Nextgov/FCW - Authors - Kenneth Chamberlain

NASA makes plans for new Mars mission

Kenneth Chamberlain, National Journal — Wed, 05 Dec 2012 09:39:17 -0500

Even as the Mars Curiosity Rover begins its planned two-year mission to explore the Martian soil, rocks and air, NASA announced plans on Tuesday for a new robotic science rover, which is set to launch from Earth to Mars in 2020.

The 2020 rover will bring the number of ongoing or planned missions to Mars to seven. By comparison, NASA has one ongoing mission at Mercury, one ongoing mission at Saturn, and upcoming missions to Jupiter and the dwarf planet Pluto.

What the new rover will do once on Mars, however, has yet to be decided. "The specific payload and science instruments for the 2020 mission will be openly competed, following the Science Mission Directorate's established processes for instrument selection," according to a NASA press release.]]>

Video: Kepler's mission comes to an end, and begins anew

Kenneth Chamberlain, National Journal — Fri, 16 Nov 2012 09:39:32 -0500

The Kepler Space Telescope's primary mission has ended, NASA announced on Wednesday, but that doesn't mean that it's being shut off.

Launched in 2009, the $591 million telescope was designed to keep constant surveillance on a small patch of sky containing 150,000 stars to measure changes in light from those stars. Regular, minute dips in the stars' brightnesss would be evidence of orbiting planets blocking the stars' light.

The plan was to keep the telescope going for at least three years or so before funding for the program would run out. However, NASA decided back in April to keep the program going through fiscal year 2016.

Since it's been in operation, researchers using the telescope have identified more than 2,300 possible planets orbiting stars other than our own, 100 of which have been confirmed, according to NASA. Of the planet candidates, hundreds are the size of Earth, orbit distances from their host stars where water can exist as a liquid, or both. Liquid water is essential for life as we know it.

Based on Kepler's findings, researchers estimate that at least one-third of stars in our galaxy have orbiting planets. The telescope's extended mission will help scientists identify those planets that could possibly harbor life, Kepler Principle Investigator William Borucki said, according to a NASA press release .

Below is an animation produced in August by Alex Parker, a postdoctoral researcher in planetary science at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics. It shows all 2,299 Kepler planets and planet candidates discovered through February 2012, represented to scale, as if they all orbited one star. The animation was posted online to Vimeo and YouTube.

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NuSTAR, the latest space telescope, launched

Kenneth Chamberlain, National Journal — Thu, 14 Jun 2012 14:09:53 -0400

For people who remember the X-15 research program from the early 1960s, the launch of a space telescope on Wednesday might have been a bit of deja vu.

Through the X-15 program, NASA, along with the Air Force, the Navy, and North American Aviation conducted research on hypersonic piloted flight, setting an unofficial speed record (4,520 mph) and altitude record (354,200 feet), according to the NASA website . But because the fuel required to reach such speeds and heights was so great, the space agency saved fuel by launching the aircraft from the wings of B-52s flying at 45,000 feet and traveling at 500 mph.

Like the X-15 aircraft, the Nuclear Spectroscopic Telescope Array, or NuSTAR, was launched off the wing of an airplane, in this case an L-1011. And like the X-15, it was launched from a plane in a Pegasus XL rocket to save fuel costs compared with the costs of launching a rocket from the ground, according to NASA.

Once operational in orbit, the telescope "will spend at least two-years observing high-energy X-rays more closely, in higher resolution, than any space telescope before it," NASA said. The X-rays include those emitted by black holes.

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NASA: Kepler Satellite Finds 11 New Planetary Systems With 26 Planets

Kenneth Chamberlain — Thu, 26 Jan 2012 00:00:00 -0500

NASA's Kepler mission has confirmed 11 new planetary systems hosting 26 planets, bringing the total number discovered by the Kepler satellite to more than 60, the space agency announced on Thursday.

The newly discovered planets range in size from 1.5 times the radius of Earth to larger than Jupiter, and orbit their stars once every six to 143 days, according to a NASA statement.

"Prior to the Kepler mission, we knew of perhaps 500 exoplanets across the whole sky," Kepler program scientist Doug Hudgins said in a statement. "Now, in just two years staring at a patch of sky not much bigger than your fist, Kepler has discovered more than 60 planets and more than 2,300 planet candidates. This tells us that our galaxy is positively loaded with planets of all sizes and orbits."

A study published earlier this month in the journal Nature indicates that there might be as many as 160 billion planets in our galaxy, the Milky Way, alone.

Launched in 2009, the satellite was designed to keep constant surveillance on tens of thousands of stars in a small patch of the night sky to look for evidence of planets orbiting them. Such evidence includes dips in the stars' brightness as their planets move in front of them relative to Kepler.

