NASA Offers News Media Access to TDRS-L Spacecraft Jan. 3

NASA's Tracking and Data Relay Satellite (TDRS)-L will be the focus of a media opportunity at 10 a.m. EST Friday, Jan. 3, at the Astrotech Space Operations facility in Titusville, Fla.
Media  will be able to view the TDRS-L spacecraft and interview project and launch program officials from NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md.; the Launch Services Program at the agency's Kennedy Space Center in Florida; and United Launch Alliance (ULA).
TDRS-L is scheduled to lift off on a ULA Atlas V 401 rocket from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida on Jan. 23 at the opening of a 40-minute launch window that extends from 9:05 to 9:45 p.m.
The TDRS-L spacecraft is the second of three next-generation satellites designed to ensure vital operational continuity for NASA by expanding the lifespan of the fleet, which now consists of eight satellites in geostationary orbit. The spacecraft provide tracking, telemetry, command and high bandwidth data return services for numerous science and human exploration missions orbiting Earth. These include NASA's Hubble Space Telescope and the International Space Station. TDRS-L has a high-performance solar panel designed for more spacecraft power to meet the growing S-band communications requirements.
Full clean room attire must be worn during the media opportunity and will be furnished. Journalists should not wear perfume, cologne or makeup. Long pants and closed-toe shoes must be worn. No shorts or skirts will be permitted. Some camera equipment may be identified by Boeing contamination control specialists as having to be cleaned before being taken into the high bay facility. Alcohol wipes will be provided. All camera equipment must be self-contained, and no portable lights are allowed. Flash photography will not be permitted, however, the facility has adequate metal halide lighting for pictures. Wireless microphones also are not permitted inside the high bay.
On Jan. 3, U.S.  media may proceed directly to Astrotech, which is located in the Spaceport Florida Industrial Park, 1515 Chaffee Drive, Titusville. Access will be available starting at 9:45 a.m., and the event will begin at 10 a.m.
Only media who are United States citizens may attend this event, per Astrotech rules. A government-issued photo identification, such as a driver's license or permanently issued NASA media accreditation badge from Kennedy will be acceptable. In addition, proof of U.S. citizenship also is required, such as a passport or birth certificate.
Journalists should call Kennedy's media update phone line at 321-867-2525 on Thursday evening, Jan. 2, to confirm the event still is on schedule.
Boeing Space and Intelligence Systems in El Segundo, Calif., built TDRS-L. NASA's Space Communications and Navigation Program, part of the Human Exploration and Operations Mission Directorate at NASA Headquarters in Washington, is responsible for the TDRS network. NASA's Launch Services Program at Kennedy is responsible for launch management. United Launch Alliance provides the Atlas V rocket and launch service.

Paul Hellyer PC: Extraterrestrial issues

Paul Theodore Hellyer, PC (born 6 August 1923) is a Canadian engineer, politician, writer and commentator who has had a long and varied career.
On 3 June 1967, Hellyer flew in by helicopter to officially inaugurate an unidentified flying object landing pad in St. Paul, Alberta. The town had built it as its Canadian Centennial celebration project, and as a symbol of keeping space free from human warfare. The sign beside the pad reads:

"The area under the World's First UFO Landing Pad was designated international by the Town of St. Paul as a symbol of our faith that mankind will maintain the outer universe free from national wars and strife. That future travel in space will be safe for all intergalactic beings, all visitors from earth or otherwise are welcome to this territory and to the Town of St. Paul.

Throughout his life, Hellyer has been opposed to the weaponization of space. He supports the Space Preservation Treaty to ban space weapons.^{[citation needed]}
In early September 2005, Hellyer made headlines by publicly announcing that he believed in the existence of UFOs. On 25 September 2005, he was an invited speaker at an exopolitics conference in Toronto, where he told the audience that he had seen a UFO one night with his late wife and some friends. He said that, although he had discounted the experience at the time, he had kept an open mind to it. He said that he started taking the issue much more seriously after watching ABC's Peter Jennings' UFO special in February 2005.^{[citation needed]}
Watching Jennings' UFO special prompted Hellyer to read U.S. Army Colonel Philip J. Corso's book The Day After Roswell, about the Roswell UFO Incident, which had been sitting on his shelf for some time. Hellyer told the Toronto audience that he later spoke to a retired U.S. Air Force general, who confirmed the accuracy of the information in the book. In November 2005, he accused U.S. President George W. Bush of plotting an "Intergalactic War". The former defence minister told an audience at the University of Toronto:

"The United States military are preparing weapons which could be used against the aliens, and they could get us into an intergalactic war without us ever having any warning...The Bush Administration has finally agreed to let the military build a forward base on the moon, which will put them in a better position to keep track of the goings and comings of the visitors from space, and to shoot at them, if they so decide."

