JANUARY/FEBRUARY 2006 THE MAGAZINE OF THE AMERICAN …€¦ · invention of the telescope and...

T H E M A G A Z I N E O F T H E A M E R I C A NA S T R O N A U T I C A L S O C I E T Y

JANUARY/FEBRUARY 2006

I S S U E 1 V O L U M E 4 5

2 SPACE TIMES • January/February 2006

T H E M A G A Z I N E O F T H E A M E R I C A N A S T R O N A U T I C A L S O C I E T Y

JANUARY/FEBRUARY 2006

ISSUE 1 – VOLUME 45

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AAS OFFICERSPRESIDENT

Mark K. Craig, SAICEXECUTIVE VICE PRESIDENT

Peggy Finarelli, International Space UniversityVICE PRESIDENT–TECHNICAL

Arun K. Misra, McGill UniversityVICE PRESIDENT–PROGRAMS

Barbara B. PfarrVICE PRESIDENT–PUBLICATIONS

Ronald J. Proulx, Charles Stark Draper LaboratoryVICE PRESIDENT–MEMBERSHIP

Steven D. Harrison, Northrop GrummanVICE PRESIDENT–EDUCATION

John E. Cochran, Jr., Auburn UniversityVICE PRESIDENT–FINANCE

Michael F. Zedd, Naval Research LaboratoryVICE PRESIDENT–INTERNATIONAL

Lyn D. Wigbels, Rice Wigbels InternationalVICE PRESIDENT–PUBLIC POLICY

Ian Pryke, CAPR, George Mason UniversityLEGAL COUNSEL

Franceska O. Schroeder, Fish & Richardson P.C.EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR

James R. Kirkpatrick, AAS

AAS BOARD OF DIRECTORSTERM EXPIRES 2006Shannon Coffey, Naval Research LaboratoryAshok Deshmukh, Technica Inc.Angela P. DiazGraham Gibbs, Canadian Space AgencyRobert E. Lindberg, National Institute of AerospaceG. David Low, Orbital Sciences CorporationArthur F. ObenschainTodd Probert, Honeywell Technology Solutions, Inc.Frank A. Slazer, The Boeing CompanyTrevor C. Sorensen, University of Kansas

TERM EXPIRES 2007Paul J. Cefola, MIT/ConsultantMichael L. CianconeJohn W. Douglass, Aerospace Industries AssociationG. Allen FlyntRobert G. Melton, Penn State UniversityLinda V. Moodie, NOAAArnauld Nicogossian, George Mason UniversityFrederic Nordlund, European Space AgencyJames A. Vedda, The Aerospace CorporationThomas L. Wilson, Swales Aerospace

TERM EXPIRES 2008Peter M. Bainum, Howard UniversityJohn C. Beckman, Jet Propulsion LaboratoryDavid A. Cicci, Auburn UniversityLynn F. H. ClineNancy S. A. Colleton, Institute for Global

Environmental StrategiesRoger D. Launius, Smithsonian InstitutionJonathan T. Malay, Lockheed Martin CorporationClayton Mowry, Arianespace, Inc.Kathy J. Nado, Computer Sciences CorporationRichard M. Obermann, House Committee on Science

SPACE TIMES EDITORIAL STAFFEDITOR, Amy Paige Kaminski

PHOTO & GRAPHICS EDITOR, Dustin DoudPRODUCTION MANAGER, Cathy L. EledgeBUSINESS MANAGER, James R. Kirkpatrick

SPACE TIMES is published bimonthly by the AmericanAstronautical Society, a professional non-profit society. SPACETIMES is free to members of the AAS. Individual subscriptionscan be ordered from the AAS Business Office. © Copyright2006 by the American Astronautical Society, Inc. Printed in theUnited States of America.

PERIODICALSSPACE TIMES, magazine of the AAS, bimonthly,volume 45, 2006—$80 domestic, $95 foreignThe Journal of the Astronautical Sciences, quarterly, volume54, 2006—$160 domestic, $180 foreignTo order these publications, contact the AAS business office.

REPRINTSSee a story you’d like to share? Reprints are available for allarticles in SPACE TIMES and for all papers published in TheJournal of the Astronautical Sciences.

ENTERING SPACEPresident’s Message 3

FEATURESColliding in Space: NASA, Astronomers, and 4the Establishment of Research PrioritiesIn the 1990s NASA asked the science community to setastronomy priorities for the agency. Now NASA is tryingto take decision-making back into its own purview.by Brian D. Dewhurst

Astrometry’s Next Leap 9The European Space Agency is formulating a space-basedmission that may revolutionize scientists’ knowledgeof stellar positions and motions and the formation andevolution of the Milky Way galaxy.by Bruce Dorminey

Report on the AAS National Conference and 1452nd Annual Meeting“Building Bridges to Exploration: The Role of theInternational Space Station”by Rick W. Sturdevant

UPCOMING CONFERENCEAAS 44th Robert H. Goddard Memorial 20SymposiumMarch 14-15, 2006Greenbelt Marriott Hotel, Greenbelt, Maryland

NOTES ON A NEW BOOKSpace Tourism: Adventures in Earth Orbit 22and Beyondreviewed by Mark Williamson

SPACE TIMES • January/February 2006 3

The AAS Board of Directors at its November 2004 meeting approved a strategic planfor the Society. It was a bold and important step because it defines who we are, where wehope to go, and the difference we will strive to make. The plan was simple by design: aboutsix hundred words in bulleted expressions on four pages. It was meant to be short, clear, andcompelling. And most importantly, it was meant to be implemented. A mentor once told methat strategy without implementation is merely poetry. He wasn’t denigrating poetry; he wasextolling real strategy. Strategy exists to make something happen, to enable an enterprise tothrive in its environment by delivering value and meeting need. Our Board-approved strategy does that.

Our Vision: AAS – the premier network of professionals dedicated to advancing all space activities.

Our Mission: AAS harnesses the intellectual energies and diverse capabilities of its membership, both technical and non-technical, to:• Strengthen the space community,• Influence the development of space policy,• Promote international dialogue on space activities, and• Inspire students to undertake space-related careers while serving the professional needs and interests of its members, both

individual and corporate.

Our Goals:1. Enhance the robustness of the space community by broadening the capabilities of its members.2. Play a more influential role in the development of space policy.3. Increase our role in facilitating international understanding and cooperation in space activities.4. Increase the Society’s efforts to enhance the appeal of space as a career field.5. Improve the service we provide for our members.6. Improve stewardship of the Society.

Within our vision and mission, these goals and their derivative objectives will evolve with time to respond to change,need, and opportunity. We spent 2005 beginning implementation of the strategic plan. The Board of Directors reviewed progressat its November meeting and found that AAS had accomplished much, including holding record-breaking conferences, producinghigh-quality publications, forming the Houston Section, rebuilding the AAS website around members, strengthening our relationshipwith the Students for the Exploration and Development of Space (SEDS), facilitating timely dialogues on international cooperation,and issuing relevant public statements.

The year ahead is going to be an exciting one as we build on the momentum of 2005. I am particularly excited about 2006opportunities to better serve our members and to inspire, mentor, and involve the next generation. I look forward to sharing strategicprogress with you in the coming months and getting your feedback and ideas.

Mark [email protected]

ENTERING SPACE

Inspired by the Hubble Space Telescope’s Ultra Deep Field images, Italian artist Alessandro Gattuso has created thismagnificent oil painting revealing the universe’s billions of stars and galaxies in vibrant colors against the dramaticblackness of space. (Source: Alessandro Gattuso)

ON THE COVER

President’s Message


Colliding in Space: NASA, Astronomers, and In the 1990s NASA asked the science community to set astronomy priorities for the agency. Now NASA is trying to take by Brian D. Dewhurst

The successful landing in 1997 of the Mars Pathfinder rover, shown here observing Martian boulders, marked one of many successes for robotic sp

President George W. Bush’s vi-sion for space exploration has given newdirection to the National Aeronautics andSpace Administration (NASA) and theU.S. civil space program. It has beengreeted, however, with skepticism andconsiderable concern in the scientific com-munity, including in those disciplines –such as astronomy – that are major NASAstakeholders. In the case of the HubbleSpace Telescope, this concern was esca-lated into open conflict, with potentiallydamaging consequences. The concern andconflict have been caused in part by acultural clash between the scientific com-munity and the agency. Both parties needto work together to find a middle groundthat will enable the agency to pursue itsnew mandate while continuing to imple-ment its successful and popular scienceprogram.

The Politics of Astronomy

Astronomers and astrophysicistshave a long tradition of becoming en-meshed in politics, as the nature of theirdiscipline makes such entanglements un-

avoidable. Astronomers study the uni-verse around us and our place in it, whichat times causes the scientific enterprise torun up against philosophical and religiousschools that come at the same questionsfrom other directions. Leaving asidethese loftier concerns, however, there isa more practical explanation for the in-teractions of astronomy and government:astronomers need telescopes.

Observation time is the lifebloodof astronomers. Unlike physics or chem-istry, astronomy is an observational sci-ence. Unable to create conditions for anexperiment in a laboratory, astronomersmust search the observable universe forinstances of various phenomena. There-fore, progress in the field is largely drivenby technological advances and their ap-plication in new generations of observ-ing tools. The classical example is theinvention of the telescope and Galileo’searly observational work. A better ex-ample for these purposes, however, is thestory of Tycho Brahe.

