Sunday’s CSExtra finds NASA Administrator Charles Bolden facing a conflict of interest challenge over Project OMEGA, an ocean-grown biofuel initiative led by the Ames Research Center. Meanwhile, NASA’s former administrator Mike Griffin speaks out on Constellation’s fate. Lockheed Martin says it can develop Orion lite for $4.5 billion. Mars once had an ocean.
1. From the Orlando Sentinel: NASA Administrator Charles Bolden is under scrutiny by the agency’s inspector general for a possible conflict of interest involving Project OMEGA, an ocean-grown biofuel initiative led by the Ames Research Center, the Sentinel reports. Bolden was advised against OMEGA by Marathon Oil, a company on whose board the administrator once sat and in which he still holds stock. Bolden and NASA lawyers say nothing is amiss, and there are no obvious signs of interference, according to the Sentinel. Bolden questions whether NASA is in a position to lead the research effort, the Sentinel reports.
http://www.orlandosentinel.com/news/local/breakingnews/os-nasa-administrator-scandal-20100620,0,3573452.story
2. From This week in Space with Miles O’Brien and Spaceflightnow.com: An interview with Mike Griffin, NASA’s previous administrator, on the status of the Constellation Program and the success of the Falcon 9 flight. Griffin says he used every Congressional forum possible to warn of the funding issues faced by the back-to-the-moon program, as well as of a growing gap following the shuttle’s retirement. Even so, the Obama Administration’s 2010 budget sounded the death knell for Constellation, Griffin says, by removing $20 billion. “I felt I did everything I could do to bring to the attention of the Congress and the nation’s space policy makers that we were not in a good financial situation,” says the former administrator. Griffin offers praise for the Falcon 9 success as well, calling it “an awesome technical accomplishment.” http://www.spaceflightnow.com/twis/
3. From Space News: In an interview, a Lockheed Martin officials says the company can produce a scaled back version of the Orion crew capsule for a space station life boat for $4.5 billion. NASA will have to ease the usual oversight to produce new contract efficiencies, the officials say.
http://www.spacenews.com/civil/100618-orion-lifeboat-cost.html
A. From the Denver Business Journal: Lockheed Martin is moving 300 workers off Orion and dropping 300 subcontractors over the next month in response to NASA’s recent termination liability notice. Orion counts 3,500 workers in the Denver, Houston, New Orleans and Cape Canaveral areas, plus 500 subcontractors. The Denver area count is 750 workers.
http://denver.bizjournals.com/denver/stories/2010/06/14/daily70.html?ana=yfcpc
4. From Spacepolitics.com: A deeper look at White House changes in NASA’s 2011 budget request. The changes would take $100 million on Exploration Systems funding and move it to the Labor and Commerce departments to deal with job losses NASA will experience as the shuttle retires and Constellation is cancelled. http://www.spacepolitics.com/2010/06/19/white-house-adds-to-nasas-tab-for-economic-development-spending/
5. From Science News: New studies of the Martian topography suggest one-third of the planet, in the Northern Hemisphere, was covered by an ocean 3.5 billion years ago.
http://www.sciencenews.org/view/generic/id/60410/title/Wet_past_for_red_planet
A. From Discovery.com: In California, 16 seventh graders working with NASA’s Mars Odyssey spacecraft discover a cave on Mars, a “skylight” punched in a lava tube. The students are from the Evergreen Middle School in Cottonwood, Calif.
http://news.discovery.com/space/seventh-graders-discover-martian-cave.html
6. From the Monterey County Herald of St. Louis, Mo.: In a new book, Astronaut Jeff Williams offers a religious interpretation of the Earth as he saw it from the space station.
http://www.montereyherald.com/religion/ci_15332912?nclick_check=1
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