Follow

• 

  Emerging Issues for the FAA Office of Commercial Space Transportation

  John Sloan

  The Federal Aviation Administration’s (FAA) Office of Commercial Space Transportation (AST), part of the U.S. Department of Transportation, has licensed over 230 launches since 1989. The FAA licenses, regulates, and promotes U.S. commercial space transportation including expendable launch vehicles, new reusable launch vehicles that can carry people such as Virgin Galactic’s SpaceShipTwo and XCOR’s Lynx, and the operation of non-federal launch sites or what are more commonly known as commercial spaceports. There are 9 licensed spaceports in the U.S.

  Although the FAA licenses launch and reentry for public safety, it does not have authority for in-orbit space transportation. In addition, unlike for passenger aircraft, FAA/AST does not have authority to protect people onboard commercial space vehicles nor does it certify vehicles. In 2014, the FAA issued “Recommended Practices for Human Space Flight Occupant Safety,” a document which could serve as a foundation for future regulations, if needed.

  There are about 30 “pre-application consultations” that are on-going with AST including proposals for new vehicles, new spaceports, safety approvals and requests for payload reviews. AST staff has grown to 81 people with a budget request to add more in FY 2016. With NASA increasingly shifting to commercial launch services for supply of the International Space Station (and return) and soon for astronaut crew transfer, the visibility of the commercial space transportation industry has increased.

  Both NASA and FAA have worked closely together to define their respective oversight responsibilities in the successful Commercial Orbital Transportation Services (COTS) program and are currently working together in the Commercial Crew Program. Separately, the FAA is promoting its regulations for international adoption as suborbital companies market their services outside the United States. All of these indicators are a sign of U.S. industry growth and generate new issues for the FAA.

  This presentation will cover an introduction to FAA Office of Commercial Space Transportation and policy issues faced by the office and commercial industry including gaps in regulatory authority. The presentation will also include the competitive position of the U.S. in the global commercial launch services market and FAA’s international goals.

• 

  Hyperspectral Remote Sensing of Agriculture and Vegetation: Knowledge Gains and Knowledge Gaps

  Prasad S. Thenkabail

  Talk given for SpSt 522 Class (Remote Sensing Principles)

• 

  Remote Sensing of Global Croplands for Food Security

  Prasad S. Thenkabail

  Monitoring of global croplands (GCs) is imperative for ensuring sustainable water and food security for the people of the world in the Twenty-first Century. However, the currently available cropland products suffer from major limitations such as: (1) Absence of precise spatial location of the cropped areas; (b) Coarse resolution nature of the map products and their significant uncertainties in areas, locations, and detail; (b) Uncertainties in differentiating irrigated areas from rainfed areas; (c) Absence of crop types and cropping intensities; and (e) Absence of a dedicated web-based data portal for dissemination of the cropland map products.

  This research aims overcome the above mentioned limitations through development of a set of Global Food Security-support analysis data at 30 m (GFSAD30) resolution consisting of four distinct products:

  1. Cropland extent/area,
  2. Crop types with focus on the 8 types that occupy 70% of the global cropland areas,
  3. Irrigated versus rainfed croplands, and
  4. Cropping intensities: single, double, triple, and continuous cropping.

  These products are produced using multi-resolution time-series remotely sensed data and a suite of automated and\or semi-automated cropland mapping algorithms (ACMAs). Data include Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) time-series, and Landsat Time-series from various epochs. Methods include spectral matching techniques (SMTs), automated cropland classification algorithms (ACCA’s), decision tree algorithms (DTAs), and linear discriminant analysis algorithms (LDAA). Massively large big data (MLBD) are computed over several platforms that include parallel computing over NASA NEX supercomputers, and Google Earth Engine (GEE). Large volumes of ground data are sourced through various crowdsourcing mechanisms and integrated on a web platform: croplands.org.

• 

  NASA’s Magnetospheric Multiscale (MMS) Mission

  Craig R. Tooley

  MMS investigates how the Sun’s and Earth’s magnetic fields connect and disconnect, explosively transferring energy from one to the other in a process that is important at the Sun, other planets, and everywhere in the universe, known as magnetic reconnection.

  Reconnection limits the performance of fusion reactors and is the final governor of geospace weather that affects modern technological systems such as telecommunications networks, GPS navigation, and electrical power grids. Four identically instrumented spacecraft measure plasmas, fields, and particles in a near-equatorial orbit that will frequently encounter reconnection in action.

• 

  Impacts in the Earth-Moon System - What, When, and Why?

