BLUE ORIGIN - Latest Mission and Jim Kitchen

"Blue Origin’s latest mission takes a professor and entrepreneur to the edge of space" PBS NewsHour 3/30/2022

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SUMMARY:  American astronaut Mark Vande Hei returned to Earth Wednesday from the International Space Station along with two fellow Russian cosmonauts.  He was in space for 355 straight days, longer than any American yet.  But attention will return to private efforts Thursday as Blue Origin, the rocket company founded by Jeff Bezos, will launch its latest human flight.  Miles O’Brien reports.

NASA - Mars 2020 Mission

Perseverance rover

 

Ingenuity helicopter

 

"NASA sets ambitious goals for latest mission to Mars" PBS NewsHour 2/17/2021

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SUMMARY:  If all goes according to plan, the United States will land its most advanced [Perseverance] rover ever on Mars on Thursday, nearly 300-million miles from where it lifted off last year.  It is a daunting task, one that will set up a more ambitious exploration of the Red Planet.  Miles O'Brien lays out the nerve-wracking challenges and goals of the mission.

 

 

"NASA rover lands on Mars, resuming search for remnants of life" PBS NewsHour 2/18/2021

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SUMMARY:  The U.S. is back on the Red Planet after a nearly 300-million-mile journey.  NASA celebrated late Thursday afternoon when it landed its latest rover on Mars.  The rover is designed to explore new areas of the planet and look for clues for past life there.  Miles O'Brien joins Judy Woodruff to discuss the mission.

 

LIVE 2:38:30

NASA - New Horizons Flyby

"Why the latest New Horizons flyby represents a space exploration milestone" PBS NewsHour 1/1/2019

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SUMMARY:  On this New Year’s Day, NASA has a special reason to celebrate: Its spacecraft New Horizons has made a successful flyby of Ultima Thule, an object orbiting in space about four billion miles from Earth.  Science correspondent Miles O’Brien joins Jeffrey Brown to explain the immense difficulty of this mission and its larger significance for the U.S. space program.

NASA - InSight on Mars

"NASA hopes InSight will illuminate Mars’ unknown core" PBS NewsHour 11/26/2018

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SUMMARY:  NASA has successfully landed [8th] its spacecraft InSight on Mars, after a long and challenging voyage.  Scientists hope InSight will uncover details of what’s under the surface of Mars, including whether the planet’s core is liquid or solid.  Science correspondent Miles O’Brien explains to Judy Woodruff why “there’s nothing easy about this” venture and how it might affect future space exploration.

REF:  NASA - InSight Mars Lander

CLIMATE CHANGE - Tracking Methane Leaks

"NASA scientists track climate-changing methane leaks from the air" PBS NewsHour 7/11/2018

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SUMMARY:  Science correspondent Miles O’Brien joins us from the atmosphere above Southern California, where NASA engineers leverage state-of-the-art technology to measure methane.  Released through oil and gas production, livestock emissions, and organic waste, methane is about 85 times more potent at trapping heat than carbon dioxide.  California wants to identify specific methane leaks so it can plug them.

DROUGHT - Cape Town, South Africa

"Cape Town drought limits people to 13 gallons of water a day" PBS NewsHour 3/31/2018

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SUMMARY:  Fearing the complete depletion of their water supply amid an extreme drought, officials in South Africa’s second most populous city have limited water consumption to 13 gallons per resident a day.  Police are also fining people for watering their lawns or washing their cars.  NewsHour Weekend Special Correspondent Martin Seemungal reports on how people are adjusting.

"Cape Town drought is a global harbinger, says NASA scientist" PBS NewsHour 3/31/2018

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SUMMARY:  Factors like population growth, income inequality and climate change have exacerbated water related issues around the world.  Abuse and depletion of the natural resource has led to instability and violence in places like Iran, Syria, and Bangladesh as well as crises in the U.S.  Jay Famiglietti, NASA’s senior water scientist, joins Hari Sreenivasan from Los Angeles to discuss the global pattern.

ELON MUSK - Space Dreams

"Elon Musk wants to go to Mars.  His reusable Falcon Heavy rocket is now one leap closer" PBS NewsHour 2/6/2018

Excerpt

SUMMARY:  SpaceX launched the world’s most powerful rocket from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida on Tuesday, a successful liftoff brought to fruition by Elon Musk’s private company.  Science correspondent Miles O’Brien joins John Yang to discuss the historical launch and what made it so different from a NASA launch.

NEWSHOUR SHARES - Apollo 11 Command Module Traveling Show

"Keeping priceless pieces of space history safe" PBS NewsHour 10/20/2017

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SUMMARY:  In our NewsHour Shares moment of the day, nearly five decades after the historic Apollo 11 Command Module brought man to the moon and back, the spacecraft is part of a new adventure in a four-stop traveling exhibition across America.  The NewsHour's Julia Griffin gets a behind-the-scenes look at how the Smithsonian has choreographed a safe trip for the module.

