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Space is a stupendous and elephantine field that needs immense exploration and the advancements in the field of spacecraft materials are the top-notch field of today's research. The objective of the article is to examine the compositions of advance and composite materials used in the designing of space shuttle. The present work will discuss the applications and mechanical properties of reinforced materials used in the aerospace industry. Moreover, the paper is focused to highlight the usage and endurance limits of aluminum alloys in the air frame structure. An attempt has been made to provide the distribution of metallic materials in the structure of space shuttle through graphical representation. The thermodynamic characteristics of composite materials and possible advancements in the composite materials are discussed. The merits and demerits of composites such as advance carbon, reinforced carbon, flexible insulation blanket etc. in air shuttle fabrication are discussed to provide further directions for researchers. The developmental stages and growth of space materials are provided to select the suitable compositions of space shuttle materials.

In light of recent managerial oversights such as those connected with the Challenger space shuttle disaster, having executives rely more on their professionals might serve to improve their organization's ethical consciousness. Although the professional record on corporate ethical behavior is by no means exemplary, the functional basis of the professions, especially the support rendered members through their professional associations and codes, is sufficient to make them potential watchdogs of corporate misconduct. The IEEE, for example, has taken steps to defend engineers who, in acting professionally to defend the public interest, are subject to arbitrary reprisals from employers. Executives, however, need to lead in encouraging professionals to follow their best instincts in supporting an ethical position within the enterprise. According to Raelin, three steps executives can take in this regard are (1) raising an ethical consciousness, (2) setting up an ethical process and structure, and (3) institutionalizing the structure. The first step involves a pronouncement from the CEO that the company is forever committed to a free and open exchange of ideas, including discretionary opinions from the professional staff. It also consists of an articulation of social and ethical goals that share the corporate agenda with economic goals. The next steps dictate how the organization goes about meeting those goals and what decision-making procedures and structures are to be adopted in carrying out such a social policy. By institutionalization, professionals and operating managers have incorporated ethical objectives into their day-to-day practice.

Rocket reusability dates as long as rockets. Since the beginning of space age, the possibility to reuse the full vehicle or some stages has been a matter of engineering. But this was directly opposite to mass ratio efficiency, the key for a well-designed rocket. Since as soon as a stage has to be recovered, subsystems to provide this function and additional inert mass are needed. Even if reusable systems are only a small part of the worldwide rockets, they flew operationally since the space shuttle age. However, full reusable vehicles are not yet operational and only partially reusable launch vehicles have been flown until now. The preliminary space shuttle design consisted of two stages both liquid and reusable (booster and orbiter stages). The consolidated design retrieved the orbiter (upper stage, the cargo and propulsion bay) and the solid rocket boosters. On Russian side Energia-Buran only retrieved the upper stage with its cargo bay and the same approach was adapted for the original design of Ariane 5-Hermes. Europe investigated and developed different reusable systems, set up test facilities and flew the IXV demonstrator in 2015. More recently, the preferred strategy consists in reuse of unwinged booster stages (e.g. Falcon 9 of SpaceX) or of only the orbited spacecraft (e.g. NASA-USAF X-37). France and Europe are preparing propulsion and reusable rocket stage demonstration bricks for next generation launchers. The purpose of this paper is to provide an overview of some reusable space systems with emphasis on the different design strategy and skills mainly focused on European heritage. The systems are split into low and high energy with a view to technology aspects and in-flight experiments.

BACKGROUND: Glaucoma and ocular hypertension (OHT) are prevalent diseases with baseline intraocular pressure (IOP) elevations that future astronauts and spaceflight participants may suffer from. Preflight, in-flight, and postflight IOP measurements were collected aboard two U.S. Space Shuttle Program missions in normotensive control, OHT, and glaucomatous crewmembers. METHODS: Five subjects (three controls, one glaucomatous, one OHT) were studied aboard 2-wk Space Shuttle missions. Baseline IOP (triplicate; handheld tonometry) was recorded during training 12 mo preflight, in flight (114 d), and postflight (329 d). Subjective symptoms were recorded via questionnaires. Data were analyzed using a spreadsheet with two-sample t-tests. P-value < 0.05 determined significance. RESULTS: IOP increased for all in-flight vs. preflight measurements for controls (N 3, 48.9, 16.9, 5.85), OHT (N 1, 20.3), and glaucomatous (N 1, 32.2) groups. IOP eventually returned to baseline postflight [Return (R)35 d], except for the astronaut with OHT (R917). Subjective symptoms, likely multifactorial, included blurredvision, decreased visual acuity, and headaches. DISCUSSION: IOP increased during spaceflight and normalized upon return. Astronauts and commercial spaceflight participants may need screening for elevated IOP to potentially prevent sequelae related to glaucoma and OHT, the former which requires treatment in flight and the latter which may need prophylaxis. Previous studies have shown elevated IOP upon entry into microgravity with various normalization timeframes in flight and postflight. It is unclear how increased IOP relates to spaceflight-associated neuro-ocular syndrome (SANS); however, several hypotheses exist. Treatment strategies should be available for acute and chronic ocular pathology during spaceflight despite the unique challenges of eye-drop application in microgravity. Dalal SR, Ramachandran V, Khalid R, Manuel FK, Knowles JR, Jones JA. Increased intraocular pressure in glaucomatous, ocular hypertensive, and normotensive space shuttle crew. Aerosp Med Hum Perform. 2021; 92(9):728733.