  Nicolle Zellner

  The Moon continues to provide scientific answers – and pose new questions – over 40 years after the last Apollo mission. While the Moon provides the most clear and complete history of impact events in the inner Solar System since its formation ~4.5 billion years (Ga) ago, the timing is not well understood and has been a topic of continued interest and persistent uncertainties. As our closest planetary neighbor, the Moon’s impact record, if properly interpreted, can be used to gain insights into how the Earth has been influenced by impacting events over billions of years.

  Lunar impact glasses, pieces of melted lunar regolith created by energetic impacting events, can offer information about the Moon’s impact history. These samples possess the composition of the target material and can be dated by the 40Ar/39Ar (argon) method in order to determine their formation age. Understanding the ages of impact glasses, along with their compositions, allows us to begin to piece together information about the rate of impact events in the inner Solar System and their effects on Earth.

  Important questions that can be answered include determining the form of the large-impact distribution with respect to time (e.g., smooth decline versus cataclysmic spike), whether there is periodicity in Earth-Moon cratering history, and the applicability of the lunar record to other planets. Of great interest to astrobiology and the study of the origin of life is the impact flux prior to ~3.7 Ga ago, and specifically, whether or not early life, if it existed on Earth before 4.0 Ga ago, may have been destroyed during these early impact events.

• 

  Mars Science during a Human Flyby Mission

  Michael Gaffey

  Spacecraft flybys of planets have initiated virtually every planetary exploration project, from the first lunar flyby by the USSR's Luna 1 in January 1959 and Luna 3 in October 1959 which imaged the moon's farside for the first time through the upcoming July 14, 2015 flyby of the Pluto system by the New Horizons spacecraft.

  Inspiration Mars has proposed sending a two-person crew on a round trip flyby mission to Mars. Adding a human component to a Mars flyby mission offers unique opportunities and limitations the science aspects of such a mission. This talk will focus on an assessment of the Mars-related science that could be incorporated into the proposed mission.

• 

  From Earth to the ISS to the Moon and Mars: Development Considerations for Space Habitation and Current Efforts at NASA

  Tracy R. Gill

• 

  Remote Sensing and Locusts: The 21st Century Science vs. The Biblical Enemy of Agriculturists

  Alexandre Latchininsky

• 

  Psychological Considerations in Astronaut Selection and Crew Support for Long Duration Space Missions

  Gloria R. Leon

  The psychological criteria used to select international crews for lunar and Mars exploration missions has been a subject of considerable discussion; strategies for maintaining optimal functioning during the mission also present considerable challenges. A change in emphasis in the initial astronaut applicant screening process is needed, from ruling out psychopathology to identifying adaptive personality traits to enhance individual and group performance over an extended period of time.

  During the mission, psychological dysfunction and crew conflicts among highly diverse mixed gender and cultural crews need to be anticipated and dealt with. Computer-interactive intervention programs show considerable potential to reduce intra-and interpersonal problems during the mission, and may be more “consumer friendly” in a space agency culture in which disclosure of personal issues can have negative consequences. Studies of polar expedition teams as an analog of planetary exploration can inform about adaptive personality traits and decision-making processes in extreme environments.

  Findings from a longitudinal study of the Danish Sirius Patrol teams operating in Greenland indicated the importance of systematic interpersonal communication training prior to the start of a long-duration mission. In addition, considering the 2.5 year length of a Mars mission, it is possible that significant negative events in the home environment may occur that have a deleterious effect on work performance and interpersonal interactions with other crew members.

• 

  Artificial Gravity as a Human Health Countermeasure for Long Duration Spaceflight

  Jon Rask

  Future long duration human exploration of the Moon and Mars will expose astronauts to the deleterious effects of spaceflight. Although artificial gravity has been proposed as a human health countermeasure for reduced-gravity environments, it is unclear what g level, duration, and frequency ofexposures is optimal for successful application of artificial gravity in space. This presentation highlighted results from recent human experiments aboard centrifuges at NASA Ames that investigated subject familiarization to centrifugation, as well as the effect that artificial gravity has on the cardiovascular system. Experiences of being an artificial gravity test subject were also shared.

• 

  Critical Human Factors in a Manned Martian Mission (Inspiration Mars fly-by mission as a case study)

  Vadim Rygalov

  Prolonged stays in space environments expose human subjects to multiple stressors with different effects and consequences for human physiology and psychological conditions. Some of those effects are well known and countermeasures developed, other ones are still uncertain and study can’t be considered as sufficient. Inspiration Mars private initiative currently is proposing to send a two-person crew on a round trip flyby mission to Mars in 2018.

