The Last Shuttle To Leave Earth at Night, SpaceRef

"An hour after the orange glow of Endeavour's liftoff lit the Kennedy Space Center press site on Feb. 8, NASA officials beamed at the bit of bright news illuminating an otherwise tough couple of weeks. The smooth countdown for STS-130 and the relatively few technical problems -- a bit of foam loss, but nothing judged too serious -- shifted the tone of the press conference to one that joked about workers missing the Super Bowl. "While I was getting evil glares for making them come in -- I don't know why it was my fault -- they were happy with the result," said Mike Moses, the shuttle program's launch integration manager, as journalists chuckled."

NASA Administrator, JSC Director Set Media Roundtable Today at JSC

"NASA Administrator Charles Bolden and Johnson Space Center Director Mike Coats will be available for a roundtable discussion with media at 2:30 p.m. CST today, Monday, Feb. 8, at the Johnson Space Center. Bolden and Coats will discuss the fiscal year 2011 budget request and bold new developments in the nation's civil space effort. Media planning to attend should contact the JSC newsroom at 281-483-5111 no later than noon CST.

The event will not be broadcast on NASA Television. For more information on NASA and its programs, visit: www.nasa.gov"

Keith's update: @Astro_Sugar is twittering comments from Bolden's employee event at JSC in real time here.

Keith's update: These comments (Tweets) were posted by a NASA employee during (and about) an official NASA event during the course of their work day. Astro_Sugar is now protecting their Tweets but you can still read them here. Earlier in the day these Tweets were made without any protection and were reteweeted and referenced by other NASA employees during work hours. Members of the media are also among this person's followers before I made mention of them. I was asked to remove mention of this from NASA Watch but due to the public nature of these Tweets and the fact that people were readily telling others about them I decided to leave the link intact. These comments were overtly public. Those postings (Tweets) aprovide a nice snapshot of Charlie Bolden's employee interactions today at NASA JSC.

NASA Idea Brainstorming Tool, Open Government at NASA

"NASA is seeking input on the creation of the NASA Open Government Plan. As outlined in the Open Government Directive, this brainstorming tool is a mechanism gain input on how to make the key principle of openness a meaningful pillar of NASA's mission, and how to implement participation, transparency and collaboration activities such that NASA becomes more relevant, efficient, and accountable. Key ideas and suggestions developed through this process will be prioritized in the NASA Open Government Plan."

NASA Launches David Bowie Concept Mission, The Onion

"NASA officials announced today the successful launch of the new shuttle Moonage Daydream, marking the beginning of a long-anticipated two-week conceptual mission inspired by British rock star David Bowie. The crew of Moonage Daydream embark on the 4.5 billion dollar, genre-defying mission. According to NASA administrator Maj. Gen. Charles F. Bolden, Jr., the highly experimental glam space program--dubbed Project Starman--has been in development for exactly five years. Though engineers initially feared the mission might "blow our minds," the historic launch ultimately proceeded without incident."

NASA STS-130 Report #01 4 a.m. CST Monday, Feb. 8, 2010

"After a one day delay due to clouds, space shuttle Endeavour launched at 3:14 a.m. CST Monday from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida with a new module and an attached cupola for the International Space Station that should increase human understanding of our home planet. It was the last scheduled night launch in shuttle program history."

China space program shoots for moon, Washington Times

"Senior Chinese space officials have told their state media that China could be on the moon by 2022 at the outside. Other authoritative Chinese space engineers see a moon landing as a next step in the Tiangong program that will launch three Chinese space stations into Earth orbit between 2011 and 2015. In 2008, NASA scientists told the Bush White House that, with the technology currently available to the Chinese space program, Chinese cosmonauts could be on the moon by 2017."

The Boy Who Looked at the Moon, Homer Hickam

"The man stood watching the glowing television sets stacked in the storefront window. The window was dirty, the glass cracked and repaired with a strip of tape. A boy stood beside him. "What are you looking at, Dad?" "I'm watching the Chinese celebrate the completion of their moonlab, son. Look, there they are on the moon. See how happy they are?" "They always seem to be so happy. How come nobody around here is ever that happy, Dad?" The man looked at his son in surprise. "Well, I don't know. I guess I haven't thought much about that."

British astronaut Nicholas Patrick prepares for Nasa space launch, The Telegraph

"The head of Nasa, Major General Charlie Bolden, admitted last night that the task of breaking the news of Constellation's proposed cancellation to staff at the space agency's 10 centres had been badly handled. "Was it screwed up? Yes it was," he said, confessing that he had ignored advice from aides that might have made for a smoother presentation. "I didn't listen to people," he added."

Bolden in for a battle, Florida Today

"A popular former astronaut, Bolden said he made a mistake by failing to brief Congress on President Barack Obama's new plan before the rollout Monday of the White House's proposed 2011 budget. "I don't fool myself that I have not injured some relationships. And so my task now is to try to go in and repair those former, incredibly good relationships because of my ineptness in rolling out this plan."

