Robust U.S. public support for the human exploration of Mars reflected in Explore Mars’s recent Mars Generation poll has probably not been changed by the subsequent spectacular explosion of a small asteroid over Russia, according to the national survey’s principal advocate.
Rep. Frank Wolf (R-Va.) has new whistleblower information of possible technology leaks from NASA to China, this time at Langley Research Center, and is seeking a federal criminal investigation of the charges.
Wyle Laboratories Inc., of Houston, will provide medical and biomedical support for a wide range of NASA human space exploration and research initiatives under a potential 10-year, $1.76 billion contract award announced March 4. The Human Health and Performance contract, which includes Lockheed Martin Services Inc., of Gaithersburg, Md., as a major subcontractor, is effective May 1. The agreement includes a five-year base period and options for extensions through 2023.
HOUSTON — Astronauts aboard the International Space Station (ISS) were well into the unpacking of the SpaceX Dragon resupply capsule on March 4, after the mission successfully overcame post-launch thruster difficulties that delayed the rendezvous and berthing by a day. Station commander Kevin Ford, assisted by flight engineer Tom Marsburn, grappled the second SpaceX Dragon supply vessel with Canada’s 58-ft.-long robot arm on March 3 at 5:31 a.m. EST.
AT LAST: The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) has taken operational control of the Suomi National Polar-orbiting Partnership (NPP) weather satellite from NASA. Originally known as the Npoess Preparatory Project, NPP was conceived as a pathfinder for the ill-fated National Polar-orbiting Operational Environmental Satellite System, an effort to merge civil and military weather satellite needs that was canceled due to massive cost overruns.
From locating balloons to re-assembling documents, from crowd-designed vehicles to disaster-response robots, researchers are using challenges to draw ideas from those who would never normally do business with the Pentagon.
As budgets are cut and margins squeezed, and business becomes more competitive, industry is turning to challenges to seek diverse views on difficult problems. And the prize, for the companies, can be ideas, talent or visibility in key markets. “Diversity of thought is key to innovation,” says Ray Johnson, Lockheed Martin senior vice president and chief technology officer. “The more different views you get on a problem, the more you can facilitate a culture of innovation.”
The U.S. has long been a leader in creating new technologies and in creatively adapting existing ones to new uses. This leadership arises from the interaction of several mutually supportive sectors of innovation. But we face a serious challenge to continuing that creative interaction which is so necessary to keep the U.S. engine of innovation strong.
The fact that large-scale aerospace and defense manufacturing is no longer as prominent in Southern California as it was in the Cold War-era is not news. But the region still leads the nation in the number of small suppliers and many are trying to come up with new ways of doing business, especially as they see ominous headlines about defense cuts from Washington.
Dennis Tito's plan to send a crew of two around Mars is getting a big assist from NASA via a Space Act Agreement (SAA) with its Ames Research Center (see page 24). While Tito will repay NASA for its work, the agency's inspector general and a powerful member of Congress are examining SAAs—which are less restrictive than standard federal business arrangements—to see if they are being abused. That is one of the charges in a whistle-blower report on alleged malfeasance at Ames (AW&ST Feb. 18, p. 19). Rep.
David S. McKay, a NASA planetary geologist who studied the soil and rock samples Apollo astronauts returned from the Moon and argued that a Martian meteorite found in Antarctica contained fossil evidence of extraterrestrial life, died in Houston Feb. 20 of heart disease. He was 76. McKay joined NASA in 1965. He trained Apollo 11 crewmembers Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin to help them return useful samples from the Moon's surface, and stood by in Mission Control during the first Moonwalk on July 20, 1969, as a resource.
Size can matter when it comes to prizes and, for one of last remaining competitions for human endeavor in flight, a significant boost in the purse has spurred a neck-and-neck race for the finish line. By the time these words are read, one of the longest-standing prizes in aviation could have been won, with two teams vying for the American Helicopter Society (AHS) International's $250,000 Sikorsky Prize for a human-powered helicopter.