  Adding a human component to a Mars flyby exploratory by nature mission offers unique opportunities for exposure astronauts to the deep space environments. At the same time physiological limitations for human subjects and life support technology as well as human factors science aspects of such a mission are not clear yet. This presentation will focus on preliminary evaluation of the deep space manned missions Human Factors (HF) science aspects and assessment of potential scientific outcome from this ‘bold endeavor’ - class exploratory missions.

• 

  Growing Plants for Supplemental Food Production on a Mars Fly-By Mission

  Raymond M. Wheeler

  Space travel to Mars, even for early fly-by missions, will require meeting all the life support needs of the human crew. This includes oxygen, food, and clean water. Bioregenerative life support approaches for space, such as using plants to generate oxygen and food have been discussed f or many years, and become increasingly cost-effective for longer duration missions. But even “shorter” missions, such as a Mars flyby could benefit from the inclusion of plants for supplemental, fresh foods.

  The plants could provide a constant source of high value, perishable fruits and vegetables to improve the nutrition and acceptability of the diet. These plants might be grown in growth chambers that could range from 0.5-5 m2 of growing area, depending on the vehicle size and available power to operate electric lighting.

  Alternatively, direct solar light might be concentrated and delivered to the inside of the vehicle to sustain plant growth. Validating plant growth and assessing system reliabilities for a Mars transit mission will be an important step toward the ultimate use of larger, more autonomous\ bioregenerative life support approaches for long-duration surface missions on Mars. Various challenges and concepts for growing plants on a Mars fly by missions will be presented.

• 

  Mars Exploration and Sample Return using Dragon: A New low cost paradigm for Mars science missions

  David Willson

  A Mars Sample Return (MSR) mission is the highest priority Mars science mission for the next decade (Decadal Survey of Planetary Science. During this Colloquium talk the feasibility of reducing mission cost by adopting the emerging commercial capabilities, in particular the SpaceX Falcon Heavy launcher that can deliver an un-manned Dragon crew capsule to Mars will be presented. The Dragon capsule can be modified to land on Mars with all the hardware needed to return samples to Earth, including a Mars Ascent Vehicle (MAV), an Earth Return Vehicle (ERV) and sample collection and storage hardware.

• 

  Space Resources Utilization: Living off the Land

  Angel Abbud-Madrid

  Just as our ancestors for centuries relied on the use of local resources to explore every corner of our planet, so the utilization of space resources will enable the affordable establishment of extraterrestrial exploration and operations by minimizing the materials carried from Earth. The search and use of resources to produce materials, propellants, energy, and basic consumables for life support on the Moon, asteroids, and other planets may very well become one of the main drivers for continuing our exploration of space.

• 

  The DAWN Mission to Asteroid Vesta – Lessons Learned & Questions Raised

  Michael Gaffey

  The DAWN mission to asteroids (4) Vesta and (1) Ceres was the ninth mission in NASA’s low cost Discovery Program. The spacecraft was launched in September 2007 and went into orbit around the large main belt asteroid (4) Vesta in July 2011, staying in orbit until September 2012, before departing for a rendezvous with asteroid (1) Ceres in mid-2015.

  During the more than a year in orbit, the DAWN spacecraft imaged the surface at high resolution and in many colors to map surface units. Additionally visible and near-infra spectra were obtained of nearly the entire surface to assess surface mineralogy, and gamma ray spectra were obtained to map elemental composition of the surface. Although Vesta had been the most intensely investigated asteroid prior to the DAWN mission, many surprises awaited the science team once data began to be returned.

  One major goal of the mission was to test this asteroid as the parent body of the most common type of igneous meteorites, the HEDs. Confirming such a link would allow the detailed chemical and chronological data from the HED to be used to outline the geologic history of this largest igneous body in the asteroid belt.

• 

  Lunar Dust: Problems and Potential For Future Explorers

  Jon Rask

  The fine-grained nature of the lunar surface is both a concern and an opportunity for future lunar surface operations. Our research on lunar dust has focused on the biological concerns that relate to astronaut exposure to lunar dust, as well as the development of regolith biocomposite technology. This presentation will highlight results from recent experimental investigations that have characterized lunar dust skin abrasivity, chemical reactivity, and pulmonary toxicity, and will feature examples of concrete-like materials made of lunar dust simulants.

• 

  Observations of Planet Earth from Low Earth Orbit

  Mario Runco Jr.

