Space Quote: Japanese Prime Minister Channels Star Trek

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“We are now standing at a turning point in history, embarking on a new frontier, and elevate this unshakable Japan-US relationship to even greater heights and hand it to the next generation. Finally, let me be conclude with a line from Star Trek, which you all know: To boldly go where no one has gone before.”

–Statement by Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida at a White House state dinner on Wednesday. He was quoting part of the famous opening credits in the Star Trek television series:

These are the voyages of the starship Enterprise. Its five-year mission: to explore strange new worlds; to seek out new life and new civilizations; to boldly go where no man has gone before!

Space Quote: Space Jobs are in Demand, and Demanding

Posted on by onespaceman2000

“You’re doing this cool thing…You’re also going to be like really worked to death.”

-Comment by Griffin Rahn, who is earning his aerospace master’s degree at Georgia Tech, in a Fortune article titled “NASA is Struggling to Compete with Bezos, Musk and Their 6-figure Salaries for Starting Aerospace Engineers at Blue Origin and SpaceX.” The title of the article is self-explanatory. See any earlier posting for more on NASA’s troubles maintaining a work-life balance.

Space Quote: The End of NASA’s OSAM-1 Project

Posted on by onespaceman2000
Image (Credit): Artist’s rendering of the OSAM-1 project in action. (NASA)

“Following an in-depth, independent project review, NASA has decided to discontinue the On-orbit Servicing, Assembly, and Manufacturing 1 (OSAM-1) project due to continued technical, cost, and schedule challenges, and a broader community evolution away from refueling unprepared spacecraft, which has led to a lack of a committed partner. Following Congressional notification processes, project management plans to complete an orderly shutdown, including the disposition of sensitive hardware, pursuing potential partnerships or alternative hardware uses, and licensing of applicable technological developments. NASA leadership also is reviewing how to mitigate the impact of the cancellation on the workforce at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland.”

-Statement by NASA in recent communications. The project has been in development since 2015. About 450 NASA employees and contractors working on the OSAM-1 project. In an earlier report by the Government Accountability Office, the auditors noted, “OSAM-1 cost growth and schedule delays are exacerbated by poor contractor performance and continued technical challenges.”

Space Quote: NASA Cannot Do Everything in this Budget Environment

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“The current budget environment has significant implications for mission and safety risk. NASA has a very full mission plate. To the extent that their budget request is not fully funded, the leadership will need to acknowledge and make critical decisions with respect to program content or schedules, which will need to be adjusted to meet fiscal realities. Attempting to do all planned efforts on expected timelines will introduce unacceptable and unmanaged risk. The Agency will need to rely on its developed strategic vision, objectives, and architecture to establish well-defined priorities to ground its endeavors in reality – taking fully into account the risk-benefit tradeoffs.”

-Statement in the Aerospace Safety Advisory Panel’s 2023 Annual Report regarding NASA’s operating environment. One particular area of risk relates to Artemis III, which entails a crewed landing on the Moon. The report states:

In addition, prior to the Artemis III mission, NASA will need to address whatever issues arise from the Artemis II mission, including the possibilities of hardware (HW) and software (SW) changes to both the Space Launch System (SLS) and Orion. Orion flight time on Artemis III will exceed previous durations. Given that it is a new rocket, a new human capsule, and a new human spaceflight environment for this generation of NASA workers, it is not unreasonable to think that NASA will still have a great deal of discovery to do with every Artemis mission for the foreseeable future, and that both schedules and workloads will need to expand accordingly.

Space Quote: Hubble Detects Water on an Exoplanet

Posted on by onespaceman2000
Image (Credit): Artist’s rendering of exoplanet exoplanet GJ 9827d. (NASA/ESA/Leah Hustak (STScI)/Ralf Crawford (STScI))

“This would be the first time that we can directly show through an atmospheric detection, that these planets with water-rich atmospheres can actually exist around other stars…This is an important step toward determining the prevalence and diversity of atmospheres on rocky planets.”

–Statement by Björn Benneke of the Trottier Institute for Research on Exoplanets at Université de Montréal. He was referring to the Hubble space telescope’s detection of water vapor in the atmosphere of exoplanet GJ 9827d. The exoplanet is about twice the Earth’s diameter and approximately 97 light-years from Earth. You can read more about the Hubble discovery here.