NASA's next Mars probe ready for Nov. launch, despite gov't slimdown

This artist's conception shows the NASA's MAVEN spacecraft orbiting Mars. The mission will launch in late 2013.LASP

NASA's next Mars probe should get off the ground on time, no matter how long the government shutdown lasts.

The Mars Atmosphere and Volatile Evolution orbiter, or Maven, got back on track for a Nov. 18 launch on Thursday (Oct. 3), just two days after the government shutdown froze liftoff preparations and put a scare into planetary scientists around the world.

"We have already restarted spacecraft processing at Kennedy Space Center, working toward being ready to launch on Nov. 18," Maven principal investigator Bruce Jakosky, of the University of Colorado, Boulder, wrote in a mission status update Thursday. "We will continue to work over the next couple of days to identify any changes in our schedule or plans that are necessary to stay on track." [How the Government Shutdown Will Influence Science and Health]

'Launching Maven in 2013 protects the existing assets that are at Mars today.'

- Maven principal investigator Bruce Jakosky

The shutdown — which went into effect at midnight EDT Tuesday, Oct. 1, when the Senate and House of Representatives failed to agree on an emergency spending bill — forced NASA to furlough 97 percent of its employees and cease most of its operations, including work on missions such as Maven that have yet to leave the ground.

So the $650 million Maven mission went into a worrisome limbo in the home stretch of its long march toward launch. A lengthy shutdown could have caused Maven to miss its liftoff window, which officially runs through Dec. 7 (though the spacecraft could actually launch as late as Dec. 15 or so, Jakosky said).

That would be a big deal, because the next opportunity for Maven to get off the ground won't come until early 2016, when Earth and Mars are once again properly aligned.

But those concerns have now evaporated. NASA has determined that Maven qualifies for an emergency exception because of its importance as a communications link between Earth and robots on the Red Planet's surface, Jakosky wrote.

"Maven is required as a communications relay in order to be assured of continued communications with the Curiosity and Opportunity rovers," he said. "The rovers are presently supported by Mars Odyssey launched in 2001 and Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter launched in 2005. Launching Maven in 2013 protects the existing assets that are at Mars today."

NASA has no Red Planet relay orbiters planned beyond Maven, he added.

Maven was designed to help scientists learn how Mars' thin, carbon-dioxide-dominated atmosphere has changed over time, and what those changes may have meant for the Red Planet's ability to support life.

The probe will arrive in Mars orbit in September 2014. It will then use eight scientific instruments to study the Red Planet's upper atmosphere for one Earth year, which is about half of a Mars year.

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NASA's Mars rover resumes work after computer glitch

CAPE CANAVERAL, Florida (Reuters) - NASA's Mars rover Curiosity resumed analysis of a sample of rock powder following a computer glitch that suspended operations for a week, scientists said on Monday.

Before the computer problem, results radioed back to Earth revealed that the rock, located near Curiosity's Gale Crater landing site, contains all the chemical ingredients necessary for microbial life, the over-arching goal of the planned two-year mission.

Scientists are eager for additional information about the rock sample, which was drilled out from what appears to be a slab of bedrock in an area known as Yellowknife Bay.

Curiosity automatically suspended its work on March 17 when it detected a problem with a computer data file. The glitch occurred as the rover was recovering from an earlier, unrelated computer problem.

The unplanned work hiatus ended over the weekend, NASA's deputy project manager Jim Erickson said.

"It's a slow recovery process, but we're back doing science," Erickson said.

Analysis of the rock powder will continue for about another week. Beginning April 4, radio communications between Earth and Mars will be blocked by the sun for a month, suspending most of the rover's science operations again.

When the planets re-align for communications after May 1, scientists plan to drill a second hole into the rock to verify the early results and look more closely for signs of organic carbon.

The $2.5 billion rover landed on Mars on August 6 to assess if the planet most like Earth has or ever had the chemical ingredients and environments for microbial life.

Scientists eventually plan to drive the rover to a 3-mile (5-km) high mound of what appears to be layered sediment rising from the floor of Gale Crater.

(Editing by Kevin Gray and Lisa Shumaker)

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NASA's 'green' planetary test lander crashes

WASHINGTON (AP) — Earlier this week NASA safely landed a robotic rover on Mars about 150 million miles away. But on Thursday here on Earth, a test model planetary lander crashed and burned at Kennedy Space Center in Florida just seconds after liftoff.

The spider-like spacecraft called Morpheus was on a test flight at Cape Canaveral when it tilted, crashed to the ground and erupted in flames. It got only a few feet up in the air, NASA said.

NASA spokeswoman Lisa Malone said it appears that the methane-and-liquid oxygen powered lander is a total loss. Nobody was hurt in the unmanned experiment and the flames were put out, she said.

NASA suspects a mechanical device that is part of its GPS navigation system, spokeswoman Brandi Dean said.

So far NASA has spent $7 million on the Morpheus program, but that includes parts for a still-to-be-built second lander.

Morpheus is a prototype for a cheap, environmentally friendly planetary lander. Thursday was the first time it had been tested untethered in a free flight. It had performed 19 flights at Johnson Space Center in Houston, where it was designed and made, and one more in Florida, but it was always tethered to a crane, Dean said.

The testing moved from Texas to Florida last week and Morpheus had a successful tether test on Friday. NASA had planned to run tests for three months. The plan was for flights over a specially created field designed to mimic the surface of the moon, with boulders, rocks, slopes and craters.

The lander was built mostly with low-cost, off-the-shelf materials. It was an attempt by NASA to use cheaper, more readily available and environmentally friendly rocket fuel. The space agency was considering it as a potential lander for places like the moon or an asteroid, figuring it would carry a human-like robot or small rover.

NASA promoted Morpheus as a "green" project because methane is more environmentally friendly than the toxic rocket fuels it uses. Methane, which is the main component of natural gas, is also cheaper and could even be made from ice on the moon or Mars, NASA figured.

Morpheus was early in the NASA experimental "test bed" process and the space agency hadn't committed to using the lander in any specific flight, NASA officials said.

NASA has parts and plans to build a second Morpheus lander, Dean said: "Hopefully, we'll be testing again before too long."

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Online

Project Morpheus: http://morpheuslander.jsc.nasa.gov/

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Seth Borenstein can be followed at http://twitter.com/borenbears

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NASA’s Flying Fish: Riding Aboard the Super Guppy Aircraft

TRAVIS AIR FORCE BASE, Calif. — On Saturday (June 30), visitors to The Museum of Flight in Seattle will get an up-close look at a very unusual NASA aircraft. In fact, it’s not uncommon for air traffic controllers and even fellow pilots who spot the "Super Guppy" to ask a simple but telling question: “What are you?”

