NASA Decides to Bring Starliner Spacecraft Back to Earth Without Crew

Aug 24, 2024

NASA will return Boeing’s Starliner to Earth without astronauts Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams aboard the spacecraft, the agency announced Saturday.

The uncrewed return allows NASA and Boeing to continue gathering testing data on Starliner during its upcoming flight home, while also not accepting more risk than necessary for its crew.

Wilmore and Williams, who flew to the International Space Station in June aboard NASA’s Boeing Crew Flight Test, have been busy supporting station research, maintenance, and Starliner system testing and data analysis, among other activities.

“Spaceflight is risky, even at its safest and most routine. A test flight, by nature, is neither safe, nor routine.

The decision to keep Butch and Suni aboard the International Space Station and bring Boeing’s Starliner home uncrewed is the result of our commitment to safety: our core value and our North Star,” said NASA Administrator Bill Nelson.

“I’m grateful to both the NASA and Boeing teams for all their incredible and detailed work.”

Wilmore and Williams will continue their work formally as part of the Expedition 71/72 crew through February 2025.

They will fly home aboard a Dragon spacecraft with two other crew members assigned to the agency’s SpaceX Crew-9 mission.

Starliner is expected to depart from the space station and make a safe, controlled autonomous re-entry and landing in early September.

NASA and Boeing identified helium leaks and experienced issues with the spacecraft reaction control thrusters on June 6 as Starliner approached the space station.

Since then, engineering teams have completed a significant amount of work, including reviewing a collection of data, conducting flight and ground testing, hosting independent reviews with agency propulsion experts, and developing various return contingency plans.

The uncertainty and lack of expert concurrence does not meet the agency’s safety and performance requirements for human spaceflight, thus prompting NASA leadership to move the astronauts to the Crew-9 mission.

“Decisions like this are never easy, but I want to commend our NASA and Boeing teams for their thorough analysis, transparent discussions, and focus on safety during the Crew Flight Test,” said Ken Bowersox, associate administrator for NASA’s Space Operations Mission Directorate.

“We’ve learned a lot about the spacecraft during its journey to the station and its docked operations.

We also will continue to gather more data about Starliner during the uncrewed return and improve the system for future flights to the space station.”

Starliner is designed to operate autonomously and previously completed two uncrewed flights. NASA and Boeing will work together to adjust end-of-mission planning and Starliner’s systems to set up for the uncrewed return in the coming weeks.

Starliner must return to Earth before the Crew-9 mission launches to ensure a docking port is available on station.

“Starliner is a very capable spacecraft and, ultimately, this comes down to needing a higher level of certainty to perform a crewed return,” said Steve Stich, manager of NASA’s Commercial Crew Program.

“The NASA and Boeing teams have completed a tremendous amount of testing and analysis, and this flight test is providing critical information on Starliner’s performance in space.

Our efforts will help prepare for the uncrewed return and will greatly benefit future corrective actions for the spacecraft.”

NASA’s Commercial Crew Program requires spacecraft fly a crewed test flight to prove the system is ready for regular flights to and from the space station.

Following Starliner’s return, the agency will review all mission-related data to inform what additional actions are required to meet NASA’s certification requirements.

The agency’s SpaceX Crew-9 mission, originally slated with four crew members, will launch no earlier than Tuesday, Sept. 24.

The agency will share more information about the Crew-9 complement when details are finalized.

https://www.nasa.gov/news-release/nasa-decides-to-bring-starliner-spacecraft-back-to-earth-without-crew/

Bonkers Plan Calls for Making Elon Musk Head of NASA

Aug 24, 8:15 AM

SpaceX CEO Elon Musk and former president Donald Trump's relationship has been rocky, to say the least. The pair have butted heads for years.

But now that Musk has somehow emerged as Trump's number-one fan, the situation is looking dramatically different.

When asked by Reuters earlier this week whether he would consider appointing Musk to a cabinet or advisory role, Trump had a straightforward answer.

"He's a very smart guy," he said. "I certainly would, if he would do it, I certainly would. He's a brilliant guy."

Musk appeared to be amused by the suggestion, tweeting "I am willing to serve" in response.

An AI-generated picture appended to the tweet imagined the mercurial CEO as the head of the fictitious "Department of Government Efficiency."

To some, that wouldn't be going far enough. In a divisive opinion piece published in the Wall Street Journal, historian and author Arthur Herman argued that Musk should be made the head of — no, we are not kidding — NASA.

"The right choice for Mr. Musk’s talents and vision is obvious," Herman wrote.

Needless to say, it's a harebrained idea that could doom the space agency.

For one, Musk's well-documented hatred of government intervention — despite his space venture relying on billions of dollars worth of government contracts — should disqualify him.

And even ignoring the preposterous conflict of interest of running the agency responsible for bankrolling SpaceX, there's the sheer lack of time he'd be able to commit to running NASA.

Musk is already spread incredibly thin across his ventures, and he's garnered a reputation for poor time management, causing some of his ventures to atrophy while his attention is taken up by micromanaging other businesses.