In 2005 we reviewed microgravity for macromolecular crystallization, four years after the final flight of the Space Shuttle Orbiter, and five years before the first commercial flight to the Interna...

First International Orbital Debris Conference, held 9-12 December, 2019 in Sugar Land, Texas. The article of record as published may be found at https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jsse.2020.07.006 The Hubble Space Telescope (HST), launched in 1990, has without question given us a better understanding of the Universe [1]. The storied spacecraft has far exceeded its design life and, in spite of four repair missions, is nearing the end of its useful lifespan. Originally designed to be returned by the Space Shuttle, the HST has no on-board propulsion system. A 2012 study estimated that without intervention, the HST will re-enter the atmosphere in approximately 2027 with a 1:240 risk of fatality [2]. This study updates that analysis with more recent de-orbit technologies and updated trajectory information. We propose a design solution to safely perform a targeted de-orbit, assuming a worst-case scenario (a non-functional, tumbling spacecraft). Multiple de-orbit options are assessed to actively capture the satellite. Results frame an approach that could be accomplished with proven technologies at reasonable cost to improve the fatality risk as required by US Government regulation [3]. Moreover, delayed action would significantly increase mission cost and complexity so we recommend a project start in the near future.

NASA has put people in unique and extreme environments for over six decades. Supporting these individuals with a comprehensive health-care system has evolved over this period. As the Apollo program ended and NASA began to contemplate a space shuttle and space station program, societal pressures in the late 1960s and early 1970s caused federal agencies such as NASA to reconsider how to link the needs of the space program with a growing pressure to address societal needs by forging interagency partnerships. The Space Technology Applied to the Rural Papago Health Care (STARPAHC) project provides an example of how NASA sought to balance these two imperatives in an age of diminishing federal support. This project can provide lessons for today’s uncertain budgetary future for agencies such as NASA, which are once again being asked to find creative and innovative ways to support their missions while demonstrating their larger value to society.

Even before the last Apollo crew left the Moon on December 14, 1972, the American aerospace industry had already begun to assign their design offices to the next space program. Although it would travel to low Earth orbit only, and therefore might look less exciting than reaching Earth’s natural satellite, the new spaceship promised to be something radically different from its predecessors. In fact, it would be the chance to make a longstanding dream come true. The idea had been conceived several decades earlier, even before the Space Age began.

The vertical landing and recovery of rockets are now considered an important solution in the field of reusable launch vehicles. This paper focuses on guided atmospheric entry to reach an expected l...

Television is a public mediator of what constitutes ‘crises’ in Europe. Audio-visual archives and researchers are facing new complexities and ‘information bubbles’ when telling stories and reusing televised materials. I reflect on these practices, among others, via a comparative case analysis of the EUscreen portal offering access to thousands of items of European audio-visual heritage. I question how practices of selection and curation can support comparative interpretations of such representations. This approach aims to understand and support (1) interpretations of digitized/digital audio-visual sources in the era of information overload; (2) user interaction with digital search technologies – especially researchers as platform users; and (3) contextualization for reuse of audio-visual texts. Support for cultural memory research is crucial as television’s audio-visual heritage can help us to recognize which cultural practices result in the production of specific texts in European societies, representing conditions of the multiple crises that European citizens are experiencing today.

The design of a spacecraft has many trade-offs to reduce its mass, which typically result in reduced work space for the installation of Line Replaceable Units (LRU). One common LRU in aerospace vehicles is the avionics box found in the space shuttle. To prevent damage to cold plates, the installation of these boxes requires designing for accurate and careful placement; yet there are no standards to follow nor studies to consider for designers concerning human limitations for installing boxes accurately and carefully. In the literature, there are an abundance of lifting studies; however, there are only a few studies that have placed a box in restricted space or on a target as a constraint. Of those studies, only three have looked at the biomechanics, and none of those studies have looked at factors affecting the Placement Control (accurate and careful placement) of a box on a target in restricted or unrestricted space. Thus, the focus of this study is to determine the biomechanical stresses and the human performance metrics for Placement Control (accurate and careful placement) of a box on target in restricted space.