I got to find out first-hand. On Thursday, I was invited by NASA to not just tour but fly aboard the Super Guppy , a bulbous cargo plane, as it flew between air bases near Los Angeles and San Francisco. The 90-minute trip up the California coast is one I won’t soon forget, and according to the Super Guppy’s flight crew, it was a rarity — perhaps even a first — for a civilian reporter.

I caught up with the Super Guppy — which is the last in a small fleet of Guppy aircraft flying after 50 years — at March Air Reserve Base in southern California. It’s there that I met the team I’d be flying with, including flight engineers Michael Robinson and David Elliot, aircraft mechanics and loadmasters Dan Thompson, Bob Coyne and Don Myrick, and pilots Dick Clark and Greg C. “Ray-J” Johnson.

If one of those names sounds familiar, it should. Johnson is a NASA astronaut and one of the stars of the IMAX movie “Hubble 3D.” Before piloting the Super Guppy, he piloted space shuttle Atlantis on the fifth and final mission to upgrade the Hubble Space Telescope.

Before I boarded the Guppy, I had the chance to see it take off and land. Its “swollen” appearance — it looks like a cartoon anthropomorphic plane that held in a massive sneeze — is as deceptive as it is daunting. [Gallery: Soaring with Seattle's Space Shuttle Trainer]

The Guppy looks like it shouldn’t be able to fly, especially when you consider that its cargo hold, which measures 111 feet long by 25 feet wide by 25 feet high (34 by 8 by 8 meters) can carry payloads weighing upwards of 26 tons.

So when it came to take my seat, I’ll admit there was just a slight hesitation. Not that I doubted my flight crew’s skills or even the safety record of the Super Guppy, but just what it would feel like in-flight.

It didn’t help all that much seeing our payload for this leg of the Guppy’s three-day trip to Seattle sitting in the cargo hold. Inside the plane was a space shuttle. To be clear, it was just the 16,000-pound (7,300 kilograms), 28-foot (8.5 m) nose section of a shuttle mockup. Part of the Full Fuselage Trainer (FFT), the crew compartment was used to train every person who flew on the real shuttles over the span of three decades.

Now it was the FFT’s turn to fly — and mine.

Welcome aboard

I was shown to my chair, a two-seat couch in the rear of the Guppy’s cockpit. These seats, and the seats to my left, are where the aircraft’s mechanics sit. In front of me was the flight engineer’s station and in front of that, the pilots’ seats. What really caught my eye, though, was what was in front of them: windows, and a lot of them.

From outside, the sheer size and dimensions of the Super Guppy grab your attention. But inside, the panoramic, 180-degree view out the forward floor-length windows are the star attraction. The only way to get a better view of the ground would be to swing open the nose of the Guppy, which can rotate 200 degrees to load its large payloads.

From my seat at the rear of the cockpit, I had to crane my neck to see just a sliver of the action. But any thought of unbuckling my seat belt and standing up to get a better view was erased when the crew powered up the Guppy’s four turboprop engines for takeoff.

"We’re going to use most of the runway," Johnson said to his crewmates. The sudden burst of speed — we had been taxiing for a few minutes — pushed me back into my seat. It was a lot bumpier than a commercial airline, too. But the transition from ground to air was smooth, almost unnoticeable, and the climb to altitude was a lot slower than the commercial flight that brought me to California.

The gradual climb was a good thing, too. It gave Thompson, outfitted with knee pads and gloves, time to jump into the cargo hold to climb over and around the shuttle trainer to make sure it was still chained down and where it was supposed to be. [Images: NASA's Visions for Future Airplanes]

Once he finished, Myrick and Coyne went down into the lower cargo hold to shut the lower door that separates the unpressurized back of the plane from the pressurized cockpit.

We climbed to 14,000 feet (4,267 m), the Guppy’s cruising altitude, and were told by the tower to head out over the water for Santa Catalina Island and then head toward Los Angeles.

"There’s the Pacific Ocean, boys," said someone toward the front of the cockpit. "Ten bucks for anyone who sees a whale."

Window seat

The only cetacean in sight, however, was the flying variety. The aircraft may be called the Guppy, but it’s much more akin to a whale: large, slow-moving and possessing a voracious appetite — for fuel.

The most frequent callout among the crewmembers was a check of the remaining fuel, for the huge Guppy burns through its reserves at a rapid pace. As such, flying west and then north was not the most efficient use of the Guppy’s gas.

Clark called the tower and requested to go to VFR — visual flight rules — rather than follow the out-and-about flight plan the tower had chosen. We gradually banked right and began following the coast north.

It was about this time that my view got a whole lot better. Myrick had set a small garbage pail behind Clark and offered me a seat. From here, I had a bank of windows to my right and Clark to my left. I could view both the cockpit controls and the spectacular landscapes we were passing.

Sightseeing turns out to be a good way to pass the time. Both Clark and Johnson took turns pointing out airfields, city spots and natural landmarks. This wasn’t for my benefit; it was for them. I was just happy to take advantage of their geographical skills (and the GPS running on an Apple iPad positioned between them).

We flew over John Wayne Airport in Orange County, NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena and the nearby Rose Bowl stadium. In the distance we could see Mount Whitney, at 14,505 feet (4,421 m) the tallest peak in the continental United States. And depending on who you talk to on the crew, we may have seen Yosemite National Park, too.

But the most memorable sight, at least to me, was the dry lakebed at Edwards Air Force Base. Clearly visible was Runway 22, the same landing strip where Johnson landed on space shuttle Atlantis in 2009. (After the flight, I asked Johnson about the differences between flying the shuttle and the Guppy. He told me the shuttle flies a lot faster but the Guppy flies a lot heavier.) [10 Military Aircraft That Never Made it Past Test Phase]

Thank you for flying

When we weren’t looking out the window, the crew focused on their flying — and their snacks. There were “Guppy Gummies” — I didn’t get a good look at them so I don’t know if they were fish-shaped or not — and beef jerky, Johnson’s favorite (he brought jerky with him to space).

I didn’t get the sense they were censoring their behavior because I was there, or because two GoPro cameras were documenting the trip for The Museum of Flight. Rather, they were a professional crew who respected the Super Guppy and were proud of their service to NASA.