NASA - In the Trump Era

"Why you should take a closer look at this week's NASA bill" by Andrew Wagner and Nsikan Akpan, PBS NewsHour 3/24/2017

President Donald Trump has signed the 2017 NASA Authorization Act, the first complete authorization for the agency since 2010.  The bill lays out NASA's directives along with a proposed budget for the 2018 fiscal year at $19.5 billion — a $0.2 billion raise from the previous year.  It must still run through a congressional appropriations process to set the final funding for NASA.

While the bill reaffirms NASA's commitments to the International Space Station (through 2024) and to future manned missions into deep space, certain elements — or the lack thereof — have caused concern among some scientists, including space baron Elon Musk.

Here are some of the bill's biggest changes.

*****

So long, Earth science

Rewind to 1958:  The act that formally created America's space agency had a set of objectives.  The first goal listed: “The expansion of human knowledge of phenomena in the atmosphere and space.”

Congress has maintained this objective for NASA, under Republican and Democratic administrations alike, until Trump signed this most recent bill Tuesday.

What changed:

• The new authorization bill removes all mention of earth sciences, a section that was included in the NASA authorization bill signed in 2010.

• It also removed sections on NASA's collaboration with National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration on the investigation of the Earth's atmosphere.

The 2015 Antarctic ozone hole area was larger than the continent of North America, based on research by NASA and NOAA.

Photo by NASA/Goddard Space Flight Center

Why it happened:

• The new bill was authored by Senator Ted Cruz (R-Texas), who has said in the past that he “is concerned in the current environment, that NASA has lost its focus” by focusing on climate change.

• During a debate over the new bill, Rep. Lamar Smith (R-Texas), who chairs the House Committee on Science, Space and Technology, said the bill ensures “NASA is not burdened with funding other agency missions.”

Why it matters:

• “Those programs provide the space-based measurements to help scientists understand the Earth's systems and changing climate to predict space weather events, which can have devastating impacts on our terrestrial infrastructure,” Rep.  Eddie Bernice Johnson (D-Texas), said of the missing science and heliophysics programs .

• Scientists have pointed out that the items in question also include a lot of practical programs, “such as safeguards to avoid eating toxic shellfish, reduce aviation disruptions and tracking unhealthy air quality,” said Brenda Ekwurzel, senior climate scientist at the Union of Concerned Scientists.

• The fate of those programs won't be clear until the bill goes through the budget appropriations process.  The authorization act passed in the Senate with unanimous support and by voice vote in the House.

*****

Who's on the hook if a commercial spaceship goes kaboom?

Meanwhile, the commercialization of space travel has strolled into its heyday.

In the 2017 authorization, Congress restates its dedication to NASA's Commercial Crew Program, a six-year-old initiative that provides government funds to private sector companies — like Blue Origin, SpaceX or Boeing — to develop space transportation vehicles.

What changed:

• The bill requires NASA to prioritize the use of its own launch vehicles or commercial providers over those of foreign entities like Russia.  Russian space vehicles had transported a number of American astronauts, including Scott Kelly, to the ISS in recent years.

• The 2017 authorization act also calls on NASA to facilitate the “commercialization and economic development” of low-earth orbit activities, such as lowering the costs of commercial satellite operations and exploring the possibility of transferring the International Space Station into the private sector.

• The power to invoke indemnity clauses — which place risk, or financial liability for an accident, on the government instead of private suppliers — moves from Congress to the executive branch, in this case, the NASA Administrator.

Shortly after the signing, Vice President Mike Pence announced plans to reinstate the National Space Council.  The space policy committee , which ran from 1958 to 1973 and again under President George H.W. Bush in the early 1990s, has a long legacy of executive control over NASA.

“We're going to be bringing together the best and the brightest in NASA and also in the private sector,” said Pence, who will lead the NSC.  “We have elected a builder president and, as he said, America once again has to start building and leading to the stars.”

Why it happened:

• “This bill will make sure that NASA's most important and effective programs are sustained,” Trump said after Tuesday's signing.  “It orders NASA to continue transitioning activities to the commercial sector where we have seen great progress.  So many people and so many companies are so into exactly what NASA stands for, so the commercial and the private sector will get to use these facilities and I hope they're going to be paying us a lot of money.”

Why it matters:

• The indemnity clause provisions actually aren't new.  “We have had commercial space transportation law going back to 1984 that codifies a risk-sharing agreement between the government and the private sector,” said Joanne Gabrynowicz, editor-in-chief emerita of the Journal of Space Law.  “It would be triggered in the event of a catastrophic loss — and happily, that provision of the law hasn't been needed yet.”  But the shift gives more power to the executive branch rather than Congress.

• The bill calls on private companies to buy insurance coverage of $500 million for any launch or reentry mission.  This kind of mandate has appeared in similar legislation before, but the 2017 version re-ups the terms.  By comparison, the Mars Curiosity Rover mission cost $2.6 billion.  (Reminder: NASA's current budget is $19.3 billion, approximately 0.5 percent of the total federal budget).

