Next launch attempt for Delta IV Heavy will be 1:37 p.m. Friday. Scrub today caused by issue with gaseous nitrogen pipeline
TECH

NASA orders first Commercial Crew mission from Boeing

James Dean
FLORIDA TODAY

NASA has placed an order for the first mission that will launch astronauts from the Space Coast to the International Space Station in a privately designed and operated spacecraft, possibly in 2017.

As expected, the agency's Commercial Crew Program, led from Kennedy Space Center, made the order from Boeing, which will build its CST-100 capsule in a former shuttle hangar and engine shop at KSC.

A similar order from SpaceX, NASA's other Commercial Crew partner, is expected later this year, and no decision has been made on which company will fly astronauts first.

Nonetheless, Boeing and NASA hailed the milestone as a historic one — the first contract for a commercial human spaceflight mission — and a sign that flights were on track to begin by late 2017.

"This occasion will go in the books of Boeing's nearly 100 years of aerospace and more than 50 years of space flight history," said John Elbon, vice president and general manager of Boeing's Space Exploration division. "We look forward to ushering in a new era in human space exploration."

NASA last September awarded Boeing and SpaceX contracts to fly astronauts, worth up to $4.2 billion and $2.6 billion, respectively.

The contracts guarantee each company at least two flights, and potentially up to six. They are contingent on earning NASA certification that the systems are safe to fly, and will follow at least one orbital test flight with a crew.

NASA reiterated a warning that unless Congress fully funds the program's request for $1.2 billion next year, milestones will have to be delayed and a targeted late-2017 first operational launch will slip, extending reliance on Russia to fly astronauts.

While neither company has finished designing or testing its capsule, missions are still put under contract two to three years in advance to accommodate manufacturing and assembly time.

NASA said the Boeing order showed its CST-100 system, will will launch atop a United Launch Alliance Atlas V rocket from Cape Canaveral, "has reached design maturity appropriate to proceed with assembly, integration and test activities."

Europa instruments selected

What's the brown gunk?

That's one of the key questions a robotic NASA science mission to Jupiter's moon Europa will strive to answer sometime in the 2020s, a mission for which the space agency this week announced it has selected nine science instruments.

Images of Europa captured by NASA's Galileo mission in the 90s show webs of brown lines criss-crossing the moon's icy surface. Uncertain what that material is, NASA refers to it simply as "brown gunk."

"These are areas where we think that water is erupting onto the surface just like lava erupts onto the surface of Earth, and this brownish gunk is what is being carried in that water," said Curt Niebur, Europa program scientist at NASA Headquarters. "So if we can determine what that brown gunk is, we can then understand what is in the water, what's in the oceans of Europa. And that is an incredibly important question to answer if we're trying to figure out if this place is habitable."

Seddon signing

After being inducted into the U.S. Astronaut Hall of Fame on Saturday, Rhea Seddon will sign copies of her new book, "Go For Orbit," at the Kennedy Space Center Visitor Complex's Space Shop Sunday at 3 p.m.

Seddon was selected by NASA in 1978 as part of the first U.S. astronaut class to include women and flew on three shuttle missions.

Pluto encounter at UCF

The lead scientist behind a NASA mission closing in on a close encounter with Pluto will visit the University of Central Florida Monday evening to discuss the New Horizons mission.

Alan Stern of the Southwest Research Institute, who is also the Florida Space Institute's chief scientific officer, will discuss the probe's planned July 14 arrival near Pluto, more than nine years after launching from Cape Canaveral.

As of Wednesday, the mission reported that the spacecraft was healthy and flying about 2.95 billion miles from home.

Space is limited at UCF's Science Cafe event running from 6:30 p.m. to 8:20 p.m. RSVP at http://sciences.ucf.edu/cafe/rsvp or contact Jose Vazquez Perez for more information at jvazquez@ucf.edu.

LightSail glitch

The Planetary Society this week reported its small LightSail satellite fell silent days after hitching a May 20 ride to orbit from Cape Canaveral with the Air Force's X-37B mini shuttle.

A software glitch is believed to have frozen the spacecraft to the point that it needs a reboot, the society's Jason Davis wrote in a blog post. Read the post here.

Reboot commands are being sent, but it could take a strike by a charged particle to force a reboot — the equivalent of hitting the power button in space — something that might take weeks to happen.

Once able to communicate with LightSail again, the mission team will try to manually deploy four Mylar sails measuring a combined 344 square-feet, an event that had been planned about four weeks after launch.

The member-funded mission is a precursor to next year's planned of a solar sailing demonstration mission by a nearly identical spacecraft. The initial shakeout cruise hoped to confirm that software and sail deployment systems worked properly.

Google doodles Ride

Google's home page "doodle" art this Tuesday honored the late Sally Ride, the first American woman in space, on what would have been her 64th birthday.

Five animations showed Ride, who died in 2012, steering a shuttle's robotic arm, floating inside a shuttle cockpit, in a mission control center, on the ground in front of an orbiter and giving a talk to students. Several of the images pay tribute to Ride's work encouraging kids — especially girls — to study science, technology, engineering and math.

Check out the doodles here.

Margaritaville reaches orbit

"Nibblin' on sponge cake/Watchin' the sun bake..."

Sound like life on board the International Space Station? Astronauts living there may have been singing Jimmy Buffett's "Margaritaville" after the performer's concert Thursday night in Houston.

Buffett showed ISS images during the show and played a taped message from NASA astronaut and Expedition 43 commander Terry Virts, then beamed a recording of the show up to the outpost for its six-person crew to watch.

"This will be the first time a Buffett show will be transmitted to space, confirming that Margaritaville is anywhere you want it to be," said a Margaritaville TV press release.

Contact Dean at 321-242-3668 or jdean@floridatoday.com. And follow on Twitter at @flatoday_jdean and on Facebook at facebook.com/jamesdeanspace.