interestingly, the thing that set me on the course to pursue the privatization of space, to ultimately get me there, actually happened (at the Johnson Space Center). I was at the clinic here on base and one of the optometrists was noting I had poor eyesight and said, 'hey Richard, I'm really sorry, but that poor eyesight is going to keep you from being selected as an astronaut.' "But (instead) of being crushed and giving up on that dream, that just set me on the path of saying wait a minute, you can't tell me no. ... Literally, throughout my entire professional career, I've been investing in the privatization of space, everything from companies like Spacehab, which flew hardware on the shuttles, to a number of suborbital spaceplane companies down through Space Adventures. "And so my father, he was not shocked at all to see me pursuing this. In fact, he has helped put together some of those companies I've invested in down through the years towards the privatization of space. So I would like to believe, anyway, that I've been a modest player in opening the doors to allow a broader cross section of citizens to be able to participate in activities like this." He made his fortune developing multiplayer computer games like Ultima. "My mundane life, so to speak, has been in the business of creating virtual worlds to explore," he said of his computer gaming business. "Most of them have been in medieval fantasy. My most recent is actually a science fiction game involving humanity's spread throughout the galaxy. In my game, it was by necessity because of a calamity that befalls the Earth. "And so as you might imagine, since I'm getting a chance to go to space myself, I would be remiss without finding a way to connect to the community of players and gamers in general from space. So not only will I be sending messages down to players in my game, but I'll actually be taking up something we call the 'immortality drive,' which is a repository of the wisdom and knowledge of mankind. Gamers can ... contribute to the information that I'll be storing up on the space station just in case such a calamity was to actually befall the Earth." While some NASA astronauts have criticized the Russian space program's willingness to fly non professionals to the space station, Fincke said he was glad to have Garriott as a crewmate. "Having spent time with Richard, I can see he really understands the importance of what we're doing with space and he understands the operational side of things where you just can't randomly push buttons or do something that seemed like a good idea at the time," Fincke said. "And that's first and foremost, can you trust your crewmates? And with Richard, we have complete trust. That goes a long way. "It's only going to be 10 days (but) it's going to be really enjoyable to watch somebody who's flying in space for the very first time, going through all the same things I went through, all the happiness and the learning how to float around the cabin and just looking at the expression on his face when he looks at our planet for the first time. Those are some memories I have from my first mission that I'll get a chance to relive by watching somebody else go through it. It's going to be really enjoyable." Fincke, Lonchakov and Chamitoff will have a busy three weeks preparing the station for Endeavour's arrival on Nov. 16. Then the real work will begin. U.S. and Russian flight crews, engineers and controllers hope to expand the station's crew size from three to six next year. To do that, the station must be able to recycle condensation, cooling water and even urine to provide enough potable water for the astronauts, their experiments and the station's U.S. oxygen generator. Additional astronaut sleep stations, a second toilet and a second galley also must be delivered, installed and checked out. "Our main mission during Expedition 18 is to get the space station, which is currently sized for three people, up and running and ready to go for six people," Fincke said. "It's going to take a lot of work, but it's the next step in getting the space station fully operational. We've got the right team for it." Along with carrying Magnus to the station and providing a ride home for Chamitoff, Endeavour also will deliver two racks of water recycling gear, two sleep stations, a galley and a second toilet identical to the one in the Russian part of the station. The recycling gear, the toilet and the galley will be installed in the U.S. Destiny laboratory module and tied into the same water system. The sleep stations will be mounted in a connecting module attached to the front end of Destiny. Up to this point, the station's fresh water has been supplied by visiting Progress supply ships and space shuttles. But the shuttle is scheduled to be retired in 2010 and the Russians cannot make up the difference, much less expand production to accommodate a six-person crew. "Recycling is a must," said station flight director Ron Spencer. "We can't be delivering water all the time for six crew. So the highest priority is to install and activate the water treatment hardware first. And we want to have this operate for 90 days before we give a 'go' for six crew operations on board station. So we want to start this 90-day clock as soon as possible. We're actually going to try to activate this hardware, the initial activation of it, during the (Endeavour) mission itself so that we can get the first processed water sample returned home on that shuttle mission to verify acceptable water quality." Said Fincke: "Right now, we're running kind of a water deficit and it's being supplemented by the shuttle. Without the shuttle flying, we really have to manage our water, so our water racks are going to be really important to us so we can recycle a lot of our water. That's going to be key. I think the biggest milestone, or biggest measure of success, is getting those racks up and running. We have a 90-day test period to see if they're going to actually be able to use that water. That water is also going to be used not just for drinking and food preparation but also for oxygen generation, which is a key component in life support. Because I think we're all pretty much addicted to breathing!" And drinking. NASA hopes to have the new recycling gear up and running, hooked into the new toilet, before Endeavour departs at the end of November, but it will take at least three months for Fincke and Magnus to complete initial testing to make sure the water quality meets requirements. Magnus agreed there is a bit of a "yuck factor" when it comes to drinking recycled urine, but for long-duration stays on the station and eventual flights to the moon and Mars, recycled water is a must. "Yeah, that's part of what we have to adapt to in our new lifestyle," she said. "This is water, OK, yeah, it used to be urine, forget about that part. It's water, it's important, it'll be clean and that's fine. Yeah, there is a certain amount of I guess you'd call it a yuck factor to it. On top of that, of course, is the fact that (bathroom operations) in space are intensely interesting to everybody on the planet, it's the most popular topic. So there's a lot of interest in this." As for her role in the system's activation, she laughed, saying "I kind of look at it as being on the front line of an evolutionary change. 'One small step for man' kind of thing." 5:25 PM, 9/25/08, Update: NASA to install new solar array bearing race on starboard SARJ Engineers believe they have finally pinned down the cause of metallic contamination and degradation in a critical solar array rotary joint mechanism aboard the international space station, Program Manager Michael Suffredini said today. The problem apparently was caused by the premature loss or breakdown of a gold plating intended to lubricate the joint. During the next station assembly flight in November, shuttle astronauts will replace bearings in the joint, attempt to clean up the contamination and apply a lubricant to the surface of the bearing race. The idea, Suffredini said, is to stabilize the joint, reducing stress and vibration so it can be periodically moved to maximize solar energy generation. While the starboard solar alpha rotary joint, or SARJ, features a redundant, uncontaminated race ring, Suffredini said the long-range solution is what amounts to major surgery: astronauts will partially disassemble the joint and insert a new race ring to take over from the one that has been damaged. "It is our intention today ... to essentially not go to outboard ops and use the redundant ring that exists on orbit today," Suffredini said. "We intend to bring up another race and we will attach it to the race that's damaged and then roll on that race and save the outboard race for later in the life of the international space station." The space station's main power truss features two SARJ mechanisms, one on the left side and one on the right, that were designed to turn outboard solar arrays like giant paddlewheels to track the sun as the station circles the globe. The left-side of the truss is complete, with two sets of arrays in place, and it has not experienced any problems. The starboard truss has one set of arrays in place with another set scheduled for attachment early next year. Engineers noticed high currents and vibration in the mechanism in the summer of 2007. When spacewalking astronauts took a look inside last Fall, they discovered extensive contamination in the form of metallic shavings and degradation to one face of the bearing race. The 10-foot-wide toothed drive gear at the heart of the joint is held in place by 12 trundle bearing assemblies, or TBAs, which distribute the load as a powerful motor drives the main gear and outboard arrays. One TBA was taken off the starboard SARJ in a subsequent spacewalk and returned to Earth for analysis. It was replaced with a pristine unit. During the next shuttle assembly flight, scheduled for launch Nov. 16, "we intend to go on the starboard side and remove the remainder," Suffredini said. "There are 12 trundle bearings, we've replaced one. We intend to remove and replace 11 other trundle bearings in order to bring those all home to help us with root cause. "We will take that opportunity to clean up that race and then we'll also lubricate that race. What we're doing here is we're trying to modify the system just enough so that when we do have to rotate it, we minimize both the vibrations associated with the damage to the race and the contamination that's currently on the race, that helps us with structural life. In addition to that we want to reduce the amount of current required to drive this joint to make sure we never reach the maximum current the motor can drive to. So that's what these two steps do." As a precaution, the astronauts also plan to lubricate the port-side SARJ. "We have concluded the most likely cause of this anomaly is due to high friction, which was caused by the loss of lubrication in the joint when it flew," Suffredini said. "The way we lubricate that joint is we put a gold plating on the (TBA) rollers. This is a very soft material and over time, it kind of wears off the roller and finds its way onto the race and fills in the very small, microscopic holes and provides, basically, a lubricant that will wear over time. But it was intended to wear very slowly over time. "We have found through a bit of research in the paperwork that was put together before we flew, and some of the information we gained from the trundle bearing we returned home, that we believe the gold prematurely came off these rollers, either because of a condition pre-flight or because of the process used to install the gold just wasn't adequate for the conditions that it saw. We have proven through testing that once you take the lubrication off this joint, it will damage the race very, very quickly." Up to this point, the only long-range option appeared to be switching to the outboard race ring. But Suffredini said installing a new race will permit the station to continue operating with its current software and still preserve a backup in case of additional problems down the road. "The downside to that is we have to basically separate the truss at a joint that wasn't made to separate on orbit," he said. "This is not the joint we put together on orbit, this is a joint that was assembled prior to flight and flew as an integrated truss. We referred to it at the time as S3/S4. "We have a technique for doing that," he said. "We have to build the hardware, basically build some jack screws and we'll attach them to where we had some launch locks. And we'll basically separate this joint about 10 inches and we'll slip this new race ring in, install it and then pull it back together. To do all that, it won't happen tomorrow. It'll probably take us to late in 2010 before we have all this hardware ready to go and can get this race ring on orbit. But that is the current plan." A detailed electrical analysis shows the station will have enough power for normal, or near-normal, operations until the new race can be installed. 4:45 PM, 9/25/08, Russians believe recent Soyuz problems due to electrical arcing caused by station's plasma environment Russian troubleshooters believe electrical arcing between the space environment and the international space station most likely caused recent problems with the system used to separate modules making up Soyuz crew ferry craft just before atmospheric entry. The two most recent Soyuz entries ended with off-course landings that subjected crew members to extreme buffeting and vibration. A top U.S. space station manager said today the Russians believe they have resolved the problem and that the next landing in October - and subsequent flights - will go smoothly. "Our Russian colleagues have taken a number of steps," said space station Program Manager Michael Suffredini. "For the ascent vehicle, they've actually changed the pyros to a configuration that's less sensitive to this. ... In addition to that, the vehicle that's due to return home (in October) has, as you know, through a pair of EVAs, a pyro was removed therefore freeing up the mechanism." In the two most recent Soyuz re-entries, one of five pyrotechnic separation bolts failed to disengage properly, causing the central descent module carrying the crew to remain attached to another module longer than usual. In both cases, the modules eventually broke apart, but the malfunctions caused steeper-than-usual "ballistic" re-entries, shaking up the crews and resulting in off-course touchdowns. The Soyuz currently docked to the station, TMA-12, was launched last April, after the first unusual entry but before the second. During a spacewalk this summer, Expedition 17 commander Sergei Volkov and flight engineer Oleg Kononenko released the mechanism and removed the pyro in question so it can be returned to Earth for analysis. The Russians plan to launch Soyuz TMA-13 on Oct. 12 to ferry two fresh station crew members - Expedition 18 commander Michael Fincke and flight engineer Yuri Lonchakov - to the lab complex, along with Richard Garriott, a U.S. space tourist. Volkov, Kononenko and Garriott then will return to Earth in the TMA-12 vehicle on Oct. 23 U.S. time. Suffredini said the TMA-13 spacecraft has been modified to minimize the threat of arcing. "Our Russian colleagues have spent an enormous amount of time, a very structured effort, to create a fault tree and then work off the fault tree to come to a most probable cause," Suffredini said. "They have concluded the most probable cause to be related to the plasma environment and the delta potential between the plasma environment, the environment around space station, and the space station itself. "The way the space station is wired together, there actually is a voltage, a delta voltage potential, between the environment around the ISS and the ISS itself and what happens over time is occasionally that potential tries to equalize. And when it tries to equalize, you get what essentially is a spark to the ISS. This is an environment we've been living in since we starting flying ISS, it's why we have what we refer to as the plasma contactor units that we operate during EVAs to prevent that from occurring during EVAs." The plasma contactor units use xenon gas to equalize electrical potential around the station. The xenon supply is limited and the PCUs are only operated during spacewalks to prevent any chance of arcing while astronauts are working outside. Testing showed no obvious threat to the station's systems when the PCUs were turned off. "What our Russian colleagues have determined is because of the very specific configuration of the pyros ... on the Soyuz, where it's failed to separate each time, they've determined that there's been some arcing, if you will, or equalizing of voltage in this area," Suffredini said. "And this over time has caused the pyros to be ineffective." The culprit apparently