Thermal control systems in near-space-oriented vehicles are bound to be different from those on either traditional airplanes or typical space shuttles owing to the extremely thin atmosphere caused ...

Water-rich rocket exhaust plumes, in particular those emitted by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration Space Shuttle, have been suggested to make a significant contribution to long-term trends in polar mesospheric cloud (PMC) ice water content. We investigate this claim using the combined Solar Backscatter Ultraviolet (SBUV) PMC data record from eight separate instruments, which includes 60 Shuttle launches during PMC seasons between 1985 and 2011. No statistically significant postlaunch signal in PMC total ice is observed based on superposed epoch analysis of the SBUV record. Only a few launches show individual peaks in total ice anomaly above the seasonal background that exceed an empirical threshold, and the maximum cumulative signature from these infrequent cases is typically less than 5% of the season total in ice mass. Other non-Shuttle launches show circumstantial evidence of possible PMC effects, although supporting evidence for plume transport is not available. We conclude that space traffic effects have been a negligible component of long-term PMC behavior.

The aim of this work is a technical review about Quartz Crystal Microbalance (QCM) sensors used in space missions, i.e. Space Shuttle flights, i.e. NASA Space Transportation System (NASA STS) and satellite missions, that aimed at monitoring the contamination generated by outgassing processes of materials onboard satellites and sensitive payloads. The contamination processes are critical for scientific instrumentation (e.g. optics, telescopes, detectors) because scientific measurements and performances can be jeopardized or worsened by uncontrolled contamination. This issue has been addressed by the space agencies, e.g. NASA, ESA and JAXA that have implemented many different studies to monitor the material outgassing and degradation in space environment. During the past years, the QCM sensors have become the baseline solution for measuring material outgassing and characterizing the on-orbit contamination environment. This work summarizes the main QCM applications in Space and their findings, providing an overview of the sensors’ performances in terms of stability, power, data rate, measurement accuracy and resolution. Different QCM technologies will be compared highlighting the advantages of their use for the next space missions and instrumentations that require an accurate monitoring of contamination environment. In particular, due to more severe contamination requirements for next payloads and instrumentations, QCM sensors would be useful to estimate the cleanliness degree by evaluating the induced contamination and degradation on sensitive instrumentations.

As humanity moves closer to forming realis-tic paths toward space exploration beyond that what we have already accomplished, multiple new chal-lenges have presented themselves. Traditional large spacecraft prove to be unfeasible both logistically and economically for missions where a single prob-lem can completely halt operations, especially given that higher reward missions are also of higher risk. A possible alternative to large craft is using a swarm of smaller craft made to accomplish the same goals while mitigating some of the drawbacks large craft face. Rockets, space shuttles, and satellites all prove to be too large to navigate areas of space dense with obstacles. Smaller craft on the scale of one meter in a large swarm would navigate these regions. Due to the decentralized nature of a swarm, any problems faced by one craft do not necessarily affect the oth-ers, allowing the swarm to stay operational despite some crafts becoming compromised. This feature means that a problem or miscalculation that could completely derail an entire mission in the context of a large spacecraft would not do the same to a swarm. In the context of exploring dense and/or extreme en-vironments in space, many logistic and economic problems faced by large craft due to their size and centralized nature will not affect a swarm. With an ac-curate mathematical model of the swarm dynamics from Benet et al.[1], a genetic algorithm’s metaheuristic method is utilized[2] to find optimal pa-rameters that yield a minimal fuel consumption value for a given trajectory/mission objective. From this approach, the total fuel consumption was cut in half while retaining desirable characteristics of the trajec-tory such as collision avoidance and final formation constraints, giving us a similar course that accom-plishes the same goal of transporting craft around objects and disturbances while also minimizing eco-nomic losses.

The 1969 Apollo 11 Moon landing gave the US the final victory in the Space Race against the Soviet Union. But while NASA’s lunar achievement was decisive for this extraterrestrial competition, it was not so for the ongoing terrestrial one. And even as America aimed for the Moon, Russia occupied the space around the Earth, launching crewed space stations into low Earth orbit.

For a successful space programme, the reusable spacecraft should survive numerous re-entry conditions. The re-entry of almost all the reusable space shuttles resembles a flat plate at high angles of attack because of its flat windward surface. The feasibility of concave ventral surface in space shuttles is analysed computationally with a commercially available solver scFLOW. A full three-dimensional Navier–Stokes equations are solved over a thin concave plate at different angles of attack to a hypersonic flow. The peak temperature and drag coefficients of different eccentric plates are compared with that of a flat plate normal to the flow. The air is assumed to be thermally perfect gas. The flow is assumed to be continuum. The total heat transfer rates and peak heat fluxes of a concave plate are compared with the flat plate. This paper discusses the results of these simulations and how the concavity behaves in the re-entry of spacecraft.