Hellyer told the audience that in December 2004, he had enjoyed reading and had endorsed a book by Alfred Webre entitled Politics, Government and Law in the Universe. He ended his 30-minute talk by stating:

"To turn us in the direction of re-unification with the rest of creation the author is proposing a “Decade of Contact” – an “era of openness, public hearings, publicly funded research, and education about extraterrestrial reality”."^{[citation needed]}

In 2007, the Ottawa Citizen reported that Hellyer is demanding that world governments disclose alien technology that could be used to solve the problem of climate change:

"I would like to see what (alien) technology there might be that could eliminate the burning of fossil fuels within a generation...that could be a way to save our planet...We need to persuade governments to come clean on what they know. Some of us suspect they know quite a lot, and it might be enough to save our planet if applied quickly enough."

In 2010, Hellyer accused Stephen Hawking of spreading misinformation about threats from aliens. According to Hawking, if human beings tried to contact aliens, they could invade us and take away our most important resources. Hawking had also said that though most extraterrestrial life could be only in the form of small animals, there could also be "nomads, looking to conquer and colonize" other planets. Hellyer told the Canadian Press that

"the reality is that they (aliens) have been visiting earth for decades and probably millennia and have contributed considerably to our knowledge."

Blaming Hawking for scaring mankind about aliens, he said, "He (Hawking) is indulging in some pretty scary talk there that I would have hoped would not come from someone with such an established stature."
Paul Hellyer spoke at the Citizen Hearing on Disclosure (the non-governmental hearings chaired by six former U.S. congressmen and aimed at, according to the event's website, doing "what the U.S. Congress had failed to do for forty-five years"), which was held on 29 April – 3 May 2013 in Washington, DC, and testified that "aliens are living among us and that it is likely at least two of them are working with the U.S. government". He asserted a number of things, such as:

• that "at least four species" of alien have been visiting Earth for "thousands of years";
• that these species "may have different agendas";
• that "there are live ETs on Earth at this present time, and at least two of them are working with the United States government". (wiki)

Member of Parliament Bryan Hayes Announces Support for Algoma Fall Festival

SAULT STE. MARIE, Ontario, November 12, 2013 - Bryan Hayes, Member of Parliament (Sault Ste. Marie), on behalf of the Honourable Shelly Glover, Minister of Canadian Heritage and Official Languages, today announced funding to the Algoma Arts Festival Association for the Algoma Fall Festival.
“Year after year, the Algoma Fall Festival features high-calibre music, theatre, dance, and visual arts,” said Mr. Hayes. “I look forward to the upcoming festivals, and I am pleased to see the Government of Canada's continued support for our local artistic and cultural community.”
Funding will support the 42^nd and 43^rd editions of Algoma Fall Festival, which will take place in Sault Ste. Marie in 2014 and 2015. The multidisciplinary festival will showcase presentations of visual and performing arts, as well as an extensive outreach program for youth that includes artist-led workshops and professional presentations.
“Canadians continue to attend thousands of cultural events in communities of all sizes and in all parts of Canada,” said Minister Glover. “This speaks to a thriving arts and cultural sector that enriches our economy and reflects our diverse heritage. Our Government is proud to invest in organizations that offer Canadians access to a variety of artistic performances and presentations.”
“The Algoma Arts Festival Association is very pleased to receive support from the federal government for the Algoma Fall Festival,” said Donna Hilsinger, President, Algoma Arts Festival Association. “This contribution means that we can continue to provide excellence in the performing arts and arts outreach opportunities for our community.”
The Government of Canada has provided funding of $100,000 ($50,000 in 2014–2015 and $50,000 in 2015–2016) through the Canada Arts Presentation Fund of the Department of Canadian Heritage. This program gives Canadians increased access to the variety and richness of Canada's culture through professional arts festivals, presentations of live professional performances, and other artistic experiences.