The landing at Travis Air Force Base was much smoother than I expected. Make no mistake, it was still bumpy, but despite the crosswinds, the touchdown was far from jarring. You could almost forget that there was a space shuttle nose in the very large trunk. Almost.

Back on the ground, it was time for me to part ways with the Guppy. I’ll be in Seattle on Saturday, however, to see the cargo plane — and its crew — arrive to well-deserved fanfare. They may have been delivering a piece of space shuttle history, but their ride should enjoy a little time in the spotlight, too.

Robert Z. Pearlman is the editor of collectSPACE.com, the leading online space history publication and a SPACE.com partner. See collectSPACE.com for more photos and continuing coverage of the Super Guppy’s flight to Seattle.

You can follow @robertpearlman on Twitter or on Facebook. Follow SPACE.com on Twitter @Spacedotcom and on Facebook.

Copyright 2012 SPACE.com, a TechMediaNetwork company. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

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NASA's Mars Rover Curiosity Had Planetary Protection Slip-Up (SPACE.com)

All NASA spacecraft sent to other planets must undergo meticulous procedures to make sure they don't carry biological contamination from Earth to their destinations.

However, a step in these planetary protection measures wasn't adhered to for NASA's Mars Science Laboratory rover Curiosity, now en route to the Red Planet, SPACE.com has learned.

The incident has become a lessons-learned example of miscommunication in assuring that planetary protection procedures are strictly adhered to.

The issue involves a set of drill bits carried by the Curiosity rover, which launched Nov. 26 to Mars. When project developers made an internal decision not to send the equipment through a final ultra-cleanliness step, it marked a deviation from the planetary protection plans scripted for the Mars Science Laboratory mission. [Photos: Watching the Mars Rover Curiosity Blast Off ]

That judgment, however, didn't reach NASA's chief protector of the planets until "very late in the game," said Catharine "Cassie" Conley, NASA's planetary protection officer. "They didn't submit the request for the deviation not to comply with their planetary protection plan until several months ago," she emphasized.

Conley told SPACE.com that the initial plan called for placing all three of the drill bits inside a sterile box. Then, after Curiosity landed, the box would be opened for access to the sterilized bits via the rover's robot arm, extracted one by one and fit onto a drill head as the mission progressed.

But in readying the rover for departure to Mars, the box was opened, with one drill bit affixed to the drill head, Conley said. Also, all of the bits were tested pre-launch to assess their level of organic contamination. While done within a very clean environment, that work strayed from earlier agreed-to protocols, she said.

"That's where the miscommunication happened," Conley said. "I will certainly expect to have a lessons-learned report that will indicate how future projects will not have this same process issue. I'm sure that the Mars exploration program doesn't want to have a similar process issue in the future. We need to make sure we do it right."

Equatorial target

Conley said the deviation from protocol was reinforced by science and project officials concluding that Curiosity's target landing spot, Gale Crater, is free of potentially life-harboring ice — at least at depths that the drill bits would penetrate.

"That reinforced the reasonableness of not having the drill bits sterilized, because there's unlikely to be 'special regions' in the Gale Crater landing site," Conley said.

The $2.5 billion Mars Science Laboratory mission was designed to comply with a requirement to avoid going to any site on the Red Planet known to have water or water-ice within 3.3 feet (1 meter) of the surface.

Adhering to cleanliness standards is a way to make sure the mission does not transport Earth life to Mars. Doing so preserves the ability to study that world in its natural state and also avoids contamination that would obscure an ability to find native life on that planet, if it exists.

Conley emphasized that the Curiosity assembly team and technicians did an excellent job of keeping Curiosity cleaner than any robot that NASA' s sent to Mars since the Viking lander in the 1970s.

Still, the decision to not keep the drill bits ultra-clean shows the process needs to be fixed, Conley said.

"It would have been better for them to check with me before they opened the box of bits to confirm that it was okay … rather than trying to ask for it afterwards," she said. "In this case it was fine. But for future missions we want to make sure that they ask beforehand."

Habitable environments

The Mars Science Laboratory is not a life-detection mission. Rather, it will study whether the Gale Crater area of Mars has evidence of past and present habitable environments.

"Direct life detection is inherently difficult, some would argue currently impossible, because there is no uniform agreement on life," said Scott Hubbard, the former "Mars Czar" for NASA Headquarters in Washington.

Hubbard is now a professor in the Department of Aeronautics and Astronautics at Stanford University, Stanford, Calif., and author of the new book "Exploring Mars — Chronicles from a Decade of Discovery," published by the University of Arizona Press.

"There is no mathematical expression for life as there is gravity … only a series of attributes such as complexity, reproduction, metabolism, responsiveness and so on," Hubbard told SPACE.com. "We don't have a 'Star Trek' tricorder that says 'It's alive, Jim'."

Mars sample return

On-the-spot detection of life is difficult, underscoring the need to return to Earth well-selected samples from the Red Planet for analysis in a lab, Hubbard noted.

There are three reasons for pushing forward on a Mars return sample effort, he said: The best laboratory equipment can be employed, much of which cannot be reduced to spacecraft size; many labs and many scientists can be utilized to cross-check each other with alternate techniques; and discoveries can be followed and rechecked years later with new tools and techniques and hypotheses.

"The treaty-type agreements on planetary protection specify very rigorous levels of cleanliness to prevent forward and backward contamination," Hubbard said. "Spacecraft going to potential habitable zones on Mars must be cleaned to an amazing degree, even sterilized. Samples returned to Earth will be treated as if they were highly infectious until demonstrated otherwise."

Price tag estimates for a "Sample Receiving Facility" here on Earth have ranged as high as $300 million, Hubbard said. "Nevertheless, I think it is all worth it to find out 'Are we alone?'… 'Did life ever arise on Mars?'" he said.

Leonard David has been reporting on the space industry for more than five decades. He is a winner of this year's National Space Club Press Award and a past editor-in-chief of the National Space Society's Ad Astra and Space World magazines. He has written for SPACE.com since 1999.

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NASA's Dawn Spacecraft Discovers Mountain on Asteroid Vesta 'Higher Than Mount Everest' (ContributorNetwork)

NASA's Dawn space craft has taken an image of a mountain on the asteroid Vesta that is higher than Mount Everest, according to the U.K. Daily Mail. It is the latest in spectacular pictures taken by the probe now orbiting the asteroid.