• Despite the commercial commitments to near-Earth travel, SpaceX CEO Elon Musk said he wasn't happy with new act's prospects for deep space.  “This bill changes almost nothing about what NASA is doing,” Musk stated via Twitter.  “Existing programs stay in place and there is no added funding for Mars.”

Deep space and cyberspace

Two additional tidbits in the act address NASA prospects in deep space and cyberspace.

What’s changed:

• The bill creates the TREAT Astronauts Act, which addresses the need for medical coverage for U.S. astronauts that spend extensive time in space flight, such as on future missions to the moon, Mars or elsewhere in the Solar System.

• Unless new technology is developed, these trips will feature extensive exposure to microgravity and cosmic radiation with unknown ramifications.  The TREAT Act would provide medical monitoring for astronauts years after they return and retire, namely for those who may not have access to military insurance plans.

• The bill also requires NASA to establish agency-wide information security and to establish accountability, governance and implementation oversight to meet standard cybersecurity best practices.

Why it matters:

• Scientists have observed bone loss and eye injuries among long-term residents of space stations.

• But Gabrynowicz pointed out the bill only states the government “may provide” this medical coverage — but “it does not have to be provided,” she said.  “In other words, it is allowed but not obligatory.”

• Meanwhile, NASA computers, like any connected to a modem, are vulnerable to attacks, as demonstrated last year, when hackers caused breached a drone operated by the space agency.  The hack was minor relative to other recent government hacks, but still exposed the names, phone numbers and emails of more than 2,400 employees.

• The bill forces the agency to “modernize its cybersecurity defenses into a layered, security-by-design approach,” said James Scott, co-founder and senior fellow at the Institute for Critical Infrastructure Technology (ICIT) in Washington D.C.  “These low-level attackers typically exploit trivial vulnerabilities, such as FTP access to servers, that should have been mitigated.”

"What do the stars hold for the Trump administration?  Here's how NASA's mission could change" PBS NewsHour 4/12/2017

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SUMMARY:  Some big changes could be in store for American space exploration under President Trump and the Republican Congress.  Sending more humans to the moon, as well as a mission to Jupiter's moon Europa seem to be part of a plan that extends years beyond the Trump administration.  Science correspondent Miles O'Brien explores how NASA's mission could be reshaped.

TRUMP AGENDA - Human Moon Missions

Assuming you trust Trump to keep his word.

"Human moon missions could be on the horizon under Trump" PBS NewsHour 3/1/2017

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SUMMARY:  Is there renewed focus inside the Trump administration, NASA and the private sector to revive travel to the moon?  There are signs, like a single reference in President Trump's address to Congress, that seem to suggest that a space journey may be sooner than we might think.  Science correspondent Miles O'Brien joins Judy Woodruff to discuss what we could learn and why it's back on the table.

JUDY WOODRUFF (NewsHour):  And now to our Leading Edge segment for this week, a potential return to the moon.

Near the end of his address last night, the President made a reference to space travel, saying — quote — “American footprints on distant worlds are not too big a dream.”

It was only a line.  But whenever a President speaks on the subject, the space community is closely trying to read the tea leaves.  The sentence leaves a lot to interpretation, but all signs seem to indicate there is renewed focus inside the Trump administration, NASA, and the private sector, on travel to the moon, sooner than you might think.

Our science correspondent, Miles O'Brien, is here.

So, Miles, why the moon after all these years?

MILES O'BRIEN (NewsHour):  Aside from the “because it's there” answer, it's actually a good destination to go and learn about living and working on an encampment in space.

You know, we went to the moon 50 years ago now.  We left some footprints and flags behind, but we didn't really learn how to live there on a sustained basis.  So, while NASA would still like to go to Mars, there's a lot of things you can learn about by setting up an encampment on the moon.

And we have learned in the past 50 years there's a lot of water ice on the moon.  What is water?  Hydrogen and oxygen.  What is rocket fuel?  Hydrogen and oxygen.  So you can learn a lot about how to create rocket fuel on location and perhaps push deeper into space.

JUDY WOODRUFF:  So this didn't just spring up as an idea because they couldn't think of anything else?

MILES O'BRIEN:  Well, there was one other factor.  There was a mission planned at the end of '18 for the Space Launch System, which is the next heavy lift that NASA is working — heavy lift rocket.

One piece of it wasn't going to be ready, built by the Europeans, a service module.  And so NASA was faced with the possibility of delaying that mission, an unmanned mission, even later, or maybe doing something like we did with Apollo 8, something bold.

In the case of Apollo 8, the lunar module wasn't ready.  And we decided to go around the moon.  In this case, they're thinking about putting astronauts on this flight maybe early '19, and send them around the moon Apollo 8-style.

So, a lot of things have lined up.  And, all of a sudden, there is wide agreement in the space community, this might be the next step.

THE LEADING EDGE - Alien Life in Solar Systems

"Hunt for alien life zooms in on newly discovered solar system" PBS NewsHour 2/22/2017

An artist's impression of TRAPPIST-1
 and its seven planets

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SUMMARY:  Astronomers have identified seven Earth-sized planets orbiting a star that's just a mere 230 trillion miles from our own planet, raising the tantalizing prospect of life in a solar system beyond our own.  Science correspondent Miles O'Brien joins Hari Sreenivasan to discuss how they made the discovery and what it means.