Tycho Brahe was a minor sixteenthcentury Danish noble with a strong inter-est in astronomical observations and in-

struments. Tycho’s observations of the1572 supernova brought him to the at-tention of the Danish king who, in 1576,granted him an island and a blank checkto build his observatory. Tycho trans-formed the island of Hveen, which liesin the strait between modern-day Den-mark and Sweden, into a state-of-the-artobservatory with the most precise obser-vational tools ever created. From thisfacility Tycho was able to make the mostdetailed astronomical observations of thepre-Galilean era. When Tycho set a youngastronomer/mathematician namedJohannes Kepler to the task of determin-ing the orbit of Mars in 1601, it was thetwenty-one years of high-quality dataTycho had collected which enabled Keplerto eventually succeed and, more impor-tantly, defend his results. Kepler’s deter-mination of the elliptical orbit of Marsled to the development of his three lawsof planetary motion – the beginnings ofmodern astrophysics. None of this wouldhave been possible without the investmentof the Danish king in Tycho’s observa-tory on Hveen.


the Establishment of Research Prioritiese decision-making back into its own purview.

pace science missions and helped bolster the science budget at NASA during the Clinton Administration. (Source: NASA/Jet Propulsion Laboratory)

Modern astronomy in the UnitedStates is quite similar. While there aresome private observatories, most modernground-based facilities are supported atleast in part by the U.S. governmentthrough the National Science Foundation.For space-based observatories such as theChandra X-ray Telescope or the HubbleSpace Telescope, NASA is the only gamein town. Today’s space observatories aredriving astronomy and astrophysics for-ward, and, therefore, the health of thefield is largely tied to NASA’s supportfor the current facilities and new missionsthat are in development. Clearly the spacescience piece of NASA is important tothe astronomy community. But how isthe astronomy community important toNASA?

From Mission to ScienceAgency…and Back

At the end of the George H. W.Bush administration, NASA was a rud-derless agency. The Bush admin-istration’s Space Exploration Initiativehad fallen flat, and its central program –

the Freedom space station – was increas-ingly targeted by budget cutters lookingto increase the “peace dividend” at theend of the Cold War. In June 1993 anamendment to eliminate the space stationprogram was defeated by one vote on thefloor of the House. While the additionof the Russians to the rechristened Inter-national Space Station program relievedsome of the pressure, the agency was stillcasting about for a role for the programthat would in part validate the cost of thestation. Forbidden by the Clinton admin-istration to talk about further goals suchas a return to the Moon or a Mars mis-sion, the agency turned to a scientific ra-tionale. The space station began to bebilled as a “world-class laboratory inspace.”

As the space station programlimped along through the 1990s, roboticspace science missions began to generatepositive publicity for the agency. TheHubble Space Telescope observations ofComet Shoemaker-Levy hitting Jupiter in1994, the successful arrival of the Galileomission at Jupiter in 1995, the announce-ment by NASA researchers of potential

Martian fossils in a meteorite in 1996,and the successful landing of the MarsPathfinder rover on July 4, 1997, pro-vided a string of major successes for theagency. NASA, realizing the value ofthese investigations, responded by increas-ing the budget for science. At the end ofthe George H.W. Bush administration, sci-ence in the agency was struggling to main-tain its hold on one fifth of the NASAbudget; by the end of the Clinton admin-istration, science missions had grown toaccount for one third of the agency’sspending. More importantly, the publicidentified NASA as a science agency –even the space shuttle program was sell-ing itself on the strength of its scientificand educational accomplishments.

The transformation from a missionagency to a science agency had a dramaticeffect on the way NASA operated. Bothscience and mission agencies can supportscientific research, but the way in whichthey do so is different. Mission agen-cies, such as the Office of Naval Researchor the National Cancer Institute, supportbasic research that can be tied to the goalof that agency – a better sonar system or


Astronauts Story Musgrave and Jeffrey Hoffman performed the first Hubble SpaceTelescope repair in 1993, as shown here. Although a fourth Hubble servicing mission isplanned for late 2007 pending the shuttle’s safe return to flight, some astronomers feelthat the money required to remain ready for the space shuttle-based mission may bebetter spent elsewhere in astronomy. (Source: NASA)

a new cancer drug, for instance. TheNational Science Foundation, on the otherhand, supports science for its own sake.It is designed to be reactive to new dis-coveries or new avenues of research. Inshort, it is the scientific community thatadvises science agencies about the areasin which they should invest. As scienceclimbed in importance at NASA, theagency increasingly turned to the scien-tists for new projects to pursue.

In the wake of the Columbia acci-dent, it was clear that NASA’s humanspace flight activities were in need of anew rationale. On the other hand, criticscharged that robots could do better sci-ence with both fewer dollars and a negli-gible risk to human life. In response tothe accident and the need for a reinvigo-rated mission, the Bush administrationreleased its vision for space exploration

in January 2004. The first major Presi-dential direction that had been given tothe agency since the failure of the SpaceExploration Inititative, the vision and itssweeping set of goals became the focusof the agency. Accomplishing them wouldrequire NASA to change its culture.NASA could no longer be a scienceagency; it had to return to its mission-oriented roots.

Setting Science Priorities

Understanding how significant thechange from science priorities to missionpriorities is requires an understanding ofhow the scientific community sets priori-ties. Because astronomers are dependenton government support for new observa-tories, they have developed a sophisti-cated priority-setting system based on the

scientific peer review process and the cre-ativity of members of the community.The culmination of this process over thepast forty years has been a series of sur-vey reports on astronomy and astrophys-ics conducted by the National Academies.

Conducted roughly every tenyears, these “decadal surveys” summarizethe current state of knowledge in the fieldand then look ahead and identify the mostimportant scientific questions to be ad-dressed and the tools needed to addressthem. From a policy perspective, the keyfeature of these reports is a prioritizedlist of ground- and space-based observa-tories for federal investment. The pro-cess by which the survey is conducted isdesigned to sift and funnel the variousproposals for new observatories into asingle prioritized list for the governmentto implement.

The decadal survey process is ofconsiderable value to both the astronomycommunity and to the science agencies.The survey process directly engages thecommunity. For example, the decadalsurvey committee and panels that con-ducted the survey in 1999-2000 werecomprised of 125 astronomers fromaround the nation, and dozens more par-ticipated through various informationgathering sessions. By engaging such alarge fraction of the nation’s astronomers,the survey process is able to credibly rep-resent the consensus of the community asa whole. Debates between members ofthe community are held inside the surveyprocess, and the members of the commu-nity choose the winners and losers. Whenagencies fund the missions included onthe decadal survey priority list, they areconfident that the taxpayers’ dollars aresupporting the most valuable projects.Furthermore, the consensus nature of thereports can be used as a shield againstlobbying on behalf of individual projects,saving agency officials and congressionalstaff from having to be the arbiters ofscientific disputes – roles they may notbe qualified to play.

Historically, the large majority ofprojects recommended in the decadal sur-veys has been completed, without messy


Almost a year after the Space Shuttle Columbia disaster, President Bush, shown hereduring a memorial service for the Columbia astronauts at the Johnson Space Center,announced his new vision for space exploration and redirected the agency’s focus tohuman and robotic exploration of the Moon and Mars. (Source: NASA)

public debates such as those which ac-companied the Superconducting Super-collider. The result is a win-win situa-tion for the astronomers and the govern-ment: the government is confident that itis investing in the most valuable observa-tories, and the astronomers are confidentthat their desires are being heard and actedupon. Perhaps the biggest testament tothe value of the astronomy and astrophys-ics decadal surveys is that in the late 1990sNASA requested that the National Acad-emies conduct decadal surveys for otherscientific areas in NASA’s portfolio.

Priorities in Conflict

NASA’s request for additionaldecadal surveys shows how far the agencyhad swung towards the science agencyculture. By requesting the surveys,NASA was asking the scientific commu-nities to set the agency’s science priori-ties for the coming decade. When thevision for space exploration was releasedwith its own set of priorities for theagency, the competing priorities were seton a collision course. The former set ofpriorities was filtered from the bottomup, the latter set directed from the topdown. NASA needs to find a way to rec-oncile the two sets of priorities in a deci-sion-making process that keeps the bestscience while preparing the agency tocomplete its mission.

Unfortunately, the first steps indefining a new relationship between thescience priorities of the stakeholders andthe needs of NASA as a reinvigoratedmission agency have not gone smoothly.In an attempt to reassert the missionagency culture, NASA’s FY2005 budgetrequest, released in February 2004, di-vided the agency’s science portfolio into“exploration science” and “other science”categories. The agency proposed thatfunding for science in the “other” cat-egory would remain essentially flat until2020, while exploration would roughlydouble in size over the same period. Inastronomy, the tilt was incredibly pro-nounced. NASA proposed in mid-2004to accelerate the third-ranked space ob-

servatory in the decadal survey, the Ter-restrial Planet Finder, and to double itsproposed scope. To fund this accelera-tion and expansion, the second-rankedpriority and a suite of other missions theagency had been planning were postponedindefinitely. This decision was based onNASA’s interpretation of the vision forspace exploration and its determinationthat the Terrestrial Planet Finder missionwas exploration-oriented and the othermissions were not. In short, NASA wasasserting its mission priorities over theastronomers’ science priorities.

Had this change proven to be thesole reorientation involved in implement-ing the vision, the astronomy communitymight have been persuaded to accept thenew ground rules and work with theagency. Unfortunately, the budget deci-sions were announced in the wake of thenAdministrator O’Keefe’s decision to can-cel Hubble servicing mission SM-4. Theadministrator made the decision withoutnotifying or discussing it with the NASAAdvisory Council and its scientific sub-committees – a marked change from pastagency practice. The Hubble decision,

combined with the reorientation of theprogram away from the community’s pri-orities, portrayed an agency that was nolonger willing to work with the as-tronomy community.