* The mountain, as yet unnamed, is 13 miles high and is surrounded by features that scientists believe were caused by landslides. By contrast Mount Everest is about 5 1/2 miles high.

* Dawn has also imaged a mysterious dark spot on Vesta's equator, about 60 miles wide.

* Dawn was launched from Earth on Sept 27, 2007. It used Mars for a gravity assist in February 2009. It arrived at Vesta in July. It will depart from orbit around Vesta in July 2012 and arrive at Ceres, the largest asteroid in the solar system, in February 2015.

* Dawn used an ion propulsion system to fly to Vesta, a voyage that took nearly four years.

* Dawn's instruments include a framing camera, a visible and infrared spectrometer, and a gamma ray and neutron spectrometer.

* Dawn's primary objective is to gain a better understanding of the origins of the solar system by studying Vesta and then Ceres at close range.

* Dawn is orbiting Vesta at a height of 420 miles, circling the asteroid every 12.3 hours.

* Dawn has completed a series of orbits designed to image Vesta's features straight down. It will now image those same features at an angle. This will aid in the creation of topographical maps of the asteroid as whereas stereo images of individual features. The images are being taken in both visible and infrared light.

* Vesta was discovered by German astronomer and physician Wilhelm Olbers on March 29, 1807.

* Vesta is named after the ancient Roman goddess of the hearth.

* Vesta's orbit around the sun takes 3.63 years.

* Vesta is an irregularly shaped body with an approximant diameter of 530 kilometers.

* Vesta rotates every 5.342 hours.

* Vesta's surface is silicate rock with a nickel-iron core. It is thought not to have accreted a lot of water or may have lost most of its water in the distant past.

* Scientists believe that Vesta suffered a major impact from another body almost its side, creating a crater that reaches deep within its mantle, exposing the material within. This gives Dawn an opportunity to examine that material remotely and perhaps gain some insights into the mantles of other celestial bodies, such as Earth or Mars.

Mark R. Whittington is the author of Children of Apollo and The Last Moonwalker. He has written on space subjects for a variety of periodicals, including The Houston Chronicle, The Washington Post, USA Today, the L.A. Times and The Weekly Standard.

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NASA's space shuttle operations chief heading to Virgin

Space shuttle Launch Integration Manager Mike Moses speaks about a hydrogen leak during fueling, which scrubbed launch of the space shuttle Discovery, at the Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral, Florida, November 5, 2010.

Credit: Reuters/Joe Skipper

By Irene Klotz

CAPE CANAVERAL, Florida | Tue Oct 11, 2011 8:04pm EDT

CAPE CANAVERAL, Florida (Reuters) - Deputy space shuttle program manager and former flight director Mike Moses is leaving NASA to oversee operations for Virgin Galactic, the commercial spaceflight company owned by Richard Branson's Virgin Group, the company said on Tuesday.

Moses oversaw space shuttle operations during the final three years of the program, which ended this summer.

NASA is working on a heavy-lift rocket and capsule to fly astronauts to the moon, asteroids, Mars and other destinations beyond the International Space Station's 225-mile-high orbit.

"I'm more than onboard with NASA's plan," Moses told Reuters. "It's just that the operations of that system were still eight to 10 years away. I couldn't just push paper around and write requirements for the next 10 years so I'm going to take another shot at it here in the commercial sector."

As Virgin Galactic's vice president of operations, Moses will set up and oversee the company's commercial suborbital spaceflight services. Virgin's first ship, called SpaceShipTwo, is undergoing flight tests at manufacturer Scaled Composites' Mojave, California, base. A trial run beyond the atmosphere is expected next year.

About 450 people have made reservations for the $200,000 ride, a five-minute suborbital hop that will expose passengers to weightlessness and a view of the planet that so far only about 500 people have had.

"If this works and we get commercial, regular, routine spaceflight, even if it's suborbital operations, that expands the number of people who are involved in the space program, the number of people who get to go up in orbit and see the Earth from above and that should hopefully seed the whole culture of the country and world to start changing our attitudes toward how important space is," Moses said.

Moses, 43, will be relocating from Houston to Mojave, then to Virgin Galactic's commercial space base near Las Cruces, N.M, where a spaceport is under construction.

(Reporting by Irene Klotz)

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Two of NASA's space shuttles meet nose-to-nose (AP)

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. – NASA's retired space shuttles are trading places.

In a rare nose-to-nose encounter, Discovery and Endeavour met outside the shuttle hangar Thursday at Kennedy Space Center in Florida.

Discovery moved into the hangar and Endeavour went to the Vehicle Assembly Building.

The switch was necessary for NASA to continue preparing both spaceships for their future homes. Discovery will head next spring to a Virginia hangar belonging to the Smithsonian Institution. Endeavour will then be transported to the California Science Center in Los Angeles.

Atlantis — which recently completed the last shuttle flight — will remain at Kennedy for public display.

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Online:

NASA: http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/ap/ap_on_sc/storytext/us_sci_space_shuttle/42578679/SIG=10tqef4au/*http://www.nasa.gov/shuttle

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NASA's Juno probe sets sail for Jupiter

An Atlas V rocket with NASA's Juno spacecraft payload is seen the evening before its planned launch at Space Launch Complex 41 of the Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida, August 4, 2011.

Credit: Reuters/Bill Ingalls/NASA

By Irene Klotz

CAPE CANAVERAL, Florida | Fri Aug 5, 2011 4:55pm EDT

CAPE CANAVERAL, Florida (Reuters) - An unmanned rocket blasted off from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station on Friday, sending a robotic scout on its way to Jupiter to gather details about how the solar system formed.

The Atlas 5 rocket carrying NASA's Juno spacecraft lifted off at 12:25 p.m. (1625 GMT), the first step in a five-year, 445-million mile (716-million km) odyssey to the largest planet in the solar system.

Launch was delayed almost an hour while United Launch Alliance fixed a technical problem with ground support equipment. The Boeing-Lockheed Martin joint venture builds and flies Atlas and Delta rockets for NASA, as well as the military and commercial customers.

"Next stop is Jupiter," an elated Scott Bolton, head of the Juno science team, told reporters after launch. "I couldn't be happier. This is sort of like a dream come true."

Upon arrival in July 2016, Juno is to spend a year in an unprecedented polar orbit around the giant planet, measuring its water content, mapping its magnetic fields and searching for signs of a solid core.

With more than twice the mass than all its sibling planets combined, Jupiter is believed to hold a key piece to the puzzle of how the planets formed some 4.65 billion years ago from the gas and dust left over after the birth of the sun.