involves insulation on the Soyuz near the pyro in question that includes an ungrounded aluminized layer. The huge U.S. solar arrays that provide most of the station's power affect the electrically charge plasma around the lab. The recent Soyuz problems occurred after a major change in the configuration of the arrays. Another major change is expected next February, when a fourth and final set of arrays is added to the starboard side of the station's main power truss. NASA engineers are not convinced the evidence supporting the arcing theory is conclusive, but "it certainly implies that it's a plausible scenario," Suffredini said. 7:30 PM, 9/24/08, Update: House includes waiver to Iran-North Korea-Syria Nonproliferation Act in continuing resolution; would permit NASA purchases of Soyuz flights to space station The U.S. House of Representatives today, as part of a continuing resolution needed to fund government operations past the upcoming elections and into 2009, extended a waiver to the Iran, North Korea and Syria Nonproliferation Act that would allow NASA to purchase seats on Russian Soyuz spacecraft after the current waiver expires at the end of 2011. "I'm thrilled! Couldn't be more pleased. Now, the Senate..." NASA Administrator Mike Griffin said in an email exchange with CBS News. Because it takes three years to build a new Soyuz, an INKSNA waiver extension is required for NASA to avoid unmanning the station starting in 2012. If the Senate goes along and the extension becomes law, NASA would be able to maintain an uninterrupted presence on the lab complex and bridge the gap between the end of shuttle operations in 2010 and the debut of its replacement in 2014 or 2015. The extension would go into effect Jan. 1, 2012, and run to July 1, 2016. It is intended to "allow NASA to continue to purchase needed ISS-related goods and services from the Russians and ensure that U.S. astronauts will continue to have access to the ISS after the current waiver expires," according to a statement released by the Committee on Science and Technology. "The House passed the CR by a vote of 370 to 58." "While I regret that it is necessary, passage of the waiver helps ensure uninterrupted access for U.S. astronauts to the international space station until our new American crew transfer and rescue systems are developed, by allowing us to contract with Russia," committee Chairman Bart Gordon (D-TN) said in the statement. The Iran, North Korea, Syria Nonproliferation Act forbids U.S. purchase of high technology goods from Russia, primarily because of Russia's past support of nuclear power initiatives in Iran. NASA has been able to buy Soyuz seats for U.S. and international astronauts under waivers granted by Congress. NASA relies on the three-seat Russian spacecraft to occasionally carry U.S. and international astronauts to and from the space station and to provide emergency return capability between shuttle visits. NASA also is counting on using Soyuz seats to bridge the five-year gap between the end of shuttle operations in 2010 and the debut of the shuttle's replacement. In recent weeks, an extension to the waiver appeared stalled, thanks in large part to Russia's conflict with Georgia. In an interview earlier this month, Griffin told CBS News he was not optimistic legislation could be passed before lawmakers adjourned for the fall elections. Without a waiver, Griffin said "the first and most obvious possibility is there won't be any American or international partners on the space station after Dec. 31 of 2011. That's a possibility. Another possibility is that we will be told to continue flying shuttle and we would be given extra money to do so, in which case our Ares and Orion could be kept on track and we would no longer have a dependence on Russia. "A third possibility is we could be told to keep flying shuttle, not be given any extra money, in which case we don't get Ares and Orion anytime soon and we still have a gap, it's just further out in time. And all of these things ignore the fact that flying shuttle does not ameliorate in truth our dependence upon the Russians because we still need them for crew rescue." But in a statement today, Gordon said "the American taxpayers have made a significant investment in the ISS. It is important that we be able to use it productively once it is assembled, and for that we needed to have the INKSNA waiver extended." 12:55 PM, 9/4/08, Update: CBS News interview: Griffin not optimistic about station/Soyuz exemption; believes U.S. astronauts may have to leave outpost for at least part of 2012; discusses shuttle extension review, upcoming Hubble flight Movement on a legislative exemption that would allow NASA to buy seats on Russian Soyuz spacecraft past 2011 is at a virtual standstill, NASA Administrator Mike Griffin says. Because of the three-year lead time needed to build Soyuz vehicles, contracts must be in place by early 2009 to avoid an interruption in NASA's presence on board the international space station. But in an interview with CBS News on Thursday, Griffin said he is not optimistic any such legislation will be approved in the wake of Russia's invasion of Georgia and that it's now likely the U.S. segment of the station will have to be unmanned for at least some portion of 2012. Griffin said the problem is "very serious. We have been literally working this issue all year long. I need a contract vehicle in place by early '09 if we are to fly American and international partners on Soyuz in early '12." Under the terms of an exemption to the Iran-North Korea-Syria Non-Proliferation Act, which forbids U.S. purchase of high technology goods from Russia, NASA has been able to buy Soyuz seats for U.S. and international astronauts. NASA relies on the Russian spacecraft to occasionally carry astronauts to and from the space station and to provide emergency return capability. NASA also is counting on using Soyuz seats to bridge the five-year gap between the end of shuttle operations in 2010 and the debut of the shuttle's replacement, the Orion/Ares vehicle, in 2014 or 2015. The current exemption expires at the end of 2011 and new legislation must be approved within the next few weeks - and contracts in place by early next year - to prevent an interruption in NASA's on-board presence. "Where it stands is right now," Griffin said of the exemption, "it's dead stalled. Because there's no legislation which is going to come out of the Congress, other than the continuing resolution package, before they recess to go home for elections. And so right now, we're just on dead stop. And of course, the invasion of Georgia didn't help. "So here's what will happen. The first and most obvious possibility is there won't be any American or international partners on the space station after Dec. 31 of 2011. That's a possibility. Another possibility is that we will be told to continue flying shuttle and we would be given extra money to do so, in which case our Ares and Orion could be kept on track and we would no longer have a dependence on Russia. "A third possibility is we could be told to keep flying shuttle, not be given any extra money, in which case we don't get Ares and Orion anytime soon and we still have a gap, it's just further out in time. All right? And all of these things ignore the fact that flying shuttle does not ameliorate in truth our dependence upon the Russians because we still need them for crew rescue. So if we continue to fly shuttle, either we're flying without crew rescue capability, in other words putting crew on station and then leaving them there without a way to get home in an emergency, which we have never done, or our tenure on station is only during the two weeks you get when the shuttle visits a couple of times a year." Asked if he has any optimism a waiver can be in place in time to avoid a gap in U.S. space station operations, Griffin said simply, "no." "My own guess is at this point we're going to have some period in 2012 where there's no American or international partner crew on station, that there's only the Russians there," he said. "That period always ends three years from when we have a contract with the Russians. So if we can get through all this by June of next year and have a contract with the Russians, then in the latter part of 2012 we can fly a Soyuz flight and restore things to normal." Along with clouding the prospects for the long-sought exemption, the Russia-Georgia conflict prompted Griffin to order a review of what would be required to keep space shuttles flying past 2010 if Congress or the next president ordered a change of course for American space policy. Here is a transcript of Griffin's conversation with CBS Space Analyst William Harwood (questions have been edited for length): Q: You are the man who reinstated the upcoming Hubble Space Telescope servicing mission. You must be excited to see the flight finally get here. The history of Hubble is almost like reading "The Perils of Pauline." Griffin: Well, it is. I would say the team brought it back from the dead. It WAS dead, it was off the books. But in the end, I think the right thing was done and I'm real pleased about that. Q: If the astronauts are successful, Hubble will be in better shape than it's ever been in, with five instruments, new gyros and new batteries. Really, it'll be a new telescope, more capable than it's ever been. Griffin: Without a doubt, I mean, by far. The technology has evolved in the 25 years since the basic design was completed. Remember, this was originally supposed to fly in 1986 and so it was completed, essentially all done in the early '80s and upgraded several times. But compared to the original instruments, it shares the name (only). Q: What is your sense of Hubble's legacy? is this the most scientifically productive spacecraft of all time? Griffin: Well, it's certainly up there. When you start talking about 'the most scientifically valuable,' well you know, COBE and WMAP, measuring the cosmic background and establishing that the irregularities in the earlier universe were just the right size, neither too big nor too small, to produce the galaxy structure we see today, that's pretty important. When you talk about detecting gamma ray bursters and understanding high energy processes in the universe, that's pretty important. In certain ways, it gets hard to say what's THE most important. But if you want to measure long-term productivity, it's Hubble at the tape. Q: But it's probably safe to say nothing rivals Hubble in its public recognition. Griffin: There's nothing like a picture for people to see. Now you know, the pictures also contain very crucial, detailed and important scientific information, but they're also stunning. I made the point in a recent speech in Florida, over in Pensacola, that Hubble is the only thing I can think of whose products hang on the walls of art museums and are also on the pages of scientific journals. I mean, I can't think of another one. Q: You decided early on to have a second shuttle ready to take off on a rescue mission if something happened to the Hubble crew's orbiter. In hindsight, now that you have tested heat shield inspection and repair techniques in hand, was that overkill? Do you really need that capability? Griffin: Statistically speaking, even then, we knew and I knew that it is not necessary. In fact, the odds that we have are higher than 1-in-400. So 1-in-400 and some that we would have a problem on the Hubble shuttle that another shuttle could save you from, whereas the overall odds on the loss of crew on the shuttle are something like 1-in-75 to 1-in-80 is our best estimate currently. If you were to launch 400 and some Hubble missions, once in every six failures would be a failure that the rescue shuttle could save you from. You with me on that? OK, so that's what the statistics mean. Most of the failures that are going to get you are not something that the launch-on-need shuttle will save you from. So specifically, six out of seven of them it won't save you from. So on a purely technical basis, yes, it's overkill. But you know, I was raised in the south and as a boy I first heard the saying 'you know, son, sometimes you have to rise above principle.' And sometimes you have to rise above technical truth. And the deeper truth is if I elected to conduct a launch where we didn't have the launch on need, especially at the time I made the decision, I would have caused people to question the agency's processes, the agency's decision making, I would have caused a distraction that would have had, I think, a negative value much greater than the money and the time we're having to spend to get the launch on need shuttle ready. I did make the final call on the launch-on-need shuttle and not everybody agreed, frankly, because we did have the numbers. But it is also of value to have our stakeholders believing that the decisions of the agency are being made in a responsible way, looking at all aspects of the situation. Q: When the Hubble mission is over, NASA will have nine shuttle missions left on the books. I know nothing has changed in that regard and no additional flights are currently planned. But can you explain the shuttle program extension study you recently asked the program to go off and look at? What are you looking for? Griffin: Well, despite what you hear and read everywhere, I'm not clueless! After the Russian invasion of Georgia it was clear here in Washington the general tone of acceptance for the earlier policy decision to rely upon Russia during the gap - and remember, the gap was not an accident, it is a feature not a bug of U.S. space policy; now I don't agree with the feature, but it was there when I walked in and I've not been able to muster arguments sufficiently convincing, frankly, either to the administration or to Congress that we shouldn't tolerate it. So it's a feature of U.S. space policy. Well, that means it was planned. After the Russian invasion of Georgia, it occurred to me, immediately, that that feature might not continue to stand up under scrutiny and there might be, I think a wrong-headed political reaction, but a political reaction to what I've characterized as cutting off your nose to spite your face. We would decline to renew our INKSNA (Iran-North Korea-Syria Non-Proliferation Act) exemption and therefore decline as a nation to allow NASA to buy rides from Russia. Now, again, I think on the facts that's a poor decision. If that were to come about, I think that's a poor decision. Because in declining to buy rides from Russia throughout the gap, what we do is we punish, you know, U.S. and international partner interests. So the Russians invade Georgia and we punish the U.S., Canada, Japan and Europe. Because the Russians will continue to have access to the station, but we won't unless we decide to fly the shuttle. Q: And the international partners, obviously, go through NASA. Griffin: Oh, they do. And in fact, we have a, basically, treaty level obligation to supply access to them in exchange for the hardware that they've built. We took that obligation on, as well as the obligation of crew rescue, for ourselves and our partners. We signed up to all that. Now, our means of meeting those obligations, our intended means after loss of Columbia, was to fly the shuttle until 2010 and then as a matter of deliberate policy to rely upon the Russians for five years. OK, it occurred to me that policy might come in question in the next Congress or the next administration and I did not want people asking NASA questions about what it would take to continue to fly shuttle or what would the impact be, what happens if we do, what happens if we don't. I thought those questions should be thoroughly studied at NASA and the answers ready before someone asks, so that we're not having to scramble for a quick answer. We do a lot of internal work and it is internal and pre-decisional for a reason. I don't like the fact that it (the shuttle program extension review) leaked, but I'm not going to apologize for having done prudent advance planning. Q: What sort of scale are you talking about? Is this open ended... Griffin: We're talking a few months to figure out what it would take. Q: I didn't meant that. I meant are you talking about a couple of flights a year, what sort of options are on the table? Griffin: I'm not asking for them to tell me what it would take to do five flights a year. I'm asking them what it would take to do a couple of flights a year, primarily crew rotation and ISS resupply. So that's what I'm asking. But we need enough variation in what they look at to get a sense of how it trends, where the knees in the curve are. I mean, if I ask a point question, I'll get a point answer but it won't be that informative. Q: Any assumptions in this? Retiring an orbiter, for example, anything else? Griffin: I want them to tell me. I asked them to tell me what would happen in terms of the impacts if NASA receives additional