The astronomers began to searchfor other avenues to make their voiceheard. In short order they found thatMaryland Senator Barbara Mikulski waseager to help. The Space Telescope Sci-ence Institute and NASA Goddard SpaceFlight Center, the key institutions support-ing Hubble, are both in Maryland. Fur-thermore, Senator Mikulski was the rank-ing member of the Senate subcommitteethat controlled NASA’s appropriations –putting her in a powerful position tochange Hubble’s fate. After months ofwrangling it became clear that the sena-tor was not going to allow NASA toeliminate the Hubble mission. By the nextspring Administrator O’Keefe had re-signed, and a new NASA administrator,Dr. Michael Griffin, had publicly com-mitted to “saving” Hubble if the spaceshuttle’s return to flight was successful.

By working through the politicalprocess, the astronomers had won a pyr-


Data from four space-based astronomical observatories – the Chandra, Hubble, Spitzer,and GALEX space telescopes – were combined to form this image of the CartwheelGalaxy. NASA funded the development of all of these space telescopes and many others.(Source: NASA/Chandra X-ray Center/Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory)

rhic victory. NASA was committed toconducting SM-4 once the space shuttlehad returned safely to flight, but morethan a year later the shuttle is stillgrounded. The astronomy program isspending well over $250 million per yearon Hubble, a large fraction of which isspent merely keeping the agency readyto fly SM-4. That money might well bewasted if the agency is unable to fly be-fore Hubble’s batteries fail – assumingthe shuttle returns safely to flight. Mean-while, in this time of lean federal bud-

gets, other NASA astronomy missions arebeing delayed or canceled. A conversa-tion between NASA and the astronomycommunity about whether SM-4 is thebest mission in which to invest could bebeneficial to all involved, but because theastronomers sought a political solutionsuch a conversation is very unlikely.

Even if such a conversation werepossible, it is unclear how such a conver-sation might take place. AdministratorGriffin chose to disband NASA’s advi-sory committees until he could rework

how they functioned. Historically, theadvisory committees have been the venuein which the agency’s top-down priori-ties and the community’s bottom-up pri-orities have been brought together. Atthis time NASA has reestablished theNASA Advisory Council, but none of itsscientific subcommittees are in place.Without these subcommittees, it is unclearhow or whether the scientific communityis able to have input into NASA’s deci-sion-making process. How the scientificcommunity will communicate with theagency is unclear.

Moving forward, NASA’s ScienceMission Directorate needs to develop amechanism to integrate the agency’s mis-sion priorities with the community’s sci-ence priorities. NASA and the sciencecommunity have come to depend on oneanother. The agency cannot return to anApollo-like posture in which the sciencepriorities are driven almost entirely bythe needs of the human space flight pro-gram. On the other hand, the scientificcommunity must realize that a healthy,vibrant exploration program is incom-plete without a viable human space flightcapability. By working together, NASAand the community should be able tomaintain the remarkable success of thepast decade while successfully imple-menting a new program of exploration. ■___________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

Brian D. Dewhurst is a senior pro-gram associate for the National Acad-emies’ Board on Physics and Astronomy(http://www.nationalacademies.org/bpa/).

Charitable Giving and the AAS

A popular way to donate to an organization is to make a gift by means of a will, i.e., make a bequest. You maywish to consider either a general bequest to AAS or a bequest targeted to an existing or new AAS scholarshipor award fund. Such bequests are deductible against estate and inheritance taxes. Of course, there are alsotax advantages to making charitable donations to AAS while you’re living. Such gifts could give tribute to thememory of someone who has passed away or honor a person still living. Special occasions offer other oppor-tunities for gifts to be directed to the Society. As a final note, although AAS can provide suggestions forcharitable giving, such actions should always be reviewed by your financial or legal advisor.


Astrometry’s Next LeapThe European Space Agency is formulating a space-based mission that may revolutionize scientists’ knowledgeof stellar positions and motions and the formation and evolution of the Milky Way galaxy.by Bruce Dorminey

Astrometry, first honed by theearly Greeks and practiced to varyingdegrees of success by seafarers since thePhoenicians, was until recently lookedupon as somewhat of an astronomicalbackwater. Astronomers anxious to breaktheoretical ground frequently turned else-where. Yet for decades, U.S. Naval Ob-servatory (USNO) astronomers have faith-fully provided the Department of Defenseand the astronomical community at largewith astrometric data listing relevant stel-lar positions, proper motions, and distanceparallaxes. Even in this age of globalpositioning systems, the USNO’s continu-ally updated, billion-star catalogs remainthe foundation for military ground-basednavigation, satellite station-keeping, andamateur and professional astronomy. To-day, the USNO also spends an average ofa quarter of its observing time on purelyscientific pursuits.

Even so, Europe gets credit forbringing astrometry into the space age,with the 1989 launch of the EuropeanSpace Agency’s (ESA) revolutionary geo-stationary Hipparcos (High Precision Par-allax Collecting Satellite), an acronymhonoring Hipparchus, the second centuryB.C. Greek observer who first catalogedone thousand stars. The satellite’s 1997catalog provided the biggest astrometricalleap in nearly four hundred years. UsingHipparcos data, astronomers cataloged120,000 stars to an accuracy of approxi-mately two milli-arcseconds and a mil-lion stars to an accuracy of some twentymilli-arcseconds. With Hipparcos,astrometry moved into pristine observa-tional and theoretical territory.

Hipparcos project scientist MichaelPerryman, together with LennartLindegren, an astronomer at Sweden’sLund Observatory, first proposed Gaia, afollow-on to Hipparcos, in 1994. Origi-

nally an acronym for Global AstrometricInterferometer for Astrophysics, the 520million euro ($614 million) mission iscurrently due for liftoff on a Soyuzlauncher in December 2011. Once itreaches the Earth-Sun L2 Lagrangianpoint, a semi-stable gravitational pointfrom which Earth is always between aspacecraft positioned there and the Sun,its charge is to catalog more than a bil-lion celestial objects.

Although Gaia is no longer an in-terferometry mission, its moniker stuck,and ESA approved the mission in 2000.But Perryman, now Gaia’s project scien-tist, and much of the Gaia team spent acouple of anxious years wonderingwhether the Americans’ Full-skyAstrometric Mapping Explorer (FAME)

mission would cause postponement oreven a cancellation of their own project.

But FAME had its own problems.The USNO’s long-awaited astrometricspace-mission unfortunately met its de-mise only months after the National Aero-nautics and Space Administration(NASA) gave it the go-ahead. FAME wasto have been launched in 2004, measur-ing some forty million stars down to fif-teenth magnitude (as a point of compari-son, celestial objects are typically onlyvisible with the naked eye down to sixthmagnitude). During FAME’s rollercoasterfunding ride, ESA, meanwhile, had beendeveloping its own plans for Gaia.

According to Ralph Gaume, an as-tronomer and the head of the USNO’sastrometry department, FAME had diffi-

ESA’s Hipparcos satellite, which launched in 1989, is credited with bringing astrometryinto the space age. (Source: European Space Agency)


culties with on-time delivery of some ofits key components, which in turn droveup costs, causing NASA to bail out ofthe mission altogether.

“The FAME team made huge ad-vances in a short time,” according toPerryman, “but it faced big challenges,some of which are still with us. One bigchallenge will be to insure that the scien-tific goals of Gaia do not get relaxed over

the next four to five years, as the realchallenges of building the satellite becomemore evident. As a problem turns into adelay, then specifications get relaxed topreserve the schedule.” Perryman saysanother challenge is readying Gaia’sground-based data-analysis system tomeet the demands of handling up to apetabyte (1015 bytes) of raw scientificdata. Gaia also faces some stiff computa-

tional challenges, and to that end, ESAhas sought collaboration with Dell Com-puter Corporation.

Mission Specs

Once the satellite has reached theEarth-Sun L2 point and finished three tofour months of commissioning, time willbe of the essence. The spacecraft willspend five years rotating on its axis ev-ery six hours, gathering data from threetelescopes roughly scanning contiguousgreat circles on the sky in almost oppo-site directions from two different fieldsof view. With its three-axis motion, Gaiawill orbit the Sun once each year, all thewhile keeping our own nearest star at aconstant 50-degree angle. Two of its tele-scopes have primary rectangular mirrors(1.4 x 0.5 square meters) each to be sepa-rated by an angle of 106 degrees. Theirimages are to be combined into a singlefocal plane where their data will be col-lected by one hundred state-of-the-artcharge coupled devices (CCD). And if allgoes as planned, Gaia’s nominal five-yearlifetime could be given a one-year exten-sion.

“The advantage of L2 is absenceof Earth and Moon eclipses, contributingto the required thermal stability of thesatellite and its payload,” says Perryman.Aside from getting to L2 within a rea-sonable timeframe, he says, the mainchallenge is having enough transmitterpower to effect a sufficiently efficient datareturn rate from L2’s distance of 1.5 mil-lion kilometers from Earth.

ESA is considering two slightly dif-ferent designs from two competing in-dustrial teams — EADS-Astrium andAlenia/Alcatel — with the winner to beannounced in early February 2006. Thenthere will be a period of about a year whenthe design details are optimized. At thatpoint, Perryman says, final constructionwill begin. Some items, like Gaia’s CCDs,are already being produced.