"We're really looking for the recipe for planet formation," said Bolton, who is with the Southwest Research Institute in San Antonio, Texas.

"We're going after the ingredients of Jupiter by getting the water abundance as well as very precise measurements of the gravity field that will help us understand whether there's a core of heavy elements or a core of rocks in the middle of Jupiter."

INSIDE RADIATION BELTS

The measurements will help scientists sort through theories about what the early solar system looked like and how Jupiter, believed to be the first planet to form, was created.

To make its observations, Juno will soar as close as 3,100 miles above Jupiter's cloud tops, the first spacecraft to fly inside the planet's radiation belts.

With its sensitive electronics housed in a vault of titanium, Juno should last through 33 orbits around Jupiter, which is about a year on Earth.

Its last maneuver will be a plunge into the planet's thick atmosphere, which will incinerate the probe to avoid possible contamination of Jupiter's water-bearing moons.

Now that NASA has retired its shuttle fleet, the U.S. space spotlight is shifting toward the robotic probes and observatories that have brought the biggest leaps in understanding the cosmos.

More than 10,000 people flocked to the Cape Canaveral area to watch the Atlas launch, the first rocket to fly from Florida since the shuttle's retirement last month. That was part of an outreach effort by NASA, which typically invites around 300 guests for an unmanned rocket launch.

"We're extremely excited about coupling the energy that the nation has for human spaceflight into understanding what we're doing in science because right now science is really the positive face of this agency," said Jim Adams, NASA's deputy director for planetary science.

The Juno mission is the second in NASA's lower-cost, scientist-led New Frontiers program, and it was accomplished on schedule and within its $1.1 billion budget.

The spacecraft was built by Lockheed Martin Astronautics of Denver, Colorado.

In addition to launching science probes and other satellites, United Launch Alliance is in the process of certifying its Atlas 5 rockets to fly astronauts to the International Space Station, one of several possible commercial rockets contending to replace NASA's space shuttle fleet.

(Editing by Jane Sutton and Xavier Briand)

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NASA's Final 4: Fate grants them farewell flight (AP)

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. – America's longest space-flying streak ends this week with the smallest crew in decades — three men and a woman who were in high school and college when the first space shuttle soared 30 years ago.

History will remember these final four as bookending an era that began with two pilots who boldly took a shuttle for a two-day spin in 1981 without even a test flight. That adventure blasted space wide open for women, minorities, scientists, schoolteachers, politicians, even a prince.

On Friday aboard Atlantis, this last crew will make NASA's 135th and final shuttle flight. It will be years before the United States sends its own spacecraft up again.

Commander Christopher Ferguson, co-pilot Douglas Hurley, Rex Walheim and Sandra Magnus are delighting in their good luck.

"We're very honored to be in this position. There are many people who could be here," said Ferguson, a retired Navy captain. "When the dice fell, our names were facing up."

NASA managers were looking for space vets when they cobbled together this minimalist crew with seven spaceflights among them, to deliver one last shuttle load of supplies to the International Space Station.

They are an eloquent, colorful bunch in their 40s, accepting if not embracing the spotlight.

Ferguson is a drummer for an astronaut rock `n' roll band. Hurley is nuts about NASCAR; his cousin is married to crew chief Greg Zipadelli. Walheim is a former shuttle flight controller; his graphic designer wife creates the mission patch every time he flies, always on Atlantis. Magnus is arguably the first out-of-this-world chef: She whipped up Christmas cookies and Super Bowl salsa aboard the space station in late 2008 and early 2009, using — as all good chefs — ingredients on hand.

They were originally recruited to be a rescue team. The idea was that back in May, if anything seriously damaged Endeavour during its final flight, Ferguson and his team would have rushed to the space station and brought those astronauts home.

If no rescue was needed, the original plan went, Ferguson's crew simply wouldn't fly. And Atlantis would be sent to a museum along with the two other retired shuttles.

But early this year, NASA decided to add one more flight. Since Atlantis was being groomed for a potential rescue anyway, NASA reasoned, why not make a cargo run with a year's worth of food and other provisions to keep the space station well-stocked.

That added a new wrinkle: What if Atlantis were damaged? There are no more shuttles to rescue them.

The only viable option is the Russian Soyuz spacecraft. The capsules can carry a maximum three people at a time, and at least one must be Russian. That's why Atlantis' crew was capped at four, instead of the usual six or seven.

It will be NASA's first four-person shuttle crew since 1983.

Ferguson and his short-handed crew know there's a chance — about 1-in-560 — that they could be stranded at the space station because of flight damage to Atlantis.

If that happens, it will take close to a year to get the last person home. Hurley, a Marine, drew the long straw.

The travel sequence is based on robotic-arm and spacewalking skills, as well as accumulated exposure to cosmic radiation. That last factor alone prevents Magnus, a former space station resident, from spending too long a time in space.

Hurley — who is married to astronaut Karen Nyberg and has a 1-year-old son — looks at the bright side.

"If it works out that way, I get a yearlong expedition for nine months of training, so that's a pretty good return on the investment," he said. He points to Magnus, a scientist whose specialty is in cathodes and radar, who trained four years for a mere four-month station stay.

Yearlong space missions are exceedingly rare; only three Russian cosmonauts have attempted it. The longest an American has spent in space, at a stretch, is seven months.

That's how far NASA's astronauts are willing to go, these days, for a shot at space.

Until private companies get piloted spacecraft flying — an estimated three to 10 years out — NASA will have to stick with the pricey Russian Soyuz to get U.S. astronauts to and from the space station.

For Americans, that means just a handful of flying opportunities a year. Compare that with the 35 to 50 seats that the shuttles typically provided each year.

Little wonder, then, that NASA's astronaut corps has shrunk to 61 active members. Only the youngest and most patient are willing to wait out these conflicted, money-tight times.

Few people, it seems, can agree on where NASA should aim next. The moon, an asteroid, Mars? And how best to get there?

As the debate and uncertainty drag on, Ferguson said he's seen no ill feeling toward NASA by those still toiling in the shuttle program. Thousands more layoffs are coming as soon as Atlantis lands, on top of the thousands of jobs already lost.

Ferguson rejects suggestions the U.S. space program is headed downhill with the shuttle's retirement. "Hopefully, we'll see 10 years of good quality science out of the space station," he said. "We still have a vibrant program going on."