money from the Congress or a new administration in order to, you know, fly shuttle while keeping the Constellation elements on track and also to assess it if it had to be done within a constant top line like we have today. Q: What does that mean? Griffin: Well, OK, there's two possibilities and a range in between. Suppose someone says I want you to keep flying the shuttle, but I want you to keep Ares and Orion on track so tell me how much money you need to keep flying shuttle extra? Q: And have Orion ready in 2015. Griffin: Exactly. That's one question. Another question, the other end of the spectrum is, I want you to keep flying shuttle and I'm not giving you any extra money so tell me what happens to Ares and Orion, how badly are they delayed? And then there's a spectrum of options in between. Suppose I give you some money, but not enough? So we're trying to get a handle on what the range of options and impacts are. Q: Is there some point, based on manufacturing capability or whatever, where you can't keep flying shuttle without significant new money? Griffin: Well, yeah, that point would be reached if we ripped up the tooling at Michoud (Assembly Facility where external tanks are built) and put down tooling for the Ares tanks. Q: I thought you were pretty much there. Griffin: We're coming up on it, but it hasn't happened yet. Q: So you've got a few months in here to consider all this before you would really have to make it happen? Griffin: Correct. Q: So when a new administration comes in, you'd have to have some pretty quick action here one way or the other. Griffin: You either have to have a reasonably quick decision or you have to just stand down, don't do anything. I mean that's always a recipe for delay and obfuscation and wasting money. Q: What's the feedback from Congress been like? Griffin: The hill is not in session so no, I've not gotten any feedback. But again, we're not changing policy. We're trying to answer the 'what if' questions if a new administration or a new Congress wants a change of policy. Part of their desire to change or not change policy will depend upon what the costs and impacts are, right? And I want to be able to provide those. The other scenario is, suppose nobody asks me, they just tell me? Well, that's fine. A point I've made many times is NASA doesn't create policy, we execute it. If I'm lucky, they ask me what I think. But if they don't even bother to ask and they just tell me what they want, whoever the 'they' is, then I need to be able to move out on those directions with the least damage to NASA rather than being in a hurry up mode and creating unnecessary collateral damage. So I get to that place by studying the thing first. Q: And you expect to have this wrapped up by the end of September or October? Griffin: I don't know. I mean, I certainly hope by the end of October we have a pretty good first-order cut at it. I don't think there are any better people at NASA than the folks running space ops and running the shuttle program. I think we've got the best there is, they'll get the answer to me as soon as they can. It'll be a couple of months, it won't be six months. Q: In your perfect world, what would you see happen? Griffin: In my perfect world? I've been pretty clear about this from the start. In my perfect world, the nation's space policy makers would allocate enough money that we could fly Ares and Orion at the earliest possible date and we'd fly shuttles as a matter of engineering and programmatic practicality until Ares and Orion were available. Now that would take several extra billion dollars a year. That's the way a program manager would think and that's fundamentally what I am. That's not the policy path the nation went down. I've done my very best to provide an approach that was going to get us through the gap. But if you asked me in my perfect world what would we do, we wouldn't have a gap. Q: I understand. In the near term, there seems to be political support to add at least one extra mission to launch the Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer. Where does that stand? What's the likelihood of that mission? Griffin: I have no idea. I've said repeatedly that, you know, that's again basically a political decision. Technically, NASA can fly AMS. It might not fly in fiscal 2010, but it could surely fly in calendar 2010 unless we get another hurricane or something like that. This is a case where to a certain extent NASA is caught between the desires of the Congress and the desires of the administration. The administration has not budgeted that mission and does not wish to fly it and the Congress feels, in general it seems to me, the Congress feels oppositely and I don't honestly detect any differences across party lines. It's not a Republican-Democrat matter. So what I have been very clear on is we absolutely do not have the money to fly that flight. So if someone wants it flown, the money has to be requested and appropriated. Or else, someone then has to identify what the $300 million offset is, what $300 million of other work that has already been approved at NASA doesn't get done? Q: You don't have to make that decision immediately, I guess. Griffin: Well, February, March next year we kind of need to know because there's an 18-month template to integrate any flight. You know, so it's a $300 million problem. The marginal cost of any given shuttle flight is not that high, I mean, it's really no more than what it would be to fly (a large unmanned rocket). So the marginal cost of the shuttle flight is not terrible, but it isn't free and in the end we need direction. I mean our current direction is don't fly it and unless that changes, we don't fly. And I need to know by February or March next year. Q: Let's go back to the Iran-North Korea-Syria Non-Proliferation Act. Can you give me an update on where the exemption stands? It expires in 2011 and there's a three-year lead time required to build new Soyuz spacecraft, right? How serious is this? Griffin: It's very serious and it hasn't snuck up on me. We have been literally working this issue all year long. I need a contract vehicle in place by early '09 if we are to fly American and international partners on Soyuz in early '12. Because you're right, the current exemption expires on Dec. 31, 2011 and the Russians have about a three-year lead time on producing Soyuz. That's not a negotiating tactic on their part, there's a historical record that it takes them about that long to produce one and I don't really think I want to pay them to try to accelerate it. And the other thing is, I don't actually want them to accelerate it, I don't want them to do anything different building Soyuzes than they've been doing. Right? We just want to have a contract in place in the normal amount of time that will produce a Soyuz on the normal schedule. That means, if we want to fly Americans and our partners in '12 we need a contract in place by early '09. And I've said that starting with my congressional hearings last winter. Q: I understand that. I'm just trying to understand where it stands. Griffin: Well, where it stands is right now, it's dead stalled. Because there's no legislation which is going to come out of the Congress, other than the continuing resolution package, before they recess to go home for elections, right? And so right now, we're just on dead stop. And of course the invasion of Georgia didn't help. So here's what will happen. If we don't get a renewal of our INKSNA exemption, one of four things will come to pass. The first and most obvious possibility is there won't be any American or international partners on the space station after Dec. 31 of 2011. That's a possibility. Another possibility is that we will be told to continue flying shuttle and we would be given extra money to do so, in which case our Ares and Orion could be kept on track and we would no longer have a dependence on Russia. A third possibility is we could be told to keep flying shuttle, not be given any extra money in which case we don't get Ares and Orion anytime soon and we still have a gap, it's just further out in time. All right? And all of these things ignore the fact that flying shuttle does not ameliorate in truth our dependence upon the Russians because we still need them for crew rescue. So if we continue to fly shuttle, either we're flying without crew rescue capability, in other words putting crew on station and then leaving them there without a way to get home in an emergency, which we have never done, or our tenure on station is only during the two weeks you get when the shuttle visits a couple of times a year. Q: Interesting. Griffin: Yeah, an interesting set of circumstances, huh? Q: I guess the sky really is falling? Griffin: Yep. I said in my testimony last winter, my first round of testimony, we had to have INKSNA this year or we were at risk of not having crew on station. Q: If the U.S. doesn't have crew there, can the station safely operate? Griffin: Sure. We had plans for going unmanned on station if we had to. And the Russians can operate station just fine. There's no question, there are troubleshooting scenarios where if equipment had problems and you didn't have a person on board to help fix it that it would be easier to lose station without people on board than with it on board. But in the nominal case, the station can fly unmanned. But it's not going to be unmanned. You're going to have three Russians up there. Q: Was there progress on the waiver before the Russian action in Georgia? It's not clear to me that you wouldn't be telling me the same thing even if that hadn't happened. Griffin: Well, I might, but I think the probability changed, to be honest. I think because the administration had requested the exemption through State (Department) and because I had been articulating our case on the hill, I think I had most of our critical folks, you know, ready to hold their nose and support, if you will. Now, there still was some possibility it wasn't going to happen but we were looking at different legislative vehicles for that and no one was really objecting, they were in fact helping us. So the climate did change with the invasion of Georgia and at this point, people who were already suspicious, like Sen. (Bill) Nelson, changed from being suspicious to being downright against. And I, in the larger perspective, I understand. I'm not being critical. I am trying to outline and elucidate that this is a consequence of a policy decision we made several years ago as a country that it was OK for us to depend upon the Russians for access to our space station. We made that decision. This is one of the consequences of it, the position we find ourselves in today. Q: When I tell non space people about the gap, the response is almost universally "you're kidding." Why is that? Griffin: The 'you're kidding' part and the lack of notice, for several years it was something fairly far off in the future. The actual circumstance doesn't even occur in the next president's administration unless that president gets two terms. It certainly wasn't occurring in this president's administration and it doesn't occur in any of the next couple of Congresses, right? Nobody around today was certain to be on scene when the actual consequence occurs. Moreover, I don't think anybody reading about it in the papers ... thought really that it was going to be allowed to come to pass. I was first asked the question by Sen. Nelson, it must have been 18 or 20 months ago, I was first asked what would it take to deploy Constellation earlier and how early could you do it? At that time, and this was a couple of years ago, I said we could deploy in 2013 but it would cost you an extra $2 billion. And he said per year? And I said no, an extra $2 billion total. And people did not want to advance that money. Therefore, 2013 melted away. Well now, the water's gone over the dam or under the bridge or whatever your favorite metaphor is, and at this point, if everything went just right, the earliest we could deliver Constellation would be in the fall of 2014. Now our commitment date has remained unchanged, March of 2015 based on the president's budget. But at this point, even if you dump a bunch of money on it you're not going to get it earlier than sometime in late 2014. Q: Who was it that said 'may you live in interesting times?' You've got your interesting times. Griffin: It's a Chinese curse. So that's how we got where we got. It's always been something in the future. Well, you know, if you don't die, sooner or later the future arrives. Q: Do you have any reason at all for optimism about getting a waiver in time to avoid a gap in 2012? Griffin: No. Q: So one of the options you laid out is probably going to happen. Griffin: Well, certainly one of them will come to pass. My own guess is at this point we're going to have some period in 2012 where there's no American or international partner crew on station, that there's only the Russians there. That period always ends three years from when we have a contract with the Russians. So if we can get through all this by June of next year and have a contract with the Russians, then in the latter part of 2012 we can fly a Soyuz flight and restore things to normal. Q: So it's one to one with how long it takes to get a contract. Griffin: That's right. So my own personal guess, and this is nothing more than a guess, is that we will wind up in 2012 with some period where there's no U.S. crew and no Canadian, Japanese or European crew on the station. Q: That is something. You've been warning people about this for quite a while. Griffin: I brought it up in my confirmation hearing. On April 12 of '05. Q: Is there anything we haven't touched on that you would like to point out or elaborate on? Griffin: I guess one point I would make, and I know you know it, we've been getting a lot of flack lately for our fairly open discussion about slipping our internal dates for Constellation. People are accusing us of, you know, slipping the program. We are slipping our internal dates. The program is not in trouble. What we're doing is recognizing the fact that we are not going to, or not likely to receive extra money for the Constellation program. Now earlier on, the direction I had given to the team was to preserve the best possible date, right? Under the assumption that at some point, somebody would decide that they wanted the gap to be lesser rather than greater and would provide some extra money for Constellation. If that happened, I didn't want us to have made it moot by not being able to take advantage of it, right? OK. So we were preserving an end-of-2013 internal date and making decisions based on that and working toward the end of 2013 under the assumption that at some point the bow wave of money would arrive. All right. Well, that's not going to happen. So I don't want the team making decisions in an earlier timeframe, decisions in haste, if you will, that don't need to be made. In fact, the major cost of the program is governed by production and our production can't start until we pass critical design review, which is at the end of 2010 when the shuttle retires. So that milepost, that stake in the ground, hasn't changed because we still expect to get money for Constellation when shuttle retires at the end of 2010. So my goal now is not to, any longer, is not to preserve the possibility of pulling that production in. My goal is to be ready for it when the shuttle retires. So therefore, the decisions leading up to CDR ... that we can afford to move out to give ourselves some extra thinking time before the serious money spending starts, those we are moving. Our anchor is the CDR at the end of fiscal 2010. Does that all make sense? Some of the less informed media have raised the flag - Constellation's in trouble - well no, it's not. I'm giving up the option of pulling the schedule in and am now just sort of putting in place what we have to do to maintain what we said we could do with the president's budget. Q: Thank you. 3:30 PM, 8/19/08, Update: 'Tuned mass actuators' proposed to solve Ares 1 vibration concern NASA hopes to resolve concern about high vibrations in its new Ares 1 rocket by using a shock absorber-like passive damper between the first and second stages and a computer-controlled, motor-driven system of spring-mounted weights at the base of the booster to actively cancel out unwanted up-and-down oscillations. The Ares 1 rocket will use an extended five-segment space shuttle solid-fuel booster as its first stage and a hydrogen-fueled upper stage to boost Orion crew capsules into low-Earth orbit. The Ares-Orion spacecraft will replace the space shuttle after the winged orbiters are retired in 2010. First operational use of the new rocket is expected around 2015. But shuttle boosters experience high vibration levels as they exhaust their loads of solid propellant. Engineers have been assessing a variety of techniques for