Gaume says that based on his ex-perience with the FAME program, Gaia’sbiggest technical nemesis will be radia-tion damage to its highly sensitive CCD

ABOVE: A schematic illustration of ESA’s Gaia spacecraft, which will catalog millions ofobjects across the celestial sphere, scanning the sky in great circles. (Source: EADSAstrium) BELOW: The chart above shows how much progress has been made in a littleover two thousand years of astrometry. With new space-based missions like Gaia, thescience of astrometry is truly entering a golden era. (Source: Erik Hoeg)


detectors, causing significant degradationto the telescopic payload’s focal plane. Ifthis occurs, Gaia might be stymied in itseffort to get to the faintest planned mag-nitudes.

Even if the mission suffers from abit of observational degradation due toradiation damage to its CCDs, its capa-bility will be unprecedented. WhileHipparcos observed one star at a time, anaverage of 2.5 stars per square degree,Gaia will observe some 25,000 starsper square degree or about 20,000 at anygiven time. Gaia’s unbiased all-sky sur-vey down to twentieth magnitude willreach best accuracies of seven micro-arc-seconds and provide positions, propermotions, and parallaxes of any given ce-lestial target.

Science

Gaia’s main goal is its stereoscopicthree-dimensional disentanglement of theformation and evolution of the MilkyWay. It will shed new light on how ourgalaxy built itself up over time via theaccretion of nearby dwarf galaxies. Gaiawill observe millions of stars in both theMilky Way and neighboring Magellanicclouds (satellite “dwarf galaxies” of theMilky Way only visible from the south-ern hemisphere), allowing a detailed studyof diverse stellar populations. The chemi-cal makeup and movement of these dis-tinct stellar populations offer clues to theirorigins. As with the Hipparcos mission,these new observations should provideastronomers with ancient stellar finger-prints. By observing how these older stel-lar interlopers have merged with theMilky Way’s much more homogeneousstellar populations, theorists should bet-ter understand how the galaxy grew andevolved over time.

“I am excited about being able toconstruct a movie of the spatial extent andthe motions of one billion stars,” saysPerryman, “then effectively being able totake a detailed look at how our galaxy isstructured and how its constituent starsare moving.”

Gaia’s science payload will consistof three instruments to be mounted on asingle optical bench – two astrometrictelescopes that will be a combination ra-dial velocity spectrometer to measure acelestial object’s motion and break downits constituent spectra for chemical andkinematic analysis, and a photometer tochart an object’s color and luminosityvariations over time. Photometry is oneof the keys to refining theories of stellarevolution.

The spectrometer will take radialvelocity measurements for up to 250 mil-lion stars at a limit of seventeenth mag-nitude and with an accuracy of a few ki-lometers per second. Gaia’s photometerwill offer researchers information on ab-solute stellar luminosities, temperature,

chemical composition, and surface grav-ity. Gaia will measure stars in the galac-tic center, for instance, with an absoluteaccuracy to 10 percent. Baade’s Window,a region in the Milky Way’s inner bulge,will be the highest density galactic regionobserved, containing some three millionstars per square degree.

“Astrometry provides the infra-structure for doing a lot of astronomy,”says Gaume. “For example, if you arefollowing a gamma-ray burst, you haveto be able to join the gamma-ray refer-ence frame with the radio referenceframe. Astronomers have found that therecan be many arc minutes of offsets be-tween different reference frames.”

That’s another area where Gaia willcome into play, tying together diverse as-

Gaia will be able to directly observe and catalog stars in the Andromeda galaxy, ournearest spiral neighbor. (Source: Robert Gendler)


tronomical reference frames so that nomatter what part of the electromagneticspectrum is being studied, ground-basedobservatories will be able to routinelycross-reference Gaia’s new catalogs forhelp. The mission’s first scientific paperswill appear twelve to eighteen monthsafter launch, with a final data wrap-uparound 2020, some three years after theend of spacecraft operations.

In addition to quantifying and clas-sifying stars, Gaia will detect thousandsof hyper-dense remnants of dead starsknown as “white dwarfs” and perhaps asmany as 30 to 40,000 Jupiter-mass plan-ets circling other stars, 20,000 superno-vae, 50,000 low-mass, cool failed starsknown as “brown dwarfs,” half a milliondistant quasars, and ten million galaxies.

Ben Oppenheimer, astronomer andassistant curator in the department of as-trophysics at the American Museum ofNatural History in New York City, is in-terested in Gaia’s detection of so-called“missing” white dwarfs in our galaxy’shalo. He says that these missing whitedwarfs have been proposed as the pos-sible solution to the problem of missing

baryonic, or ordinary, matter, whichmakes up about 4 percent of the mass ofthe universe. Oppenheimer notes that theremay be enough white dwarfs in the haloto account for most or all of this missingmatter.

Gaia will also help cosmologistsfurther constrain their “distance ladders,”or means of determining cosmological dis-tances to both the local and distant uni-verse. Astronomers routinely use obser-vations of variable stars and their inher-ent period-luminosity relationships as“standard candles” to calculate the stars’absolute magnitude and luminosity. Theythen use these standard candles to extrapo-late distances, both within our galaxy andto the neighboring Magellanic Clouds, thenearby Andromeda Galaxy (M31), andbeyond. Gaia may detect up to eighteenmillion variable stars and make an almostcomplete census of galactic Cepheids andalso lower-mass fainter RR Lyrae vari-able stars, to a distance of nearly 10,000light years.

“Gaia will measure proper motionsfor many supergiant stars in Andromeda(M31), as well as in other Local Group

galaxies,” says Linnart Lindegren. “Itshould therefore provide an estimate ofthe Local Group rotation.” As vast as ourown Milky Way galaxy may seem, bothour galaxy and Andromeda (M31) aredynamically bound up in a much largercluster of galaxies known as the LocalGroup. Virtually nothing is known aboutthe Local Group’s rotation as a whole,but most of this cluster’s mass can be at-tributed to M31 and our own Milky Way.

Lindegren further explains,“Knowing the relative orbits of M31 andthe Milky Way will make it possible topredict if and when they are going tomerge and form one giant elliptical gal-axy. Gaia’s observations of the presentMilky Way halo will thus trace the for-mation history back in time. Gaia willalso provide a lot of detailed informationabout the structure and motions in theMilky Way and other Local Group gal-axies.”

While the dynamics and velocitiesof the galaxies within the Local Groupare misunderstood, there are also so-calledhypervelocity stars whose movements andpositions defy explanation. Most recently,the European Southern Observatory’s(ESO) Very Large Telescope in Chiletracked a massive, young, speeding starfar out in the halo of the Milky Way,moving at more than 2.6 million kilome-ters per hour. ESO researchers believe thatthe star may have been gravitationally“slung out” by a heretofore undetectedmassive black hole in the center of thenearby Large Magellanic Cloud.

What puzzles researchers is whysuch a massive star should be found outbeyond the Milky Way’s halo and notcloser to the disc of our galaxy. RalfNapiwotzki, an astronomer at the Centerfor Astrophysics Research at the Univer-sity of Hertfordshire in the United King-dom, says that Gaia’s proper motion mea-surements will help us better understandwhere such hypervelocity stars may haveoriginated.

Closer to home, Gaia will detectup to a million asteroids and cometswithin our own solar system. Because ofits ability to observe within 40 degrees

The U.S. Naval Observatory’s Origins Billion Star Survey spacecraft may succeed Gaiaone day as the world’s most advanced astrometry mission. (Source: Ralph Gaume)


The MAPS Mission ConceptThe USNO is also working on a more modest space-based

astrometric micro-satellite concept. The $40-50-million Milli-ArcsecondPathfinder Survey (MAPS) could be deployed in a 900-kilometer orbitaround Earth by early 2009, more than two years ahead of Gaia’s currentlaunch schedule. The USNO is in discussions with the Department of Defense(DoD) and NASA about combining an astrometric mission that would helpupdate and expand current catalogs while also enabling some innovativescience surveys. Astronomer Ralph Gaume, head of the USNO’s astrometrydepartment, and other proponents at the USNO are in the process of pitchingthe idea to the astronomy community at large.

While Gaume remains pessimistic about NASA funding for anotherFAME-like astrometric mission in the immediate future, he hasn’t givenup on either the DoD or NASA funding a smaller-scale project. “Becausethe DoD has a real need for precise astrometry,” says Gaume, “for the lastyear, we have been designing a mission specifically tailored to DoDastrometry needs. Not many people outside of DoD circles have heard ofMAPS, but we’ve recently begun enumerating and elaborating basicscience results that would be derived from MAPS.” MAPS isn’t fully fundedas of yet, but Gaume says that the project has stirred significant interestwithin the DoD, and he believes NASA may underpin the project’s scienceinvestigations.

In its current incarnation, MAPS would use a fifteen-centimetervisible and near-infrared telescope to gather positions, parallaxes, and propermotions over a one-square-degree field of view, with an average of twothousand stars within its sights at any given time. MAPS would observesome fifty million stars, from second to sixteenth magnitude, with ten millionof the brightest stars observed at Hipparcos-like accuracies. But in contrastto Gaia’s planned scanning mode, MAPS would use guide stars in a “step-stare” process of pointing and integrating the satellite toward one field ofview at a time during a three-year mission.

MAPS science highlights would include searching for evidence ofgalactic mergers; fine-tuning the cosmic distance ladder, with new fixes onthe Pleiades star cluster and other distance calibrators; and studying theorigins of nearby stars like Beta Pictoris, a massive young star long knownto harbor a planetary disk. MAPS would also help quantify whether long-period giant planets are circling nearby stars. In addition, it would helpplace age limits on the oldestbinary systems, while givingnew clues to the dynamics ofthe young star-formingregions nearest to Earth.