Despite two horrific accidents that killed 14 astronauts and destroyed two spacecraft, the shuttle program has carried more people than any other space fleet — 355 people from 16 countries. That includes Saudi Arabia, which flew a prince aboard Discovery in 1985.

Space miles logged by the five shuttles: 537 million, with 4 million more to come this mission.

"There is not an American who doesn't look upon an ascending shuttle with a certain sense of American pride, hair on the back of your neck, chills, call it what you will," Ferguson said.

The space shuttle is "a quintessential American vehicle," said Walheim, a retired Air Force colonel who will serve as the flight engineer. "You point to that and people know it's from the United States, so I think we're losing that piece of identity."

The four astronauts feel the extra burden of putting "the best possible face forward for the last go-around of this," as Ferguson describes it.

This should not be a time of mourning, these astronauts say, or for second-guessing the shuttle retirement decision made seven years ago by President George W. Bush in the wake of the Columbia disaster.

Ferguson and his crew want this final flight to be a celebration. They point to the Hubble Space Telescope, which was launched and repaired by shuttle crews, as well as the International Space Station. Nearly one-third of the 135 shuttle flights were spent building or supplying the nearly 1 million-pound orbiting laboratory.

For now, Atlantis' astronauts are focused on the upcoming cargo mission, humble as it is.

They'll provide robotic-arm support for a spacewalk by two space station astronauts. But most of the work involves hauling supplies from Atlantis into the station, and carting out broken equipment and junk for disposal back on Earth.

One thing Ferguson didn't count on, when mapping out the training flow months ago, was all the emotional conversation that has added to the crew's already long workdays. Almost every shuttle worker they encounter wants to share a story: How long they've worked at Kennedy Space Center and what the shuttle program means to them.

"At the end of the day ... we're like, wow, there's a lot of emotion here," Ferguson said. "But they're all stories that we want to hear."

Ferguson expects "the enormity of it to hit us" at wheels-stop on landing day — July 20, the 42nd anniversary of man's first steps on the moon, if the schedule holds.

The astronauts say they will have to be pried from the cockpit. Magnus expects to shed tears as she sits on the runway, "contemplating 30 years of a spectacular program."

"We are blessed to have been a part of it. All of us, not just perhaps the chosen few who are lucky enough to fly it, but as a country," Ferguson said.

Until then, he said, "We're just trying to savor the moment. We want to be able to say, `We remember when. We remember when there was a space shuttle.'"

___

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NASA's Atlantis mission: http://1.usa.gov/9JytXV

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NASA's Next Mars Rover Lands ... in Florida (SPACE.com)

NASA's next Mars rover to explore the Red Planet landed in Florida yesterday (June 22) after a cross-country flight, marking a key milestone on the road to its planned launch this fall.

The Mars Science Laboratory (MSL) rover, also known as Curiosity, arrived at NASA's Kennedy Space Center aboard an Air Force C-17 transport plane. Also making the trip was the novel rocket-powered descent stage that will fly the rover during the final moments before landing on Mars, NASA officials said.

The C-17 took off from March Air Reserve Base in Riverside, Calif. The rover and the descent stage had been trucked there from NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in nearby Pasadena. JPL is managing the $2.5 billion MSL mission.

The rover's aeroshell and cruise stage — which will protect the rover and guide it, respectively, during the nine-month journey to the Red Planet — arrived at Kennedy last month. The MSL mission is slated to launch from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station between Nov. 25 and Dec. 18, and the car-size rover should touch down on Mars in August 2012. [Video: Curiosity to Make Unusual Landing on Mars]

"The design and building part of the mission is nearly behind us now," said JPL's David Gruel, manager of MSL assembly, test and launch operations. "We're getting to final checkouts before sending the rover on its way to Mars."

The rover and other spacecraft components will undergo more testing in Florida before mission staff stack them and fuel the onboard propulsion systems.

Curiosity should be enclosed in its aeroshell for the final time in September and delivered to Kennedy's Launch Complex 41 in early November for integration with a United Launch Alliance Atlas V rocket, NASA officials said.

Curiosity is about twice as long and more than five times as heavy as any previous Mars rover. Its 10 science instruments include two for ingesting and analyzing samples of powdered rock delivered by the
rover's robotic arm.

During a prime mission lasting one Martian year (nearly two Earth years), researchers will use the rover's tools to study whether Curiosity's landing region is, or ever was, capable of supporting microbial life. Mission planners have narrowed the possible landing sites to four choices and are expected to select one soon.

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Astronauts practice for NASA's last shuttle launch

By Irene Klotz

CAPE CANAVERAL, Florida | Thu Jun 23, 2011 4:39pm EDT

CAPE CANAVERAL, Florida (Reuters) - Four U.S. astronauts in bright orange spacesuits climbed aboard their spaceship on Thursday to practice the launch of NASA's last space shuttle on a cargo run to the International Space Station.

The flight of Atlantis is targeted for liftoff on July 8 and will close out NASA's 30-year-old space shuttle program. The program is ending due to high operating costs and to free up funds to develop spacecraft that can travel beyond the space station, a $100 billion project of 16 nations that orbits 220 miles above Earth.

The shuttle will deliver a year's worth of food, clothing, science gear and equipment to the station in case commercial cargo carriers hired to replace the shuttle are delayed.

NASA limited the number of astronauts on the final shuttle flight to four, rather than the six or seven typically assigned. That will accommodate the smaller Russian Soyuz capsules that will serve as the Atlantis crew's lifeboats.

Since the 2003 Columbia accident, NASA has had a second shuttle in waiting, ready to mount a rescue mission should a crew find their ship too damaged by launch or orbital debris strikes to fly back through the atmosphere for landing.

Columbia was destroyed as it glided through the atmosphere for landing. Its heat shield was damaged by a piece of foam insulation that fell off the fuel tank and hit the shuttle during launch. Seven astronauts were killed when the shuttle broke apart over Texas and Louisiana.

There are no more shuttles available for rescue missions, so the last shuttle crew would rely instead on the three-seater Soyuz capsules to ferry them home, one at a time over a year.

Being short-handed means the crew had to revamp how they operate the shuttle and handle cargo transfers to the space station.

"The overall workload is pretty high," said Atlantis astronaut Sandra Magnus, who will oversee the crew's work on the station.

"We've had to do a lot more cross-training than normal for a shuttle crew," she added. "You end up being a little bit more of a jack-of-all-trades."