reducing those vibrations to make sure they will not affect a crew's ability to perform. "We're dealing with a vibration that takes place very late in first stage burn, it's a smooth ride up until around between 105 and 115 seconds," said Garry Lyles, associate director of technical management at NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center. "Most of the activity occurs around 115 seconds for a very few seconds." The longitudinal, or up-and-down, vibration does not affect the structural integrity of the rocket, he said, but it could affect an astronaut's ability to read cockpit instruments and respond to emergencies. "The effects that we were dealing with were primarily effects on the crew and we're primarily dealing with crew performance, that is, the ability of the crew to read the console displays and respond to what they see," Lyles said. "We've found that the crew health issue is relatively easy to mitigate, but we're dealing with crew performance, primarily. We set a guideline on ourselves to have the vibration on the crew down to around a quarter of a G in the longitudinal direction." Without any mitigation, loads as high as five or six times the force of Earth's gravity - Gs - could be experienced. With a strictly passive system, engineers believe the loads would drop to around one G. While that would not pose a health concern, it still could impair performance, causing blurry vision. During a teleconference today, program managers said they are recommending a system that uses a combination of passive and active vibration control to ensure Orion astronauts do not experience more than about a quarter of a G in unwanted longitudinal vibration. The passive system is a "compliance structure" between the first and second stages that reduces the rigidity of the interface and "has the effect of detuning the vehicle frequencies away from the acoustic frequencies of the motor," Lyles said. "That's basically a spring and damper ring that will be designed into the structure between the first stage and the upper stage." For the active system, 16 cylinders would be mounted around the interior circumference of the flared base of the first stage. Each cylinder would feature spring-mounted weights that can be moved on computer command to counteract vibrations sensed by a redundant control system. "It will sense the response of the vehicle and sense the motor vibrations and respond to that by moving a mass and spring system to cancel the vibrations of the vehicle at that point," Lyles said. "We believe we have a system that will be extremely reliable when it's developed." The system would use battery-powered motors to move the 16 100- to 150-pound weights as required. With a fully redundant control system, Lyles said, "we can lose multiple actuators and still effectively cancel the vibrations on the crew." "In fact, it turns out we can design this system so that if we lose all active control, that is, our redundant controller goes out and we have no active control in the system, the whole system fails as a passive tuned-mass absorber and we'd still be well under the health limits on the crew," Lyles said. The system will add weight and thus reduce the mass that can be delivered to the moon or low-Earth orbit by 1,200 to 1,400 pounds. It is not a one-to-one loss, however, because mass added to the first stage reduces the mass delivered to orbit by about one tenth. In any case, managers already were holding about 8,000 pounds of performance margin in reserve to handle unexpected problems like the vibration issue. Steve Cook, manager of the Ares Project at the Marshall Space Flight Center, said engineers have rigged up a chair at the Ames Research Center In California that can subject a subject to the expected vibration levels. "I've had a chance to ride in the chair, I wanted to see what this felt like," he said. "The closest analogy I can come up with, if you're driving down the interstate and you have to pull off and your wheels go off on the shoulder a little bit and you feel the rumble that's vibrating to remind you to get back on the road, that's the closest thing that I felt. "It doesn't specifically bother you, it's just kind of a high vibration rumble, if you will. All you notice is if you're looking at a screen, at a quarter G you can read everything fine as you get a little higher, things get a little blurrier to read." Engineers are planning a series of tests on upcoming shuttle flights to measure vibration levels just before booster jettison and to better characterize the effects of that vibration on an astronaut's ability to read Orion-like cockpit panels. Sensors also will collect structural loads data to improve computer modeling of the Ares 1 rocket. "We believe we have a system we can go forward with," Lyles said. "We're working toward a proof of concept in the near future." 5:00 PM, 8/11/08, Update: NASA's internal target for first manned flight of shuttle replacement slips one year; little chance seen of 'closing gap' between shuttle and Orion NASA's internal planning date for the first manned launch of the new Orion spacecraft that will replace the space shuttle after the winged orbiters are retired in 2010 has slipped one year, from September 2013 to September 2014. The new schedule, managers said today, reflects a more realistic assessment of projected funding, contract realities and technical requirements in the absence of any significant additional support from Congress. The agency's public commitment to initial operations with the Orion spacecraft remains March 2015, nearly five full years after the shuttle Endeavour flies that program's final mission in the spring of 2010. Between the shuttle fleet's retirement and the debut of Orion, U.S. astronauts will be forced to hitch rides to orbit aboard Russian Soyuz spacecraft. NASA managers, holding out hope they could "close the gap" between shuttle and Orion operations, had been pressing for first launch of a manned Orion capsule in September 2013. But based on a more realistic assessment of projected funding and technical requirements, the date slipped a full year, leaving little hope the gap can, in fact, be narrowed in any significant way. "We are adhering to our commitment date of March 2015 for initial operating capability," said Doug Cooke, deputy associate administrator of NASA's Exploration Systems Mission Directorate. "As the program ... content matures, and as we now have contracts in place, we are better able to phase the necessary work within the established budgets," he said during an afternoon teleconference. "At this point, we've been working to an aggressive internal IOC date of September 2013. Basically, we wanted to press this date as hard as we could until we understood in more detail so that we were able to get the earliest possible date. "With the current understanding and with the mature data we now have, we are shifting that date to September of 2014, which is still an aggressive date against a commitment date of March 2015. We wanted to announce this at this time because this will result in some contract directions and changes and actions and other internal milestone changes in order to align the work within the available budget." Jeff Hanley, Constellation program manager at the Johnson Space Center in Houston, said even with the slip of the first manned Orion flight to no earlier than September 2014, "Our confidence that the gap will get no worse than five years has actually improved." "This alignment you see us doing is, in fact, to better align schedule with the available dollars," he said. "We had a more aggressive target, the 2013 target, that we set many, many months ago when our total plan and our total understanding of the costs to get to the end, the finish line if you will, was a lot less mature. So this is the product of going through this process of deciding what our requirements are, getting our contracts in place, understanding what the true costs really look like they're going to be." A first launch in September 2014 "is, in my opinion, very achievable with no additional dollars," he said. Plans for an unmanned Ares-1 first stage test flight next spring will remain on track, as will a launch abort test. Subsequent milestones likely will slip based on the reassessment. The Constellation program is made up of manned Orion spacecraft, the shuttle booster-derived Ares-1 rocket that will propel them into low-Earth orbit and the heavy-lift unmanned Ares-5 that ultimately will boost Orion capsules and lunar landers from Earth orbit to the moon. The program is the result of the 2003 Columbia disaster and a subsequent decision by the Bush administration to complete the international space station and retire the shuttle fleet by the end of fiscal 2010. The money that had gone into supporting those programs will then be funneled into the Constellation program and the shuttle's replacement. The long-range goal is to establish a lunar base of sorts by around 2020. But the high cost of recovering from Columbia, and the lack of any significant additional funding for Constellation, resulted in a projected five-year gap in the nation's ability to launch astronauts into space. NASA managers and some lawmakers have held out hope for closing that gap and both presidential candidates have expressed support. But given current budget projections, there appears little hope the gap can be significantly reduced even if additional funding ultimately is approved. "The window of opportunity for us to accelerate Orion is closing, and in fact this summer here, with this realignment of our schedule, has closed," Hanley said. "Now, if new money should become available in the next few months or in the next year, we would certainly do all we could, but it depends on the timing of it, it depends on where we're at with having slowed the program down with the contract actions ... that we'll be taking in the next few weeks. That in itself is a very elaborate, tedious process to go renegotiate contracts based on this schedule." Said Cooke: "If there were additional money, we would apply it as best we could and we will continue to do everything we can to reduce the gap between shuttle retirement and flying the Ares-1 and Orion." On a positive note, Hanley said engineers have come up with a possible fix for high vibration levels in the Ares-1 rocket. "It's a really rather elegant concept of using electromagnetic mass absorbers," he said. "Basically, what they are are big springs at the base of the rocket, either arrayed inside or outside the aft skirt of the first stage. The team has identified a concept, a system that has an active element to it to sense what's going on with the vehicle, the way it's behaving, and actually manipulate those mass absorbers to tune up with the offending oscillations. That looks to be very effective." The Ares-1 first stage is an extended version of the solid-fuel booster used by the space shuttle. Engineers were concerned early on about potentially excessive vibrations associated with such a large solid-fuel rocket but Hanley said he was confident the problem can be resolved. 4:30 PM, 8/5/08, Update: Phoenix data suggests perchlorates in Mars soil; implications TBD An instrument aboard NASA's Phoenix Mars lander has detected what may be perchlorate in the soil of the red planet's northern latitudes, an unexpected, still tentative discovery that has touched off a flurry of speculation about whether Mars is now, or has ever been, habitable. While perchlorates can be toxic, some terrestrial plants thrive on the compound and its presence on Mars would not confirm or challenge the planet's overall habitability, either now or in the distant past, scientists said today. "We have substantial evidence that our soil samples contain perchlorate, that's chlorine with four oxygen (atoms)," said Peter Smith, the manager of the Phoenix lander project at the University of Arizona. "On the Earth, perchlorates are found in the Atacama DesertÊin Chile in association with nitrates that are mined for fertilizer. The desert is a hyper-arid environment that rarely sees rain and has no vascular plants. It is often used by scientists, as a matter of fact, as a martian analogue site. "These compounds are quite stable in soil and water and do not destroy organic materials under normal circumstances. In fact, there are species of perchlorate-reducing microbes that live on the energy provided by this oxidant. Therefore, this is an important piece in the puzzle as we attempt to determine if habitable conditions exist for microbes on Mars. In itself, it is neither good nor bad for life." Either way, Smith said, the results have not yet been confirmed by a second instrument aboard the Phoenix lander. And while perchlorate is defined as a toxic compound "with powerful oxidizing properties," it is too early to draw any conclusions about the habitability of the landing zone or of Mars in general based on data from Phoenix. "How this perchlorate in the soil affects habitability is a complex question that we certainly don't have the final answer on," Smith said. "It is a very stable material, it's not likely to tear apart organic materials unless you heat it to very high temperatures. It really doesn't limit us in our search for habitability in this icy soil. And if we were lucky enough to see some organic signatures (in future soil samples), it would not be a huge surprise to think they were co-existing with perchlorate." The Phoenix lander is not equipped with instruments capable of direct detection of life. But by analyzing the chemical makeup of soil near now-confirmed ice deposits, scientists hope to draw conclusions about the past and present habitability of the red planet. That data, in turn, will help NASA planners select landing sites and experiments for future missions. During a news conference last week, Phoenix scientists reported confirmation that ice has been found in the soil near the lander. That was not a surprise given earlier photographs from the lander that showed what appeared to be ice sublimating and vanishing in sunlight. But in a subsequent story, Aviation Week & Space Technology magazine, quoting sources, reported the White House Presidential Science Advisor's office had been briefed on a new discovery concerning the habitability of Mars. The story did not say whether those results supported or challenged habitability. A NASA spokesman said today the agency had not briefed the White House at that time. But NASA apparently received enough enquiries from the news media in the wake of the Aviation Week story to warrant a follow-up teleconference today to discuss the issue. "We are here today to announce a non-announcement," said Michael Meyer, chief scientist of the Mars Exploration Program at NASA headquarters. "More experiments and time are needed to resolve the interesting findings from the soil chemistry." Smith described the teleconference as "an unusual step and break with scientific tradition." "Today we're opening a window into the project to allow the public to see our scientific process in action," he said. "Tradition has been bypassed because of the extreme interest that has been exhibited toward Phoenix ... in our search for a habitable environment on the northern plains on Mars. "Rather than the speculation that has become rampant on the web, I promise you insight into the investigations that are underway inside the operations center. However, I must caution you that we have not completed our process and ... we're about halfway through the data collection phase." Asked repeatedly about the potential implications of perchlorates if, in fact, the presence of the compound in one or more forms is confirmed, Phoenix officials said they simply did not know. "I can say they could potentially keep a lot of graduate students busy for a long period fo time," said Michael Hecht, science lead for the Microscopy, Electrochemistry and Conductivity Analyzer, or MECA, instrument. Over the past few weeks, two soil samples have been analyzed by MECA's wet chemistry laboratory. Results indicate the possible presence of perchlorate in the soil. Another instrument, called the Thermal and Evolved-Gas Analyzer, or TEGA, uses small ovens to bake out and "sniff" soil constituents. Scientists are still analyzing data from TEGA to find out if it, too, detected perchlorate. Along with analyzing data from the MECA and TEGA instruments, the Phoenix team also is working to make sure the spacecraft did not somehow introduce perchlorate, a component of solid rocket propellant, into the martian environment. "So why all the excitement because our chlorine atoms are surrounded by a few more oxygen atoms than expected?" asked Hecht. "Well, in part, because as scientists we're fascinated by things like that. That's why we had trouble getting dates in high school. But mostly it's because different types of perchlorate salts have interesting