On June 19, NASA unveiled an upgraded Payload Operations Integration Center at the Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Ala. (Credit: NASA/Emmett Given)

By Jessica Eagan
NASA International Space Station Program Science Office

It’s a place that’s familiar to most. Hollywood has splashed it across the big screen in many movies: the Mission Control Center at NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston — where flight controllers carry out NASA’s human spaceflight missions, whether they involve human footprints on the moon or experiments aboard the International Space Station.

Although it is not as well known, there is another control center about 770 miles east of Johnson. The newly upgraded Payload Operations Integration Center (POIC) at NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Ala., manages all the science aboard the space station.

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NASA Deputy Administrator Lori Garver has confirmed a NASA Watch report that she will be leaving the space agency in September after four controversial years. Garver has been a hero to the NewSpace community for pushing commercial space initiatives at the agency. Less than two weeks ago, she was welcomed warmly by members of the Space Frontier Foundation at the NewSpace 2013 Conference in San Jose, Calif. Critics have been […]

I just want to thank everyone who has responded to Parabolic Arc’s fund-raising campaign. I have been very touched by the generosity of all those who have made contributions. Some contributions have been very large, others small. All of them have been great appreciated. I am in the process of sending out personal thank-you notes to everyone who has responded. If you haven’t received one yet, you will soon. I […]

Deputy NASA Administrator Lori Garver

In this third and final excerpt from the NewSpace 2013 conference, NASA Deputy Administrator Lori Garver answers reporters’ questions about the future of the International Space Station, cargo services to the orbiting facility, and experiments being done there.

Q. But, do you have any more Progress cargos going up next year?

Garver: Oh, we’re not going with Progress anymore….We’re not going with the Russians anymore, it turns out we’ve got U.S. capability.

Q. It just seems like the U.S. capability is only starting to get a little finger nail hold on it, and it feels a little unstable to me to be stopping the Progress cargo before you’ve got that finally going. Cygnus hasn’t even gone operational yet, they’re still demonstrating.

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Holy shi’ski! The rocket…it go KABOOMSKI! (Credit: Tsenki TV)

Russia’s troubled Proton rocket is set to re-enter service in September after investigators determined the causes of a failure that destroyed three satellites. The Rockot launch vehicle also will fly again during the same month using a failure-prone upper stage motor officials say has been fixed.

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Deputy Prime Minister Dmitry Rogozin. (Credit: A. Savin)

The Russian space agency Roscosmos has no capacity for strategic planning, is failing at the key task of launching rockets that it has set for itself, is unable to enforce any sort of labor discipline in the industry, and should probably be folded into a larger organization that would encompass both space and aviation.

So says Deputy Prime Minister Dmitry Rogozin, the aerospace and defense czar responsible for overhauling those two bloated, inefficient and deeply troubled sectors.

“There are no specialists who have experience in strategic planning to develop the space industry and ensure its reliability,” Rogozin said at a special meeting devoted to the Proton-M crash.

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This week on The Space Show with David Livingston: 1. Monday, August 5, 2013, 2-3:30 PM PDT (5-6:30 PM EDT, 4-5:30 PM CDT): We welcome back DR. JEFF FOUST of The Space Review (www.thespacereview.com) and www.spacepolitics.com. 2. Tuesday, August 6, 2013, 7-8:30 PM PDT (10-11:30 PM EDT, 9-10:30 PM CDT): We welcome back DR. ROBERT ZUBRIN, founder of The Mars Society. For more information, visit www.marssociety.org. 3. Friday, August 9, […]

View from the International Space Station of the SpaceX Dragon spacecraft as the robotic arm moves Dragon into place for attachment to the station May 25, 2012. (Credit: NASA)

Continuing our look at recent U.S. launches, we turn our gaze to Elon Musk’s scrappy start-up, SpaceX.

In poker terms, the California-based company now holds three of a kind….three 5’s, that is. They’ve had 5 largely successful flights of its Falcon 9 rocket (with one secondary payload placed in the wrong orbit), 5 flights of the Grasshopper test bed, and 5 flights of the Falcon 1 rocket with a pair of successes and a trio of failures. There also have been four successful flights and recoveries of the Dragon spacecraft.
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Video Caption: The Google Lunar XPRIZE Team Summit 2013 took place in Santiago Chile this year. The competitors met to discuss the status of the Google Lunar XPRIZE and their progress in the competition. The team members sat down to discuss their challenges and how they plan on overcoming them.

Engineers at NASA’s Michoud Assembly Facility transfer a 22-foot-tall barrel section of the SLS core stage from the Vertical Weld Center. (Credit: NASA)

NEW ORLEANS (NASA PR) –– The first liquid hydrogen tank barrel segment for the core stage of NASA’s new heavy-lift launch vehicle, the Space Launch System (SLS), recently was completed at the agency’s Michoud Assembly Facility in New Orleans.

The segment is considered a “confidence” barrel segment because it validates the vertical weld center is working the way it should. The vertical weld center is a friction-stir-weld tool for wet and dry structures on the SLS core stage.

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