• 

  The Politics and Promise of Near-Earth Asteroids

  Mark V. Sykes

  Near-Earth objects are viewed primarily as hazards. One is noted for killing the dinosaurs. This February, another much smaller object exploded over the Siberian city of Chelyabinsk in Russia, injuring more than 1500 people. The perceived threat drove Congress in 1998 to direct NASA to find 90% of asteroids having diameters exceeding 1 km. Recognizing the potential damage from another Siberian airburst over Tunguska in 1908, Congress modified their mandate in 2005 to include objects down to 140 meters in diameter.

  However, asteroids represent more than just threats, they represent the potential to expand human presence and economy beyond Earth. The Obama administration has committed to sending a crewed mission to a near-Earth asteroid by 2025 and it is planning to propose that Congress allocate $100M in 2014 to begin planning for a mission to return a 5 meter object to Earth orbit. A non-profit company says it will raise hundreds of millions in donations to survey NEOs to reduce the hazard threat. Private companies have started up with the goal of mining asteroids and turning a profit. Is this the Dawn of a new space age? Or business as usual?

• 

  Reading Tea Leaves, Space Law & Space Policy: A Method for Elucidating the Next Big Thing

  Edythe E. Weeks Esq.

  Dr. Weeks will discuss recent U.S. space policy and U.S. space law provisions and how they complement and/or potentially conflict with International space treaty provisions, and how this is likely to be relevant regarding space mining plans being articulated by various key actors within the space community.

• 

  Landsat, and the Landsat Data Continuity Mission (LDCM)

  Jon Christopherson

• 

  Space Habitats: An Overview of Simulations, Analogs, Pressure Chambers, and Development Technologies

  Marc M. Cohen

  This presentation offers a common frame of reference for understanding full scale mockups and simulators for human spacecraft. Mockups and Simulators have a range of objectives and purposes, including:
  - Concept evaluation,
  - Design research,
  - Engineering integration
  - Operations simulation and development, and
  - Crew Training. These purposes are not mutually exclusive, but can co-exist or overlap in the same mockup or simulator.

• 

  How Science Drives Operation of NOAA’s Weather Satellite Assets

  Thaddeus Johnson

  This presentation centers around the requirements and modus operandi that drive NOAA's Satellite operations at the short and long term levels for the GOES and POES programs. As an example, at the daily level, team members deliberate such things as missed satellite contacts for POES and product impacts due to maneuvers for GOES, while at the long-term level, the changes in requirements that compel technological advances for the GOES and POES programs are considered. This will also demonstrate how NOAA’s Space Assets have improved and how that improvement has advanced our knowledge of weather and climate.

• 

  National Security Space Strategy: A Path to Success in a Changed Environment

  William J. Liquori

  Space capabilities provide the United States and our allies unprecedented advantages in national decision-making, military operations, homeland security, economic strength, and scientific discovery.

  Space systems provide unfettered global access, enable rapid response to global challenges, and are vital to monitoring strategic and military developments. Space systems allow people and governments around the world to see with clarity, communicate with certainty, navigate with accuracy, and operate with assurance. An evolving strategic environment increasingly challenges U.S. space advantages.

  Space, a domain that no nation owns but on which all rely, is becoming increasingly congested, contested, and competitive. This presentation will discuss the 2011 National Security Space Strategy and the path it charts for success in this changing environment. The speaker will address how the strategy maintains and enhances the advantages derived from space through the following approaches:

  • Promoting responsible, peaceful, and safe use of space
  • Preventing and deterring aggression against space infrastructure
  • Partnering with responsible nations, international organizations, and commercial firms
  • Providing improved U.S. space capabilities
  • Preparing to defeat attacks and to operate in a degraded environment

• 

  Models of Space Future in Science Fiction of 2000-2012

  Larisa Mikhaylova

  Is international cooperation essential for the humankind movement into the Universe? What may be the goals of space exploration as seen by contemporary science fiction writers today, in the beginning of the 21st century? These questions will be approached from the perspective of comparative culture research on the basis of Russian and American new trends in literature and film.

• 

  GPS and the Next Generation Air Transportation System

  Joseph Post

  The Federal Aviation Administration and its partners in the aviation industry are engaged in an unprecedented effort to modernize air transportation. The Next Generation Air Transportation System, or NextGen, will replace outmoded terrestrial navigation and surveillance systems, and analog voice communications, with modern, space-based digital technologies, thereby increasing operating efficiencies, enhancing safety, and improving environmental performance.

  The speaker will describe the NextGen concept and technologies, with particular emphasis on NextGen's Global Positioning System (GPS) applications. He will describe how Automatic Dependent Surveillance - Broadcast (ADS-B), Wide Area Augmentation System (WAAS), Ground-Based Augmentation System (GBAS), and Performance-Based Navigation (PBN) will be used to improve the performance of air transportation.