properties that may bear on the way things work on Mars if - and that's a really big if - the results from our little teaspoon full of soil are representative of the whole planet or even significant portions of the whole planet." He said perchlorates would affect "many things, from how land forms to whether in the distant pass there ever was precipitation." "There are widespread implications and they may all turn out to be nothing, or they may turn out to be very important," Hecht said. "It's just that this has opened up a whole new research chapter for us. We could talk about any one of those potential applications at length, I think we are not ready to do so yet." 11:55 PM, 8/2/08, Update: SpaceX Falcon 1 rocket suffers anomaly after launch (UPDATED at 1:20 a.m. 8/3/08 with stage separation problem; Musk statement) Running four-and-a-half hours late because of a series of seemingly minor problems, SpaceX launched a Falcon 1 rocket late Saturday from the Marshall Islands but about two minutes and 20 seconds after launch, video from the rocket was cut off and SpaceX declared an anomaly. A company official said later the first and second stages failed to separate as required. Liftoff at 11:34 p.m. EDT appeared normal as the slender rocket climbed away from its launch stand on Omelek Island at the U.S. Army's Reagan Test Site at Kwajalein Atoll. Roughly one minute and nine seconds after launch, the rocket accelerated past the speed of sound and was subjected to maximum aerodynamic pressure. "T-plus one minute 20 seconds. Relative velocity 600 meters per second, altitude 18.5 kilometers," a launch engineer reported. "T-plus one minute 40 seconds, vehicle is headed downrange with a velocity of 1,050 meters per second and an altitude of 35 kilometers." SpaceX employees monitoring the flight from company headquarters in Hawthorne, Calif., could be heard cheering loudly in the background. A downward-looking camera on the hull of the Falcon one showed the launch site dropping away in the background. An apparently normal back-and-forth rolling motion about the long axis of the rocket could be seen as the vehicle neared the point where it was supposed to switch to inertial guidance just prior to first stage separation. It was at about that point that the video feed from the rocket suddenly stopped without explanation. There were no obvious problems prior to loss of signal. "We are hearing from the launch control center that there has been an anomaly on the vehicle," said Max Vozoff, a mission manager at SpaceX in Hawthorne. "We don't have any information about what that anomaly is at this time. We will, of course, be doing an assessment of the situation and providing information as soon as it becomes available." About an hour and a half after launch, Diane Murphy, vice president of marketing and communications for SpaceX, spoke with reporters in a short teleconference and read a statement from company founder Elon Musk, a South African who co-founded Paypal. "It was obviously a big disappointment not to reach orbit on this flight 3 of the Falcon 1," Musk said. "On the plus side, the flight of our first stage with the new Merlin 1C regenerative engine that will be used in Falcon 9 was picture perfect. Unfortunately, a problem occurred in stage separation causing the stages to be held together. This is under investigation." The rocket presumably was destroyed at altitude, but Murphy said she did not have any additional details. Saturday's launching was the company's third attempt to log a fully successful Falcon 1 test flight. The rocket's maiden flight in 2006 ended in failure due to a fuel leak and engine fire shortly after liftoff. The second launch in 2007 reached space, but the second stage malfunctioned. Saturday's launching was considered a crucial test for SpaceX and the company's vision of low-cost access to space. SpaceX currently holds 11 government and commercial launch contracts and is in the process of developing the multi-engine Falcon 9 rocket to compete with Lockheed Martin and Boeing Atlas and Delta rockets. In his statement, Musk said "SpaceX will not skip a beat in execution going forward" with Falcon 1 flights 4 and 5 in development and fabrication of the sixth vehicle about to begin. "We are in very good financial state here," Murphy said. "We have the resolve, we have the financial base and we have expertise to identify what the problem that occurred was and we will go forward. There should be no question about that. There is great resolve here to as quickly as possible to go forward with flight 4." The Falcon 1 launched Saturday was carrying three small satellites, a quick-response military demonstration project called Trailblazer and two small NASA payloads. One, called PRESat, was designed to study the growth of micro-organisms and the other, called NanoSail-D, was intended to demonstrate solar sail propulsion technology. The Falcon 1 also carried cremated remains of more than 200 people, including "Star Trek" engineer James Doohan and Mercury astronaut Gordon Cooper. "There was great elation when we watched the first stage, which was absolutely picture perfect," Murphy said. "And then there was concern when we knew that something had happened in the stage separation. Interestingly, people here have great resolve and as Elon addressed the employees immediately following this, he said we will keep going straight forward with flight 4. One of our employees immediately spoke up and said with great resolve, 'yes we will. We will get to orbit' and everyone sent up a cheer." 2:15 PM, 8/2/08, Update: Obama vows to support NASA; supports additional shuttle flight; vows to 'close the gap' between shuttle and its replacement Barack Obama, the presumptive Democratic candidate for president, held a town hall meeting near the Kennedy Space Center today and vowed strong support for NASA, saying he favors at least one shuttle flight beyond the 10 missions left on the agency's manifest. Obama also said he would work to close the gap between the end of shuttle operations in 2010 and the debut of the Orion spacecraft that will replace it and said earlier reports that he would divert money from NASA's next manned spacecraft to education were unfounded. Obama was introduced to an enthusiastic crowd of about 1,300 at the V Community College by Sen. Bill Nelson (D-FL), who flew as a payload specialist aboard the shuttle Columbia in 1986. In his opening remarks, Obama delivered his most detailed statement yet on space policy as NASA implements the Bush administration's drive to complete the space station and retire the shuttle fleet by the end of fiscal 2010. NASA hopes to replace the shuttle with smaller Orion capsules and huge, unmanned cargo boosters, known collectively as the Constellation program. The goal is to use Orion spacecraft to carry astronauts to and from the station while developing the heavy-lift Ares 5 rocket that will help NASA establish a moon base around 2020. Under the Bush administration's plan, the money to pay for the Constellation program primarily will come from funds that now go to the shuttle and space station programs. The Orion spacecraft and its Ares 1 booster are under development, but near-term funding shortfalls will result in a four- to five-year gap between the end of shuttle operations and the advent of routine operations with Orion. During that gap, U.S. astronauts will be forced to hitch rides to the station aboard Russian Soyuz spacecraft. It has been widely reported in space circles that Obama earlier vowed to reduce spending for the Constellation program in favor of education initiatives. Sen. John McCain, the presumptive Republican candidate for president, said in a statement last week marking NASA's 50th anniversary that "under current plans, the United States will retire the space shuttle in 2010 after its final mission to the international space station, and thus lose the capability to send on our own, an American to space." "While my opponent seems content to retreating from American exploration of space for a decade, I am not," McCain said in the statement. "As president, I will act to make ensure our astronauts will continue to explore space, and not just by hitching a ride with someone else. I intend to make sure that the NASA Constellation program has the resources it needs so that we can begin a new era of human space exploration. A country that sent a man to the moon should expect no less." Today, Obama said he supports the Constellation program and will work to narrow the gap between the end of shuttle operations and the advent of Orion. "I know it's still being reported that we were talking about delaying some aspects of the Constellation program to pay for our early education program," he said. "I told my staff we're going to find an entirely different offset because we've got to make sure that the money that's going into NASA for basic research and development continues to go there. That has been a top priority for us. This is an administration that's been anti-science. Whether it's on stem cell research, whether it's on climate change, they have rejected science. I want to reverse that trend, I want us to be a science-based society and I want us to invest in science." Obama expanded on that theme in his opening remarks today, saying "we've got to rebuild our economy in a much more fundamental way. We've got to secure our long-term prosperity and strengthen our economy for the 21st century." "One of the areas where we're in danger of losing our competitive edge is in science and technology and nothing symbolizes that more than our space program," Obama said. "I've written about this in my book, I grew up in Hawaii and I still remember sitting on my grandfather's shoulders as some of the astronauts were brought in after their capsules had landed in the middle of the Pacific. I could just barely see them, I was waving, I had an American flag, and I remember my grandfather explaining to me this is what America's all about, we can do anything when we put our mind to it. "And that was what the space program described, that sense of possibility and always reaching out to new frontiers. When I was growing up, NASA inspired the world with achievements that we're still proud of. And today we have an administration that sets ambitious goals for NASA without giving NASA the support it needs to reach them. As a result, NASA's had to cut back on research, trim their program, which means that after the space shuttle shuts down in 2010 we're going to have to rely on Russian spacecraft to keep us in orbit. "So let me be clear," he said. "We cannot cede our leadership in space. That's why I'm going to close the gap, ensure that our space program doesn't suffer when the shuttle goes out of service. We may extend an additional shuttle launch, we're going to work with Bill Nelson to add at least one more flight beyond 2010 by continuing to support NASA funding, by speeding the development of the shuttle's successor, by making sure that all those that work in the space industry in Florida do not lose their jobs when the shuttle is retired. Because we cannot afford to lose their expertise." The additional shuttle flight presumably would be devoted to launching the Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer, a major physics experiment that lost its ride to the space station in the push to finish the station and retire the shuttle by the end of fiscal 2010. Nelson and other NASA supporters in Congress favor the additional flight, but the Bush administration opposes the additional expense. "But more broadly, we need a real vision for the next stage of space exploration," Obama continued. "And to help formulate this vision, I'm going to re-establish the national aeronautics and space council so we can develop a plan to explore the solar system, a plan that involves both human and robotic missions, enlist both international partners and the private sector. And as America leads the world in the long-term exploration of the moon and Mars and beyond, let's also tap NASA's ingenuity to build the airplanes of tomorrow and to study our own planet so we can combat global climate change. "Under my watch, NASA will inspire the world once again and make America stronger and it's going to help grow the economy right here in Brevard County and right here in Florida. That's what we're going to do. That's what this election's all about. It's about raising our sights, seizing the moment, reclaiming our destiny." 7:20 PM, 7/15/08, Update: Spacewalk ends Space station commander Sergei Volkov and flight engineer Oleg Kononenko re-entered the Pirs airlock module and closed the hatch at 7:02 p.m. to wrap up a successful five-hour 54-minute spacewalk. The cosmonauts accomplished all of their primary objectives, mounting a docking target on the Zvezda command module, installing a physics experiment and bringing another experiment back inside. They also inspected the mounting point for a docking system antenna that will be installed later, repositioned a foot restraint and straightened out an antenna used by the station's ham radio system. This was the 114th spacewalk devoted to station assembly and maintenance since construction began in December 1998, the 15th so far this year and the second in five days for Expedition 17 commander Volkov, 35, and flight engineer Kononenko, 44. Space station EVA time now stands at 718 hours and 48 minutes. Volkov and Kononenko have now logged 12 hours and 12 minutes of EVA time during their two spacewalks. "I believe we are done, I believe we completed all the tasks," one of the spacewalkers radioed after floating back into the Pirs module. "You took the words from my mouth," mission control replied. "You've done everything just great. In two EVAs, you've done everything that was required of us." "Thank you so very much." Just before hatch closure, the cosmonauts and mission control discussed media coverage of the Russian spacewalks. During the first spacewalk last week, the cosmonauts accomplished their sole primary objective, removal of an explosive bolt from their Soyuz TMA-12 re-entry craft, but deferred the docking target installation until today. The docking target was added to last week's spacewalk as a purely secondary objective to be carried out only if time was available. "You know, in that set of articles, the overall (thrust was that) we did not complete all the tasks because we did not install the docking target because from their point of view, the docking target was the prime task and we didn't do it," one of the cosmonauts said via an interpreter. "Well you know, I don't have this journalist on the balcony (in mission control)," someone responded. "But you know, normally, you know, they're looking for something fishy. But since there was nothing, they are just, you know, trying to make it up." "And they tell that we lost 4 kilos each and we never even weighed ourselves! So we're curious ourselves whether we lose some weight or not." "Well, when you come back to Earth and meet them at one of the press conferences, please explain where they should be getting information." "You know it was really surprising and upsetting that all the articles were repeating one and the same, that we did not complete all the tasks because we did not install the docking target." After a bit more banter, someone said "Well, the main important thing for us, guys, is not to take offense." "We got a good laugh and it doesn't really bother us," one of the cosmonauts said. 01:10 PM, 7/15/08, Update: Russian spacewalk begins Space station commander Sergei Volkov and Oleg Kononenko depressurized the Pirs airlock module today and opened an outer hatch at 1:08 p.m. to officially kick off a five-and-a-half-hour spacewalk to install equipment and experiment hardware on the hull of the international lab complex. This is the 114th spacewalk devoted to station assembly and maintenance since construction began in December 1998, the 15th so far this year and the second for Expedition 17 commander Volkov, 35, and flight engineer Kononenko, 44. Going into today's excursion, space station EVA time stood at 712 hours and 54 minutes. Unlike a dramatic spacewalk last Thursday to remove an explosive bolt from the crew's Soyuz TMA-12 lifeboat, the goals of today's excursion are more typical. The cosmonauts plan to attach a docking target to the Zvezda command module's upward-facing port where another Russian module will be attached next year; inspect bolt holes that will be used later to mount a rendezvous antenna on the Zvezda module; install a high-energy physics experiment; and remove a biorisk experiment canister installed last year. While the goals of the two spacewalks are different, one safety precaution remains in force: NASA flight engineer Gregory Chamitoff will ride out today's EVA inside the Soyuz TMA-12 spacecraft docked to Pirs. The docking module must be depressurized for the spacewalk and if the cosmonauts had problems repressurizing the compartment at the end of today's spacewalk, Chamitoff would be unable to reach the spacecraft in an emergency. For that reason, he'll remain in the Soyuz throughout today's excursion and if repressurization problems are encountered later, Volkov and Kononenko would join him in the TMA-12 spacecraft and move it to a different docking port later. Any such contingency is considered extremely remote. 