Speaking to reporters by the launch pad where Atlantis is being prepared for flight, shuttle commander Chris Ferguson said on Wednesday that he and his crewmates have had little time to dwell on the significance of the final shuttle mission.

"I hate to see the space shuttle go away, I really do, but I think that there are some events historically that have led to this and it's probably appropriate," Ferguson said.

NASA will rely on Russian crew transports while it supports private U.S. industrial efforts to develop space taxis, but it will be at least five years before those are ready to fly.

Cargo hauls are being turned over to Space Exploration Technologies and Orbital Sciences Corp, which are expected to start deliveries to the space station next year. Station freight services also are provided by the Russian, Japanese and European space agencies.

NASA will set a firm launch date for Atlantis on June 28. The flight is scheduled to last 12 days. If the shuttle flies as planned on July 8, landing day would fall on July 20, the anniversary of the Apollo 11 moon landing.

(Editing by Jane Sutton and Eric Walsh)

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NASA's New Heavy-Lift Launcher Would First Fly With Solid Rocket Boosters (SPACE.com)

Dan Leone, Space News Staff Writer
Space.com Dan Leone, Space News Staff Writer
space.com – Sat Jun 18, 3:14 pm ET

WASHINGTON — Facing mounting pressure to bring industrial competition to a congressionally mandated heavy-lift rocket development program, NASA has tentatively selected a vehicle design featuring solid-fueled, side-mounted boosters that eventually could be replaced with liquid-fueled engines, according to U.S. industry and congressional sources.

NASA Administrator Charles Bolden has approved a design for the Space Launch System (SLS) whose core and upper stages would utilize space shuttle- and Apollo-heritage propulsion systems, respectively, these sources said. For the side-mounted boosters, NASA would continue development of shuttle-derived solid-rocket motors while initiating work on a brand new engine likely fueled by liquid kerosene, sources said.

Under the plan, awaiting approval by the White House Office of Management and Budget, initial flights of the SLS would utilize the solid-rocket motors, developed by ATK Aerospace Systems of Magna, Utah. ATK is under contract to develop an advanced version of the space shuttle solid-rocket booster under NASA's now-defunct Constellation program. [Photos: NASA's New Spaceship for Deep Space]

Among the companies that have expressed interested in developing an advanced kerosene-fueled engine are Aerojet of Sacramento, Calif., Space Exploration Technologies (SpaceX) of Hawthorne, Calif., and Pratt & Whitney Rocketdyne of Canoga Park, Calif. This engine might eventually replace the solid-fueled motors on SLS, sources said.

NASA’s plan would appear to address conflicting pressures the agency is facing on the SLS program. The NASA Authorization Act of 2010, signed by U.S. President Barack Obama in October, directs the agency to utilize shuttle infrastructure and Constellation technology and contracts to the maximum practical extent in developing the SLS, which would be used for astronaut missions to deep-space destinations. But in recent weeks, some lawmakers have urged NASA to solicit competitive bids for the propulsion elements of SLS.

Most recently, Sen. Richard Shelby (R-Ala.) called on the agency to hold a competition for the heavy-lifter’s side-mounted boosters. "I strongly encourage you to initiate a competition for the Space Launch System booster," Shelby wrote in a June 10 letter to Bolden.

In the letter, Shelby, a fierce advocate for NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Ala., which specializes in propulsion, questioned whether using the shuttle-derived boosters is the most cost-effective approach to SLS.  “Designing a Space Launch System for heavy lift that relies on existing Shuttle boosters ties NASA, once again, to the high fixed cost associated with segmented solids,” Shelby wrote.

Shelby’s missive follows a May 27 letter to Bolden from Sens. Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.) and Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) that also pressed for a competitive SLS propulsion procurement.

The NASA Authorization Act of 2010 directs the agency to field an SLS vehicle capable of placing 130 metric tons into low Earth orbit by 2016. In terms of capability the vehicle ordered up by Congress closely resembles the Ares 5 rocket designed by NASA as part of Constellation, a collection of hardware development efforts intended to replace the retiring space shuttle and eventually deliver astronauts to the surface of the Moon. Obama proposed canceling Constellation in his 2011 budget request, and NASA officially pulled the plug on the program June 10.

Since the law's enactment, NASA has provided Congress with SLS reference designs that also closely resemble the Ares 5, but at the same time warned that the vehicle could not be fielded on the designated schedule under current budget scenarios.

Industry sources privately questioned the affordability of NASA’s latest strategy, given that it adds a brand new engine development program to the mix. Some also have suggested that competition will slow the SLS development effort.

Shelby disagrees. He wrote that he has "seen no evidence that foregoing competition for the booster system will speed development of SLS or, conversely, that introducing competition will slow the program down."

Shelby also said the SLS language in the authorization act gives NASA sufficient leeway to hold a competition.

"It was never our intention to foreclose the possibility of utilizing competition, where appropriate," Shelby wrote. Utilization of Constellation contracts and technology, he said, quoting the law, was required "only 'to the extent practicable.'"

Aerojet, which has been perhaps the most outspoken proponent of open competition for SLS propulsion elements, was encouraged that NASA appears to be leaning in that direction.  Aerojet recently formed an alliance with Teledyne Brown Engineering of Huntsville, Ala., to pursue NASA propulsion opportunities.

"Aerojet has encouraged competition since early on," said Glenn Mahone, a company spokesman. "We are ready to compete against any company that’s out there and are hopeful that the acquisition NASA puts forward will be objective and equitable."

Mahone specifically declined comment on the possibility of having to compete with a new engine design against a well-developed solid-rocket propulsion system with 30 years of flight heritage. He also declined to say whether Aerojet has developed engine designs applicable to the SLS side-mounted boosters.

Lawmakers appropriated $1.8 billion in 2011 for the SLS, and NASA, which has been accused of dragging its feet on the program, said June 14 it has released approximately $1.4 billion of that total.

"Of that [$1.4 billion] amount, $726 million has been obligated onto contracts, as of June 14, 2011, and $455 million has been costed," a figure that includes $165 million for civil servant labor, NASA spokesman Michael Braukus told Space News. The balance of the $455 million, he said, was spent to cover contractor costs for the Ares 1 rocket "and supporting elements such as program integration and ground operations." [Photos: NASA's Ares 1 Rocket Launch Test]

The reference SLS design approved by Bolden would have a core stage powered by the hydrogen-fueled main engines used today on the space shuttle, which is being retired after its next mission, now scheduled to begin July 8. Those engines were manufactured by Pratt & Whitney Rocketdyne.