NASA Kepler Results Usher in a New Era of Astronomy

Scientists from around the world are gathered this week at NASA's Ames Research Center in Moffett Field, Calif., for the second Kepler Science Conference, where they will discuss the latest findings resulting from the analysis of Kepler Space Telescope data.
Included in these findings is the discovery of 833 new candidate planets, which will be announced today by the Kepler team. Ten of these candidates are less than twice the size of Earth and orbit in their sun's habitable zone, which is defined as the range of distance from a star where the surface temperature of an orbiting planet may be suitable for liquid water.
At this conference two years ago, the Kepler team announced its first confirmed habitable zone planet, Kepler-22b. Since then, four more habitable zone candidates have been confirmed, including two in a single system.
New Kepler data analysis and research also show that most stars in our galaxy have at least one planet. This suggests that the majority of stars in the night sky may be home to planetary systems, perhaps some like our solar system.
"The impact of the Kepler mission results on exoplanet research and stellar astrophysics is illustrated by the attendance of nearly 400 scientists from 30 different countries at the Kepler Science Conference," said William Borucki, Kepler science principal investigator at Ames. "We gather to celebrate and expand our collective success at the opening of a new era of astronomy."
From the first three years of Kepler data, more than 3,500 potential worlds have emerged. Since the last update in January, the number of planet candidates identified by Kepler increased by 29 percent and now totals 3,538. Analysis led by Jason Rowe, research scientist at the SETI Institute in Mountain View, Calif., determined that the largest increase of 78 percent was found in the category of Earth-sized planets, based on observations conducted from May 2009 to March 2012. Rowe's findings support the observed trend that smaller planets are more common.
An independent statistical analysis of nearly all four years of Kepler data suggests that one in five stars like the sun is home to a planet up to twice the size of Earth, orbiting in a temperate environment. A research team led by Erik Petigura, doctoral candidate at University of California, Berkeley, used publicly accessible data from Kepler to derive this result.
Kepler data also fueled another field of astronomy dubbed asteroseismology -- the study of the interior of stars. Scientists examine sound waves generated by the boiling motion beneath the surface of the star. They probe the interior structure of a star just as geologists use seismic waves generated by earthquakes to probe the interior structure of Earth.
"Stars are the building blocks of the galaxy, driving its evolution and providing safe harbors for planets. To study the stars, one truly explores the galaxy and our place within it," said William Chaplin, professor for astrophysics at the University of Birmingham in the United Kingdom. "Kepler has revolutionized asteroseismology by giving us observations of unprecedented quality, duration and continuity for thousands of stars. These are data we could only have dreamt of a few years ago."
Kepler's mission is to determine what percentage of stars like the sun harbor small planets the approximate size and temperature of Earth. For four years, the space telescope simultaneously and continuously monitored the brightness of more than 150,000 stars, recording a measurement every 30 minutes. More than a year of the collected data remains to be fully reviewed and analyzed.
Ames is responsible for the Kepler mission concept, ground system development, mission operations, and science data analysis. NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif., managed Kepler mission development.
Ball Aerospace & Technologies Corp. in Boulder, Colo., developed the Kepler flight system and supports mission operations with the Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics at the University of Colorado in Boulder.
The Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore archives, hosts and distributes Kepler science data. Kepler is NASA's 10th Discovery Mission and was funded by the agency's Science Mission Directorate.

NASA TV Airs Discussion on Removing Barriers to Deep Space Exploration

Koichi Wakata, Soyuz, Mikhail Tyurin, Rick Mastracchio (Image by NASA)

NASA Television will air a roundtable discussion with aerospace industry leaders at 9 a.m. EST Tuesday, Nov. 12 about the progress being made toward sending humans into deep space.
The live broadcast will take place at the Newseum, 555 Pennsylvania Ave. NW, in Washington. Attendance at the event is by invitation only.
Panelists representing NASA and its prime contractors will discuss the work being done on the agency's Orion spacecraft and Space Launch System rocket, which will carry humans farther into space than ever before. The participants are:
-- William Gerstenmaier, associate administrator for human exploration and operations, NASA
-- Julie Van Kleek, vice president, advanced space and launch programs, Aerojet Rocketdyne
-- Charlie Precourt, vice president and general manager, ATK Space Launch Division
-- John Elbon, vice president and general manager, Boeing Space Exploration
-- Jim Crocker, vice president and general manager, civil space, Lockheed Martin Space Systems
Orion and the Space Launch System will provide the United States an entirely new human space exploration capability, a flexible system that can extend human presence beyond low-Earth orbit and enable new missions of exploration in our solar system.
The discussion is sponsored by TechAmerica's Space Enterprise Council in partnership with the George Marshall Institute and the Coalition for Space Exploration.