9:15 PM, 7/10/08, Update: Spacewalk ends Space station commander Sergei Volkov and flight engineer Oleg Kononenko wrapped up a dramatic six-hour 18-minute spacewalk today, closing the hatch of the Pirs airlock module at 9:06 p.m. and clearing the way for repressurization. Standing by to rejoin them was crewmate Gregory Chamitoff, who rode out the spacewalk inside the Soyuz TMA-12 re-entry vehicle that was the subject of today's EVA. The cosmonauts accomplished the primary objectives of the spacewalk, removing one of two explosive bolts in one of the five connectors holding the Soyuz's propulsion and instrumentation module to its crew cabin. The pyrobolt, safely locked in a blast-proof steel sleeve, was brought into the space station for return to Earth aboard the Soyuz at the end of October. In the two most recent Soyuz re-entries, a problem of some sort prevented the propulsion module from separating cleanly from the crew cabin just before atmospheric entry. Engineers suspect a possible problem with pyrobolts, one or more connectors or both. Today's work will help ensure a more routine module separation in October and give engineers flight hardware to inspect for signs of trouble. "Sergei, I forgot to congratulate you. Now you're a full-blown crew commander," a Russian flight controller joked in a radio call just before the spacewalk ended. "And you gear, you have a handgun, you have a grenade, next time you'll have your own test site. So you're a fully equipped crew commander now." This was the 113th spacewalk devoted to station assembly and maintenance since construction began in December 1998, the 14th so far this year and the first for Volkov, 35, and Kononenko, 44. Cumulative space station EVA time now stands at 712 hours and 54 minutes. Another spacewalk is on tap July 15 to carry out more routine station assembly and maintenance tasks. 7:15 PM, 7/10/08, Update: Spacewalkers remove pyrobolt, store in blast-proof sleeve Space station cosmonauts Sergei Volkov and Oleg Kononenko cut open insulation on their Soyuz re-entry vehicle today, successfully removed an explosive bolt from a suspect connector and locked it in a blast-proof sleeve for return to Earth. The unprecedented space surgery was ordered to help Russian engineers troubleshoot a module separation problem that caused steep, rougher-than-usual descents during the most recent two Soyuz landings. "The MLI (multi-layer insulation) is flying around again," one of the cosmonauts commented as the operation proceeded. "We've ravaged the vehicle," agreed the other, according to an interpreter in Russian mission control. After cutting through the insulation, the cosmonauts struggled to remove a locking wire from the target pyrobolt. Then, using a hex wrench, they finally succeeded in unscrewing the bolt from its housing. "Be careful, be very careful," mission control urged. The pyrobolt had the explosive potential of an M-80 firework, but Russian flight controllers said it would be virtually impossible to accidentally detonate. Even so, the cosmonauts were repeatedly told to take their time and "be very careful." Finally, at 6:44 p.m., with both cosmonauts hunched over the gaping wound in the Soyuz insulation, Volkov successfully disconnected the explosive bolt and slipped it into the cylindrical blast canister. "It is in!" "Good. Thanks, God," one of the spacewalkers said. "It is in." "Disabled the mine," someone quipped. With the explosive bolt safely locked in its canister, the cosmonauts turned their attention to photographing the work site and beginning work to cover up the cut in the protective insulation. A final task, to install a docking target on the Zvezda command module's upper port, was deferred to a more routine spacewalk next week. The Soyuz is made up of three connected sections, but only one of them - the central descent module - is designed to carry a crew back to Earth. Just before atmospheric entry, explosive bolts fire, severing connections holding the modules together. During the two most recent Soyuz entries, the lower propulsion module failed to cleanly separate from the crew cabin, presumably because at least one of the five connectors holding it in place did not release properly. Each connector features two redundant pyrobolts. The bolt removed today was from the same connector suspected of hanging up in the previous two Soyuz entries. As part of the pyrobolt removal procedure, the spacewalkers opened the connector in question, leaving the other four connectors intact. If nothing else, that should help ensure no hang up in that area of the module interface when Volkov, Kononenko and a U.S. space tourist use the Soyuz TMA-12 spacecraft to return to Earth in October. 5:15 PM, 7/10/08, Update: Cosmonauts reach Soyuz work site; cut into insulation After running into problems anchoring his feet on the end of a telescoping boom, cosmonaut Oleg Kononenko tethered himself to the mechanical arm and held on while crewmate Sergei Volkov moved him down to the Soyuz TMA-12 spacecraft. Kononenko, wielding a serrated knife, then began sawing through multi-layer insulation like a surgeon to expose one of five connectors that hold the Soyuz propulsion module to the crew section of the spacecraft. The goal of the unprecedented space operation is to unlock the connector and remove one of two redundant explosive bolts to help engineers figure out what caused module separation problems during the two most recent Soyuz re-entries. "We feel sorry for the vehicle," one of the spacewalkers said before Kononenko began cutting into the insulation. "I don't think we're damaging it." "OK, I do want to hope so." Crystal clear video from a NASA camera mounted in Kononenko's space helmet showed the cosmonaut sawing into the insulation, cutting a ragged tear in the material. As he pulled the multi-layer insulation back, Kononenko reached inside to verify the location of cables and connectors, looking like a surgeon carrying out invasive surgery. Numerous pieces of insulation drifted away from the wound as he continued cutting. "Be careful with the cutter," a Russian flight controller warned. "You don't want to damage your glove. It's better to go slowly and surely." After extending the cut enough to permit access to the pyrobolt in the suspect connector, the cosmonauts took a break to catch their breath and to give flight controllers a moment to discuss the upcoming procedure. Television from Kononenko's helmet cam clearly showed the electrical cables leading to the two pyrobolts in the connector. So far, the spacewalkers have not reported anything unusual or out of the ordinary. "I do not see anything offensive or criminal," Kononenko said through an interpreter as he initially approached the work site. But watching Kononenko cut through the protective insulation just inches from electrical lines and cables was disconcerting to observers more familiar with NASA spacewalks, in which astronauts are seldom allowed to do anything even remotely as invasive. But Russian engineers have been unable to figure out what caused the recent re-entry problems and today's work may shed light on what might be needed to prevent similar problems in future entries. 2:50 PM, 7/10/08, Update: Spacewalk begins Space station commander Sergei Volkov and Oleg Kononenko depressurized the Pirs airlock module today and opened an outer hatch at 2:48 p.m. to officially kick off a dramatic six-hour spacewalk. The primary goals of the excursion are to unlock one of five connectors holding two Soyuz spacecraft modules together and to remove an explosive bolt to help Russian engineers figure out what might have caused back-to-back module separation problems during the two most recent Soyuz landings. Removing critical hardware from a Soyuz spacecraft - the space station crew's lifeboat - is unprecedented, as is handling an explosive bolt. The pyrotechnic device has an explosive potential roughly equivalent to an M-80 firework. But Vladimir Solovyev, chief Russian flight director, told Volkov and Kononenko on Wednesday that extensive testing showed the device was safe to handle. "It cannot fire so you should not be concerned at all," Solovyev said. "It also withstands shock up to 100 Gs and does not fire, it's been tested. So if you really wanted to fire (it), you would have to really try to knock it with a hammer. But even then, it's not possible for it to fire." The cosmonauts will guard against any static charge build up and the pyrobolt will be inserted into a blast-proof steel sleeve. It then will be brought back into the space station for eventual return to Earth. This is the 113th spacewalk devoted to station assembly and maintenance since construction began in December 1998, the 14th so far this year and the first for Expedition 17 commander Volkov, 35, and flight engineer Kononenko, 44. Going into today's excursion, space station EVA time stood at 706 hours and 36 minutes. The Soyuz TMA-12 spacecraft docked to the Pirs module will be used by Volkov, Kononenko and a space tourist to return to Earth in late October. Because it currently is docked to Pirs, and because Pirs must be depressurized for today's spacewalk, NASA flight engineer Gregory Chamitoff is sitting out the spacewalk inside the Soyuz because of the remote possibility of a problem repressurizing the Pirs module later today. In that case, Chamitoff would not be able to reach the Soyuz in an emergency. This way, if a repressurization problem occurs, Volkov and Kononenko would join Chamitoff in the TMA-12 spacecraft and they would fly it to another docking port on Friday. The Soyuz is made up of three connected sections, but only one of them - the central descent module - is designed to withstand the rigors of atmospheric entry and carry a crew back to Earth. The three modules separate, using explosive bolts, just before re-entry begins. The modules can safely separate if two of the five connectors fail to work, although such failures result in steep, rougher-than-usual ballistic re-entries. "There are five locking bolts on the Soyuz that hold the instrument (and propulsion) module to the descent module," U.S. space station Flight Director Bob Dempsey said Tuesday. "In a normal re-entry, these locks are released by pyrobolts, which explode and release the locks and then the instrument module is separated and the descent module re-enters the atmosphere. We'll be inspecting one of these locking assemblies, No. 5, and we'll be removing one of the two pyrobolts that are associated with that locking mechanism." Each of the five connectors holding the propulsion module to the descent module feature two redundant pyrobolts. Engineers do not know of any problems that might affect the normal separation of the Soyuz TMA-12 crew module, but they don't yet know what caused separation problems last May 19 and Oct. 21. In both cases, the upper orbital module separated from the crew module normally just before atmospheric entry, but the lower propulsion/instrumentation module hung up. Both spacecraft then flew steeper, so-called ballistic trajectories that subjected the crews to extreme buffeting until the lower modules broke free due to aerodynamic stress. Volkov, wearing a spacesuit with red stripes, is using the call sign EV-1. Kononenko, wearing a suit with blue stripes, is EV-2. With his feet anchored to me end of a telescoping boom, Kononenko will be positioned over the Soyuz worksite and use a knife to cut through multi-layer insulation over the descent module/propulsion module interface. Volkov will make his way down the boom and join Kononenko for a detailed photo survey. Volkov then will use a wrench to disconnect one of the two pyrobolts at the connector in question. The bolt will be inserted into a blast-proof steel sleeve for return to the station. "Our desire is straight forward," Solovyev told Volkov and Kononenko on Wednesday. "What we expect from you during this EVA is to take out one pyrobolt, thereby breaking this mechanical contact. Less of a priority is to return this pyrobolt. We would like to, of course, see what you notice before you start cutting the MLI (multi-layer insulation) and after you dig inside the niche through the cutout you make in the MLI. "The important thing here to remember is that we would like to see as many pictures as possible," he said. "We have been holding meetings after meetings with different commissions to discuss the situation with the pyrobolts and what's happening with them. This is what we decided to do because we think we have exhausted all of the studies that exist on the ground. So we need to figure out what to do with this series of Soyuz vehicles. "So, like I said, we need to break this mechanical contact, which brought us into the ballistic descent twice before. So again, make sure you take as many pictures as possible because as you know, we sometimes have video, sometimes we don't, sometimes we don't see very well what you're seeing. So we would like to look at that pyrobolt as well as possible, especially when you're inside the niche." To provide better video coverage of the work, Kononenko's spacesuit is equipped with a NASA helmet cam video system. Another camera has been mounted in a window in the Zvezda command module that looks straight down on the work site. Video from that camera, Kononenko's helmet cam and cameras mounted on the space station's solar power truss will be sent back to Earth through NASA's satellite relay system. 02:00 PM, 7/9/08, Update: Cosmonauts gear up for dramatic spacewalk; Solovyev says no danger in pyrobolt removal Cosmonauts Sergei Volkov and Oleg Kononenko are preparing for a dramatic spacewalk Thursday to cut through insulation and remove an explosive bolt from their Soyuz re-entry craft. The goal is to help Russian engineers figure out what caused back-to-back module separation problems during the two most recent Soyuz re-entries - and to make sure the Soyuz now attached to the international space station will work properly when it carries Volkov, Kononenko and U.S. space tourist Richard Garriott back to Earth in October. The cylindrical pyrobolt, which has an explosive yield roughly equivalent to an M-80 firework, will be locked in a blast-proof steel sleeve and brought back inside the international space station for eventual return to Earth. Mike Suffredini, space station program manager at the Johnson Space Center in Houston, said a detailed analysis showed no significant risk to the crew. "We dream of a lot of wild things to do and after much analysis, sometimes we do them and sometimes we don't," Suffredini told reporters Tuesday. "In this case, both safety communities thoroughly looked at all the data surrounding this. So we have quite a bit of confidence we're perfectly safe for the crew to both remove the power connector from the charge, remove the pyrobolt from the mechanism and bring the pyrobolt, in the blast canister, inside. This has been done with all the rigor we would expect for a system that was critical like this." The spacewalk is scheduled to begin around 2:21 p.m. Thursday and last about six hours. As a safety precaution, U.S. flight engineer Gregory Chamitoff will observe the spacewalk from inside the Soyuz spacecraft while his two crewmates work outside. The Soyuz is docked to the downward-facing Pirs module. If the cosmonauts have problems re-pressurizing the chamber after the spacewalk, they will join Chamitoff in the Soyuz and fly it to a different docking port Friday. "We do not like to separate the crew from escape vehicle," said Bob Dempsey, a space station/spacewalk flight director. "Therefore Greg will be staying in there. He will have some laptops, books and computers to work on while he's there. And in the event of an unlikely contingency that the docking compartment could not be repressed, the Russian crew would enter the Soyuz, which would be used as a backup airlock." The Soyuz TMA-12 spacecraft is made up of three connected modules, but only one of them - the central descent module - is designed to withstand the rigors of atmospheric entry and carry a crew back to Earth. The three modules separate, using explosive bolts, just before re-entry begins. The modules can safely separate if two of the five connectors fail to work, although such failures result in steep, rougher-than-usual ballistic re-entries. "There are five locking bolts on the Soyuz that hold the instrument (and propulsion) module to the descent module," Dempsey said. "In a normal