Marc Boucher: July 2009 Archives

Find out how innovative aerospace propulsion technologies get inserted into both new and evolving systems and earn or how advanced system applications can be used to showcase the propulsion systems, components and technologies that enable them.

NASA is issuing the third edition of the Workforce Transition Strategy, which details the agency's plan to minimize job losses while transitioning from the Space Shuttle Program to the Constellation Program.

This is the second newsletter to the community regarding the 2009-2011 Planetary Science Decadal Survey. A great deal has happened since my first newsletter back in April.

The following is a statement from NASA Administrator Charles Bolden on the death of veteran journalist Walter Cronkite.

Capsule~100%-Fratricide Environments (Implications for NASA's Ares-1 and Crew)
Estimate of Secondary Effects of the Solid Rocket Booster (SRB) Destruct Debris Environment on the Constellation Capsule.

The Boeing Company today announced that Intelsat Ltd., the world's leading provider of fixed satellite services, has selected Boeing to build four telecommunication satellites that will refresh and add new capacity to Intelsat's global satellite fleet.

NASA released Thursday newly restored video from the July 20, 1969, live television broadcast of the Apollo 11 moonwalk. The release commemorates the 40th anniversary of the first mission to land astronauts on the moon.

Seven astronauts aboard the space shuttle Endeavour awakened at 7:03 a.m. to begin a day of heat shield inspections and preparations for Friday's rendezvous and docking with the International Space Station.

A study performed by the Futron Corporation predicts that companies such as those competing for the Google Lunar X PRIZE will be able to address a market in excess of $1 billion over the course of the next decade.

Google Lunar X PRIZE contender Odyssey Moon Limited announced today that top industry leaders Near Earth LLC, WPP Group, Aon and Milbank have joined its corporate team.

This evening the Senate voted to confirm Charles Bolden as NASA Administrator and Lori Garver as Deputy NASA Administrator by unanimous consent. The request was made on the Senate floor by Sen. Bill Nelson (D-FL).

The PI's Perspective: A Summer's Work, Far From Home

The work is fun, no doubt there; but it never ends on this mission of exploration -- particularly in the summer, when we conduct our annual spacecraft checkouts.

Space shuttle Endeavour and its seven-member crew launched at 6:03 p.m. EDT Wednesday from NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida.

The IAU recently approved a proposal from the MESSENGER Science Team to confer names on 16 impact craters on Mercury. The newly named craters were imaged during the mission's first two flybys of Mercury in January and October last year.

The following is a series of questions and answers prepared by Michael Collins, command module pilot for Apollo 11. Collins issued the following statement in lieu of media interviews:

You're in a spacecraft, on a mission to land on the moon for the first time in history, and the microphone to Earth is off. What do you say?

Using a metal joining technique called friction stir welding, the Ares Projects team at the Marshall Center has completed welding the first liquid hydrogen tank dome being developed to define manufacturing processes for the upper stage of the Ares I.

The 12 scientists and support staff made a slow crawl across a vast, blank stretch of East Antarctica this past austral summer for three months to study how regional climate variability relates to global climate change expected to encounter brutally cold storms and other challenges on the high polar plateau.

A team of researchers from the CSIC-INTA Astrobiology Centre in Madrid has confirmed that the type of mineralogical composition on the surface of Mars influences the measuring of its temperature.

The Review of U.S. Human Space Flight Plans Committee will hold three public meetings July 28-30. The meetings are open to news media representatives. No registration is required, but seating is limited to location capacity.

Venus Express has charted the first map of Venus's southern hemisphere at infrared wavelengths. The new map hints that our neighbouring world may once have been more Earth-like, with both, a plate tectonics system and an ocean of water.

The outcome of the bilateral meeting was an agreement to create a Mars Exploration Joint Initiative (MEJI) that will provide a framework for the two agencies to define and implement their scientific, programmatic and technological goals at Mars.

According to findings from the Phoenix Mars Lander mission, snow and water-ice clouds play a crucial role in the exchange of water between the atmosphere and surface of Mars, which suggests that Mars is even more like Earth than previously thought.

NASA astronaut Jose Hernandez, set to fly aboard space shuttle Discovery in August, is providing insights about his training on Twitter in both English and Spanish. It will be the agency's first bilingual Twitter.

Favorable chemistry and episodes with thin films of liquid water during ongoing, long-term climate cycles may sometimes make the area where NASA's Phoenix Mars mission landed last year a favorable environment for microbes.