MAPS would lookat the internal dynamics ofstar clusters younger thanfour hundred million yearsold and might even detectlow-mass galactic blackholes on long-period orbitsaround normal main-sequence, hydrogen-burning stars.

— Bruce Dorminey

of the Sun, Gaia should also find aplethora of heretofore undetected Near-Earth Objects (NEOs). It is hoped thatGaia will determine orbits for all NEOswith diameters larger than a few hundredmeters. And for anyone who questions theesoteric nature of much of Gaia’s science,these findings might even save your life.

With the recent announcement thatthe 320-meter asteroid 99942 Apophis willmake close approaches to Earth in 2029and 2036, NASA and other groups areactively considering whether space-basedreconnaissance and tracking may be usedto determine if a future asteroid deflec-tion mission is needed. “At the moment,the [likelihood of] this object hitting Earthis one in 5500,” says Don Yeomans, anastronomer at the Jet Propulsion Labora-tory in Pasadena, California, who rou-tinely tracks and plots present and futureNEO orbits. “On April 13, 2029, it willpass below some of our geosynchronouscommunications satellites. It will be athird magnitude naked-eye object, 36,350kilometers from the Earth’s center. Weare anxious [to get] additional observa-tions to refine its orbit.”

Looking Ahead

Gaia’s serendipitous NEO observa-tions may not generate the kind of head-lines ESA garnered after the spectacularsuccess of its Huygens probe at Saturn’smoon, Titan. Yet over ten years afterGaia’s inception, ESA is to be lauded forits painstaking long view. Most of Gaia’sscience will require years of data reduc-tion at an analytical pace not necessarilysuited to a twenty-four-hour news cycle.Even so, perhaps because of the Huygensprobe and ESA’s new international rec-ognition, it can be argued that ESA, ifonly inadvertently, may be assuming aportion of NASA’s scientific mantle. Butdespite NASA’s recent difficulties,Perryman notes, the American agency’sfunding is still a factor of ten times thatof ESA’s, so he doesn’t envision ESAstealing the American agency’s thunderanytime soon.

MAPS satellite concept. (Source: U.S. NavalObservatory)Continued on page 23


Report on the AAS National Conference and52nd Annual Meeting“Building Bridges to Exploration: The Role of the International Space Station”by Rick W. Sturdevant

The AAS National Conference and52nd Annual Meeting at South ShoreHarbour Resort, League City, Texas, dur-ing November 15-16, 2005, was a re-sounding success in terms of thematiccoherence, topical relevance, and totalattendance. Outgoing AAS PresidentJonathan Malay welcomed a standing-room-only crowd of approximately fivehundred—one of the largest gatheringsin AAS history—and introduced a vid-eotaped greeting from International SpaceStation (ISS) Expedition 12 crew mem-bers Bill McArthur and Valery Tokarev,who wished everyone “all the best for asuccessful conference.” Next, JeffersonHowell, Jr., director of Johnson SpaceCenter (JSC), introduced Na-tional Aeronautics and Space Ad-ministration (NASA) Adminis-trator Michael Griffin, who de-livered the keynote address.

Griffin focused on howthe ISS can contribute most use-fully to accomplishment of theeconomic, political, and nationalsecurity goals set forth in Presi-dent George Bush’s vision forspace exploration. Viewing gov-ernment as the “core provider ofinfrastructure,” Griffin declared,“NASA will build the interstatehighway to go to the Moon andMars.” To that end, the ISS pro-vides a government-funded testbed for learning how to live andwork in space and for promot-ing space commerce. BecauseAmerican taxpayers cannot bearthe financial burden alone, thegovernment must foster morecommercial space investment.Griffin described how NASA

will spend $500 million over the next fewyears to cultivate commercial providersfor such ISS services as crew transporta-tion and cargo delivery. Long-term lo-gistical support for a fully assembled,fully operational ISS is the first definedand sustainable market NASA is givingcommercial space vendors.

Promotion of free-market compe-tition might be crucial to success of thepresident’s vision for space exploration,but we should not neglect public support.NASA Associate Administrator for SpaceOperations William Gerstenmaier ex-plained how the “NASA Means Business”capstone program taps the knowledge,energy, and creativity of students from a

broad range of academic disciplines to ar-ticulate effectively to the general publicthe value of space exploration and itspotential contributions to improvement oflife on Earth. The program, which beganin 1998 under the agency’s Mars pro-gram, has sponsored an annual competi-tion ever since. Teams of graduate andundergraduate students from accreditedU.S. higher education institutions gener-ate short video, radio, print, or web-basedproductions. Winning public service an-nouncement videos were shown beforeeach session of the AAS conference.

Gerstenmaier, joined by WilliamPanter and Kirk Shireman from JSC, pre-sented the first session on achievements

and challenges associated withassembly and utilization of theISS in the Shuttle era and be-yond. Touting the ISS as a testbed for development and demon-stration of capabilities requiredfor human missions to the Moonand Mars, Gerstenmaier admittedthe station’s current systems lackthe robustness needed for the im-pending new age of space explo-ration. He speculated that olderhardware, such as the shuttle’sexternal tank and main engine orthe Saturn launch vehicle, willcontribute to launch and propul-sion systems for lunar and Mar-tian flights. Outlining the manyengineering challenges associatedwith the ISS, Panter saw the larg-est as an effective logistical andmaintenance strategy in the post-Shuttle era. From an ISS opera-tional perspective, Shireman de-scribed challenges with assembly(e.g., shortages of spares and


A captivated audience enjoys a session of the two-day conference. (Source: AAS)

planning for unknowns), internationalpartnerships (e.g., differences in timezones, standards, and shared assets), andcrew size (e.g., shortages of consumableswhen shuttle flights are curtailed). De-spite the station’s many problems andchallenges, the panelists agreed “ISS is aspringboard to many futures.”

Tuesday’s luncheon speaker,Courtney Stadd, former NASA chief ofstaff and current president of CapitolSolutions, sounded a less optimistic noteconcerning current space policy. Hewarned of a “tremendous noise-to-signalratio” when trying to get anyone in Wash-ington, D.C., interested in anything be-sides the war on terrorism. Despite theemergence of a new, extraordinarily com-petent NASA leadership team and a bi-partisan legislative framework in Con-gress, several factors cloud prospects fora bright future: internal accounting prob-lems that work against the validity of costestimates at NASA; congressional com-mittee realignments and rule changes onappropriations; a macro-political environ-ment characterized by massive deficits;uncertainties about any presidential com-mitment to space after the 2008 elections;a “breathtakingly full dance card” forAdministrator Griffin’s team (i.e., Shuttleend of life, ISS assembly, and future crewand heavy-lift launchers); and the possi-bility that advocates of space explorationmight be “out of phase” with Americantaxpayers’ priorities. We can expect to see“Perils of Pauline” survival strategies forsome years to come, warned Stadd, andany misstep could spell a very long hia-tus in U.S. human space exploration. Ifthe nation fails to respond successfully tothis critical turning point in space history,Americans could witness a taikonaut land-ing on the Moon in 2018 and China, atleast symbolically, supplanting U.S. pre-eminence in space.

Session Two entailed an interna-tional discussion of ongoing and plannedresearch aboard the ISS. NASA’s DonaldThomas explained how the president’svision for space exploration has shiftedU.S. priorities from diverse, multidisci-plinary, fundamental research to the study

of astronaut health and protection ofcrews on long-duration missions. NicoleBuckley from the Canadian SpaceAgency (CSA) described how hercountry’s ISS experiments complementwork in areas of the life and physical sci-ences where Canada already excels ter-restrially. Canada’s goal is to achieve amixture of basic and applied research thatwill lead to improvement of life on Earthand safer space travel. Eric Istasse fromthe European Space Agency (ESA) cat-egorized his organization’s ISS research,which presently depends on U.S. andRussian willingness to share resources, asa mixture of one-third physics, one-thirdlife sciences, and one-third planetary ex-ploration. ESA also is harmonizing itsISS experiments with ongoing experimen-tation using drop towers, sounding rock-ets, and Russian Foton capsules. Finally,Masato Koyama from the Japan AerospaceExploration Agency (JAXA) introducedthe Japanese Experiment Module (JEM)“Kibo” and detailed his nation’s five-phase, twenty-year research projection,including three internal experiment rackscurrently awaiting launch and three exter-nal payloads projected for launch in 2008.

Session Three concentrated on howISS systems and operations might con-tribute directly to reduction of explora-

tion risks. The Boeing Company’s An-thony Majoros and Paul Jackson summa-rized how video-based “augmented real-ity,” a technology that merges real-worldimages with computer-generated graph-ics, can enhance mission performance; itcan guide a person step by step through aprocedure, thereby decreasing time re-quired to complete a task, reducing er-rors, and increasing overall safety. Pratt& Whitney Rocketdyne’s Ed Gholdstonreveled in the large areas available on ISSfor testing electrical technologies relatedto power generation, storage, lighting, andpropulsion. Honeywell’s Carlos Garcia-Galan discussed how the success of long-duration missions will depend on han-dling system health or mission manage-ment problems tactically with an autono-mous, spacecraft-based model rather thanstrategically with the traditional, ground-control model. In this regard, ISS can bea test bed for cultivating closer collabo-ration between technology implementa-tion centers and operations centers in as-sessing the merits of specific automatedhealth management proposals. To con-clude, Boeing’s Mark Wilson examinedwhat the ISS experience has taught usabout mitigating contamination ofonboard water systems by microorgan-isms and why design and operational im-


Michael Malin (left), holding his 2005 Sagan Memorial Award, stands with AAS PresidentMark Craig. (Source: AAS)

provements are critically needed lest, toparaphrase Louis Pasteur, the microor-ganisms have the last word.

