NASA Administrator Statement on Deputy Administrator Confirmation

U.S. Senate Deputy Sergeant at Arms Jim Morhard appears before the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science and Transportation as the nominee for deputy administrator of NASA on Thursday, Aug. 23, 2018, in the Russell Senate Office Building in Washington. Morhard was confirmed as NASA's 14th deputy administrator on Thursday, Oct. 11, 2018.

The following is a statement from NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine about the Senate confirmation of James Morhard as the agency’s deputy administrator:/span>

“Congratulations to Jim Morhard! He was confirmed as the 14th Deputy Administrator of NASA on Thursday, Oct. 11.

“He joins our amazing agency at a crucial time in history. NASA is celebrating its 60th anniversary this year, and I look forward to working with him as we look towards NASA’s next 60 years. His legislative and managerial talents will serve NASA well as we accomplish stunning achievements.”

Missouri, Colorado Students to Speak with Astronaut on Space Station

Elementary school students from Missouri and Colorado will talk live with an astronaut on the International Space Station next week. Both Earth-to-space calls will air live on NASA television and the agency’s website.NASA astronaut Serena Auñón-Chancellor will answer questions posed by 4th grade students from Katie Harper Wright Elementary School in St. Louis at 1:15 p.m. EDT on Monday, Oct. 15. The downlink is in association with the National Park Service’s recognition of both the 50th anniversary of the National Trails System and NASA’s 60th anniversary. 

A National Park Service mascot, Seaman Jr., a plush toy replica of the original Newfoundland dog, Seaman made its way to the International Space Station. Seaman explored the trail with his owner, Capt. Meriwether Lewis and colleague 2nd Lt. William Clarkon their Corps of Discovery Expedition across the Louisiana Purchase from 1804 to 1806. From the space station’s unparalleled perspective of Earth, Seaman Jr. tracked the 3,700 mile Lewis and Clark National Historic Trail. Seaman Jr.’s travels abroad the station will debut during the downlink.The event will be held the Gateway Arch National Park at 11 North 4th St, St. Louis. Media interested in covering should contact Erin Hilligoss-Volkmann at erin_hilligoss-volkmann@nps.govor 314-655-1615.

Auñón-Chancellor also will answer questions from Frontier Academy and Dos Rios Elementary School students at noon on Thursday, Oct. 18 in Evans, Colorado. The downlink will be hosted by High Plains Library District based in Greeley, Colorado, in collaboration with the Space Science Institute and its National Center for Interactive Learning. Students will participate in hands-on science and engineering activities surrounding the downlink, and the event will be streamed live to other public libraries and schools across the country.

NASA to Air International Space Station Update Briefing Today

NASA will hold a news conference at noon EDT today, to provide a status update on the International Space Station following this morning’s Soyuz spacecraft abort during launch that ended with the safe landing of two Expedition 57 crew members.

The briefing will originate from NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston and air live on NASA TV and the agency’s website.

The Soyuz MS-10 spacecraft carrying Nick Hague of NASA and Alexey Ovchinin of the Russian space agency Roscosmos launched from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan at 4:40 a.m. EDT (2:40 p.m. Baikonur time). Shortly after launch, there was an anomaly with the booster and the ascent to orbit was aborted resulting in a ballistic landing of the spacecraft in Kazakhstan.

Search and rescue teams were deployed to the landing site, and Hague and Ovchinin were recovered from the capsule and are in good condition. They were then transported to the launch site at Baikonur, where they were greeted by their families, NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine, and other NASA and Roscosmos officials.

The news conference participants are:

• Kenny Todd, International Space Station Operations Integration Manager
• Reid Wiseman, Deputy Chief Astronaut

U.S. reporters who would like to cover the news conference in person must request credentials from the Johnson newsroom as soon as possible by calling 281-483-5111.  Reporters who would like to participate by telephone must call the newsroom by 11:45 a.m.

NASA Statement on Soyuz MS-10 Launch Abort

The following is a statement about Thursday’s Soyuz MS-10 launch abort to the International Space Station:“The Soyuz MS-10 spacecraft launched from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan to the International Space Station at 4:40 a.m. EDT Thursday, Oct. 11 (2:40 p.m. in Baikonur) carrying American astronaut Nick Hague and Russian cosmonaut Alexey Ovchinin. Shortly after launch, there was an anomaly with the booster and the launch ascent was aborted, resulting in a ballistic landing of the spacecraft.

“Search and rescue teams were deployed to the landing site. Hague and Ovchinin are out of the capsule and are reported to be in good condition. They will be transported to the Gagarin Cosmonaut Training Center in Star City, Russia outside of Moscow.

“NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine and the NASA team are monitoring the situation carefully. NASA is working closely with Roscosmos to ensure the safe return of the crew. Safety of the crew is the utmost priority for NASA. A thorough investigation into the cause of the incident will be conducted.”

Commercial Crew Rotation Mission in Motion

NASA took another step toward returning America’s ability to launch crew missions to the International Space Station from the United States in 2017. Commercial Crew ordered its first crew rotation mission from The Boeing Company. SpaceX is expected to receive its first order later this year. Determination of which company will fly its mission to the station first will be made at a later time.

“Final development and certification are top priority for NASA and our commercial providers, but having an eye on the future is equally important to the Commercial Crew and station programs,” said Kathy Lueders, manager of Commercial Crew. “Our strategy will result in safe, reliable and cost-effective crew missions.”