Early in November 1984, STS-51A commander Rick Hauck received an unusual meeting request from a senior NASA public affairs official. Hauck was about to lead an eight-day mission on Space Shuttle Discovery, one of whose tasks was to retrieve and bring home a pair of communications satellites – Indonesia’s Palapa-B2 and Western Union’s Westar-VI – whose attached boosters had failed to properly lift them to geostationary orbit the previous February. Instead of positioning the satellites at 35,600 kilometers above Earth, the Payload Assist Module (PAM) boosters had ignited, spluttered, then died, leaving their expensive cargoes stranded in lopsided orbits at unacceptable altitudes which carried them no higher than 1,100 kilometers and as low as 240 kilometers. Although the fault lay with the boosters, and not with the Shuttle itself, it was an embarrassing setback as NASA sought to attract commercial clients to its reusable spacecraft. Moreover, Palapa-B2 was part of a sizeable $79 million deal with the Indonesian government and Westar-VI’s operators had switched over to the ‘safer’ Shuttle when a European Ariane rocket exploded in September 1982. Options to retrieve the two satellites and bring them back to Earth aboard the Shuttle for refurbishment soon entered the realm of possibility and it fell upon the shoulders of Hauck and his crew to do it.

Nozzles are one of the most efficient ways of producing thrust. Most of the modern day launch vehicles use a conventional Converging-Diverging nozzle (CD nozzle). One of the critical drawbacks of using these nozzles is in their inability to provide the same efficiency under varying conditions of the course of the flight. CD nozzles when developed are designed to work at a certain range of altitudes, i.e. either at sea level or under near vacuum conditions. Hence, a sea level optimized nozzle can’t provide the same efficiency at higher altitudes and vice versa. Thus, modern day rockets have multiple stages (usually 2), with the first stage having a sea level optimized nozzle which lifts the rocket from the launch pad and takes it to an altitude before being ejected along with first stage and the second stage having vacuum optimized nozzle which propels the payload in vacuum of space to a desired orbit. This results in higher operating costs for a single launch, makes the process of payload deployment more complicated. The problem of having to use multiple nozzles can be solved by using an altitude compensating nozzle, with aerospike nozzle being one of them. These nozzles under operation provide the same efficiency throughout the course of flight under varying ambient conditions. This makes possible the development of a single stage to orbit vehicle, SSTO having a single aerospike nozzle. An SSTO vehicle unlike modern rockets doesn’t have components which require to be jettisoned during its flight and thus retains its expensive hardware even after being recovered. Hence, an SSTO vehicle results in less operating costs, having optimum payload capability. An SSTO having aerospike when developed properly is highly versatile it terms of thrust vectoring, and it has the potential of being completely reusable, by using a compact single structure similar to space shuttle and using aerodynamic re-entry. This paper analyses the performance of aerospike by comparison with CD nozzle using CFD (Computational Fluid Dynamics).

This chapter examines the next time period after the Space Race—Post-Apollo Through the Space Shuttle program. At the conclusion of the Space Race, attention began to focus on the use of orbiting space stations and scientific research for an examination of a long-term presence in space. The Soviet Union and NASA were now interested in coordination in some space endeavors. Beyond the concept of space stations, the US was focused on the next space vehicle design, the Space Shuttle. The design, cost issues, and politics of this technological achievement are examined.

Since the successful flights of Apollo capsule and Space Shuttle, researches on entry guidance algorithm have made impressive and remarkable progress.

Common Aero Vehicle (CAV) [1] is a Hypersonic Glide Vehicle (HGV) featuring a hypersonic-L/D of up to 3, whereas the in-flight L/Ds of the space shuttle and X-33 Reusable Launch Vehicle (RLV) are only about 1.