re-entry, these locks are released by pyrobolts, which explode and release the locks and then the instrument module is separated and the descent module re-enters the atmosphere. We'll be inspecting one of these locking assemblies, No. 5, and we'll be removing one of the two pyrobolts that are associated with that locking mechanism." Engineers do not know of any problems that might affect the normal separation of the Soyuz TMA-12 crew module, but they don't yet know what caused separation problems last May 19 and Oct. 21. In both cases, the upper orbital module separated from the crew module normally just before atmospheric entry, but the lower propulsion/instrumentation module hung up. Both spacecraft then flew steeper, so-called ballistic trajectories that subjected the crews to extreme buffeting until the lower modules broke free due to aerodynamic stress. "Our desire is straight forward," Vladimir Solovyev, chief Russian flight director, told Volkov and Kononenko on Wednesday. "What we expect from you during this EVA is to take out one pyrobolt, thereby breaking this mechanical contact. Less of a priority is to return this pyrobolt. We would like to, of course, see what you notice before you start cutting the MLI (multi-layer insulation) and after you dig inside the niche through the cutout you make in the MLI. "The important thing here to remember is that we would like to see as many pictures as possible," he said. "We have been holding meetings after meetings with different commissions to discuss the situation with the pyrobolts and what's happening with them. This is what we decided to do because we think we have exhausted all of the studies that exist on the ground. So we need to figure out what to do with this series of Soyuz vehicles. "So, like I said, we need to break this mechanical contact, which brought us into the ballistic descent twice before. So again, make sure you take as many pictures as possible because as you know, we sometimes have video, sometimes we don't, sometimes we don't see very well what you're seeing. So we would like to look at that pyrobolt as well as possible, especially when you're inside the niche." Solovyev also reassured the cosmonauts, making their first spacewalk, that the pyrobolt poses no threat of an accidental detonation. "Now for the pyrobolt, as you were told many times before, it cannot fire so you should not be concerned at all," he said. "It also withstands shock up to 100 Gs and does not fire, it's been tested. So if you really wanted to fire (it), you would have to really try to knock it with a hammer. But even then, it's not possible for it to fire." The propulsion/instrumentation module is held to the descent module by five connectors, each one featuring two redundant explosive bolts. In the two most recent Soyuz re-entries, the hang up occurred at a specific connector, known as "plane 5," but engineers do not yet know whether one or both pyrobolts in the mechanism actually fired. "To date, they haven't come to a conclusive answer as to root cause," Suffredini said. "They continue to look at different scenarios, even as far as looking at the (electrical) environment around the ISS to see if it's playing a role in any way, shape or form. "The thing that they do know is in these last two flights, the same plane did not separate. And so they've spent quite a bit of time trying to figure out if there was any common cause to that plane that would lead them to why this was occurring. They've looked at the electrical system, the pyrobolts themselves, the mechanical system associated with the locking mechanism and nothing has turned up yet as to root cause." Bringing a pyrobolt back to Earth after six months in space will give engineers additional insight into what might be going on. In the process, the plane 5 connector will be unlocked prior to entry and will not require the operation of a pyrobolt. After exiting the Pirs airlock/docking module, Kononenko, anchored to the end of a telescoping boom, will use a knife to cut through insulation over the target connector. Using a NASA helmet cam - a first for a Russian spacewalk - he will carry out a detailed photo-visual inspection with Volkov before the station commander begins the job of removing the pyrobolt. "We have looked very carefully at any risk that mightÊbe associated with removing a pyrobolt on orbit," Dempsey said. "The Russians have been looking at this for a long time and planning this EVA very carefully. Our specialists have looked at it very carefully and we are very confident this is a very safe operation to do." Using a wrench, Volkov will unscrew a cap and pull out one of the two pyrobolts in the plane 5 connector. The explosive bolt then will be slid inside a steel sleeve that will serve as a blast-proof case. An insulation patch will be attached to the cut-out insulation to complete the inspection and removal procedure. "For all devices like this, there is a potential for a static discharge but that's been accommodated," Suffredini said of the pyrobolt removal. "The kit has been set up so we don't have any accidental charging around or in the pyro mechanism itself. "The other thing we've looked at is all of the systems that radiateÊwhile they're doing this work and whether there's any sensitivity to everything from ... the comm system to the plasma field around the vehicle when we're doing the EVAs. All these things have been looked at and determined that we don't have an environment that would cause these things to set themselves off. "So the first thing the crew does is disconnect it," Suffredini said. "At that point, it's still captured, it's in the mechanism, there's no risk to the crew during that process. After that, there is not a mechanism by which the bolt can be fired. And shortly after they pull it out they stick it in this blast proof canister and after that, via testing our Russian colleagues have done on the ground, the crew is protected. If the pyrobolt goes off, it will stay contained in that metal canister. Quite a bit of work has been done by both safety communities to confirm that the environment is such that we wouldn't accidentally set one of these things off from the time it comes out of the lock to the time we get it housed in the blast canister." If enough time is available, the spacewalkers will install a docking target on the upper port of the Zvezda command module for the upcoming attachment of a new docking compartment next year. 10:15 PM, 6/19/08, Update: Ice indirectly confirmed at Phoenix landing site Scientists examining photographs from the Mars Phoenix lander say the disappearance of clumps of material in a trench dug by the spacecraft's robot arm provides convincing evidence of exposed ice that subsequently vaporized. The robot arm, meanwhile, digging a nearby trench, ran into a hard layer of material that scientists believe may be a subsurface layer of ice at the same depth where the now-vanished chunks were uncovered. While Phoenix scientists fully expected to find ice at the spacecraft's polar landing side, seeing even indirect evidence is welcome confirmation. Detailed analysis of material from the presumed ice layer will come later. Whether organic compounds will be found in the soil nearby remains to be seen. Here is a news release from the Phoenix team that was posted earlier today (http://phoenix.lpl.arizona.edu/): June 19, 2008 -- Dice-size crumbs of bright material have vanished from inside a trench where they were photographed by NASA's Phoenix Mars Lander four days ago, convincing scientists that the material was frozen water that vaporized after digging exposed it. "It must be ice," said Phoenix Principal Investigator Peter Smith of the University of Arizona, Tucson. "These little clumps completely disappearing over the course of a few days, that is perfect evidence that it's ice. There had been some question whether the bright material was salt. Salt can't do that." The chunks were left at the bottom of a trench informally called "Dodo-Goldilocks" when Phoenix's Robotic Arm enlarged that trench on June 15, during the 20th Martian day, or sol, since landing. Several were gone when Phoenix looked at the trench early today, on Sol 24. Also early today, digging in a different trench, the Robotic Arm connected with a hard surface that has scientists excited about the prospect of next uncovering an icy layer. The Phoenix science team spent Thursday analyzing new images and data successfully returned from the lander earlier in the day. Studying the initial findings from the new "Snow White 2" trench, located to the right of "Snow White 1," Ray Arvidson of Washington University in St. Louis, co-investigator for the robotic arm, said, "We have dug a trench and uncovered a hard layer at the same depth as the ice layer in our other trench." On Sol 24, Phoenix extended the first trench in the middle of a polygon at the "Wonderland" site. While digging, the Robotic Arm came upon a firm layer, and after three attempts to dig further, the arm went into a holding position. Such an action is expected when the Robotic Arm comes upon a hard surface. Meanwhile, the spacecraft team at Lockheed Martin Space Systems in Denver is preparing a software patch to send to Phoenix in a few days so scientific data can again be saved onboard overnight when needed. Because of a large amount a duplicative file-maintenance data generated by the spacecraft Tuesday, the team is taking the precaution of not storing science data in Phoenix's flash memory, and instead downlinking it at the end of every day, until the conditions that produced those duplicative data files are corrected. "We now understand what happened, and we can fix it with a software patch," said Phoenix Project Manager Barry Goldstein of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena. "Our three-month schedule has 30 days of margin for contingencies like this, and we have used only one contingency day out of 24 sols. The mission is well ahead of schedule. We are making excellent progress toward full mission success." 01:40 PM, 6/11/08, Update: GLAST space telescope boosted into orbit A Delta 2 rocket roared to life and successfully boosted a $690 million space telescope into orbit today, the most sophisticated observatory ever built to study the tell-tale high energy gamma rays generated by the most violent explosions and processes in the known universe. The Gamma Ray Large Area Space Telescope - GlAST - "is going to be a great new instrument for looking at the extreme universe, the high-energy sky, in gamma-rays," said Project Scientist Steven Ritz. "It will open a new window on phenomena throughout the universe, such as super-massive black holes, neutron stars, gamma-ray bursts, and what really excites us is the unknown. "We want to understand some of these incredibly large systems that seem to put out huge amounts of power that range from as nearby as our sun all of the way out to the edge of the visible universe. It is a new kind of telescope that will show us new things about the universe." Running 20 minutes late because of problems at a down-range tracking station, the United Launch Alliance Delta 2 rocket flashed to life at 12:05 p.m. and quickly climbed away from launch complex 17B at the Cape Canaveral Air Force Station. The trusty rocket performed well - this was the 81st Delta success in a row dating back to January 1997 - and 75 minutes after liftoff, the boxy, solar powered satellite was released into a 350-mile-high orbit. A few minutes later, the spacecraft's two solar panels unfolded as planned. Engineers plan to spend about two months testing and calibrating the spacecraft's instruments before science operations begin in earnest. "Everything looks nominal," Ritz said after launch. "We couldn't be happier." The two instruments at the heart of GLAST - the Large Area Telescope and the GLAST Burst Monitor - "will provide scientists an unprecedented view into the high-energy universe, an opportunity to observe some of the most dynamic and powerful forces" in nature, said Project Manager Kevin Grady at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center. That includes the enigmatic processes that generate cosmic rays; radiation emitted as super-heated debris gets sucked into black holes; and the titanic detonations known as gamma ray bursts that emit more energy in one second than Earth's sun over the course of its entire life. GLAST also may shed light on the nature of dark matter thought to pervade the cosmos. "Gamma rays are the extreme high energy end of the electromagnetic spectrum," said Ritz. "How high an energy? Well, the light that we see with our own eyes corresponds to a few electron volts, which is the unit we use for describing energy. The photons that GLAST will study in gamma rays are literally millions to hundreds of billions of times as energetic. "Since gamma rays are at the extreme high end of the electromagnetic spectrum, it's not a surprise that they tell us about the most extreme environments throughout the universe, places where gravitational fields are extremely strong, magnetic fields and electric fields are absolutely enormous, so large that you couldn't possibly make those conditions on the Earth." In order of increasing energy - and decreasing wavelength - the electromagnetic spectrum runs from radio waves to infrared, visible light, ultraviolet radiation, X-rays and gamma rays. NASA's Spitzer satellite studies infrared emissions from space, the Hubble Space Telescope operates in the visible and near ultraviolet regions of the spectrum and the Chandra X-ray Observatory probes higher energy X-ray emissions. GLAST was built to follow up and extend observations made by NASA's hugely successful Compton Gamma Ray Observatory, launched from a space shuttle in 1991. CGRO ended operations in 2000 with a kamikaze plunge back into the atmosphere. "GLAST is very much a follow-on to the Compton Gamma Ray Observatory, one of NASA's Great Observatories that flew in the 1990s," Ritz said. "The high-energy instrument, called EGRET, really showed us the tip of the iceberg of the gamma-ray sky. It told us that we needed to go back and have another look with much greater capabilities." Using state-of-the-art electronics, GLAST is vastly more sensitive than its predecessor, capable of covering a range of energies differing by a factor of 10 million. That's somewhat like a piano spanning 23 octaves. "EGRET answered a lot of questions but left us with so many more questions and it was really quite compelling to the science community to go back and have a much more detailed look," Ritz said. "It's really like the human race is getting a new pair of glasses to see the universe in gamma-rays." The 3-ton Large Area Telescope can "see" 20 percent of the sky at any given moment, similar to the scale of a human eye's view. To detect gamma rays, the LAT relies on the tools of high energy physics, detecting the creation of electrons and antimatter positrons as gamma rays smash into thin sheets of tungsten. The trajectories of the electron-positron pairs are measured to determine where the gamma ray came from and a calorimeter at the base of the LAT measures how much energy the particles represent, and thus the energy of the original gamma ray. For every gamma ray detected, the LAT must filter out 100,000 to 1 million cosmic rays that can resemble the particles produced by gamma ray collisions. Appropriately enough, the instrument was assembled at the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center in California. "One of the great new advancements of GLAST is the instruments have a very wide field of view," Ritz said. "In fact, the high-energy instrument sees about 20 percent of the sky at any one time. That's very much like our own eyes. Since we are in low-Earth orbit, it takes about an hour-and-a-half to go around once. In just two of those orbits, or three hours, we will be able to take that field of view and sweep it across the entire sky. So we can observe in all directions in just three hours, and be able to do that over and over again. That's a very important new capability." The other major instrument on the satellite is the GLAST Burst Monitor, or GBM, made up of 14 detectors. Twelve detectors are sensitive to X-rays and low energy gamma rays while two are designed to detect high-energy gamma rays. The energy range overlaps with LAT's and should lead to the detection of 200 or more gamma ray bursts per year. Ritz gave a brief overview of things to come once GLAST is fully operational. "Throughout the galaxy are very rapidly spinning neutron stars," he said. "A neutron star is the collapsed core of a very massive star. It's so dense that a billion tons of neutron star material would fit into about a tablespoon. The magnetic fields are enormous. These things are spinning around sometimes a thousand times a second, making huge beams of very strong magnetic fields which when