NASA Mission Will Observe Earth's Salty Seas For Climate Clues

Final preparations are under way for the June 9 launch of the international Aquarius/SAC-D observatory. The mission's primary instrument, Aquarius, will study interactions between ocean circulation, the water cycle and climate by measuring ocean surface salinity. Engineers at Vandenberg Air Force Base in California are performing final tests before mating Aquarius/SAC-D to its Delta II rocket. The mission is a collaboration between NASA and Argentina's space agency, Comision Nacional de Actividades Espaciales (CONAE), with participation from Brazil, Canada, France and Italy. SAC stands for Satelite de Applicaciones Cientificas.

In addition to Aquarius, the observatory carries seven other instruments that will collect environmental data for a wide range of applications, including studies of natural hazards, air quality, land processes and epidemiology. The mission will make NASA's first space observations of the concentration of dissolved salt at the ocean surface. Aquarius' observations will reveal how salinity variations influence ocean circulation, trace the path of freshwater around our planet, and help drive Earth's climate. The ocean surface constantly exchanges water and heat with Earth's atmosphere. Approximately 80 percent of the global water cycle that moves freshwater from the ocean to the atmosphere to the land and back to the ocean happens over the ocean.

Salinity plays a key role in these exchanges. By tracking changes in ocean surface salinity, Aquarius will monitor variations in the water cycle caused by evaporation and precipitation over the ocean, river runoff, the freezing and melting of sea ice. Salinity also makes seawater denser, causing it to sink, where it becomes part of deep, interconnected ocean currents. This deep ocean "conveyor belt" moves water masses and heat from the tropics to the polar regions, helping to regulate Earth's climate. "Salinity is the glue that bonds two major components of Earth's complex climate system: ocean circulation and the global water cycle," said Aquarius Principal Investigator Gary Lagerloef of Earth and Space Research in Seattle. "Aquarius will map global variations in salinity in unprecedented detail, leading to new discoveries that will improve our ability to predict future climate."

NASA Wallops position to launch military satellite into orbit

The Mid-Atlantic Regional Spaceport will be the launch site later this spring for a Minotaur rocket carrying into orbit ORS-1, a military observation satellite that is the first operationally reactive space satellite designed to support combat operations. Some 50 tourism representatives from three states were brief at Wright's Restaurant in Atlantic about the Department of Defense mission. This will be the 4th Minotaur rocket launched from Wallops. The launch will occur in May or June, Valerie Skarupa, chief of policy and strategic communications for the Department of Defense's operationally reactive Space Office, said. The correct date has not yet been set, according to NASA Wallops Flight Facility spokesman Keith Kohler.

The Operationally Responsive Space office, located at Kirtland Air Force Base, was authorization by the President and Congress and created in May 2007 to focus on meeting joint force commanders' wants quickly and flexibly. "The way we had addressed threats had changed," Skarupa said, addition the objective now is "to be more agile and resilient," including a shift to using lesser satellites with shorter lifespans and to a "plug-and-play" type modular open systems approach to given that communications and imaging satellites for military use with the eventual goal being to be capable to assemble and launch a satellite within days to weeks.

Skarupa, who was involved in the last two military launches from Wallops, praised the ability as "accurate and fast" and said the inclination angle for launches from Wallops "is perfect for the wars we have going on today." Skarupa also called the TacSat-3 satellite launched from Wallops in May 2009 "a enormous success," noting that the research and development satellite went into use for real operations in 2010. Julie Mears, marketing communications director for Goodrich ISR Systems, the British company that built ORS-1 in Danbury, Ct., also spoke at the tourism meeting, as did Vicki Cox, senior communications manager for ATK Aerospace Systems, which construct the modular bus for the ORS-1 payload in Beltsville, Md. The company also construct the bus for TacSat-3.

Glory Launch Set for March 4

NASA's Glory spacecraft is scheduled for launch on Friday, March 4. Technical issues with ground support equipment for the Taurus XL launch vehicle led to the scrub of the original Feb. 23 launch attempt. Those issues have been resolved. The liftoff from Vandenberg Air Force Base in California is targeted for 5:09:43 a.m. EST, in the middle of a 48-second launch window. Spacecraft separation occurs 13 minutes after launch. Coverage of the countdown on the Glory launch blog and on NASA TV will begin on launch day at 3:30 a.m. EST. Data from the Glory mission will allow scientists to better understand how the sun and tiny atmospheric particles called aerosols affect Earth's climate.