In other words, Musk has far too much on his plate already — so appointing him to a high-up government position likely wouldn't end well.

According to Herman, Musk would "breathe new life into an agency struggling to rediscover its sense of national purpose."

But whether NASA even needs to do that remains debatable.

The agency has pushed hard in its renewed efforts to return humans to the Moon as part of its Artemis program and has been rallying behind the development of cutting-edge space observation technologies, like the agency's groundbreaking James Webb Space Telescope.

Herman also cites the ongoing Starliner crisis as a reason for NASA being "in shambles."

"NASA staff are weighed down by a bureaucratic agenda that seems more interested in meeting diversity, equity and inclusion requirements than advancing America in space," he wrote, referencing a common regressive talking point.

Needless to say, arguing that the space agency's downfall is due to its DEI practices is downright racist and highlights the kind of rhetoric Musk himself has used during his own racist tirades on X-formerly-Twitter.

While it's fair to say that NASA has been bogged down by bureaucracy, pinning its failings on its DEI practices perhaps highlights Herman's real intentions: pushing a private industry-first and highly politicized, pro-Trump agenda.

Is Musk really the man for the job, who could "inspire a new generation of explorers and entrepreneurs," as Herman suggests?

Given his abhorrent behavior and impulsive way of thinking, Musk could prove highly destabilizing if he were in charge of the space agency.

And that's the very last thing NASA needs right now: a polarizing figure that would prove far more of a source of distraction than some much-needed consistency in leadership.

Besides, Musk's mocking tone in his recent tweet about being "willing to serve" suggests he'd be unlikely to accept such an offer anyway.

https://futurism.com/plan-making-elon-musk-head-nasa

>>21479743

https://atlantadailyworld.com/2024/08/25/nasas-legendary-mathematician-katherine-johnson-honored-with-humanitarian-of-all-mankind-award/

NASA’s Legendary Mathematician Katherine Johnson Honored With Humanitarian Of All Mankind Award

August 25, 2024

Fred Outten, President and Founder of ASEP (Acknowledging Special Events and Projects), announced today that “NASA’s Legendary mathematician, Katherine Johnson, has been selected to receive ASEP’s ‘Humanitarian of All Mankind (HOAM)’ Award (posthumously).”

Katherine Johnson, (b. 8/26/1918) who sadly passed away on February 24, 2020, would have turned 106 years old on August 26, 2024.

“As we reflect on the life of Katherine Johnson, known as the Woman of the 20th Century, we are reminded of her incredible contribution to this nation and especially to the U.S. Space program as one of the many African American women who faced racial discrimination, known as the Human Computers, in the early days of the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics (NACA), renamed as the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), at the Langley Research Center in Hampton, Virginia,” Outten said.

A brilliant African American mathematician, Katherine Johnson was a child protégé who reached high school at age 10, entered college at age 15, and graduated summa cum laude with Bachelor of Science degrees in mathematics and French at age 18.

She started her career as a teacher and even chose to make uniforms for the school’s majorettes because the hand-me-downs from the white schools were in such ruined condition.

She was asked and accepted the challenge of being one of the three “Negro” students (and the only woman) to integrate West Virginia University’s graduate program.

She later began her stellar 33-year career in aviation and aerospace upon her arrival at NACA in 1953. It is said that the Wright Brothers’ and Katherine Johnson’s contributions to aviation are forever linked.

Perhaps one of Katherine Johnson’s most extraordinary, yet hidden, pioneering contributions to aviation history is her research in 1954, that helped to prevent wake turbulence accidents at a time of the need to address crowded air safety concerns stemming from an accident that involved a small Piper propeller plane that unexpectedly simply fell out of the sky and crashed to the ground.

Her months of lengthy and tedious research and other similar investigations ultimately led to permanent changes in air traffic regulations mandating minimum distances between flight paths to prevent wake turbulence accidents.

Katherine Johnson’s research has saved countless lives nationally and globally to this day every time one boards an airplane!

At NASA, Katherine Johnson’s unprecedented mathematical calculations of orbital mechanics, calculating trajectories, were critical to the success of the first and subsequent U.S.-crewed spaceflights, including for the Apollo missions.

By 1958, Johnson had contributed to “Notes on Space Technology,” the space agency’s first comprehensive reference document on space flight. By 1959, she had prepared a trajectory analysis for a crewed suborbital flight.

In 1960, she co-authored the research report, “Determination of Azimuth Angle at Burnout for Placing a Satellite Over a Selected Earth Position,” laying out the equations that would form the basis of that crewed orbital space flight of John Glenn’s Friendship 7 mission on February 20, 1962. Katherine was asked to verify the calculations when electronic computers at NASA were used to calculate the orbit.

Glenn personally asked that Johnson hand-check the trajectory equations input into the IBM 7090 computer. Glenn is quoted, “Get the girl to check the numbers.”

If she says the numbers are good, he told them, I’m ready to go, thereby trusting Katherine’s calculations over the computer system!

Prior to John Glenn’s orbital flight, Katherine Johnson calculated the trajectory for Alan Shepard’s Freedom 7 mission, the second person and first American spaceflight on May 5, 1961.