HARI SREENIVASAN (NewsHour):  Now to this week's edition of Leading Edge.

There is new excitement tonight about the search for possible life in a solar system beyond our own.  Astronomers have identified seven Earth-sized planets orbiting a star just a mere 230 trillion miles or so from our own planet.  That sounds like a mind-boggling distance.  It is.  But researchers say the idea of life on one of these exoplanets, as they're called, is tantalizing.

Astronomers, using ground and space telescopes operated by NASA and the European Southern Observatory, made the announcement.

Our own Miles O'Brien is here to guide us through the news.

First of all, if something is so far away — this is maybe a basic science question — how do we know what we know and what we saw?

MILES O'BRIEN (NewsHour):  It's a good question.

You know, think about it for a minute.  If it's trillions of miles away, how is it even possible?  So, imagine — the technique is called transit photometry.  Now, imagine you're about a mile away from a headlight and a mosquito goes across the headlight.

Believe it not, that headlight is slightly dimmed by the fact that mosquito goes across.  Well, this is tantamount to what they do.  The planet goes in front of the star, it dims ever so slightly, and with a lot of complicated and sensitive instrumentation, you can determine that, in fact, that's a planet.

They discovered three of them this way.  They said, hmm, this is an interesting, ultra-cool brown dwarf to look at.  Let's put some more hardware on it.  They set more instrumentation on it.  And, sure enough, there ended up to be seven Earth-like planets, just about the size and mass of Earth, orbiting this Jupiter-sized, ultra-cool brown dwarf.

HARI SREENIVASAN:  Now, you say ultra-cool, that doesn't mean it's a cold sun.  It's just not as big or as hot as ours, right?

MILES O'BRIEN:  It's about like Jupiter is to us, OK, cooler and smaller.

HARI SREENIVASAN:  And when we talk about this habitable zone, this Goldilocks, not too cold, not too hot, how do they know that there are planets in this group that exist within that range?

MILES O'BRIEN:  They can measure the radiation off of TRAPPIST-1, this particular ultra-cool brown dwarf, and figure out the zone at which water would remain liquid.  And that's the key.

Everywhere we look on this planet and we find liquid water, we find life.  It doesn't matter where we go.  So, in the hunt for potential alien life, the thought of finding places where there is liquid water is what really intrigues scientists.

So, these planets are a lot closer to TRAPPIST-1 than we are to our sun, but, remember, it's smaller and dimmer.  And they have these very tight little orbits.  And it's quite likely there might be water on some of them.

NASA Announcement Video (38:32)

AT THE MOVIES - "Hidden Figures"

"‘Hidden Figures' brings NASA's overlooked black pioneers to light" PBS NewsHour 1/5/2017

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SUMMARY:  “Hidden Figures” is a story about reaching for the stars while fighting racial and gender barriers.  The new movie follows the careers of three black women who worked at NASA's Langley headquarters in Virginia during the 1950s and ‘60s to help launch the first American into space.  Long overlooked, their story is finally being told.  Jeffrey Brown reports.

ALISON STEWART (NewsHour):  A movie opening widely this weekend tells a little known piece of history about the history of the early days of spaceflight and the crucial role played behind the scenes by African-American women who acted as mathematicians and engineers.

The film is called “Hidden Figures.” It's up for a number of honors during this awards season, including two Golden Globes on Sunday night.

Jeffrey Brown has a look at the film and that history.

ACTOR:  You have identification on you?

TARAJI P.  HENSON, “Katherine Johnson”:  We're just on our way to work.

OCTAVIA SPENCER, “Dorothy Vaughan”:  At NASA, sir.

ACTOR:  I had no idea they hired....

OCTAVIA SPENCER:  There are quite a few women working in the space program.

JEFFREY BROWN (NewsHour):  It's a story about an agency that reached for the stars, but was mired in racial and gender barriers still prevalent on the ground.

“Hidden Figures” is based on the real-life stories of three black woman who worked in mostly segregated quarters at NASA's Langley Center in Virginia in the 1950s and '60s.

The film focuses on efforts to launch the first American, the late John Glenn, into orbit.

ACTOR:  Let me ask you, if you were a white male, would you wish to be an engineer?

JANELLE MONAE, “Mary Jackson”:  I wouldn't have to.  I would already be one.

JEFFREY BROWN:  Janelle Monae, the singer-turned-actress, plays Mary Jackson, struggling to get her license as an engineer.  Like the others involved, this history was new to Monae.

JANELLE MONAE:  I was excited.  I said, wow, we're going to finally be celebrating women not just for their beauty, but for their brilliance.  And I got excited.  And then once I found out that they indeed were part of the space program at NASA, it became a personal responsibility to me to make sure that no young girl, or no human being, no American, you know, went through life not knowing of these true American heroes.

JEFFREY BROWN:  Mary Jackson would spend 34 years at NASA and help many who followed.