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GRAIL Spacecraft: Celebrating New Year's From the Moon

Kenneth Chamberlain — Fri, 30 Dec 2011 00:00:00 -0500

Although workers on NASA's Gravity Recovery and Interior Laboratory (GRAIL) mission may not be attending New Year's Eve parties this weekend, they aren't too disappointed.

A quarter of a million miles away, the mission's two small spacecraft will enter the moon's orbit to begin what promises to be one of the most detailed studies of its surface and gravity.

"Our team may not get to partake in a traditional New Year's celebration, but I expect seeing our two spacecraft safely in lunar orbit should give us all the excitement and feeling of euphoria anyone in this line of work would ever need," David Lehman, project manager for GRAIL at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif., said in a statement.

The first of the two spacecraft is scheduled to arrive at the moon at 4:21 p.m. EST on Saturday, with the second arriving at 5:05 p.m. EST on Sunday. Both were launched in early September on the same United Launch Alliance Delta II rocket from Cape Canaveral, Fla.

By precisely measuring how the moon's gravity affects the distance between the two spacecraft as they orbit during the 82-day mission, researchers expect to better understand the origins of the moon, where humans may someday spend more than a few passing hours at a time. They also hope the $350 million mission will provide some insight into how the Earth and other rocky planets formed.

"I predict we are going to find something ... that is really, really going to surprise us and turn our understanding of how the Earth and other terrestrial planets formed on its ear," said Maria Zuber, the principal investigator with the mission, in an August news briefing.

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James Webb space telescope saved -- for now

Kenneth Chamberlain — Wed, 23 Nov 2011 00:00:00 -0500

Is the development of NASA's James Webb Space Telescope back on track now that Congress has voted to fund it? Yes - sort of.

The telescope, which is tentatively scheduled to be%C2%A0launched into space%C2%A0in 2018, is designed to be the successor to the popular but aging Hubble Space Telescope. Getting it into orbit by 2018 is expected to cost more than $8 billion, or $1.5 billion more than what had been forecast by an independent panel in 2010.

Back in May, the House Appropriations Committee voted to cut all funding from the telescope's development program due to its escalating costs, which the committee noted was indicative of larger budgetary problems at NASA.

"Although JWST is a particularly serious example, significant cost overruns are commonplace at NASA, and the Committee believes that the underlying causes will never be fully addressed if the Congress does not establish clear consequences for failing to meet budget and schedule expectations," the panel wrote in its committee report.

The Senate Appropriations subcommittee in charge of NASA's budget, however, included more than $500 million in its plan for JWST, a plan that was later approved by the full committee.

In approving the conference report last week for the fiscal year 2012 funding for NASA and a host of other agencies, Congress approved $529.6 million for the telescope, but apparently not with great enthusiasm. In the conference report, conferees noted that to pay for the telescope now, they had to reduce, though not eliminate, planned funding increases for other parts of NASA. They also%C2%A0set things up to%C2%A0cut off funding for the program if total costs exceed $8 billion and will require the GAO%C2%A0to make sure that NASA is keeping an eye on the telescope's development costs.

Overall, Congress approved a NASA budget of $17.8 billion, which is a bit less than what the Senate alone wanted ($17.9 billion), but considerably more than what the House had sought (about $16.8 billion).

For a breakdown of the conference report funding levels and data showing what the Senate and House appropriations committees each approved, see the charts that accompanied this story as it appeared

originally. The biggest change from what was approved earlier in the year and the conference report is the percentage of funding going to NASA's science programs, which includes the JWST, from about 27 percent

to almost 38 percent.

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Space telescope revived? Breaking down NASA's fiscal 2012 appropriations

Kenneth Chamberlain — Mon, 19 Sep 2011 00:00:00 -0400

As part of its approval of NASA's fiscal year 2012 budget on Wednesday, the Senate Appropriations subcommittee in charge of NASA's budget included about $500 million to help fund the James Webb Space Telescope.

The full Appropriations Committee approved the space agency's $17.9 billion budget on Thursday. The Senate version is about $1 billion more than what the House approved earlier this summer, but about $800 million less than what the Obama administration requested.

The telescope, which is tentatively scheduled to launch in 2018, is designed to be the successor to the popular but aging Hubble Space Telescope. Getting it into orbit by 2018 is expected to cost more than $8 billion, or $1.5 billion more than what had been forecast by an independent panel in 2010.

In its version of NASA's budget, the House eliminated all funding for the telescope due to its escalating development costs. "Although JWST is a particularly serious example, significant cost overruns are commonplace at NASA, and the Committee believes that the underlying causes will never be fully addressed if the Congress does not establish clear consequences for failing to meet budget and schedule expectations," the panel wrote in its appropriations report.

The Senate Appropriations Committee noted the importance of the telescope to science, but also took into consideration the cost overruns in approving $529.6 million for it in fiscal 2012. The Senate bill would cap the telescope's overall development costs at $8 billion. Whether the telescope will be funded ultimately depends on negotiations between House and Senate members who will need to reconcile differences between the two bills.