NASA is developing an expendable heavy lift launch vehicle capability, the Space Launch System, to support lunar and deep space exploration. To support this capability, an updated ground infrastructure is required including modifying an existing Mobile Launcher system. The Mobile Launcher is a very large heavy beam/truss steel structure designed to support the Space Launch System during its buildup and integration in the Vehicle Assembly Building, transportation from the Vehicle Assembly Building out to the launch pad, and provides the launch platform at the launch pad. The previous Saturn/Apollo and Space Shuttle programs had integrated vehicle ground vibration tests of their integrated launch vehicles performed with simulated free-free boundary conditions to experimentally anchor and validate structural and flight controls analysis models. For the Space Launch System program, the Mobile Launcher will be used as the modal test fixture for the ground vibration test of the first Space Launch System flight vehicle, Exploration Mission ? 1( now referred to as Artemis 1), programmatically referred to as the Integrated vehicle modal test. The Integrated vehicle modal test of the Exploration Mission - 1 integrated launch vehicle will have its core and second stages unfueled while mounted to the ML while inside the Vehicle Assembly Building, which is currently scheduled for the late spring or early summer of 2020. The Space Launch System program has implemented a building block approach for dynamic model validation. The modal test of the Mobile Launcher is an important part of this building block approach in supporting the integrated vehicle modal test since the Mobile Launcher will serve as a structurally dynamic test fixture whose modes will couple with the modes of the Exploration Mission ? 1 test vehicle. The Mobile Launcher modal test will further support understanding the structural dynamics of the Mobile Launcher and SLS during rollout to the launch pad, which will play a key role in better understanding and prediction of the rollout forces acting on the launch vehicle. The Mobile Launcher modal test is currently scheduled for the summer of 2019. Due to a very tight modal testing schedule, this Mobile Launcher modal pretest analysis has been performed to ensure there is a high likelihood of being able to successfully complete the modal test (i.e. identify the primary target modes) using the planned instrumentation, shakers, and excitation types. This paper will discuss this Mobile Launcher modal pretest analysis and the unique challenges faced due to the Mobile Launcher's size and weight, which are typically not faced when modal testing aerospace structures.

This chapter describes a training approach that applies empirically derived principles of training to re-imagining the overall design of NASA’s space flight training program. The chapter is focused specifically on the design of astronaut training for NASA’s future deep space, exploration missions to Mars. We briefly describe NASA’s space flight training practices during the Apollo and Space Shuttle eras as well as NASA’s current practices for training astronauts for their missions to the International Space Station. We provide an overview of NASA’s current concepts for a mission to Mars to scope our training approach. We envision a new space flight training approach which we term “crew-centered, mission oriented” training, inspired by the design approach offered in the context of airline pilot training by Barshi (2015). We apply some of the training principles reviewed by Kole and his colleagues in the companion volume (Kole, Healy, Schneider & Barshi, 2019), as well as by other researchers in training science (e.g., Ericsson, Krampe, & Tesch-Romer, 1993; Healy & Bourne, 2012; Salas, Wilson, Priest and Guthrie, 2006), into real-world, practical guidelines for the particular context of training astronauts for a mission to Mars.processes over very long retention intervals.

In 1981, the Shuttle Remote Manipulator System (SRMS), developed by Canada, was put into orbit by the space shuttle Columbia, becoming the world’s first on-orbit operating robot for space applications (Siciliano and Khatib in Handbook of robotics. Springer, New York (2007) [1]).

In 2009 I had the good fortune to fly on a long duration space mission. With two crewmates, I launched aboard a Russian Soyuz rocket from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan. When our spacecraft reached orbit nine minutes later, we were traveling at a speed of 28,000 kilometers per hour through an environment devoid of air, water and anything familiar. Two days later we rendezvoused with the International Space Station (ISS) at an altitude of 350 km. As our Soyuz vehicle docked with the Station, we began an incredible space odyssey as members of the ISS Expedition 20/21 crew. This Expedition marked the first time that the ISS hosted a permanent crew of six. My international crewmates (from Russia, the United States, Japan and Belgium) and I performed an unprecedented amount of multidisciplinary research (Figure 1). We also performed complex robotic operations, spacewalks, and maintenance and repair work of Station systems and payloads (Figure 2). Figure 1: European astronaut Frank De Winne performs echocardiography on Robert Thirsk, MDCM. This experiment investigated cardiovascular adaptation to weightlessness. Figure 2: Robert Thirsk, MDCM, performs maintenance on the Station's Water Recovery System. This recycling system processes waste water and crew urine into potable water. Six months later my Soyuz crewmates and I undocked from the Station and landed back in Kazakhstan. During our stay in space, we completed 3,000 orbits of the Earth and traveled 125,000,000 km. It was truly an odyssey. This ISS expedition as well as my earlier Space Shuttle mission have enriched me in ways I can never fully explain. I often reflect on the career path that took me from medicine to the cosmos. To some of my medical colleagues, this path seems incongruous. They ask, "What does the practice of medicine have in common with space exploration?". In the following paragraphs, I describe the astronaut profession and its commonalities with medicine. Astronaut training is certainly a transformative experience and the spaceflight environment is alien to anything in the clinical world. However, a career transition to space exploration after investing so much time and effort in a medical career is not unusual. A well-trained astronaut exhibits many of the same knowledge, skills and professional attributes of an exemplary physician. Indeed, a medical background forms an excellent foundation for a career in astronautics.

