Thursday, January 30, 2014

Fwd: JSC Director News, January 2014



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From: JSC Director News <jsc-director-news@lists.nasa.gov>
Date: January 30, 2014 10:22:18 AM CST
To: null <bobbygmartin1938@gmail.com>
Subject: JSC Director News, January 2014

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NASA

January 2014

Greetings:

First, I'd like to share our JSC 2013 Highlights video that in less than 4 minutes shows some of the amazing accomplishments in human space flight last year.  JSC wrapped up 2013 with two spacewalks (Dec. 22 spacewalk  and Dec. 24 spacewalk) that gave the International Space Station a new functioning pump module on the station's starboard truss.  The Space Station Team worked through the holidays to get the thermal control system back to normal – just in time for a busy and gratifying start to 2014.

On Jan. 9, Orbital Sciences' Cygnus cargo spacecraft launched to the station, arriving three days later, for its first "official" mission, after a demonstration mission last September. During the same week, it was announced that the Obama Administration supports extending the Space Station's mission until at least 2024 allowing us to continue the groundbreaking research and technology development in space for at least another decade.

While our astronauts keep busy utilizing ISS, they also take time to share the experience of living and working in space.  Expedition 38 astronauts Rick Mastracchio and Mike Hopkins recently were interviewed with NBC Nightly News with Brian Williams potentially reaching nearly 8 million people. And, if you've ever wondered how astronauts sleep on the ISS, you can watch Japanese astronaut Koichi Wakata give a tour of the ISS crew quarters, featured on ReelNASA.

We're grateful to have a signed appropriations bill for this fiscal year, providing $17.6 billion for NASA. Among other items, the bill keeps our deep space exploration (Orion spacecraft and Space Launch System) on track, and we're continuing to formulate the agency's Asteroid Redirect Mission, a stepping stone to Mars.  

With Orion's first mission less than a year away, there is visible progress every week. On Jan. 16, Orion engineers gathered in-air data on the performance of the parachute system including the jettison of the capsule's forward bay cover at the U.S. Army's Yuma Proving Grounds in Arizona, one of the most complicated tests they'll do. The cover protects the parachutes during launch, orbital flight and high-speed re-entry from deep space into Earth's atmosphere and must then come off to allow the spacecraft's parachutes to deploy.

One of our Commercial Crew partners, SpaceX, also recently demonstrated how Dragon's parachute system would function in the event of an emergency on the launch pad or during ascent, essential for a spacecraft carrying humans. And in another milestone for the commercial crew program, proposals for the second and main phase of developing a commercial crew capability through certification have been received. The evaluation team, involving JSC and Kennedy Space Center people, will be reviewing them over the next few months.

Finally, don't miss our new weekly web series 'Space to Ground,'available every Friday. It's a short wrap-up of the week's activities aboard the space station. Visit: http://go.nasa.gov/spacetoground

Ellen Ochoa

Ellen Ochoa
JSC Director

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