Moderator Stephen Johnson fromthe Institute for Science and Space Stud-ies at the University of Colorado, Colo-rado Springs, introduced Session Four onintegration challenges in a large-scaleprogram like the ISS. His roundtable in-cluded Kuniaki Shiraki (JAXA), AlanThirkettle (ESA), William Gerstenmaier(NASA), John Elbon (Boeing), BenoitMarcotte (CSA), and NikolaySevastiyanov (RSC-Energia). In one wayor another, all participants identified theimportance of deriving system require-ments from a clearly defined, mutuallyunderstood end product or set of goals,and of remembering to maintain suffi-cient flexibility to adapt as funding lev-els, schedules, or priorities change. Sev-eral mentioned the need to orient con-figuration management to a documentedbaseline, to arrange communicationamong partners in ways that will ensureboth accountability and the free flow ofinformation, and to simplify as much aspossible interfaces and other aspects ofsystem integration. More than one ac-knowledged the benefits of internationalcooperation but pointed to problems

caused by differences in language, cul-ture, technical standards, time zones, andother barriers. Some stressed being ableto “decompose” the program into self-contained, manageable elements or stagesto avoid introduction of artificial prob-lems; processes must be implemented toensure all partners understand and adhereto the division of responsibilities. Shirakitouted the value of a building-block ap-proach over the more traditional lineardevelopment program, and Thirkettlecautioned against developing new technol-ogy as an integral part of any critical path.

Johnson summarized the discussionby asserting that how we integrate thesocial aspects of what we do significantlyaffects a large-scale program’s outcome.The introduction of systems engineeringand integration reduced failure rates from50 to 10 percent; now, the challenge ishow to achieve an even lower failure rateof 1 or, perhaps, 0.1 percent. To accom-plish this, he asserted, we must “use bu-reaucracy to fight bureaucracy.” Becausethe repetitive nature of bureaucracy dead-ens minds and leads to failure, we mustidentify and implement ways to counterthat phenomenon. He hinted thoughtfullythat the key to overcoming bureaucracy’snegative impact on large-scale programs

might lie in answering the question, “Is asystem of systems just another system, oris it something different?”

The awards banquet on Tuesdayevening capped a very full day. JackStuster, vice president at Anacapa Sciencesand author of Bold Endeavors: Lessonsfrom Polar and Space Exploration (Na-val Institute Press, 1996), delivered theaddress. Specializing in the measurementand enhancement of human performancein extreme environments, Stuster seeks toapply lessons about the psychological andbehavioral effects of isolation, confine-ment, and other conditions historicallyassociated with exploration to benefitcrews on future lunar and Martian expe-ditions. Content analysis of records fromthe voyages of Columbus, journals fromthe Lewis and Clark expedition, logs andrecollections from nearly a dozen polarexpeditions during the nineteenth andearly twentieth centuries, and diaries cur-rently being kept by ISS crews suggestsa dip in morale during the third quarterof any expedition, regardless of its length.Furthermore, research indicates that whileconditions vary on any particular expe-dition, the types and relative importanceof problems or issues remain fairly consis-tent, with group interaction being foremost.

To crown the evening, new AASPresident Mark Craig presented the an-nual awards. Charles Elachi, Jet Propul-sion Laboratory (JPL) director, receivedthe prestigious Space Flight Award forapplication of synthetic aperture radar toEarth and planetary remote sensing. Asthe first pilot of a civilian craft,SpaceShipOne, into outer space, MichaelMelvill of Scaled Composites earned theFlight Achievement Award. ThomasGavin’s extensive contributions to all ro-botic missions since 2001 brought himthe W. Randolph Lovelace II Award, andPeter Teets’s leadership of the NationalReconnaissance Office led to his winningthe Military Astronautics Award. TheDirk Brouwer Award went to F. LandisMarkley for his technical expertise onspacecraft attitude and restoration, and theJohn F. Kennedy Astronautics Award wasbestowed on John Logsdon for many years


AAS award recipients, from left to right: John Logsdon, Charles Elachi, Michael Malin,and Peter Teets. (Source: AAS)

of helping the public appreciate and un-derstand the importance of the nation’sspace programs. Ted Gavrilis, presidentof Lockheed Martin Commercial SpaceSystems, received the Industrial Leader-ship Award. For her book Right Stuff,Wrong Sex: America’s First Women inSpace Program (The Johns Hopkins Uni-versity Press, 2004), Margaret Weitekampwon the Eugene M. Emme AstronauticalLiterature Award. Finally, three individu-als became AAS Fellows: ChristopherHall, David Hull, and Srinivas Vadali.

Wednesday morning began withpresentation of the Carl Sagan MemorialAward to geologist Michael Malin, presi-dent of Malin Space Science Systems. Inhis lecture on exploring Mars, the hon-oree explained how imagery from the RedPlanet indicates a unique geologic mor-phology. It is a “complex, complicatedplace,” said Malin. The layering, gullies,and other surface features provide evi-dence of what happened, but exactly howthings happened remains mysterious. “Allthe interpretations you’ve heard at pressconferences have been wrong,” Malincharged, because the terminology associ-ated with the geologic impact of water,wind, weather, and climate has been mis-used. We must ensure, he said, that peoplereceive correct information and hear thebest rationale for truly sustainable, sys-tematic, and extensive robotic and humanexploration of Mars. From Malin’s per-spective, the best rationale is not a searchfor life but, rather, to study the effects ofweather and climate change on Martiangeologic history.

He suggested Antarctic research asa “pretty good” model for justifying andscoping a Mars project because the formerreceives enormous Executive Branch sup-port. If the U.S. presence in Antarcticahas elevated national prestige throughsuccessful pursuit of knowledge, demon-stration of technical capabilities, and pro-motion of international cooperation, ex-ploration of the Red Planet could do thesame. To answer those who might chargethat human expeditions to Mars are tooexpensive, Malin speculated that the costover a decade would be comparable to

what the United States will spend on Ant-arctic research—about $3 billion, with upto 80 percent for infrastructure or logis-tical support and less than 20 percent go-ing to scientific research.

In Session Five, teams of youngengineers from JSC and JPL discussedchallenges that human and robotic explo-ration have in common. Dividing thosechallenges into four categories—avion-ics; entry, descent, and landing (EDL);robotics; and mission operations—thediscussants sought areas of current orpotential JSC-JPL collaboration. For avi-onics, several recommendations emergedto expand beyond radiation research:opening communication via a NASA avi-onics conference, establishing a com-monly accessible database for technologi-cal information, dedicating funds for con-tinued collaborative efforts, piggyback-ing on tests, and employing inter-centerliaisons on specific projects. The EDLteam recommended creation of a NASA-wide EDL working group and found fer-tile ground for collaboration on blunt andslender lifting bodies, powered descent,inflatables, ballistic parachutes, naviga-tion and guidance, simulation tools, andbreak-up or burn-up analysis for humancasualty and hazard risk assessments.

Robotics provides abundant opportunitiesfor collaboration on mechanical, electri-cal, and software issues arising from thedesign, development, and testing of newinterfaces or modules. Despite extensivecooperation on mission operations in thepast, ample room exists for development,and demonstration through a series ofintegrated field tests, of a collaborativehuman-robotic approach to enhance crewperformance on long-duration missions.JSC Deputy Director Robert Cabana con-cluded, “This exercise opened a channelof communication for future exploita-tion,” and JPL’s Andy Mishkin called forpursuing funds to implement the teams’suggestions. When Mishkin recom-mended making JSC-JPL collaborativesessions a regular part of the AAS na-tional conference, new AAS PresidentMark Craig expressed strong support.

Wednesday’s luncheon speaker,James Lewis from the Center for Strate-gic and International Studies, examinedthe “how and why” of Chinese humanspace flight. Led by American-trainedrocket expert Tsien Hsue-shen, the Chi-nese first began planning for human mis-sions in the late 1960s but terminated thateffort a decade later due to its high cost.In 1992, China renewed its human space


NASA Administrator Mike Griffin giving his keynote speech. (Source: NASA)

flight program with a target date for thefirst mission of 1999, the fiftieth anni-versary of the country’s Communist revo-lution. Russia agreed in 1995 to assistChina with data and training, which surelyreduced the risk and time it took the Chi-nese to succeed. Finally, in October 2003,China became the world’s third nationindependently capable of launching ahuman into space.

According to Lewis, the Chinesedo not seek to compete with the UnitedStates in this arena but, rather, want toshow the world generally and their neigh-bors specifically that “China has arrived.”The primary driver behind China’s well-funded program is political symbolism—to demonstrate technological self-relianceand thereby gain prestige and influencein the international community. AlthoughChina has invested immensely in trainingscientists and engineers and has pro-gressed markedly in building a strongtechnological base, Lewis thinks its po-litical culture, legal and financial system,along with programmatic compartmen-talization, work against innovation andretard progress.