rotating makes strong electric fields which accelerate particles and generate gamma rays. We'd like to know what is the geometry of those systems, where are the gamma rays emitted, how do they work? GLAST will be very important for that, combined with radio observations. Super massive black holes are though to lurk in the cores of many galaxies, including Earth's Milky Way. As material gets sucked in, it is accelerated to enormous velocities and friction generates extreme temperatures. "A black hole has a huge impact on its environment," Ritz said. "And the environment has a huge impact on the black hole. And in the centers of galaxies where there are these immense black holes and a huge amount of material for them to eat, as the material falls in enormous amounts of power are liberated. In fact, we see coming out of these galaxies very collimated jets of very high energy particles that are literally blown clean out of the galaxy. "We'd like to know how that happens, how is this possible? When those jets happen to be pointed roughly toward our direction, we see the galaxy and the core of the galaxy as incredibly bright in gamma rays. So much power is emitted just in gamma rays that it's the equivalent of all the suns of an entire galaxy shining over all wavelengths. And the sources are variable on various timescales from minutes to years. "What is that variability telling us? What kinds of clues is it telling us about what composes the jet and how is this even possible? GLAST is going to be key for studying this because we're going to be able to see the entire sky every three hours, be able to probe that variability over vastly different time scales and that's just a bonanza to scientists interested in studying these systems." Gamma ray bursts, the most powerful explosions in the known universe, are another critical area of research. "Once a day somewhere in the visible universe there's an enormous explosion," Ritz said. "In about a second, enough energy comes out that it's comparable to the amount of energy that will come from our own sun over its multi-billion year lifetime. We'd obviously like to understand these things better. The key thing that GLAST is going to provide is to tell us what the energy budget is for these incredible engines. We'd like to know how they work, we'd like to know how high in energy they can go. GLAST is going to open up a key new energy band for their study." Said Deputy Project Scientist David Thompson: "There are gamma rays coming from all directions. The Milky Way would be a brilliant swath of light, and you'd see a sky constantly changing with objects dimming and brightening on different time scales. If you see a blinding flash, that would be a gamma ray burst." But Ritz said GLAST will do more than study objects astronomers already know about. It will discover objects and processes that astronomers have not yet imagined. "With such a huge leap in capabilities," he said, "I'm expecting that the most important science GLAST is going to do that we're going to be talking about years from now is actually not yet on anybody's list." 11:15 PM, 5/27/08, Update: MRO radio back in operation; Phoenix team gears up for robot arm deployment A UHF radio aboard NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter suffered a transient glitch Tuesday, preventing engineers from relaying the day's flight plan to the Phoenix lander, parked near the red planet's northern polar cap. In the absence of fresh instructions, the lander executed stored commands to snap additional pictures of its surroundings while engineers worked to resolve the MRO problem. Late Tuesday, the radio was back in operation, NASA reported on its Phoenix mission web site, and a fresh set of images was relayed back to Earth. "NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter successfully received information from the Phoenix Mars Lander Tuesday evening and relayed the information to Earth," said the NASA update. "The relayed transmission included images and other data collected by Phoenix during the mission's second day after landing on Mars." During a news briefing earlier today, NASA also unveiled spectacular new images from MRO showing Phoenix sitting on the ruddy surface of Mars, its two solar arrays clearly visible, along with the spacecraft's discarded heat shield and parachute. The parachute, still attached to the lander's supporting back shell, also is visible in ground-level shots from Phoenix as a bright white object near the martian horizon. The images from MRO are remarkably sharp, clearly showing how the heat shield bounced when it hit the surface and the effects of Phoenix's descent engines, which disturbed the soil around the lander as it settled to the surface. http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/phoenix/images/index.html The UHF radio problem was more of a frustration than a real concern. Phoenix also can communicate with Earth through NASA's Mars Odyssey orbiter and Odyssey already was scheduled to relay fresh commands to Phoenix on Wednesday. So instead of relaying the day 3, or sol 3, command sequence Wednesday, engineers will re-send the sol 2 sequence, which is focussed on additional images for a panorama and the initial steps to unlimber Phoenix's 7.7-foot-long robot arm. "When this transient event occurred, the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter is programmed to turn that radio off," Fuk Li, a senior Mars program manager at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif., said during an afternoon briefing. "This occurred sometime this morning and we were going to uplink the set of events Phoenix would be doing. Because of that transient event, those uplinks were not accomplished. Phoenix is healthy, everything is fine. It's running out a sequence of commands that is pre-stored on board. The MRO team is in the process of analyzing what happened. They are also in the next several hours trying to turn that UHF radio back on and hopefully everything will be back to normal." The radio was turned back on Tuesday afternoon and while the cause of the problem remains a mystery, the radio successfully relayed fresh pictures and other data back to Earth during an evening communications session around 8:30 p.m. EDT. Earlier today, Smith passed along the first weather report from Phoenix, data collected by instruments supplied by the Canadian Space Agency. The temperature at the landing site ranges from minus 22 degrees Fahrenheit to a bitterly cold minus 112 degrees. Atmospheric pressure was 8 millibars, about 1 percent of Earth's, and winds from the northeast blew across the spacecraft at 20 mph. "Finally, we have a picture that we released yesterday," Smith said. "It's our memorial weekend picture, it shows the American flag (on the lander's upper deck), it also shows our mini DVD that was put onto the deck (of the lander) and was provided by the Planetary Society and contains 250,000 names of interested people who really wanted to support our mission and get their names on Mars. And it also has a library of Mars-relevant books that are inside this DVD. "This DVD will be there for a very long period of time and on the DVD it says, "astronauts please take this with you." And that's for future astronauts who may come to the polar region of Mars who knows how far in the future, maybe in the next century, we hope, maybe 5,000 years from now, maybe 100,000 years from now. But some day, somebody will come and take that DVD and be able to read the books in our little library. "So we're very proud to be making such progress," Smith said. "It's only been a day and a half since we landed, we're already getting a good sense of what the space is around our lander. ... We're really feeling very positive about this mission and can't wait to start interacting with the soil and doing our scientific investigations." Flight controllers hope to begin digging in the frigid martian soil next week. 9:45 PM, 5/26/08, Update: Fresh Phoenix pictures posted Scores of new pictures from the Phoenix Mars lander were relayed to Earth Monday afternoon, showing stark black-and-white views of the lander, its solar arrays, various appendages and the frigid, pebble-strewn ground near the spacecraft. Other shots showed the lander's shadow on the surface and more distant views of the horizon showed a flat, barren landscape dotted with small rocks and in at least one case, a distinctly angular, bright object that may be a discarded piece of the spacecraft. Whether the object is, in fact, all or part of the lander's discarded heat shield, the upper shell that held Phoenix to its parachute or the parachute itself is not yet known. The pictures are posted on the Phoenix mission website hosted by the University of Arizona: http://fawkes3.lpl.arizona.edu/gallery.php The next news briefing, carried on NASA television, is planned for 2 p.m. EDT Tuesday. 4:30 PM, 5/26/08, Update: Mars orbiter captures dramatic picture of Phoenix lander's parachute descent to surface Still basking in the elation of a successful Mars landing, engineers with the Phoenix program unveiled a dramatic photo today showing the spacecraft descending to the martian surface under its parachute Sunday. The black-and-white photo, shot by NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter spacecraft as it sailed overhead, shows the inflated parachute and the backshell supporting Phoenix dangling below, somewhere between 10,000 and 1,000 feet above the surface. "The picture is awesome," said Principal Investigator Peter Smith during a morning news conference. "We're now awaiting an image from (Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter) of our spacecraft on the surface so we know exactly where it is. We hope to see also the heat shield and the back shell and the parachute. All of those things will be visible, we just haven't seen them quite yet. But we will, and once we do, because we carpeted this whole area with images, we'll have a before and after picture showing what the site looked like before the lander was there and then after the lander came down. So that should be really spectacular." Phoenix was designed to send its own pictures and data back to Earth using UHF radio relay links with the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter and NASA's Mars Odyssey. Additional pictures showing the terrain around the lander are expected to be downlinked every afternoon, helping scientists build up a high-resolution 360-degree panorama around the landing site. The north polar landing site was chosen because it is flat and generally free of large boulders and other topographic features that might cause problems for Phoenix's touchdown. More important from a science perspective, the Mars Odyssey spacecraft has detected what scientists believe is a layer of water ice a few inches below the surface of Mars' extreme northern and southern latitudes. Pictures from NASA Mars orbiters and now from Phoenix show repeating polygonal patterns in the surrounding terrain that are indicative of an "active" surface. "As the ice gets cold, it tends to contract a little bit and it'll form very narrow cracks and then the sand falls into those cracks, so now you see a little depression on the surface where the sand has fallen into a crack," Smith said. "And then in the sun, when the ice tries to expand back to where it was, the crack's filled with sand, it can't do that, and it tends to buckle a little bit. So you see these mounded structures." Similar patterns are found in cold regions on Earth. "As we look over this landing site, we see a very flat, kind of barren landscape," Smith said. "But you have to realize in the winter, this is encased in carbon dioxide ice, which might be several feet deep, it's a completely different landscape in the winter. And so it's gone through these cycles of winter, summer, winter, summer, and while it goes through those cycles, the polar tilt is changing, so the climate changes. "One thing we've found about polar regions on the Earth is it's a good record keeper of climate change. So we wonder if perhaps on Mars we'll find clues as to what the climate has been like in the past by studying various signatures under the surface. Our mission is all about digging. So we're not roving over the surface, we're digging into the surface and that's where the science discoveries are likely to be made. So the pictures may look a little bleak, but the science can be absolutely fascinating. "The other thing we've learned about polar regions on Earth is that there's a long record of organic materials preserved in the ice, just as you preserve organics in the freezer in your kitchen," Smith said. "That's the place where you can go back a million, two million years and bring signatures of organisms back for analysis, that's where they are. ... So we're wondering on Mars is there any indication that organic materials are preserved in this ice? And probably, the organic materials would come from asteroids and comets that have hit the surface of Mars over the last many eons. If it's preserved there, i think that changes the way that we're going to be exploring Mars, we're going to be going where ice is accessible." Phoenix is equipped with a 7.7-foot-long robot arm capable of digging trenches up to 20 inches deep. A scoop and an ice rasp will be used to collect soil and ice chips for microscopic analysis by a suite of sophisticated instruments capable of detecting organic compounds and characterizing how the soil might have been affected by water in the past. The instruments also will sniff out whether organic compounds are, in fact, preserved in the sub-surface ice. If all goes well, engineers will unlimber the lander's robot arm Tuesday, after its joints reach the proper temperature. Digging operations are not expected to begin for another week or so, after the Phoenix camera photographs the entire area reachable by the arm to give scientists a chance to prioritize possible target sites. Scientists are hopeful a depression marking a possible sub-surface ice crack will be within reach of the arm to help them determine exactly what sort of mechanism might be responsible. In some cases, liquid water is required, in others it is not. "Our priority is to first see the entire martian scene around the lander to give us a sense of place as to where we are and try and put these few polygons we've been able to see up close into perspective with the rest of the site around us and also to understand the rock distributions," Smith said. Examining the handful of pictures already sent back from Phoenix, scientists noted that "some of the rock patterns don't line up with the polygons, it's like they're remnants, perhaps, of a more ancient surface," Smith said. "That's one thing our science team is considering. "As far as knowing what's under the rocks, I'm anxious to find out. ... When you look at some of those troughs, you actually see what looks like freshly dug depressions in the center of them. And this is just like the active surfaces we see in the arctic regions on Earth it implies we have an active surface, in other words, the ice is still there and expanding and contracting with the seasons." 2:15 AM, 5/26/08, Update: NASA managers elated with Phoenix landing The Phoenix lander that touched down on Mars Sunday appears healthy and should be ready to begin digging for ice within a week or so, NASA officials said early Monday, after engineers complete initial checkout and collect more photos to help characterize the landing site. The first batch of pictures from Phoenix, collected shortly after touchdown, showed the craft's fully deployed solar arrays, a landing leg and various shots of the nearby surface, a flat, pebble-strewn landscape marked by shallow polygonal ridges stretching away to the horizon and a striking absence of any large rocks or hills. The landing site was chosen specifically because it was flat and free of large rocks and boulders to improve the odds of a successful landing. While the region appears relatively featureless to the untrained eye, Principal Investigator Peter Smith said it was exactly what he wanted and that he is confident Phoenix's robot arm will be able to reach a layer of ice believed to be within a few inches of the surface. "I know it looks a little like a parking lot, but that's a safe place to land, by gosh, and there aren't any big rocks!" Smith said, describing the initial photos. "I think we really nailed it. That makes it exactly the place we want to be because underneath this surface, I guarantee you, is ice. There is ice under this surface. You don't see any ice, but it's down there. "Over the next few days, (the lander's camera will) be getting the whole scene filled in. We've only looked at one little sliver of the martian surface but it's exactly what we wanted and I couldn't be more pleased. This is a scientist's dream, right here on this landing site." NASA