After briefly describing the origins of NASA in 1958, this chapter analyzes three broad themes of NASA’s mission over the last 50 years: human spaceflight; the space, Earth, and life sciences; and aeronautics. It distinguishes four eras of human spaceflight: the Apollo era, the Space Shuttle era, the International Space Station era, and the Moon/Mars era. In the space sciences NASA achievements have been legendary, ranging from the early Moon probes, such as Ranger and Surveyor, to landmark robotic spacecraft exploring the inner planets, such as Mariner and the Mars probes, and Pioneer, Voyager, and others exploring the outer gas and ice giant planets. Together these spacecraft completed the preliminary reconnaissance of the Solar System. The spectacular imagery from the Great Observatories including the Hubble Space Telescope carried this exploration to the furthest reaches of space. NASA’s Earth applications programs utilized near-Earth space to study the planet’s resources, to provide essential information about weather, and to provide means for navigation that was both life-saving and had enormous economic implications. Worldwide satellite communications brought the world closer together, a factor difficult to estimate from a cost-benefit analysis. NASA’s life sciences programs tackled some of the most profound questions for humanity, including the origins of life and the search for extraterrestrial life. In the field of aeronautics NASA from its beginnings conducted research on aerodynamics, wind shear, flight safety, and other important topics using wind tunnels, flight testing, and computer simulations. We conclude that exploration is important for any forward-looking society.

International audience; The control of the satellites end-of-life including deorbiting and atmospheric entry as well as the investigation of orbital maneuvers for new space missions confer a growing importance to the study of the hypersonic rarefied regime. While flight data are necessary for the validation of Direct Simulation Monte-Carlo numerical simulations, only a few studies and data are available for this purpose. Therefore, this article aims at gathering ground windtunnel and flight data in rarefied regime as well as their numerical reconstruction from a wide scope of space programs. A detailed analysis of these data will be presented. After a review of hypersonic low-density wind-tunnel experiments that are the main source of non-reacting hypersonic rarefied flow study cases, we address, with our own simulations, unexploited afterbody heating data from former space programs such as Mercury and Apollo. Numerically reconstructed flight data from OREX and the Space Shuttle are also considered. Finally, ionization and radiative environment are discussed through the data collected during Stardust, Fire II and RAM-C II Earth atmospheric entry.

On January 16, 2004, NASA Administrator Sean O’Keefe announced his decision to cancel the Hubble Space Telescope (HST) Servicing Mission (SM4) by the Space Shuttle. SM4 was to have inserted two new instruments, the Wide Field Camera 3 and the Cosmic Origins Spectrograph, at the same time replacing the batteries and gyroscopes, extending Hubble’s lifetime to 2010. The decision resulted in a strong reaction among some members of Congress, the HST science community, and the general public, because it would likely leave the telescope inoperable by 2007, years before its full lifetime and well before the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) would be launched. In the immediate aftermath of his decision to cancel the final servicing mission, Administrator O’Keefe requested an independent study be undertaken by the author in his role as NASA Chief Historian, in order to document in detail the events that led to the cancellation decision. What follows is a history of that decision and its aftermath, completed December 17, 2004, as well as an Epilogue added in 2012 describing the reversal of O’Keefe’s decision by NASA Administrator Michael Griffin.

European astronauts have traveled to the ISS in two types of spacecraft: the American space shuttle and the Russian Soyuz. They have been resupplied on board the station by payload in the Italian-built Multi-Purpose Logistics Modules (MPLM) carried aboard shuttles and also by a variety of uncrewed vehicles – the Russian Progress, the European ATV, the Japanese HTV, the SpaceX commercial Dragon spacecraft and Orbital Sciences Cygnus.

Internal gas dynamics of liquid rocket engines and solid rocket motors with equilibrium flow and frozen flow is discussed. In evaluating the rocket performance under equilibrium flow, the application of the three key derivatives [ Open image in new window , Open image in new window , and cp] is explained. The performance parameters (characteristic velocity c∗, thrust coefficient CF, and specific impulse Isp) under the equilibrium flow and the frozen flow are discussed to show that the parameters assume different values for the two flows. To demonstrate the application of the knowledge gained, the design analysis on the internal ballistics and engine-envelope determination of proven engines, such as Space Shuttle Main Engine (SSME), is carried out. Also problems with answers are added on the design analyses of some proven engines: R-1E Marquardt, Mitsubishi LE-5B, and Vulcain.