After lunch, Session Six focusedon possible commercial participation in

human space flight programs. UniversalSpace Network President JosephRothenberg emphasized that commercial-ization generally involves multiple pro-viders offering products or services in acompetitive market containing multiplecustomers. This is very different fromprivatization, where industry takes overa service from NASA and sells it back toNASA. According to Rothenberg, pastexperience reveals several challenges tocommercialization in space: the govern-ment is an unreliable customer in termsof funding and scheduling; the govern-ment has limited experience in commer-cial contracting; and industry has a poorperformance record when the governmenthas sought services. Art Dula, chief ex-ecutive officer of Excalibur Almaz Ltd.,said two key questions—how to raisecapital and how to mitigate risk—mustbe answered before commercial successcan occur. If NASA would accept andfollow the Commercial Space Act of1998, he asserted, commercializationmight work. Placing even stronger em-phasis on risk mitigation, Charles Millerof Constellation Services International onthe Isle of Man explained how his com-pany, through proven performance on a

privately funded, fixed-price deal withNASA for development of an ISS cargo-delivery concept, hopes to use NASA asan “anchor tenant” to attract other, morerisk-averse customers. EchoingRothenberg, Miller cautioned that the big-gest challenge to commercial success is a“culture gap” between how companies dothings to achieve a return on investmentand how NASA normally procures things.

The sixth session continued withMichael Bain from SPACEHAB toutinghis company’s success in solving—at one-fifth the government’s estimated cost fora similar capability—NASA’s problem ofinsufficient room for hundreds of experi-ments aboard the shuttle. Because ap-proximately twenty flights since 1993cost less than one-half the government’sestimate for just the first four flights,SPACEHAB realized a significant returnon its initial $184-million investment andmanaged to go public with fund raising.Although SPACEHAB envisions an ex-panded number of customers, Bain ad-mitted that government customers—civiland military—currently are essential tothe company’s survival.

Chris Stott, chief executive officerof ManSat Ltd., a commercial satellitecommunications provider based on theIsle of Man, thinks the business modeland the regulatory environment are mostimportant to commercial success. Usingthe East India or Hudson’s Bay Companymodel, ManSat has received the “sole andexclusive” contract to develop space forthe Isle of Man government. The currentregulatory environment for outer spaceis unfavorable for commercial ventures,however, and ought to move toward a“private property regime.” Stott’s com-pany seeks support to establish that kindof regime in space law. Summarizing thesession, Rothenberg observed that trueintegration of government and commer-cial interests in space exploration hingeson industry risking investment and on thegovernment trusting commercial serviceproviders.

Prospects for international coop-eration on human space flight projectssupplied the focus for Session Seven.


The audience poses questions during the conference. (Source: AAS)

Peggy Finarelli from International SpaceUniversity (ISU) and Ian Pryke fromGeorge Mason University, both of whomparticipated in the April 2005 StrasbourgWorkshop on “Structuring Global Inter-national Cooperation in Space Explora-tion,” pointed out obvious political, eco-nomic, and technological advantages tosuch partnering. They also found suchdisadvantages as greater managementcomplexity and the possibility of one na-tion being held hostage to the broaderforeign policy agendas of others. Becausenations perceive their interests differ-ently, they need not agree on a commonrationale for cooperation, only on a com-mon solution. Describing the workshop’soutcome, Pryke said the traditional ap-proach of negotiating roles and responsi-bilities at a project’s outset will not suf-fice in future, cooperative efforts to ex-plore the Moon and Mars. The latter willbe a complex, open-ended set of activi-ties, not a single project or monolithicprogram. Consequently, to advance hu-man space flight beyond Earth orbit, headvocates a “program of programs” para-digm containing two tiers—individualnational or multilateral explorationprojects; and a broad, flexible, interna-tional coordination structure to integratethose efforts globally. This concept envi-sions a more genuine, egalitarian partner-ship—not one characterized by U.S.domination.

Picking up on the conferencetheme, ISU President Michael Simpsonpostulated that the real challenge lies inbuilding “a bridge big enough for all ofus.” The past has taught us the bridge mustbe international, intercultural, and inter-disciplinary. It also must be dynamic, con-tinually renewed by elements of historyyet to be made; it must beintergenerational, drawing on the wisdomof the past and the enthusiasm of thepresent to lead spacefarers toward a pur-poseful future. Education can bridge gen-erations, and that is why ISU takes pridein having graduated 2,400 individualsfrom ninety-one countries during its eigh-teen-year existence.

Two earlier speakers, AlanThirkettle and Nikolay Sevastiyanov, alsojoined this session. Thirkettle identifiedthe desire for independent access to hu-man space flight as a force driving ESAtoward cooperation with Roscosmos toproduce the Kliper space shuttle, whichcould be launched from Baikonur orKourou. Probing deeper into the natureof cooperation, Sevastiyanov perceivedthree structured ways it occurs: integratedinternational programs (e.g., ISS); inde-pendent national programs with interna-tional participation (e.g., European Au-tomatic Transfer Vehicle and Kliper); andinternational commercial programs (e.g.,Sea Launch International and RSC-Energia’s Yamal communications satel-lite). Regardless of cooperative struc-tures, he concluded that pooling politicalinterests, economic resources and, aboveall, intellects will allow human explora-tion beyond Earth orbit.

In the final session, teams from theStudents for the Exploration and Devel-opment of Space organization presentedto the audience and a panel of NASAjudges proposals for using the ISS as anexploration mission test bed in four tech-nical areas—robotics, habitability, main-tenance, and life support/medicine. Therobotics team offered two concepts, anAdvanced Robotic Maintenance Systemand an “Astrobot” network, to reduce

human performance of simple tasks andto increase crew safety. For improvinghabitability, a second team articulated a“virtual Earth” concept that included aterrestrial-environment simulator, a “win-dow” view, and family interaction. An-other team proposed improving mainte-nance through data mining, increased in-side vehicular activity, more reliance onrobotic systems for extravehicular activ-ity, reduction of spares inventory throughstandardization of some parts (e.g., fas-teners) and on-station manufacture of oth-ers. The fourth team designed an easilyscaleable, hydroponic system featuringhexagonal packing to double the ratio ofsurface area to volume and fiber-optic“curtains” for the collection and distri-bution of ambient solar light, along witha storage/fixation bay for preserving har-vested plants. By a single point, the judgesselected the life support/medicine team’sproposal over the maintenance team’s ideas.

While the judges were deliberat-ing, Boeing geologist Kurt Klaus enter-tained the audience with tales from his“voluntary time in hell”—a fifteen-daysimulated visit to the Red Planet by anengineering and science team at the MarsDesert Research Station (MDRS) nearHanksville, Utah. Seeking to better un-derstand the environmental, engineering,psychological, and physiological chal-lenges for humans during actual explora-


TUESDAY, MARCH 14, 2006

Welcome and Introduction: Mark Craig, SAIC - AAS President

Introduction of Keynote Speaker: Edward Weiler, Director, NASAGoddard Space Flight Center

Keynote Address: Michael Griffin, NASA Administrator

Session 1: Exploration and the VisionThe architecture to enable the vision for space exploration beginswith a return to the Moon before the end of the next decade, goingfrom sorties to full outposting. The Constellation program is thefirst step and core activity to implement the vision.

Luncheon Speaker: Senator Kay Bailey Hutchison, R-TX (invited)

Session 2: Exploring with Humans and Robots – The Synergy ofHuman and Robotic ExplorationHuman and robotic exploration has made significant contributionsto understanding our universe. This synergy is essential forenabling the vision for human exploration beyond low Earth orbit.

Session 3: Engineering the Exploration – The Challenge ofSystems EngineeringThe vision provides the long-term goals that will challenge ourengineering systems to operate with a blend of proven and newtechnology. Learning from the past successes and failures of spaceexploration system engineering is essential to creating a robustexploration architecture to meet these goals.

Session 4: Engineering Innovation and the VisionEven as we build upon and modify what has come before, the visionrequires that we continually consider new ideas and alternateapproaches to developing new technologies, systems, and missions.

Reception

WEDNESDAY, MARCH 15, 2006

Keynote Address: John H. Marburger, III, Director, Office of Scienceand Technology Policy (invited)

Session 5: Future Human Capital Needs of the VisionIt is important to identify the capabilities that will satisfy thehuman capital needs that ensure a future workforce to executethe vision. The human capital required to enable the visionencompasses committed leadership in government,academia, and industry.

Luncheon Speaker: Miles O’Brien, CNN Anchor (invited)

Session 6: Science is ExplorationHuman exploration seeks the unknown. Robots take dayswhere humans take minutes to make scientific measurements.Going where no human has gone before in the pursuit ofscience is the heart of the exploration vision.

Session 7: Exploration is ScienceLike science, exploration is an adventure in gaining newknowledge. Exploration provides strategic knowledge andcapabilities that allow opportunities for science. As humansexplore, we need to understand what we have found, where itcame from, and how it relates to where we are in our Earthand space science research efforts.

Full Registration: includes all sessions, continentalbreakfasts, refreshment breaks, two luncheons, andreception.

AAS Member ...............................................$350Non-Member / Renewing Member ............$435U.S. Government / Academia .....................$275One-Day Registration ................................$220

Special Registration: includes all sessions,continental breakfasts, refreshment breaks, andreception. (Luncheons are not included, but ticketsmay be purchased for $40 each.)

Student (full-time) / Teacher (K-12) ................. $30Retired (over 65 and not employed full-time) ..... $75Press (with credentials) ........................ No Charge

44th Robert H. Goddard Memorial Symposium(visit www.astronautical.org for program updates and online registration)

tion of Mars, all-male (Leonardo) and all-female (Mona Lisa) crews ventured outin analog-pressurized rovers to explorethe terrain, collect soil samples, photo-graph rocks, and observe cloud forma-tions. Crewmembers reported their find-ings via e-mail to a command centerstaffed by Mars Society scientists. Theyalso participated in a comparative studyof behavioral characteristics in theLeonardo and Mona Lisa teams. Finally,they contributed to a study of the relative

comfort levels of two types of spacesuits:the MDRS variety simulating gas-pres-surization (as currently used by NASAastronauts) and the MarsSkin physical-compression suit. They also evaluated theutility of MDRS and MarsSkin helmetsand gloves. All crewmembers found theMarsSkin suit more comfortable, with thegloves allowing especially good flexibility.