The upper stage of the heavy-lifter would utilize the J-2X, a modified version of the Apollo-heritage J-2 engine also being developed by Pratt & Whitney. The J-2X and the modified space shuttle solid rocket motors being developed by ATK were key elements of the now-defunct Ares 1, which under Constellation was to launch a crew-carrying capsule into space.

Both the J-2X and the modified solid rocket booster — featuring five segments rather than four used on the shuttle boosters — were key building blocks for the much-more-powerful Ares 5.

One of NASA’s biggest concerns  as it seeks to comply with congressional direction to take advantage of existing contracts in developing the SLS is doing so in a way that does not draw a protest from companies that would be left out in the process.

This article was provided by Space News, dedicated to covering all aspects of the space industry.

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President Obama kills NASA's moon mission plans

WASHINGTON — President Obama is redirecting America's space program, killing NASA's $100 billion plans to return astronauts to the moon and using much of that money for new rocket technology research.The moon program, which has cost $9.1 billion so far, "was over budget, behind schedule and lacking in innovation due to a failure to invest in critical new technologies" according to the budget plan issued Monday.

Obama's budget would increase fiscal year 2011 funds for NASA by 1.5% and support the development of rocket systems that eventually might take U.S. astronauts back into deep space. In preparation for those trips, Obama envisions using robotic ships to find locations for future landings and test new technology.

"Simply put, we're putting the science back into the rocket science at NASA," White House science adviser John Holdren said Monday.

Buzz Aldrin, an Apollo astronaut, strongly endorsed the budget. He said investing now in better technologies could accelerate goals such as sending people to Mars. "I applaud the president for working to make these dreams a reality," Aldrin said.

The plan to drop the moon strategy already has drawn opposition from lawmakers such as Sen. Bill Nelson, D-Fla., who said they feared the changes could risk U.S. leadership in space. NASA spacecraft are launched from Kennedy Space Center on Florida's Atlantic coast.

The $4 billion that NASA spends yearly on human space exploration will now be used for what NASA and White House officials called dramatic changes in rocketry, including in-orbit fueling. They said eventually those new technologies would be used to send astronauts to a nearby asteroid, a brief foray back to the moon, or the Martian moons.

The White House plan was short on details, such as where astronauts would fly next, on what type of rocket ship, or when. However, officials were quick to point out the failures of the Bush administration's moon program, called Constellation. It included the construction of two types of rockets, Ares I and Ares V, and an Orion crew capsule. All were canceled. Shutting down the program will cost about $2.5 billion, NASA said.

Besides redirecting money to new technologies, NASA is getting an extra $6 billion over five years to encourage companies to build private spaceships that NASA could rent. NASA will also spend an additional $2.5 billion over five years for more research on how global warming is affecting Earth. NASA will also extend the life by several years of the International Space Station, which had been slated for retirement in 2016. NASA's yearly budget is $19 billion.

Contributing: Bart Jansen of Gannett Washington Bureau; the Associated Press; Bloomberg News

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NASA's seven new space pioneers are companies

By Seth Borenstein, Associated PressWASHINGTON — A half century ago the Mercury Seven embodied America's space future. Now it's the merchant seven — space companies for hire.Mimicking a scene 51 years ago when the Mercury astronauts were revealed, NASA's boss beamed Tuesday as he introduced the "faces of a new frontier:" representatives of the seven companies that NASA is funding to develop future private spacecraft.

And more money is coming. In President Barack Obama's proposed budget, he not only killed his predecessor's $100 billion moon program, he proposed spending $6 billion over five years to develop private space taxis. NASA would then pay them to carry astronauts to the International Space Station.

Some of the players include companies run by Internet pioneers Jeff Bezos of Amazon and Elon Musk of PayPal. Bezos runs Blue Origin, a Kent, Wash., company that until Tuesday had only talked about going into suborbital space; now it will compete to go into orbit as a space taxi. Musk runs SpaceX of Hawthorne, Calif. and already has built a rocket called Falcon and a capsule called Dragon.

Others include Boeing of Houston; Paragon Space Development of Tucson; Sierra Nevada of Sparks, Nev.; United Launch Alliance of Denver, and Orbital Science of Dulles, Va.

NASA on Tuesday detailed $50 million worth of seed grants for development of a space taxi to Boeing, Sierra Nevada, Paragon, United Launch and Blue Origin.

A year ago, the space agency gave $3.5 billion in contracts to Orbital Science and SpaceX for 20 commercial cargo resupply flights to the space station. Both are likely to develop crew taxis too, with Musk of SpaceX saying he could fly astronauts within three years of a final contract. And he said he could do it for $20 million a head, less than half the price NASA pays Russia for astronauts flying on that country's Soyuz capsule.

NASA administrator Charles Bolden and officials from the companies said just because space will become for-profit, safety will not be forgotten, as some congressional critics worry.

"It's all about crew safety," United Launch Alliance President Mike Gass said. Gass's company got a $6.7 million NASA grant so the firm's Atlas and Delta rockets could be better monitored to provide safety for any astronauts sitting on capsules on top of them. Bezos' Blue Origin received $3.7 million from NASA to work on a new type of launch escape system for a crew on top of a rocket.

"I know personally the great challenges involved in sending humans into orbit and have lost friends in trying to do so," said Bolden, a former shuttle commander. "I pledge to you that I will make it my job everyday to ensure that everything is done efficiently and safely."

There won't be just one winner, officials said. NASA hopes there will be multiple spaceships carrying crews, pushing costs down and safety up. There may be even more than just these seven, Bolden said.

With the dramatic changes ordered by the Obama administration, NASA is going back to its pre-Apollo 1959-60 roots, when it was a research-and-development powerhouse more than an engineering factory, said Harry Lambright, a professor of public policy at Syracuse University.

"It turns NASA inside out; it takes it back to the old days, pre-Apollo days," Lambright said. He called it a gamble that might not work.

What's happening is part spin, part needed reinvention, said American University space policy and historian Howard McCurdy.

"Clearly what they're trying to do is it make it look positive. Instead of making it a story of cancellations, it's a story of new beginnings," McCurdy said. "It probably is in some ways as dramatic as the appointment of the first new astronauts."

Ken Bowersox, a former astronaut and now a SpaceX vice president, was one of those introduced and said he couldn't help but notice the parallel to the Mercury astronauts — right down to the number seven.

_

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NASA: www.nasa.gov

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