JANELLE MONAE:  She found out that the women and minorities were being paid significantly less than their male white counterparts.  And she, along with a couple of other colleagues, took this to NASA.  And, you know, NASA being the progressive place and the place that listened, she helped advance more women's careers and more minorities' careers in STEM at NASA during that time.

So, I thought that was just so remarkable, and I'm so honored to play such a woman.

CLIMATE CHANGE - Trump vs NASA Climate Research

"Will Trump Scrap NASA's Climate Research Mission?" by Andrew Revkin, ProPublica 12/12/2016

NASA does more than explore other planets; it studies our own.  Agency scientists worry Donald Trump will abort the work.

The wonders of NASA — Mars rovers, astronaut Instagram feeds, audacious missions probing distant galactic mysteries — have long enthralled the American public.  And, it turns out, the accomplishments have won the agency the public's trust: Polls have consistently shown NASA to be the second-most trusted government institution, behind only the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

The public, however, probably has less appreciation for the work NASA has done on its home planet.  NASA's $2-billion-a-year earth-science program has long tracked global-scale environmental conditions on Earth, including climate change.

But with the election of Donald Trump, there was immediate concern — inside NASA and among the fans of its valued work on global warming — about the future of the agency's earth-science program.  Within hours of Trump's acceptance speech on Nov. 9, an internal email from a senior official in the Earth Sciences division at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center circulated within NASA acknowledging worry that “funding may now be exposed to severe reductions.”

The last month is not apt to have eased that alarm.

Trump's most visible adviser on space policy has been Bob Walker, a former House Science committee chairman who is now a space-policy lobbyist pressing to move “Earth-centric” and “heavily politicized” climate science out of NASA altogether.  And Christopher Shank, who was chosen by Trump to lead the transition at NASA, is a seasoned strategist who has expressed strong skepticism about the severity of global warming.

Should Trump come to take a dim view of NASA's research on climate change, he's likely to have no shortage of support in Congress.  The last few years have seen intensifying moves against the Obama administration's investments in climate science in hearings led by the Texas Republicans Sen. Ted Cruz and Rep. Lamar S. Smith, whose views on NASA and climate parallel those of Walker — built around the notion that NASA needs to focus on outer space, not back on Earth.

As Smith put it in 2015, “There are 13 other agencies involved in climate-change research, but only one that is responsible for space exploration."

NASA's Earth Science Division, if less well known to the public, has regularly seen its budget fluctuate with turnover in the White House.  Under Ronald Reagan, there were substantial investments in what was then called the Earth Observing System.  George H.W. Bush, building on a 1987 report by astronaut Sally Ride, funded a program that came to be known as the “Mission to Planet Earth.”

George W. Bush reversed course, and reduced resources for the program (his administration was eventually exposed for trying to suppress NASA research on global warming).  Most recently, though, the division's budget was greatly restored by Barack Obama.  A core argument of Walker and congressional critics of NASA earth science, that budgets have ballooned and reduced resources for other NASA science programs, has no basis, said Arthur Charo, who has tracked NASA science budgets for the Standing Committee on Earth Science and Applications from Space of the nongovernmental National Academy of Sciences.

He said a careful look at programs, adjusting for inflation, shows no evidence of such a pattern.  “There is a mythology that earth science has undergone dramatic growth and that this growth has occurred at the expense of other divisions in the Science Mission Directorate,” he said.  “Both assertions are false.”

The Trump transition office declined requests for interviews and Walker did not reply to email messages.

Piers J.  Sellers is the director of the Earth Sciences Division at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center, and the former astronaut is a climate scientist himself.  ProPublica spoke with him recently.  Sellers declined to discuss the politics surrounding NASA during a presidential transition, but said the agency has a unique position in the world in clarifying global environmental risks and that part of its mission deserves support.

“We're doing our best to provide the least dangerous options to getting from here to a safe future,” he said.  “That's our job as U.S. government scientists.  NASA has the greatest capability to see what's going on and has a pretty strong capability to model what's going on into the future, as well.”

Some of NASA's most vital earth-science work has been done at a tiny climate research hub, the Goddard Institute for Space Studies.  The center occupies the upper floors of a century-old building in upper Manhattan best known for Tom's Restaurant, the cash-only corner diner famed because its façade was featured in the sitcom “Seinfeld.”

The institute was led for decades by James E.  Hansen, the climate scientist who stepped ahead of most peers in the hot summer of 1988, famously telling a Senate panel it was “99 percent certain” that human-generated greenhouse gases were driving global warming.  A decade ago, Hansen defied muzzling efforts during the George W. Bush administration and irked defenders of fossil fuels with his warnings of calamitous warming.  He retired in 2013 to focus on activism aimed at curbing emissions of greenhouse gases linked to warming.

The institute has produced one of the four most important records of global temperature trends and, under Hansen's successor as director, the TED-talking, Twitter-savvy climatologist Gavin A. Schmidt, has continued to refine climate simulations and communicate warnings about unabated warming.