Missions flown to the station on Boeing’s CST-100 and SpaceX’s Crew Dragon spacecraft will restore America’s human spaceflight capabilities and increase the amount of scientific research that can be conducted aboard the orbiting laboratory. A standard mission to the station will carry four NASA or NASA-sponsored crew members and about 220 pounds of pressurized cargo. The spacecraft will remain at the station for up to 210 days and serve as an emergency lifeboat during that time.

“Commercial Crew launches are critical to the International Space Station Program because it ensures multiple ways of getting crews to orbit,” said Julie Robinson, International Space Station chief scientist. “It also will give us crew return capability so we can increase the crew to seven, letting us complete a backlog of hands-on critical research that has been building up due to heavy demand for the National Laboratory.”

NASA Begins Testing Mars Lander in Preparation for Next Mission to Red Planet

Testing is underway on NASA’s next mission on the journey to Mars, a stationary lander scheduled to launch in March 2016.

The lander is called InSight, an abbreviation for Interior Exploration using Seismic Investigations, Geodesy and Heat Transport. It is about the size of a car and will be the first mission devoted to understanding the interior structure of the Red Planet. Examining the planet's deep interior could reveal clues about how all rocky planets, including Earth, formed and evolved.

The current testing will help ensure InSight can operate in and survive deep space travel and the harsh conditions of the Martian surface. The spacecraft will lift off from Vandenberg Air Force Base in California, and land on Mars about six months later.

The technical capabilities and knowledge gained from Insight, and other Mars missions, are crucial to NASA's journey to Mars, which includes sending astronauts to the Red Planet in the 2030s.

"Today, our robotic scientific explorers are paving the way, making great progress on the journey to Mars," said Jim Green, director of NASA's Planetary Science Division at the agency's headquarters in Washington. "Together, humans and robotics will pioneer Mars and the solar system."

During the environmental testing phase at Lockheed Martin's Space Systems facility near Denver, the lander will be exposed to extreme temperatures, vacuum conditions of nearly zero air pressure simulating interplanetary space, and a battery of other tests over the next seven months. The first will be a thermal vacuum test in the spacecraft's "cruise" configuration, which will be used during its seven-month journey to Mars. In the cruise configuration, the lander is stowed inside an aeroshell capsule and the spacecraft's cruise stage – for power, communications, course corrections and other functions on the way to Mars -- is fastened to the capsule.

"The assembly of InSight went very well and now it's time to see how it performs," said Stu Spath, InSight program manager at Lockheed Martin Space Systems, Denver. "The environmental testing regimen is designed to wring out any issues with the spacecraft so we can resolve them while it's here on Earth. This phase takes nearly as long as assembly, but we want to make sure we deliver a vehicle to NASA that will perform as expected in extreme environments."

Module Relocated Prepping Station for Commercial Crew

The Permanent Multipurpose Module (PMM) was successfully relocated from the Unity module to the Tranquility module at 9:08 a.m. EDT Wednesday.

The PMM was robotically relocated from the Earth-facing port of the Unity module on the International Space Station to the forward port of the Tranquility module in the next step to reconfigure the complex for the future arrival of U.S. commercial crew vehicles. Robotic flight controllers at Mission Control, Houston, working in tandem with the Mobile Servicing System (MSS) Operations Center at the Canadian Space Agency’s headquarters in St. Hubert, Quebec, Canada, used the Canadarm2 robotic arm to maneuver the 11-ton module a short distance to its new location. Expedition 43 Commander Terry Virts and Flight Engineer Scott Kelly of NASA supervised the commanding of the bolting of the PMM to Tranquility. The PMM’s hatch will be reopened tomorrow.

The operation opened the Earth-facing port of Unity as another berthing location for U.S. commercial cargo vehicles. Future U.S. commercial crew vehicles will arrive at the space-facing and forward ports of the Harmony module, which will continue its transformation later this year when a pair of International Docking Adapters (IDAs) will be delivered on the seventh and ninth NASA-contracted SpaceX cargo resupply missions. The IDAs will be attached to Pressurized Mating Adapters 2 and 3, enabling the station to host up to two U.S. commercial cargo and two U.S. commercial crew vehicles at any given time.

Deep Web Search May Help Scientists

When you do a simple Web search on a topic, the results that pop up aren't the whole story. The Internet contains a vast trove of information sometimes called the "Deep Web" that isn't indexed by search engines: information that would be useful for tracking criminals, terrorist activities, sex trafficking and the spread of diseases. Scientists could also use it to search for images and data from spacecraft.

The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) has been developing tools as part of its Memex program that access and catalog this mysterious online world. Researchers at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, have joined the Memex effort to harness the benefits of deep Web searching for science. Memex could, for example, help catalog the vast amounts of data NASA spacecraft deliver on a daily basis.

"We're developing next-generation search technologies that understand people, places, things and the connections between them," said Chris Mattmann, principal investigator for JPL's work on Memex.

Memex checks not just standard text-based content online but also images, videos, pop-up ads, forms, scripts and other ways information is stored to look at how they are interrelated.

"We're augmenting Web crawlers to behave like browsers in other words, executing scripts and reading ads in ways that you would when you usually go online. This information is normally not catalogued by search engines," Mattmann said.

Additionally, a standard Web search doesn't get much information from images and videos, but Memex can recognize what's in this content and pair it with searches on the same subjects. The search tool could identify the same object across many frames of a video or even different videos.