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How can it be prevented that NASA would become (too) dependent on one rocket company or vice versa?
By doing exactly what NASA is doing right now.
In 2006 NASA's Commercial Orbital Transportation Services funded several companies to develop alternatives to resupply the International Space Station (ISS). Later that year NASA downselected to two suppliers, ...
14
Wouldn't it be an unhealty situation when NASA would become (too) dependent on one company, for instance the only one that could launch heavy rockets ?
Sure, and this was the case from 2006 to around 2010, when ULA, as manufacturer of both the Atlas V and Delta IV launcher families, was the sole provider for NASA and DoD.
Under these circumstances, ULA had ...
8
In the late 1949, the Army designated the Redstone Arsenal as their R&D center for rocket-related activities, presumably to consolidate the efforts in one location:
In October 1948, the Chief of Ordnance had designated Redstone Arsenal as the center of research and development activities in the field of rockets and related items. The arsenal was ...
5
Do they return to their old job? Retire?
The answer is "yes".
Some return to their old job and stay with NASA for years. For example, Dr. Christopher J. Scolese returned to his former job of Associate Administrator and then went on the become the Director of the Goddard Space Flight Center. Others retire immediately or nearly immediately. For ...
5
No. Although as stated in another answer, the International side of the ISS is under the jurisdiction and control of the relevant partners, that doesn't mean that those modules are the TERRITORY of the relevant states. It is a lot like embassies, which, despite the Simpsons episode to the contrary, are absolutely not territory of their home state, despite ...
4
A team of about 350 scientists and engineers are keeping "Mars time" right now !
From Business Insider's article "Now on 'Mars time,' NASA's Perseverance team shifts their work hours 40 minutes later every day" on Feb.20, 2021:
At NASA, the team of scientists and engineers behind the Perseverance surface operations have to work around ...
4
Computational Analysis of a Prototype Martian Rotorcraft Experiment, by folks from Pennsylvania State University and Ames Research Center. The linked version of the paper was published in 2002, but ResearchGate have a copy (that I haven't read) from late 2001.
The prototype Mars rotor is currently being tested at NASA Ames Research Center
and a ...
3
Up until Expedition 12, everyone on the station arrived and departed at the same time. Expedition 13 was the first one that did not occur. I believe this was in part due to spaceflight participant Anousheh Ansari visiting with the mission that brought the Expedition 14 crew up to the ISS. Thomas Reiter instead returned on the Space Shuttle, as it was then ...
3
The system being used is Hololens, by MicroSoft. It was programmed by JPL's Ops Lab. They have a video of the project, though it seems more geared towards promoting it than documenting it, here. The current state of the tech is shown in this BBC video, while this one from a couple of years earlier shows the experience of viewing the Martian surface this way, ...
3
So I decided to get a bit into Python in my holidays and made a script by myself!
I posted it on GitHub, so feel free to use it if you want :)
https://github.com/compidev/perseverance-raw-images-downloader
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For shuttle:
Since shuttle missions were relatively short duration, not much time could be allotted to acclimatization (the term used in shuttle was adaptation). This was mostly handled by attempting to defer highly complicated tasks to beyond a (somewhat arbitrary) 72 hour point.
For example:
Spacewalks (EVAs) were forbidden in the first 24 hours, and ...
2
Partial answer to "What direction did telemetry monitoring systems take in the years after 1995?"
I worked in shuttle Mission Control Center (MCC) backrooms frequently from 8/1999 to 1/2003 and again from 7/2008 to 7/2011 monitoring certain Orbiter systems during simulations and flight ops. Our displays for the disciplines I supported were ...
2
Artist: Pat Rawlings
Depicted: Hypothetical future lunar mass driver installation
Relation to Clementine: scene depicted is on the Moon. Clementine orbited the Moon.
Source: NSS Lunar Bases and Settlements
An imagined future on the Moon, showing some of the activities we might undertake there. The long, linear feature is a mass driver, a method
of using ...
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It appears that they are doing so, but on Twitter and Facebook.
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Yes, it's a 12U "base" with a protruding antenna and related equipment. It's quite a custom spacecraft because it'll be demoing the Cislunar Autonomous Position System (among other things like "how to perform real-world navigation in an NRHO").
For CAPS, it will communicate with the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter when it passes near its ...
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