Schmidt declined to be interviewed for this story, citing what he described as selective quoting in recent coverage of possible threats to earth science under the Trump administration.  But he's shown no signs of dread in his personal Twitter flow, on Thursday night posting this provocative two-parter:

Gavin Schmidt @ClimateOfGavin
The sight of the denier-industrial complex drooling at what they imagine will happen to climate science is actually pretty funny...  1/2

Gavin Schmidt @ClimateOfGavin
It's as if they really believe that the science is ordered up by politicians & changes as often as their principles.

Newsflash: It doesn't
6:04 PM - 8 Dec 2016
57 57 Retweets 101 101 likes

On Wednesday, in an appearance at a space law conference in Washington, D.C., Walker, Trump's adviser, stuck with his vision of stripping “Earth-centric” science out of NASA and “transferring the programs, lock, stock and barrel, to another agency,” according to an article by Jeff Foust in Space News.

It could be argued that the core work done at Goddard — particularly its climate modeling — is redundant, for the United States has two other major climate modeling centers, and there are more than 30 worldwide.  But Richard Betts, the head of the climate impacts division at Britain's Met Office, said in an interview that the Goddard Institute's modeling stands out because of NASA scientists' longstanding familiarity with the information coming from NASA-built satellites.

Decades ago, John R. Christy, the director of the Earth System Science Center at the University of Alabama, Huntsville, co-developed with NASA a method for tracking the temperature of the lower atmosphere from satellites, cutting out some of the uncertainties that come with surface measurements.  He has long held skeptical views on the severity of global warming, and has been a featured witness of Republicans resisting steps to cut greenhouse gases.  But in an interview Thursday, Christy expressed concern about plans to move Earth-focused science out of NASA.

“NASA has a very good track record of putting things in space that work, and that provide data,” he said.  “NASA does that soup to nuts kind of work.”  He added, “Undoing that would be disruptive to the mission we have of trying to characterize the planet with as much accuracy as we can.”

He also noted that, with or without human-caused global warming, from California to sub-Saharan Africa, the forces driving megadroughts and other climate-system threats are still poorly understood.  “There's so much that needs to be known and the perspective from space is just absolutely essential,” he said.

What happens to NASA next?

In his victory speech on Nov. 9, Trump pledged to listen to people with differing views, so perhaps he'll reach out beyond Walker in weighing next steps for NASA to people like David Titley, a retired Navy rear admiral and former Oceanographer of the Navy, who has written a comprehensive overview of the value NASA earth science provides to society, including to national security.

Or perhaps he could turn to former President George W. Bush.  While funding for NASA earth science dropped on his watch, his administration's 2006 NASA Strategic Plan made clear that NASA was an appropriate venue for such research: “Earth science is science in the national interest.  While scientific discovery from space is inherent in the Agency's mission, NASA's programs in earth science also are central.”

Sellers, in the email to his Earth Sciences Division team a month ago, managed to summon some confidence, even defiance.

“We have an excellent record of achievements and can make a solid case for stable support,” wrote Sellers (his email was provided to ProPublica by someone else at NASA).

“We will never give up on this.”

COMMENT:  Trump is infamous for NOT keeping his campaign promises.

NASA - When Juno Probe Reaches Jupiter

"NASA promising July 4 big bang — and lots of science — when Juno probe reaches Jupiter" PBS NewsHour 6/29/2016

Excerpt

SUMMARY:  On Independence Day NASA's Juno spacecraft (NASA home page) reaches the largest planet in our solar system and is expected to transmit pictures the 1.8 billion miles back to Earth.  But even more interesting than pictures, scientists hope to collect tons of data to help them understand Jupiter's formation — and our own.  Science correspondent Miles O'Brien joins William Brangham.

WILLIAM BRANGHAM (NewsHour):  The holiday weekend is often a time for big blockbuster movies, and it's safe to say that concept has not been lost on NASA.

The space agency has just released a kind of movie trailer about what it hopes will be a nail-biting night on the Fourth of July.  That's when the Juno spacecraft, which is going to fly closer to Jupiter than any spacecraft has before, is supposed to reach its destination.  But getting to Jupiter comes with its own risks.

This is how NASA describes it in the trailer.

MAN:  It's a monster.  It's unforgiving.  It's relentless.  It's spinning around so fast its gravity is like a giant slingshot, slinging rocks, dust, electrons, whole comets.  Anything that gets close to it becomes its weapon.

WILLIAM BRANGHAM:  OK, that got my attention.

Our science correspondent Miles O'Brien is here to spell out some more.

MILES O'BRIEN, Science Correspondent (NewsHour):  William, I should have brought the popcorn.

(LAUGHTER)

WILLIAM BRANGHAM:  Exactly.

We have been to Jupiter before.  NASA's been there a couple of times.  What's different this time?

MILES O'BRIEN:  Well, depending on how you count, we have had about 10 missions to Jupiter.

Most of them have been flybys, Voyager, Pioneer notable among them, New Horizons as well.  We of course had the orbiting mission of Galileo, which began in the mid-'90s into the early 2000s, which did most science around Jupiter and its moons.