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>>21479815

Katherine Johnson also helped to calculate the trajectory for the successful Apollo 11 landing on the moon on July 20, 1969, and its safe return to earth on July 24, 1969.

She contributed calculations to the parking orbit of Apollo 11’s command and service module during that first crewed Moon landing.

Her work helped fulfill President John F. Kennedy’s dream to win the Space Race against the Soviet Union at a time when our nation was caught up in an exceedingly dangerous race for space during the Cold War with the then #1 World Power, the Soviet Union (now Russia).

It was a time when the Soviet’s Premier, Nikita Khrushchev, threatened to “bury” America. A time when the threat of nuclear annihilation through an Atomic War was very real!

Katherine Johnson spent the latter years of her career working on the Space Shuttle program and Earth Resources Satellite as well as on plans for a mission to Mars. Her work continues to be used to further the continued success of space exploration to this day.

Ms. Johnson never forgot her roots as an educator by responding to invitations to visit classrooms where she inspired students about the role of mathematics in her life, and when she became too frail to go to them, students came to her to be inspired by her extraordinary life.

Among her many honors, Katherine Johnson was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom by President Barack Obama on November 24, 2015, who among her many achievements, cited her as a pioneering example of African American women in STEM.

Ms. Johnson was also awarded the Congressional Gold Medal in 2019. On March 23, 2024, Women in Aviation International (WAI) inducted Katherine Johnson (posthumously) into their International Pioneer Hall of Fame for the Class of 2024 in Orlando, Florida.

And on September 14, 2024, Katherine Johnson will be enshrined (posthumously) into the National Aviation Hall of Fame in Dayton, Ohio.

Katherine Johnson’s story was untold for much too long! Despite the many awards and accolades she has received, including a book and movie of the same name,

Hidden Figures, her story and contributions to our nation and indeed the world remain too seldom recognized by the general public and by institutions.

“Given the current efforts to obscure, distort, ignore, and remove Black history from our educational system and society overall, we must keep Katherine Johnson’s story and her accomplishments at the forefront of our nation’s history throughout the year and especially as we honor her memory on the anniversary of her birthday every August 26th,” said Outten.

“Katherine Johnson’s lifetime achievements contributed to aviation safety and helped broaden the scope of space travel, charting new frontiers for humanity’s exploration of space and creating new possibilities for all humankind.

She inspired countless students to learn about the benefits of STEM. For these reasons, ASEP believes that Katherine Johnson is most deserving of this prestigious HOAM Award,” said Outten.

The HOAM award will be forwarded for inclusion in Katherine Johnson’s archives housed at the West Virginia University Libraries/West Virginia and Regional History Center.

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Fireball — seen from several states —traveled 51,000 mph, NASA says. See its path

August 23, 2024 5:12 PM

A fireball blazing through the sky the night of Aug. 22 was spotted across several states, NASA said. Over 200 people in 13 states — Alabama, Georgia, Illinois, Indiana, Kentucky, Michigan, Missouri, North Carolina, Ohio, South Carolina, Tennessee, Virginia and West Virginia — could see the fireball around 9:45 p.m. Eastern time.

The “bright” meteor, however, only flew approximately 30 miles over the Kentucky skies, according to an Aug. 23 Facebook post from NASA Meteor Watch.

Visibility started at about 53 miles above Clementsville in central Kentucky, barreling at a speed of 51,000 mph southwest of the town, NASA said.

The fiery meteor traveled about 30 miles to the town of Exie before it disintegrated, according to the post.

“The breakup of the fireball unleashed an energy of about 10 tons of TNT, which generated a pressure wave that traveled to the ground; this wave is responsible for the noises heard by some eyewitnesses,” NASA said. Officials say the fireball originated from a meteoroid that was about 20 inches in diameter, weighing in at 400 pounds.

It is unknown if meteorites were on the ground, according to the post. Exie is about a 40-mile drive southwest of Clementsville, which is about a 70-mile drive southwest of Lexington.

https://www.kentucky.com/news/state/kentucky/article291385560.html

Not earthquake, but possibly a meteorite

Sunday, 25 August 2024, 11:27

Did you feel it? Did you hear it?

Unconfirmed reports have been doing the rounds of a possible meteorite or satellite that hit close to the Patensie area, causing people to think there might have been an earthquake.

According to Weather Guru, a Facebook page run by Garth Sampson, a former employee of the South African Weather Service, although it’s unclear exactly what happened, it was definitely not an earthquake.

Residents in the Mossel Bay area said they had heard two loud bang noises this morning, as dit another resident in Great Brak.

Weather Guru said: “My rainfall group in the Langkloof started reporting what sounded like an earthquake.

Later reports came through of what seems to look like a meteor or satellite.

It apparently hit in the Patensie area.”

He said a video had been doing rounds on many groups and was sent to Weather Guru by Tsitsikamaboertjie from Assagaaibosch.

https://www.knysnaplettherald.com/News/Article/Local-News/not-earthquake-but-possibly-a-meteorite-202408251140