NASA Admin Addresses Constellation Cancellation, WESH

"I thought I knew better, to be quite honest," he said. "So, we rolled out the budget and rolled out everything in the manner we did. Was it screwed up? Yes. So, I learned a valuable lesson."

Keith's note: You know that the message plan NASA has been trying to roll out is not working when signs carried by protesters outside of KSC today say "Obama lied - NASA died". It gets worse: I also received a link to a YouTube video from someone sitting at their desk at NASA that uses captioned movie footage of an actor playing Hitler to criticise the Obama decision on Constellation. This ain't good folks.

Keith's update: Oh yes - to all of you who are demanding that I post a link to the Hitler video: No way. I find even a casual comparison of anyone to Hitler under any circumstances to be reprehensible and I will not allow this website to be a party to that. If you do not like this policy, then go find another website to read. There will be no further discussion on this topic. Alas, Portal to the Universe, "the latest Cornerstone project of the International Year of Astronomy 2009 (IYA2009)" apparently thinks that Hitler jokes are funny. The posting is by "AmericaSpace" which is run by Jim Hillhouse. Using Hitler - in any context - is never funny and only serves to drag any associated discussion into the gutter.

Cernan: Pres. Unwilling to Invest in U.S. Future, Fox 26 TV Houston

"I'm angry. It's very short sighted on the part of this administration," said Cernan. "He is somehow unwilling to invest in the future of this country and the future of this country is important to me. I won't be here 20, 30, 40 years from now, but my grandkids will. I want them to have the country I had. I want something better for them."

We are Ready for Commercial Human Spaceflight, Leroy Chiao

"Many of my colleagues and peers have written articles and pieces, deriding the idea of commercial LEO access. Indeed, the track record of the self-described "New Space" companies has thus far, been marked generally with failure and arrogance. Not all, but many of these folks, before they run their companies into the ground, seem to spend the bulk of their time attending self-serving, self-aggrandizing conferences where openly slinging mud at NASA is sport. This is hardly constructive, and it brings discredit to others who have serious aspirations for the future of commercial spaceflight."

Launching NASA on a Path to Nowhere: Analysis, Tom Jones

"The new budget, announced Monday, seems merely an attempt to disguise the demise of U.S. leadership in space. The president does away with Constellation, its Orion spacecraft, and its Ares I and Ares V boosters. The abrupt cancellation means the U.S. no longer wishes to send its explorers to the frontiers of knowledge and spacefaring skill. We are deliberately choosing to have no better space capability than do Russia, China, or India."

Boosters Flare in Space Debate, MSNBC

"Another former shuttle astronaut, Ken Bowersox, is more bullish on the commercial prospects - perhaps in part because he's now an executive at one of those companies, California-based SpaceX. Today Discovery News quoted him as saying that space contractors "should be able to come up with new and innovative ways" to fill NASA's needs for resupplying the International Space Station."

Keith's update: And then there's my (non-Astronaut) two cents' worth ...

Blasting NASA, Living on Earth, NPR

"COWING: Well, it already is commercial, the funny thing is that the Russians have been taking paying passengers for the better part of a decade now. And I always find great humor in that you have a country who's got a capitalist economy that's barely been a decade and a half old and they came out of Communism, and yet they're teaching us how to commercialize space. And we've got an economy that's two and a half centuries old based on the capitalistic way of doing things. So, this isn't new, it's just it's new to America."

Vision Impaired, Paul Spudis, Air & Space

"I have previously discussed what I perceive as the most significant problem with FP, namely, that it is activity without direction. The administration's budgetary version of this path confirms this perception. Much verbiage is thrown around about multiple missions to all sorts of destinations, blazing new trails with new technology, trips to Mars that last weeks instead of months, and "people fanning out across the inner solar system, exploring the Moon, asteroids and Mars nearly simultaneously in a steady stream of firsts." But nowhere in the budget documents or agency statements is there anything about the mission that we are undertaking. So we're going to an asteroid. What will we do there? Why are we going there? What benefit accrues from it?"

Plan for NASA lacks vision, editorial, St. Petersbrug Times

"But the 2,000 jobs the administration expects private companies to create in Florida under the plan is far less than the 12,000 NASA and private jobs that Florida's east coast expects to lose when the shuttle is retired."

Give NASA Back, The Crimson White

"Most importantly, this achievement of the International Space Station proves, definitively, the existence of the worlds' potential for cooperation. Nations can peacefully work together towards a common goal--not unlike, say, Obama's goal of eradicating nuclear weapons. If NASA were to go commercial, as Obama hopes, the country would lose its ownership, and cooperation between multinationals--only concerned with their bottom lines and profits--wouldn't be nearly as idealistic as the cooperation between nations we have now."