And that's the big treasure trove of data.  And all the while, the Hubble telescope has captured a lot of interesting data from Jupiter.  And in particular, back in 1994, you may recall when the Shoemaker-Levy 9 comet, that fragment comet, struck Jupiter, Hubble got some amazing images of those impacts.

But all off this is skin-deep.

WILLIAM BRANGHAM:  So what are we trying to learn this time?

MILES O'BRIEN:  Well, there's a lot of things we can learn from Jupiter.

Full documentary (1:04:22)

NASA - Space Station, Fighting Fire With Fire

"NASA scientists try to stop space fires — by setting them" PBS NewsHour 6/8/2016

Excerpt

SUMMARY:  Confined spaces, low gravity and high concentrations of oxygen mean any unexpected fire on a space station could well be a death sentence, especially since fire extinguishers aren’t very effective away from Earth.  So NASA scientists are trying to develop a new kind of firefighting tool by starting their own space fires and studying how they unfold.  Science correspondent Miles O’Brien reports.

JOHN GRUNSFELD, NASA:  We are crossing an international boundary.  We are on the U.S. side now, and now we are on the Russian Mir space station.

MILES O’BRIEN (NewsHour):  By 1997, the Russian space station Mir was 11 years old and showing its age.  During the fifth shuttle mission to the station, astronaut John Grunsfeld documented the warren of modules brimming with a disorienting maze of cables, hoses and trash.

JOHN GRUNSFELD:  I feel like I am exploring a cave.

MILES O’BRIEN:  Can you imagine being in a fire here?

U.S. astronaut Jerry Linenger lived that nightmare on February 23, 1997 (see "Fire! How the Mir Incident Changed Space Station Safety").

JERRY LINENGER, Former NASA Astronaut:  The fire was basically in this region here with the flames shooting across this way.

MILES O’BRIEN:  The source was a canister filled with chemicals designed to generate oxygen.

JERRY LINENGER:  You have got a two- or three-foot flame, blowtorch-like in intensity, sparks flying off the end of it.  It looks like a hundred sparklers all at once.

MILES O’BRIEN:  Linenger and his Russian crewmates donned masks and frantically fought the fire.

JERRY LINENGER:  The fire took about 14 minutes total, and 14 minutes is a long time with a roaring fire and a blackout from the smoke, and no place to go.  And if it were any bigger, I’m pretty darn sure we would have lost that spacecraft.

MILES O’BRIEN:  For NASA scientists and engineers, it was a big wakeup call.

GARY RUFF, NASA:  One of the things that you learn is, we really didn’t have a way to put that fire out.

NASA - BEAM Me Up

"Beam me up — NASA experiments with inflatable modules" PBS NewsHour 6/1/2016

Excerpt

SUMMARY:  Over the weekend, astronauts aboard the orbiting International Space Station added a module like none other.  Think an RV that expands out the back with extra space for sleeping quarters.  In the case of the ISS, it was an inflatable Bigelow Expandable Activity Module (BEAM).  It's made of a material stronger than kevlar and could be a game-changer.  Science correspondent Miles O'Brien reports.

MILES O'BRIEN (NewsHour):  NASA just added some space to the space station, and it is 16 cubic meters like no other.  Inflated carefully with short spurts of air, it is an expandable module, the first designed for human habitation ever to reach low-Earth orbit.

It's a big step on the long road to building spacecraft and habitats for human missions to Mars.  Expandables allow engineers to color outside the lines, beyond the diameter of the nose cone of the rocket called the fairing.  That's the constraint when launching a module made of rigid aluminum.  It's sort of like carrying a tent to space.

Jason Crusan is NASA's director for advanced exploration systems.

JASON CRUSAN, NASA:  Expandables allow you to pack up whatever your habitat is and fit in more potential volume in the same fairing volume.  So that's the key advantage, is the volume advantage.

MILES O'BRIEN:  It's called BEAM, an acronym for Bigelow Expandable Activity Module.  It's a technology demonstrator, an experiment to see how well it performs in space.

The man behind BEAM, Robert Bigelow, watched it all unfold in the viewing room overlooking the space station flight control room in Houston.  His company, Bigelow Aerospace, is based in North Las Vegas.

All right, so what are we looking at here?

Bigelow made his fortune in real estate, contracting and extended stay hotels.  He is now pursuing a lifelong passion for space.  He believes expandables are a game-changer.

ROBERT BIGELOW, Bigelow Aerospace:  It's that dramatic.  It's that huge in terms of concept change.  We didn't invent the change.  This is a NASA idea.

MILES O'BRIEN:  It is an idea as old as the space age itself.  In a seminal series on space exploration in “Collier's” magazine in 1954, legendary rocket scientist Wernher von Braun envisioned humans flying to, and living on, Mars in inflatables.

The first communications satellites, Echo 1 and Echo 2, launched in 1960 and '64 respectively, were inflatable metallic balloons, passive reflectors of microwave transmissions.  At about the same time, NASA pondered several early space station designs with expandable modules.  And in the 1990s, when the International Space Station was becoming a reality, the agency designed an expandable called TransHab that would have replaced the U.S. crew quarters.