Both aerosols and solar energy influence the planet's energy budget the amount of energy entering and exiting Earth's atmosphere. An accurate measurement of these impacts is important in order to anticipate future changes to our climate and how they may affect human life. Project management for Glory is the responsibility of NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md. The launch management for the mission is the responsibility of NASA's Launch Services Program at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida. Orbital Sciences Corp. of Dulles, Va., is the launch service provider to Kennedy of the four-stage Taurus XL rocket and is also builder of the Glory satellite for Goddard. 

NASA Budget Plan limit spend On Private Rockets

The Obama administration's proposed 2012 National Aeronautics and Space Administration budget, estimated to total more than $18.5 billion, scales back funding for private rockets and spacecraft future to take astronauts into orbit, according to government and industry officials. The White House's expenses plan for manned space exploration seeks to avoid last year's argument between Congress and President Barack Obama, according to government and industry officials. Slated to be released Monday, it also imagine step up international cooperation, despite widespread space and scientific budget cutback in Europe.

Mr. Obama's earlier bid to slash the agency's customary manned programs for allegedly being too slow and costly sparked opposition on Capitol Hill. Lawmakers also balked at White House proposal to outsource some core NASA functions by shifting much of the agency's focus to encourage what have been called business space taxis. This time, these officials said, the agency's request is likely to track main element of a bipartisan compromise Congress finally approved last year. That package limited funding for commercial-space efforts but recognized about $11 billion over five years substantially more than the White House requested to accelerate government growth of heavy lift rockets able to reach deeper into space.

For 2012, the bipartisan contract envision roughly $18.7 billion in overall NASA expenditures. Last week, Lori Garver, NASA's deputy administrator, told an industry meeting in Washington that the new budget would be broadly reliable with that compromise, though she didn't elaborate. Days later, Rep. Frank Wolf, the Virginia Republican who heads the House appropriations subcommittee with right over NASA, said the agency was "just wallowing" and lawmakers have been "concerned about the administration's hostility toward manned spaceflight." Commercial space development are years behind plan, and critic still worry about placing undue reliance on them.

Taurus XL Ready to Launch Glory Spacecraft

The Glory spacecraft and its Taurus XL launch vehicle are coming together at Vandenberg Air Force Base in California as NASA gets ready to launch its first Launch Services Program mission of 2011. Researchers are looking for more puzzle pieces to fill out the picture of Earth's climate and Glory was designed to give them the pieces relating to the role tiny particles known as aerosols play in the planet's weather. The spacecraft, about the size of a refrigerator, is also equipped with an instrument to measure the sun's impact on Earth's conditions. Glory is to lift off Feb. 23 at 5:09 a.m. EST. "The Glory satellite will help us understand the interaction of what's called aerosols in our environment," said Chuong Nguyen, LSP's mission integration manager for Glory.

The particles Glory will measure are small enough to float in the atmosphere and affect weather conditions by either absorbing sunlight or reflecting it. The particles can also affect rain patterns by seeding clouds and have other effects. The Glory mission is to also find out how long-lasting the effects for aerosols and how far their effects reach. The effects of some aerosols are limited to those parts of the world that generate them. For example, cities in developing nations often produce the most "black carbon," or soot, and it is in those areas that the effects are seen most dramatically, sometimes even in the form of health problems. However, other aerosols including dust from the Sahara desert, reach high enough into the air that they are transported across the oceans. In the case of the Sahara, its dust has been seen in the Caribbean.