Meanwhile, NASA is waiting to hear from the Office of Management and Budget about a plan the agency hatched to use funds from throughout NASA to help pay for the telescope, which NASA Administrator Charles Bolden has designated a priority.

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Kepler finds planet orbiting two stars

Kenneth Chamberlain — Fri, 16 Sep 2011 00:00:00 -0400

For the first time, NASA's Kepler spacecraft found a planet outside our solar system that appears to be orbiting not one star, but two, according to a report published in Science on Wednesday.

Launched in 2009, the Kepler spacecraft was designed to keep constant surveiliance on tens of thousands of stars in a small patch of the night sky to look for evidence that those stars have planets orbiting them. Such evidence includes dips in the stars' brightness as their planets move in front of them in relation to Kepler.

"This discovery confirms a new class of planetary systems that could harbor life," NASA's Ames Research Center's William Borucki said in a NASA press release.

To date, researchers using Kepler have confirmed the existance of 21 planets and found evidence of hundreds more, according to the NASA's Ames website. Several hundred additional planets have been confirmed through other means to exist.

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Moon mission to explore Earth's origins

Kenneth Chamberlain — Fri, 26 Aug 2011 00:00:00 -0400

NASA plans on launching a pair of satellites early in September that will use gravity to help researchers understand the interior structure of the moon and how heat has affected it.

It's really more interesting that it sounds.

Understanding the moon inside-out%C2%A0will not only help researchers better%C2%A0know our nearest celestial neighbor, where someday humans will spend more than a few passing hours at a time, but also will give insight into how the Earth and other rocky planets formed.

"I predict we are going to find something ... that is really, really going to surprise us and turn our understanding of how the Earth and other terrestrial planets formed on its ear," Maria Zuber, the principal investigator with the mission, known as the Gravity Recovery and Interior Laboratory, or GRAIL, said in a news briefing.

It's the latest in just under a dozen so-called discovery missions launched by NASA starting in 1992. These robotic missions aim to help us learn more about the solar system and include robot landers on Mars and visits to comets and asteroids.

Once the two satellites reach lunar orbit almost four months after the planned September 8 launch, they will use radio signals to precisely measure the distance between them. This distance will be affected by the gravitational pull of moon structures the satellites fly over, providing data for a highly precise map.

"The moon has played a central role in the human imagination and the human psyche. When people first landed on the moon in 1969, it really became a defining event for human civilization," Zuber said.

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NASA seeks funding alternative for James Webb space telescope

Kenneth Chamberlain — Thu, 25 Aug 2011 00:00:00 -0400

The Office of Management and Budget is considering an alternative financing plan from NASA to finish building the James Webb Space Telescope, Nature reported on its website.

Designed to be the successor to the enormously successful but aging Hubble Space Telescope, the Webb telescope is tentatively scheduled to launch in 2018. The cost of meeting that deadline is expected to be about $8 billion, or $1.5 billion more than what had been forecast by an independent panel in 2010.

Instead of financing the extra development costs only using funds slated for the telescope, NASA hopes to pay for half of the costs using funds appropriated for programs outside the agency's science division, which is developing the telescope. By doing so, NASA hopes to help preserve funding for lesser-priority science-division programs.

"There's an acknowledgment that the science budget can't solve this on its own," Matt Mountain, director of the Space Telescope Science Institute, told Nature. The Baltimore-based institute operates Hubble and will operate the JWST.

Even if OMB approves NASA's plan, congressional appropriators will still have the final word. Last month, the House voted to eliminate funding altogether for the telescope in part due to its cost overruns. The Maryland-based telescope may have more luck in the Senate, though, where Sen. Barbara Mikulski , D-Md., chairs the Senate Appropriations subcommittee in charge of NASA's budget.

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Tracking a solar storm, from the sun to the Earth

Kenneth Chamberlain — Fri, 19 Aug 2011 00:00:00 -0400

What happens when a billion tons or more of plasma explodes from the sun at 3 million miles an hour and hit the Earth? Sometimes, not much. Sometimes, a lot.

NASA announced on Thursday that for the first time researchers have seen one of these explosions, known as a coronal mass ejection, from the time it left the surface of the sun to the point where it engulfed the Earth, 93 million miles away. To study the ejection, researchers used NASA's STEREO twin spacecraft; one orbits the sun ahead of the Earth; the other orbits the sun trailing the Earth.

Knowing the ejections' physics can help scientists predict what will happen when the forces hits the Earth, and the STEREO observations can help in understanding that, researchers say. Although usually it's usually greatly dissipated by the time it reaches Earth, the plasma can still damage satellite electronics and, in extreme cases, power grids on the ground.