Abandoning human space flight is shortsighted, Rep. Pete Olson, The Hill

"The administration would like to foster commercial providers with our human space flight capabilities. Commercial participation is a good thing, and something that everyone agrees with, but it's simply not ready to take humans into space safely, and should not be the sole means for our country's access to space."

Space to thrive, The Economist

"Much has been made of the fact that NASA will, as a consequence of Constellation's cancellation, have to rely on private firms to send its astronauts to the international space station once the space shuttle is withdrawn. In many ways, though, this is the least interesting aspect of what is happening, for what Mr Obama proposed is actually a radical overhaul of the agency."

One step back for mankind, Financial Times

"That is what makes the debate over Constellation symbolic. The decision to abandon moon exploration has "decline" written all over it. Americans often profess astonishment that the Chinese of 600 years ago failed to take full advantage of their technological superiority. They invented gunpowder and, on the eve of Columbus's discovery of America, their ocean-going vessels were bigger and more seaworthy than Europe's."

This video of NASA JSC's "Project M" depicts a Robonaut-based, tele-operated mission to the Moon - one that JSC claims could be accomplished in 1,000 days once the go-ahead was given.

"OPM: The Federal Government will be open in the morning operating under an unscheduled leave policy with a planned 4 hour early dismissal. Employees reporting for work should be dismissed by their agencies 4 hours earlier than their normal departure time from work. OPM is continuing to closely monitor developing weather conditions should there be a need to reassess the Government's operating status."

IFPTE: A new day at NASA - a rebirth at Ames

"More specifically, there was truly terrific news on Monday as the Obama Administration has addressed many of IFPTE's NASA-budget recommendations:

The Agency will be going to a single unified CS labor account in FY11. In a letter from Administrator Bolden on Monday, he assured the Union that: "Going forward, it is also NASA's intention to work with the Congress to implement a unified labor account for FY 2011.   NASA remains committed to full-cost workforce planning, to including labor estimates in our project baseline, and to complete transparency in workforce utilization at HQ and the Centers; however, we think it very valuable to unify labor into a single account for budget purposes."

Technoarcheology and Earth Sciences, the Recovery of Nimbus II High Resolution Infrared Radiometer Data

"In 2008 the Lunar Orbiter Image Recovery Project (LOIRP) began a NASA ESMD sponsored project to resurrect 43+ year old Ampex FR-900 instrumentation tape drives for the purpose of recovering, before the capability to do so becomes impossible, the last surviving master tapes from the five Lunar Orbiter spaceraft that orbited the Moon in support of Apollo in 1966-67. Our project is proceeding on our task to do so. During our research on the Ampex tape drives we scoured the NASA Technical Reports Server as well as any other source we could get our hands on.

One of the things that the LOIRP team is going to do is to take the Nimbus II HRIR data from August 23rd 1966 and overlay that with the Lunar Orbiter 1 data on the same date for a composite mosaic. There is potential for a significant synergy between Lunar Orbiter, Apollo, and Nimbus II and III data sets. This type of synergy could provide many benefits to the Earth sciences community."

Techno-Archaeology Rescues Climate Data from Early Satellites, National Snow and Ice Data Center

"Starting with the methods developed for the Lunar Orbiter Image Recovery Project (LOIRP) at NASA Ames Research Park, a team at NSIDC worked with Dennis Wingo at LOIRP to search NASA archives for the original Nimbus tapes containing raw images and calibrations. Their first goal was to read and reprocess the data at a higher resolution, removing errors resulting from the limits of the original processing."

NASA Plan Faces Turbulence in House, WS Journal

"NASA's proposed budget "essentially decimates America's human space-flight capacity," said Democratic Rep. Donna Edwards of Maryland Rep, Ralph Hall of Texas, the ranking Republican on the full Science and Technology Committee, said "it is naive to assume that a do-over will somehow deliver a safer, cheaper system faster than the current path we are on." The reaction portends an uphill fight for the Obama Administration, partly due to sentiment on Capitol Hill that it failed to consult members before unveiling such a dramatic shift in direction In an interview Tuesday, NASA's Administrator, Charles Bolden, accepted part of the blame. "I could have done a better job of communicating" with Congress, he said. "I will take the hit for that."

Proposed NASA budget plots entrepreneur-friendly course, LA Times

"The potentially seismic shift for the aerospace industry was announced Monday, the seventh anniversary of the loss of the space shuttle Columbia, and came as defense companies were bracing for a pullback in the Pentagon's spending on weapons."

Obama Gets Space Funding Right, Steven Weinberg, WS Journal

"Giving up on manned space flight doesn't mean we have to give up on the exploration of the solar system. The president's budget calls for spending $19 billion on NASA, and for much less than the cost of sending a few astronauts once to a single location on Mars we could send hundreds of robots like Spirit and Opportunity to sites all over the planet."