While the spacecraft will get due attention, many eyes also will be on the Taurus XL rocket that will lift Glory. The four-stage, solid-fueled rocket was last used in February 2009 to launch the Orbiting Carbon Observatory. However, the payload fairing protecting the spacecraft during the early part of launch did not separate and the spacecraft never reached orbit. "Glory is going to do some fantastic stuff as far as mapping out aerosols in the atmosphere, but it's also a groundbreaker in that this is the first flight after a failure of the Taurus XL vehicle," said Omar Baez, launch director for the Glory mission. "So we're excited to be doing this and Glory just happens to be the science that we're taking up with us this time." Compared with other rockets that have launched many hundreds of times, the Taurus XL is quite young and Baez said the trouble with the last launch is part of any new system's growing pains.

The SpaceX Gears Up for Orbital Flight

Space pioneer Elon Musk expect to put his name in the history books once again next week, with the planned launch and recovery of the first commercially function spacecraft from orbit. But to make this point, his closely held company, Space Exploration Technologies Corp., previously has managed to overcome regulatory hurdles never before encountered by the aerospace industry. And federal documents free on Friday underscore the bureaucratic complexities and huge technical risks confronting the pioneering effort. In June, SpaceX, as the company is recognized, launched its 18-story Falcon 9 rocket and successfully flew it for more than nine minutes. It was the first privately fund U.S. rocket launch in decades.

This week's scheduled mission to launch and return an unmanned, reusable Dragon pill from low earth orbit, predictable to last for hours, poses many more challenges. Placing the vehicle into a such an orbit at speeds more than 17,000 miles per hour, then maneuvering through a fiery reentry and splashdown in the Pacific Ocean will need a flawless trajectory, a dependable heat shield and finally, perfect operation of the superfluous parachutes, according to space experts. Based on a ground test finished Saturday, SpaceX said blastoff could occur as early as Tuesday. In an October interview, Mr. Musk said "the likelihood of us receiving everything right "may be no added than 50% on the first try. Considering the difficulty of both the launch and the reentry, he said, in the end "the possibility of mission success may be less than that."

In addition to the stake for SpaceX, the flight will amount to a unique public test of President Barack Obama's controversial effort to use NASA to fund and care for a variety of such commercial spacecraft. The policy continues to face resistance from many lawmakers, established aerospace contractors and even some Air Force officials concerned about relying too heavily on untested private rockets and spacecraft to replace the National Aeronautics and Space Administration's reserved fleet of space shuttles. But a successful reentry would propel Mr. Musk, a former Internet capitalist who has invested more than $100 million of his personal chance in the scrappy startup, further into the guide for such ventures.

Multibillion Dollar Broadband Dream Rockets into realism with Launch

Designed to beam broadband messages to smart phones from more than 22,000 miles in space, a massive spacecraft annoying off Sunday from the plains of Kazakhstan on a Proton rocket in the first phase of deploy a sole wireless communications network stretching across North America. The 11,900-pound satellite, named SkyTerra 1, will join customary terrestrial cell networks to shape a fourth-generation, or 4G, wireless system designed to reach nearly each American by the end of 2016. The ambitious plan is a project of LightSquared, a Virginia bottom firm with $2.9 billion in fresh financing from Harbinger Capital Partners of New York. LightSquared, which newly changed its name from SkyTerra, also claims a further $1.75 billion in fairness financing from other sources.

Sunday's launch will allow LightSquared to meet its promise to the Federal Communications Commission, the narrow agency organization broadband communications spectra in the United States. The Proton rockets soar into glittery skies from the Baikonur Cosmodrome at 1729 GMT on the blue-orange flame of six main engines. The three stage booster seemed to work flawlessly and hand over to the Breeze M upper phase less than 10 minutes after liftoff. The Breeze M ignited a little minutes later to propel the payload into a steady parking orbit about 110 miles high, according to International Launch Services, the U.S.-based firm overseeing profitable Proton flights. Four more Breeze M burns were expected to reach an orbit stretch from a low point of 3,750 miles to a peak altitude of more than 22,200 miles.

The planned leaning at spacecraft separation was 19 degrees, according to Khrunichev, the Proton rocket's prime contractor. ILS declared the launch a success in a report released late Sunday after spacecraft separation. "It is very thrilling for ILS to be a key associate for the launch of the SkyTerra 1 satellite for LightSquared, the new leader for wireless broadband," said Frank McKenna, president of ILS. SkyTerra 1 will raise its orbit with an on board liquid fueled boost engine. The satellite will eventually be positioned in geosynchronous orbit 22,300 miles above the equator at 101.3 degree west longitude, in view of potential customers in the United States, Canada, Mexico and the Caribbean. "At LightSquared, our goal is to transform wireless communications and our timeline to do that is very aggressive.