The video below shows images taken of the coronal mass ejection by the various instruments on the STEREO spacecraft leading the Earth in it's orbit, according to the NASA website. The sun is on the right and the Earth is the small blue dot on the left.

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House panel slates Hubble successor for elimination in NASA budget

Kenneth Chamberlain — Wed, 13 Jul 2011 00:00:00 -0400

NASA's James Webb Space Telescope may be on the budget chopping block this week, and astronomers are more than a little unhappy.

Designed to be the successor to the enormously successful but aging Hubble Space Telescope, the Webb telescope was tentatively scheduled to launch in 2018. Work on it so far has cost $3 billion, but it's eventually expected to cost $6.8 billion, making it an attractive target for budget trimmers.

The planned appropriation for NASA by the House Commerce, Justice, and Science Appropriations Subcommittee eliminates funding for the Webb telescope. The full committee on Wednesday approved the subcommittee's recommendation.

The telescope "is billions of dollars over budget and plagued by poor management," the subcommittee wrote in its overview of the legislation for funding NASA and a host of other agencies.

Astronomers disagree. Such a cut "would waste more taxpayer dollars than it saves while simultaneously undercutting the critical effort to utilize American engineering and ingenuity to expand human knowledge," the American Astronomical Society complained. "The United States's position as the leader in astronomy, space science, and spaceflight is directly threatened by this proposal."

The Webb telescope sees in the infrared spectrum, and it is expected to be able to image objects that were created just after the Big Bang gave birth to the universe. Hubble has been able to see back in time to just 200 million years after the Big Bang. Webb is designed to see even farther back in space and time than that.

The telescope isn't the only pawn in play as the Obama administration proposals get hacked by the Republican-led committee.

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Estimates vary on the effect of the NASA stimulus

Kenneth Chamberlain — Fri, 27 Aug 2010 00:00:00 -0400

There's no doubt that NASA spending -- as with the spending of any government agency -- can benefit the economy directly through the purchase of goods and services, and indirectly by inspiring industries that spin off from its technologies.

But how much of a benefit is an open question -- one that most researchers have given up trying to resolve.

This question becomes more pertinent than ever as NASA proposes to issue a series of technological challenges through its $572.2 million Space Technology Program, an initiative modeled after the Pentagon's Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency.

Perhaps partly due to the experimental nature of the program, which makes it difficult to predict what technologies would make the cut for development and who would use them, deriving a specific return on investment isn't included in the agency's fiscal 2011 budget proposal. Instead, it promises Congress that the program will help build a "more robust national capability for space activities that will improve our competitive posture in the international marketplace, enable new industries and contribute to economic growth."

Most of the academic and NASA-related studies published between the mid-1960s and 1980s agree that NASA benefits the economy, but "economists are not in agreement in finding a clear and best approach to measurement," wrote Henry R. Hertzfeld, research professor for George Washington University's Space Policy Institute, in a 1998 compilation of economic studies focused on NASA. "It is also clear that no one measure is a comprehensive indicator of NASA impacts and benefits," he added.

"There are many things we just do better thanks to space investment, big things," such as telecommunications, Hertzfeld said in an interview. But separating out NASA's contributions to a particular industry such as telecom, much less to the entire economy during the past 60 years from all other contributions and influences is difficult and costly, he said.

Starting in the 1980s, much of the economic research and policy directives began to move away from the overall stimulative effects of NASA spending and focused on other issues, such as the agency's role in the commercialization of space.

NASA spending has caused "technological advancement to occur at an earlier time than it would have occurred otherwise" if it would have indeed occurred at all, an early Denver Research Institute study concluded.

But placing a monetary value on those benefits proved more difficult, even for one of NASA's greatest achievements. The "fact remains that we got to the moon in a decade, but are, as yet, unable to fully measure the present and future economic impact of the science and technology accumulated on the way to the moon (or the aggregate effect of technological progress in general)," noted the authors of a 1971 Midwest Research Institute study. No one's ever really resolved the uncertainty.

And as a result, researchers over the years have come up with a wide array of returns on investment for NASA spending. Estimated ratios of revenue generated compared to spending have been as high as 14-to-1.

Some early academic and other studies "made very 'generous' assumptions about the spinoffs, goods and services produced as a result of NASA's investments," G. Scott Hubbard, a consulting professor at Stanford University, said in an e-mail. A study commissioned by Hubbard in the mid-2000s when he was director of NASA's Ames Research Center in California on the center's local economic impact found a "more conservative" 2- to 3-to-1 ratio.

Trying to find a precise value for the economic benefits of NASA spending, though, may miss the point as long as it's acknowledged that the spending has at least some positive returns, Hertzfeld argues. He said that for a mission-focused organization like NASA, which isn't making a play for profits, any ratio of economic benefits versus spending that exceeds 1-1 "is a success."

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