Keith's note: The NASA IPP NASA Commercial Space Initiatives Team Meeting is meeting on 9 Feb. Who knew? No Federal Register notice, no mention on the NASA IPP home page - no mention anywhere at NASA.gov. You would think that with all of the recent emphasis on commercial space in the new Obama space policy that NASA would want these events to be widely known and heavily attended. Guess not.

The right way forward on space exploration, OpEd, James Cameron, Washington Post

"... the president and NASA have crafted a bold plan that truly makes possible this nation's dreams for space. Their plan calls for the full embrace of commercial solutions for transporting astronauts to low Earth orbit after the space shuttle is retired this year. This frees NASA to do what it does best: deep space exploration, both robotic and human. By selecting commercial solutions for transportation to the international space station, NASA is empowering American free enterprise to do what it does best: develop technology quickly and efficiently in a competitive environment."

Keith's note: The director of the highest grossing movie of all time - a movie overtly about space exploration, a former member of the NASA Advisory Council, writes a glowing OpEd in a prominent national newspaper in support of the new White House's space policy - and yet NASA cannot find a way to make mention of it - any where? Not even a single Twitter posting? At a time when a lot of people are hammering NASA and the Administration over this new space policy, one would think that NASA would be looking for good news wherever they could find it. Guess not.

James Cameron Endorses Commercial Spaceflight, New NASA Plan, Commercial Spaceflight Federation

Pluto's White, Dark-Orange, and Charcoal Black Terrain Captured by Hubble

"NASA has released the most detailed and dramatic images ever taken of the distant dwarf planet Pluto. The images from NASA's Hubble Space Telescope show an icy, mottled, dark molasses-colored world undergoing seasonal surface color and brightness changes. Pluto has become significantly redder, while its illuminated northern hemisphere is getting brighter. These changes are most likely consequences of surface ice melting on the sunlit pole and then refreezing on the other pole, as the dwarf planet heads into the next phase of its 248-year-long seasonal cycle. Analysis shows the dramatic change in color took place from 2000 to 2002."

Mementos from canceled NASA moon plan flying on space shuttle, Collectspace

"Together with a piece of Everest's summit, also retrieved by Parazynski, the plaque-mounted moon rocks will be displayed inside Tranquility's new seven-windowed Cupola to inspire the astronauts working there. "Imagine being in the Cupola and looking out this huge series of windows and looking at the Moon and having a piece of the Moon right next to you. What's that going to be like? I have no idea. I'll come back and tell you," said STS-130 mission specialist Stephen Robinson. Robinson had a role in including aboard the flight another, albeit subtle, nod to NASA's lunar exploration history in the form of his and his crewmates' mission patch. The six-sided emblem, which was shaped to resemble the Cupola viewing port attached to Tranquility's side, depicts the Earth as it was first seen in a photograph taken from the Moon by Lunar Orbiter I."

Keith's note: Not only is STS-130 carrying the Moon rock that I carried to Nepal and slept with for a month and Scott then carried to the summit of Mt. Everest, but I just learned that the STS-130 patch was inspired by the "earthrise" photo that Dennis Wingo and our team at the Lunar Orbiter Image Recovery Project released in Nov. 2008. It usually takes quite a lot to leave me speechless - this comes very close to doing so. How do we expand on such resonant opportunities so as to allow not just a few - but rather millions of people to have a similar, personal connection to what we do in space?

NASA and GM Create Cutting Edge Robotic Technology

"NASA and General Motors are working together to accelerate development of the next generation of robots and related technologies for use in the automotive and aerospace industries. Engineers and scientists from NASA and GM worked together through a Space Act Agreement at the agency's Johnson Space Center in Houston to build a new humanoid robot capable of working side by side with people. Using leading edge control, sensor and vision technologies, future robots could assist astronauts during hazardous space missions and help GM build safer cars and plants."

Keith's note: I certainly hope that NASA and GM are going to create a road show for these cool-looking robots. Once you have built one or two then building multiple copies starts to get cheaper. NASA and GM should put them on display and then invite the public into GM plants across the U.S. to see them in action. Show how NASA technology is going to help the U.S. auto industry thrive and rebound as well as explore space. Take the robots to local schools and local chamber of commerce events and let people try them out for a drive, so to speak. Make certain that flyers and other promotional materials are in EVERY GM dealership in America and that very new GM car has something in the drivers sear about these robots to go with it. Put the robots in a GM TV commercial. Work with Mattel or other toy companies to make action figures. Work with Legos to make small hobby versions of the robot - indeed have school competitions where kids are encouraged to make their own copies.

This is a Education and Public Outreach activity that is just begging to be implemented. If NASA can lavish lots of attention on a fake robot like Buzz Lightyear one would hope that they could do the same for the real thing.