Briefly summarizing the confer-ence, AAS President Mark Craig re-minded listeners of its theme—Building

Bridges to Exploration. He describedGriffin’s keynote address on Tuesdaymorning and the team reports in SessionEight as “anchors at each end of a bridge.”The discussions between the anchors heperceived as “pylons” marking the en-trance or approach to a new era in humanspace flight. ■___________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

Rick W. Sturdevant is deputy com-mand historian at Air Force Space Com-mand in Colorado Springs, Colorado.



Reviewed by Mark Williamson

Space Tourism: Adventures inEarth Orbit and Beyond

Space Tourism: Adventures in Earth Or-bit and Beyond by Michel van Pelt.Chichester/New York: Praxis Publishing/Copernicus Books, 2005. 217 pages.ISBN: 0-3874-0213-6. $27.50 (hard-back).

With recent events such as the win-ning of the Ansari X Prize and the found-ing of new private human space flightcompanies, space tourism is becoming anaccepted sub-genre in space book pub-lishing. Written by Michel van Pelt, anengineer with some experience in design-ing – if not actually producing – reus-able spaceplanes, Space Tourism is an in-dication of what to expect from thisemerging area.

According to the author, the bookis aimed at those who dream about cir-cling the Earth and those who are curi-ous to know why others do. Its non-tech-nical nature should make it accessible toanyone. Indeed, some chapters are writ-ten in the form of a narrative describingthe experience of space flight. These“imaginative scenarios” are printed in adifferent typeface and set in gray boxesto distinguish them from the rest of thebook. In addition to black-and-white pho-

NOTES ON A NEW BOOK

tos, the book includes an eight-page colorinsert.

The book begins, conventionallyenough, with a section on selecting as-tronauts for space flight but quicklymoves on to the recent history of spacetourism and some of the proposals fornew spacecraft. However, perhaps asan indication of the speed at which themarket is developing, it contains no de-tails of the recent agreement between Ri-chard Branson’s Virgin Galactic spacetourism venture and Scaled Composites,developer of Ansari X Prize-winningspacecraft SpaceShipOne, as the book waswritten before the completion of theAnsari X Prize competition. And as faras pictures are concerned, it gives equalcoverage to SpaceShipOne, the UnitedKingdom’s Starchaser project, and theXerus spaceplane from XCOR Aerospace,the latter two of which are so far unproven.

Predictably, much of the book re-fers to space history as opposed to “spacefuture,” contrasting the way things havebeen done in the past with the way theymight be done in future. This is a goodtactic to use for an audience which forthe most part needs convincing that spacetourism is possible, but it means that much

of the book is not actually aboutspace tourism. This indicates that theprobable market for the book is not spaceprofessionals but the lay audience beyond.

Naturally enough, the author can-not resist the obligatory sections on eat-ing, sleeping, and sex in space (which heheads “Space Loving”). The text here islittered with the usual euphemisms, suchas “cosmonauts getting a bit too interac-tive” and “orbital lovers [experiencing]rendezvous and docking problems” – ahabit that is bound to continue until thesubject is given a proper airing. Indeed(at the risk of dwelling on the subject my-self), natural human interest means that,one day, a manual of “recommended tech-niques” will have to be produced. Accord-ing to the author, for example, the use of“special four-legged shorts” has alreadybeen suggested, while others propose avariety of straps, loops, and even “spe-cial furniture and fittings to help peopleto stay together.” The mind boggles!

If nothing else, the inclusion of thisrelatively small section proves that spacetourism is a human interest story. If youwant an easy read on the general pros-pects for space tourism, then this couldbe a book for you. Personally, I look for-ward to a book about the systems, tech-nologies, and policies for actual spacetourism – and, of course, that all-impor-tant users’ manual. ■___________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

Mark Williamson is an independentspace technology consultant and author.

AAS Volunteers NeededYour help is requested! Three important committees will meet later this year,and each is critical to the work of AAS. The awards committee reviewsnominations for ten major AAS annual awards and selects worthy candidatesfor election by the Board. The Fellows committee reviews candidates for theannual Fellows election; 415 distinguished men and women have been chosenfor this honor since 1954. Finally, the nominations committee develops aslate of officer and director candidates for election by the membership.Although the AAS president selects the committee chairs, membership ofeach is open to AAS members. If you are interested in serving as a committeemember, please contact the AAS office at [email protected].


Astrometry’s Next LeapContinued from page 13

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For its part, the USNO has already gone back to thedrawing board. In May 2005, the USNO submitted a proposalto NASA for a concept study for a mission it calls the OriginsBillion Star Survey. As a follow-on to Gaia, the Origins surveywould also position itself at L2, observing down to twenty-secondmagnitude, two magnitudes fainter than Gaia. Even so, themission remains unfunded.

Perryman thinks astrometry’s post-Gaia future may lie inan astrometry mission capable of detecting all Earth-mass plan-ets out to some 320 light years. That sort of capability is yearsover the horizon. At present, there are only a few astrometricmissions being planned or even being discussed. The Japanesehave mentioned mounting an infrared astrometric mission tosurvey stars normally obscured by dust along the Milky Way’scrowded galactic plane. But other than Gaia, the only fundedspace-based astrometric mission is NASA’s Space Interferom-etry Mission (SIM), due for launch no earlier than 2013. SIM isprimarily a planet-finding mission, yet it will also provide par-allaxes of stars down to four micro-arcseconds at distances outto 80,000 light years. That’s three arcseconds better than Gaia,and in a whole new paradigm from Hipparcos. A little astrometricrivalry never hurt anyone. ■___________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

Bruce Dorminey, author of Distant Wanderers: The Searchfor Planets beyond the Solar System (Copernicus Books/Springer-Verlag, 2001), is a science journalist who covers aerospace andastronomy.

2006 Space EventsMarch 5-8 – Earth & Space 2006 “Engineering,Construction, and Operations in ChallengingEnvironments” at the South Shore Harbour Resort,Houston, Texas. www.asce.org/conference/space06

April 24-27 – 4th Responsive Space Conference“Pulling It Together” at the LAX Westin Hotel,Los Angeles, California. www.responsivespace.com

April 24-28 – Introductory Space Course at theInternational Space University campus, Strasbourg,France. www.isunet.edu

May 4-7 – International Space DevelopmentConference sponsored by the National SpaceSociety and The Planetary Society at the SheratonGateway Hotel, Los Angeles, California.www.isdc.nss.org/2006

May 20 – Team America Rocketry Challenge atThe Plains, Virginia. www.aia-aerospace.org/aianews/features/team_america

July 17-21 – GPS/GNSS Symposium sponsoredby the International Global Navigation SatelliteSystems (IGNSS) Society at the Holiday Inn Surf-ers Paradise, Queensland, Australia. www.ignss.org

September 19-21 – Space 2006 Conference “TheValue Proposition for Space – Security, Discovery,Prosperity” at the San Jose Convention Center, SanJose, California. [email protected]

November 9-11 – Space Vision 2006 Students forthe Exploration and Development of Space (SEDS)3rd National Conference at the University of CentralFlorida in Orlando. www.seds.org


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UPCOMING EVENTS

*AAS Cosponsored Meetings

March 14–15, 200644th Robert H. GoddardMemorial Symposium“Eighty Years After Robert Goddard’sFirst Rocket Flight: Engineers,Scientists, and the Vision”Greenbelt Mariott HotelGreenbelt, Marylandwww.astronautical.org

June 8–10, 2006*Student CanSat CompetitionWashington, D.C., areawww.cansatcompetition.com

August 21–24, 2006*AIAA/AAS AstrodynamicsSpecialist Conference and ExhibitKeystone Resort & Conference CenterKeystone, Coloradowww.aiaa.org

AAS Events ScheduleAAS CORPORATE MEMBERSa.i. solutions, Inc.The Aerospace CorporationAir Force Institute of TechnologyAnalytical Graphics, Inc.ArianespaceAuburn UniversityBall Aerospace & Technologies Corp.Braxton Technologies, Inc.The Boeing CompanyCarnegie Institution of WashingtonComputer Sciences CorporationGeneral Dynamics C4 SystemsGeorge Mason University / CAPRGottfried International, Inc.Honeywell, Inc.Honeywell Technology Solutions, Inc.Jacobs SverdrupJet Propulsion LaboratoryKinetXLockheed Martin CorporationMitretek SystemsNorthrop Grumman Space TechnologyOrbital Sciences CorporationRaytheonSpace Systems/LoralSpaceVestSwales AerospaceThe Tauri GroupTechnica, Inc.Texas A&M UniversityUnivelt, Inc.Universal Space NetworkUniversity of FloridaUtah State Univ. / Space Dynamics Lab.Virginia Polytechnic Inst. & State Univ.Women in AerospaceWyle Laboratories

November 14–15, 2006AAS National Conference and53rd Annual MeetingPasadena HiltonPasadena, Californiawww.astronautical.org

January 28 – February 1, 2007*AAS/AIAA Space FlightMechanics Winter MeetingHilton Sedona Resort & SpaSedona, Arizonawww.space-flight.org

January 31 – February 4, 200730th AAS Guidance andControl ConferenceBeaver Run ResortBreckenridge, Coloradowww.aas-rocky-mountain-section.org

See pages 20-21for details!

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