Layoffs Continue as NASA Slows Moon Program spend

NASA has advised contractor to anticipate reduced spending on the moon bound Constellation program it plans to terminate, prompt a new round of contractor layoffs. The U.S. space agency is bound by a 2010 law to continue funding all Constellation associated contracts until Congress enacts new appropriations legislation approving the termination or reform of the program. Although the U.S. government's 2011 budget year began Oct. 1, lawmakers failed to pass any 2011 appropriations bills before exit Washington last month until mid November, leaving NASA and the relax of the federal government to operate through Dec. 3 under a stopgap measure called a continuing declaration that funds agencies at no greater than 2010 spending levels.

For NASA, that means creation do for at least the next eight weeks with 1.5 percent less than the $19 billion the White House has budgeted for the agency for 2011. Spending on group, which includes development of the Ares I rocket and Orion crew capsule, is predictable to decline as much as 25 percent for the two months ahead, according to NASA spokesman Michael Braukus. In an Oct. 1 e-mail Braukus said NASA plans to instantly reduce its Constellation spending from an average rate of $282 million per month down to $212 million per month. If Congress fails to pass a 2011 plan when it returns in November and instead extends the continuing resolution beyond Dec. 3, "that amount will go lower," Braukus said.

Two years ago, when group was still going strong, NASA contractors were anticipate that expenditure on the program would have ramped up to an average of $540 million per month by now. Much of that money would have gone toward retain workers now facing layoffs as the space shuttle heads toward departure and the assembly phase of the International Space Station program nears completion. As NASA prepares to steadily diminish spending on the program, some Constellation contractor is responding with pink slips. Ares I major contractor Alliant TechSystems, for example, said Oct. 1 it would lay off about 300 Ares I workers in Utah this month.

NASA and ATK Successfully Test Five-Segment Solid Rocket Motor

With a loud roar and mighty column of flame, NASA and ATK Aerospace Systems successfully completed a two-minute, full-scale test of the largest and most powerful solid rocket motor designed for flight. The motor is potentially transferable to future heavy-lift launch vehicle designs. The stationary firing of the first-stage development solid rocket motor, dubbed DM-2, was conducted by ATK, a division of Alliant Techsystems of Brigham City, Utah. DM-2 is the most heavily instrumented solid rocket motor in NASA history, with a total of 53 test objectives measured through more than 760 instruments. Prior to the static test, the solid rocket motor was cooled to 40 degrees Fahrenheit to verify the performance of new materials and assess motor performance at low temperatures during the full-duration test.

Initial test data showed the motor performance met all expectations. "For every few degrees the temperature rises, solid propellant burns slightly faster and only through robust ground testing can we understand how material and motor performance is impacted by different operating conditions," said Alex Priskos, first stage manager for Ares Projects at NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Ala. "Ground-testing at temperature extremes pushes this system to its limits, which advances our understanding of five-segment solid rocket motor performance." The first-stage solid rocket motor is designed to generate up to 3.6-million pounds of thrust at launch. Information collected from this test, together with data from the first development motor test last year, will be evaluated to better understand the performance and reliability of the design.

Although similar to the solid rocket boosters that help power the space shuttle to orbit, the five-segment development motor includes several upgrades and technology improvements implemented by NASA and ATK engineers. Motor upgrades from a shuttle booster include the addition of a fifth segment, a larger nozzle throat, and upgraded insulation and liner. The motor cases are flight-proven hardware used on shuttle launches for more than three decades. The cases used in this ground test have collectively launched 59 previous missions. After more testing, the first-stage solid rocket motor will be certified to fly at temperature ranges between 40-90 degrees Fahrenheit. The solid rocket motor was built as an element of NASA's Constellation Program and is managed by the Ares Projects Office at Marshall. ATK Aerospace Systems is the prime contractor.

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