Three Space Station Crews Answer Media Questions from Orbit

Nine International Space Station crew members will discuss their mission with reporters from around the world during a joint crew news conference to be broadcast live on NASA Television at 8:50 a.m. EST Friday, Nov. 8.
This is the first time since October 2009 that nine people will be aboard the space station at the same time without a space shuttle present. The crew members are together for only four days as one expedition ends and another begins.
The nine crew members represent three space station expeditions:
• Expedition 36/37: Karen Nyberg of NASA, Fyodor Yurchikhin of the Russian Federal Space Agency (Roscosmos) and Luca Parmitano of the European Space Agency;
• Expedition 37/38: Michael Hopkins of NASA and Oleg Kotov and Sergey Ryazanskiy of Roscosmos; and
• Expedition 37/38/39: Rick Mastracchio of NASA, Koichi Wakata of the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency and Mikhail Tyurin of Roscosmos.
The joint news conference, which was arranged in coordination with NASA's international partner agencies, will last 40 minutes and will feature questions from U.S., Russian, European and Japanese media. Each partner agency will have 10 minutes for questions. Because of the limited time available, all U.S. media will be required to ask their questions via a phone bridge managed at NASA's Johnson Space Center in Houston. To use the phone bridge, journalists must call Johnson's newsroom at 281-483-5111 by 8:30 a.m. EST Nov. 8.
Topics for discussion include the upcoming 15th anniversary of space station construction, the crew members' support for research inside the orbiting laboratory, and plans for a Nov. 9 spacewalk with the Olympic torch that will light the flame at the opening of the 2014 Winter Olympic Games in Sochi, Russia.
Mastracchio, Tyurin and Wakata will launch aboard a Soyuz rocket Nov. 6 from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan with the torch stowed aboard and dock their Soyuz capsule to the space station that same day, bringing the onboard complement to nine.
Kotov and Ryazanskiy will venture outside the space station with the torch as part of a 6-hour spacewalk before the torch's scheduled Nov. 10 return to Earth with Nyberg, Yurchikhin and Parmitano.

Next Space Station Launch to Be Shown on Times Square Toshiba Vision Screen

The Toshiba Vision screen in New York's Times Square will give the public a big-screen view of the next launch of three crew members to the International Space Station. Launch is scheduled for 11:14 p.m. EST Wednesday, Nov. 6.
NASA Television coverage, originating from the launch site at the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan, will broadcast on the giant outdoor screen beginning at 10:15 p.m. and continue with post-launch coverage until 11:45 p.m.
"The space station serves as a unique laboratory for researchers around the world, home to astronauts from multiple countries, and was built with international cooperation, so it's fitting to show the launch of the next crew in the most cosmopolitan city in the United States," said William Gerstenmaier, NASA's associate administrator for human exploration and operations.
NASA astronaut Rick Mastracchio, Russian Federal Space Agency (Roscosmos) Soyuz commander Mikhail Tyurin and Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency astronaut Koichi Wakata will launch in a Soyuz spacecraft. They will join six crew members already on the space station, including NASA astronauts Karen Nyberg and Mike Hopkins, the European Space Agency's Luca Parmitano, and Roscosmos' Fyodor Yurchikin, Oleg Kotov and Sergey Ryazanskiy.
This will be the first time since October 2009 that nine people have served together aboard the space station without a space shuttle being docked to the orbiting laboratory. The crew will return to its normal complement of six on Nov. 10, when Yurchikhin, Nyberg and Parmitano return to Earth.
Currently, the only transportation services to and from the space station is aboard Soyuz spacecraft. NASA is working with U.S. companies to develop and demonstrate human spaceflight systems that could ultimately lead to the availability of commercial services for both commercial and government customers from the United States.
Prominently positioned below the world-famous New Year's Eve Ball in Times Square, the Toshiba Vision dual LED screens will allow viewers to see the action from the launch pad as the Soyuz soars into the sky.
For NASA TV streaming video, schedule and downlink information, visit:

http://www.nasa.gov/ntv