Expanded, it would have twice the diameter, and three times the volume, of the rigid aluminum structure currently in use.  But amid cost overruns, Congress canceled TransHab.  And Bigelow Aerospace obtained the patents from NASA.

TOUCHDOWN - Reusable Rockets

"What a reusable rocket means for the future of spaceflight" PBS NewsHour 12/22/2015

Excerpt

SUMMARY:  A SpaceX rocket made a historic landing Monday night.  After taking off from Cape Canaveral, the rocket booster landed gently back on Earth, suggesting a possible future for reusable rockets.  Science correspondent Miles O’Brien joins Judy Woodruff to discuss the significance.

JUDY WOODRUFF (NewsHour):  It’s been a long time since a rocket’s descent has been big news, but, last night, there was a historic landing.  After SpaceX, a private company founded by Elon Musk, launched a rocket on Monday from Cape Canaveral in Florida, it stuck the landing, you might say.  The rocket booster landed gently on Earth, a feat cheered at SpaceX headquarters, and that suggested we may be able to create reusable rockets to explore further.

Our science correspondent, Miles O’Brien, joins me now.

Welcome, Miles.

So, how big a deal is this?

MILES O’BRIEN (NewsHour):  Judy, this is the Holy Grail for space.

Ever since the space age began, those of us who cared about exploring beyond have thought, wouldn’t it be nice if we could reuse the craft?  We have been throwing them away virtually the whole time.  The space shuttle was an attempt to make it reusable.  Didn’t work out so well.

And so the idea that you could take the first stage of a rocket, kind of the money end of the rocket, if you will, and have it land intact gently to be fueled up, gassed up and launched again is truly a great moment.  So, yes, big deal.

JUDY WOODRUFF:  Why was it so hard to do before now?

MILES O’BRIEN:  Well, part of it is, we didn’t try for a long time.  During the heady days of the space race, we were too busy trying to beat the Soviets to the surface of the moon, and so we were very happy just to throw things away, rather than try to figure this out.

There is a penalty.  You have to have extra fuel on obviously to bring it down safely.  Then we got kind of off on a tangent with the space shuttle, thinking that would be reusable, and that didn’t work out so well.  So we sort of didn’t think about it.

Then we went in the wrong direction.  And now with entrepreneurs like Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos looking at this idea in a more bottom-line manner than NASA would, dare I say, we might get some progress.

NASA CineSpace 2015

CineSpace is a collaboration between NASA and the Huston Cinema Arts Society that presents "NASA Imagery - Your Vision" and runs a yearly contest.  Here are some of my favorites of 2015:

"EXPLORATION"



"Red Pearl"



"Come Closer"



"Gravitation:  Variation in Time and Space" (for ballet lovers)

ASTRONAUT - As 'Major Tom'

MARS - Water and Life

"Where there’s water on Earth, there’s life. Is the same true on Mars?" PBS NewsHour 9/28/2015

Excerpt

SUMMARY:  NASA has found evidence of liquid water on Mars.  Science correspondent Miles O’Brien joins Judy Woodruff to discuss the inevitable question:  Does this mean there could be some form of life on the red planet?

JUDY WOODRUFF (NewsHour):  Finally tonight: big news from outer space.

NASA today announced that it has found evidence of liquid water on Mars, at least during certain seasons of the Martian year.  The discovery was made through satellite images, which revealed darkly shaded streaks on slopes of craters and hillsides.  They darken and lighten over time as water seeps across the surface, and then evaporates.

For more on what it all might mean, I’m joined by science correspondent Miles O’Brien.

Hello again.

MILES O’BRIEN (NewsHour):  Judy, good to see you.

JUDY WOODRUFF:  So, how do they know it’s water, Miles?  They don’t — there hasn’t been a human there to look at it.  They’re looking through satellites.  What — how do they know?

MILES O’BRIEN:  The HiRISE instrument, which is on the orbiting Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, is a very sophisticated instrument and has the ability to do spectral analysis.

So, it can actually look at how light moves through whatever is flowing there.  And it gives unique signatures of water and in this case a lot of salt.  It’s the salt that is the key here, because Mars is cold and has an atmosphere which is almost nonexistent.  So, the idea of water flowing there is hard to imagine.

JUDY WOODRUFF:  But this flies in the face of what scientists thought for a long time, or have they been building up to this?

MILES O’BRIEN:  Well, there is a huge body of evidence that Mars at one time was warm and wet, and we think probably a cushy birth for life.

So, we have been looking for evidence of ancient life, fossils, for example.  There has always been this thought that maybe the water is underneath in an aquifer.  Could it somehow rise to the surface on certain occasions in certain ways?  That’s been a big question.

They first spotted these streaks back in 2010.  It sure looked like water.  But what would keep it flowing?  And the key was, they found these percolates, these salts in there.  It’s extremely salty water.  Think of why do — how do we get snow off our roads in the winter?  We use salt.