In July 1975, just six years after Apollo 11 had journeyed to the Moon, the last three NASA astronauts to fly an Apollo spacecraft splashed down in the Pacific Ocean at the end of the joint Apollo-Soyuz docking mission with the Soviets (ASTP). Though it had been known there would be a delay in sending the next American astronauts into space on the Space Shuttle, few would have foreseen the six-year void between ASTP and the first Shuttle orbital test flight.

Probabilistic risk assessment (PRA) is a systematic process of examining how engineered systems work to ensure safety. With the growth of the size of dynamic systems and the complexity of the interactions between hardware, software, and humans, it is extremely difficult to enumerate risky scenarios by the traditional PRA methods. In this study, a new dynamic probabilistic risk assessment methodology is proposed that employs a new exploration strategy to generate risky scenarios. The proposed methodology consists of three main modules, including simulation, planner, and scheduler. In this methodology, the engineering knowledge of the system is explicitly used to guide the simulation module to achieve higher efficiency and accuracy. The engineering knowledge is reflected in the planner module which is responsible for generating plans as a high-level map to guide the simulation. The scheduler module is responsible for guiding the simulation by controlling the timing and occurrence of the random events. In this paper, modules of the proposed methodology, and their interactions are explained in detail. The developed methodology is used to perform risk assessment of a Space Shuttle ascent phase, and results show the effectiveness of the proposed platform.

Article analyzes the changes in the space economy, as well as the U.S. federal policy for preserving American domination in this area. The evolution of the space economy in the United States is briefly considered, including formation of venture businesses since late 1990s (due to the computer and Internet revolution and development of space technologies). Of particular importance is a so-called Astropreneurship – growth of startups, developing space launch systems and spacecrafts. Amid technological factors, the main driver for the rise of Astropreneurship was a suboptimal technological and market strategy of Boeing and Lockheed Martin duopoly. It created conditions for disruptive innovation development in the industry and transition to a new, more open model of innovation processes there. Although in the 1980–1990’s federal government enacted a business-friendly regulations for the commercial space sector and set measures to support it through public procurement, a new situation in the markets and in sectoral innovation system has become a challenge for national policy, enforced by budget constraints and other factors. Catastrophe of the Columbia space shuttle in 2003, which raised the issue of maintaining independent U.S. access to the International Space Station and, in the future, to other orbital operations after shuttles’ phase-out, triggered changes in federal policies for the industry. As a result, since 2006 NASA (with some DoD support) initiated several programs to develop new space launch and delivery systems. These programs were based on the public-private partnerships with active involvement of small and medium innovative enterprises, primarily startups. The results turned out to be more significant than originally intended: formation of a new model of federal industrial and technological policy in the space sector, almost similar to the DARPA principles. The new policy assumes the role of NASA and, more broadly, the federal government as an equal (rather than a dominant) participant in space industry innovative processes and as a more active organizer of the industry`s innovation system (considering changes in its nature). Despite all activities are mission-oriented, more attention is paid to the development of complex partnerships, ecosystems, etc. – with an emphasis both on satisfaction of government needs and on ensuring market leadership of the U.S. companies. However, this new model faces sever al problems: ambiguity of federal expenditures on space- related research and development; need to restructure NASA science and technology organization; efficiency of federal efforts in support of new partners and processes – taking into account specifics of available policy instruments. The future of federal efforts will be determined by the solution of these problems and by the need to extend new model and practices to the key (in terms of market size and technology advances) segments of space economy – satellite manufacturing and the use of space data.

Atmospheric entry corridors are established in previous research based on the equilibrium glide condition which assumes the flight-path angle to be zero. To get a better understanding of the highly constrained entry flight, an evolved entry corridor that considers the exact flight-path angle is developed in this study. Firstly, the conventional corridor in the altitude vs. velocity plane is extended into a three-dimensional one in the space of altitude, velocity, and flight-path angle. The three-dimensional corridor is generated by a series of constraint boxes. Then, based on a simple mapping method, an evolved two-dimensional entry corridor with safety factor is obtained. The safety factor is defined to describe the flexibility of the flight-path angle for a state within the corridor. Finally, the evolved entry corridor is simulated for the Space Shuttle and the Common Aero Vehicle (CAV) to demonstrate the effectiveness of the corridor generation approach. Compared with the conventional corridor, the evolved corridor is much wider and provides additional information. Therefore, the evolved corridor would benefit more to the entry trajectory design and analysis.

