Image (Credit): Official mission 1 CHAPEA crew portrait (from left to right: Anca Selariu, Ross Brockwell, Kelly Haston, Nathan Jones). (NASA)
“”It would still cause me a great deal of thought, but I think my answer now is it would be very difficult to leave my partner, to leave my people, for that amount of time, because it would be far more than a year…That commitment, it’s going to be a tremendous effort when people go, and I really applaud whoever gets to do that. But I’m not sure it’ll be me.”
–Statement by Kelly Haston, a Canadian research scientist, after spending 378 days as part of NASA’s yearlong Mars simulation project. She was part of a team of four individuals who lived together during this period at the Johnson Space Center in Houston in what is called the Crew Health and Performance Exploration Analog (CHAPEA) project. The next simulation mission is planned for next year.
Image (Credit): An artist’s rendering of the NASA’s PRIME-1 spacecraft approaching the Moon. The mission will need to accomplish some of the work previously assigned to the VIPER mission. (NASA)
Am I missing anything? Oh yeah, and NASA has decided to cancel its Moon rover, the Volatiles Investigating Polar Exploration Rover (VIPER) project, after spending $450 million. Cost overruns and multiple delays had made the mission too expensive and too late in the game to be useful.
Nicola Fox, associate administrator, Science Mission Directorate, NASA Headquarters in Washington, stated:
We are committed to studying and exploring the Moon for the benefit of humanity through the [Commercial Lunar Payload Services] program…The agency has an array of missions planned to look for ice and other resources on the Moon over the next five years. Our path forward will make maximum use of the technology and work that went into VIPER, while preserving critical funds to support our robust lunar portfolio.
Fortunately, VIPER was one of a number of missions designed to seek water on the lunar surface. For example, NASA has the Polar Resources Ice Mining Experiment-1 (PRIME-1) , which is still scheduled to land at the South Pole later this year.
It has been a rough year for NASA, but the multiple missions planned for the Moon provide more opportunities to get it right, while the ISS issues do not appear insurmountable. NASA just needs a break, and its commercial partners need to prove they can meet the goals that were set for them.
Note: If you were one of the people who added your name to the VIPER mission, maybe NASA will open up another opportunity for your name on the Moon.
Image (Credit): The launch of the Apollo 11 space vehicle from the launch pad on July 16, 1969. (NASA/ Kipp Teague)
On this day in 1969, NASA launched the Saturn V rocket that carried astronauts Armstrong, Edwin “Buzz” Aldrin, and Michael Collins on the first manned lunar landing. The 363-feet tall Saturn V rocket was launched from Pad A, Launch Complex 39, Kennedy Space Center, at 9:32 a.m. EDT.
While this was the most significant use of the Saturn V at that point in time, it was the backbone of the Apollo program. The first crewed Saturn V to launch was Apollo 8, which orbited the Moon without landing.
You can listen in on the control room chatter surrounding the launch at this NASA launch history site.
NASA has a number of events planned for this month to celebrate the 55th anniversary of the Moon landing. You can read about the planned activities at this NASA anniversary site.
Three astronomers last week proposed expanding the official definition of a planet to encompass worlds orbiting stars other than our own, a nuance not currently included in the formal definition of the term established in 2006 by the International Astronomical Union, or IAU. If the trio’s new definition pans out, thousands of celestial bodies across the universe could be confirmed as formal planets.
An American plan to destroy the International Space Station by propelling it to burn through the atmosphere, and then crashing it into the Pacific Ocean, would rob citizens of the future of one of civilization’s greatest technological masterworks, and should be halted, say one-time leaders of NASA and of the European Space Agency. NASA’s draft blueprints to send the ISS on a peacetime kamikaze mission, to explode on impact with Antarctic waters, would obliterate a pole star of human ingenuity, says Jean-Jacques Dordain, Director General of the European Space Agency when the ISS was being built and expanded.
Team members are installing pedestals aboard NASA’s Pegasus barge to hold and secure the massive core stage of NASA’s SLS (Space Launch System) rocket, indicating NASA barge crews are nearly ready for its first delivery to support the Artemis II test flight around the Moon. The barge will ferry the core stage on a 900-mile journey from the agency’s Michoud Assembly Facility in New Orleans to its Kennedy Space Center in Florida…Measuring 212 feet in length and 27.6 feet in diameter, the core stage is the largest rocket stage NASA has ever built and the longest item ever shipped by a NASA barge.
Image (Credit): A Russian Soyuz spacecraft outside the ISS. (NASA)
Well, the U.S. now has one space company with its manned spacecraft stranded at the International Space Station (ISS) while a second space company responsible for manned flights to the ISS has been grounded following a rocket mishap.
So where does this leave the ISS? Dependent on the Russians for manned flights to the ISS until the SpaceX problem can be investigated. Of course, SpaceX was also one solution for returning the Boeing crew to Earth if the Starliner problem could not be timely resolved. So much for that at the moment.
Both the Boeing and SpaceX issues could be resolved in the next few weeks, but this shows how quickly the situation can change on the ground and in space. While the Russians have certainly had their own issues with the Soyuz spacecraft as well, at least the men and women on the station have one option available to them.
Let’s hope Boeing gets its act together and the SpaceX mishap can be resolved quickly.
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