Animal research aboard the Space Shuttle and International Space Station has provided vital information on the physiological, cellular, and molecular effects of spaceflight. The relevance of this information to human spaceflight is enhanced when it is coupled with information gleaned from human-based research. As NASA and other space agencies initiate plans for human exploration missions beyond low Earth orbit (LEO), incorporating animal research into these missions is vitally important to understanding the biological impacts of deep space. However, new technologies will be required to integrate experimental animals into spacecraft design and transport them beyond LEO in a safe and practical way. In this communication, we propose the use of metabolic control technologies to reversibly depress the metabolic rates of experimental animals while in transit aboard the spacecraft. Compared to holding experimental animals in active metabolic states, the advantages of artificially inducing regulated, depressed metabolic states (called synthetic torpor) include significantly reduced mass, volume, and power requirements within the spacecraft owing to reduced life support requirements, and mitigated radiation- and microgravity-induced negative health effects on the animals owing to intrinsic physiological properties of torpor. In addition to directly benefitting animal research, synthetic torpor-inducing systems will also serve as test beds for systems that may eventually hold human crewmembers in similar metabolic states on long-duration missions. The technologies for inducing synthetic torpor, which we discuss, are at relatively early stages of development, but there is ample evidence to show that this is a viable idea and one with very real benefits to spaceflight programs. The increasingly ambitious goals of world's many spaceflight programs will be most quickly and safely achieved with the help of animal research systems transported beyond LEO; synthetic torpor may enable this to be done as practically and inexpensively as possible.

Large space structures (LSS) occupy a special place among other objects of space technology. Due to their large size, these structures are compactly stowed under the fairings of the launch vehicles or in the cargo compartments of the Space Shuttle type spacecraft. After launch into the working orbit, they are deployed automatically into the predetermined configuration with the help of transformable elements, which act both as the load-bearing frame and actuators. The deployment should be carried out within the specified time and should not negatively affect the strength, shape or spatial orientation of the structure. To meet these requirements, it is necessary to theoretically investigate the deployment dynamics of the LSS under consideration. This paper aims to find the optimal design and engineering solutions of an ultralight transformable reflector for a space antenna made of metal mesh with load-bearing elements in the form of telescopic hollow rods made from carbon fiber reinforced plastic. The deployment dynamics of the load-bearing elements with the mesh attached was modeled using the Russian-made software package EULER 10.25. The modeling allowed us to estimate the effect of the tensile load from the mesh on the deployment process. With the elastic load from mesh accounted for, the stability and rigidity of the load-bearing elements will be ensured and the accuracy of the mesh tension will be increased.

There is limited information regarding the effects of spaceflight on the anatomical configuration of the brain and on cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) spaces.We used magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) to compare images of 18 astronauts' brains before and after missions of long duration, involving stays on the International Space Station, and of 16 astronauts' brains before and after missions of short duration, involving participation in the Space Shuttle Program. Images were interpreted by readers who were unaware of the flight duration. We also generated paired preflight and postflight MRI cine clips derived from high-resolution, three-dimensional imaging of 12 astronauts after long-duration flights and from 6 astronauts after short-duration flights in order to assess the extent of narrowing of CSF spaces and the displacement of brain structures. We also compared preflight ventricular volumes with postflight ventricular volumes by means of an automated analysis of TNarrowing of the central sulcus occurred in 17 of 18 astronauts after long-duration flights (mean flight time, 164.8 days) and in 3 of 16 astronauts after short-duration flights (mean flight time, 13.6 days) (P0.001). Cine clips from a subgroup of astronauts showed an upward shift of the brain after all long-duration flights (12 astronauts) but not after short-duration flights (6 astronauts) and narrowing of CSF spaces at the vertex after all long-duration flights (12 astronauts) and in 1 of 6 astronauts after short-duration flights. Three astronauts in the long-duration group had optic-disk edema, and all 3 had narrowing of the central sulcus. A cine clip was available for 1 of these 3 astronauts, and the cine clip showed upward shift of the brain.Narrowing of the central sulcus, upward shift of the brain, and narrowing of CSF spaces at the vertex occurred frequently and predominantly in astronauts after long-duration flights. Further investigation, including repeated postflight imaging conducted after some time on Earth, is required to determine the duration and clinical significance of these changes. (Funded by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration.).

The thrust vector control (TVC) system is used to control the attitude and direction of a launch vehicle by regulating the swinging angle of the rocket engine. At present, the electro-hydraulic (EH) TVC systems are most widely used due to their excellent dynamic and steady-state control performances. The launch vehicles that use EH TVC systems include the Space Shuttle, Saturn V, Atlas V, Long March series, Soyuz, Arian V, et al. When output power is larger than 5 kW, the energy of the EH TVC system usually comes from the rocket engine, gas generator, or compressed nitrogen. The EH TVC systems that are powered by battery are usually used in the third stage or upper stage of launch vehicles, where the output power of the system is smaller than 5 kW [1].