FAYETTEVILLE : NASA in twilight of changes
Posted on Tuesday, October 16, 2007
FAYETTEVILLE — Joe Dowdy, special operations manager for NASA’s Kennedy Space Center, encouraged an audience at the University of Arkansas on Monday to watch the next space shuttle launch “with a sense of childlike wonder.” He advised them to travel to Orlando, Fla., to witness a launch in person, to feel the air pulse and to see the waters ripple as the shuttle propels toward space.
“It hits you in your chest — to your very core,” he said. “There’s nothing like it.” Dowdy, a Little Rock native, spoke about the future of the U. S. space program to students, faculty and staff in the Willard J. Walker Hall auditorium on the Fayetteville campus.
NASA is in a period of transition as it gears up for the Constellation program, in which space shuttles will be replaced with the Ares rockets, Dowdy said.
“Now the time is upon us to take that next big leap, to really explore beyond that next hill,” Dowdy said.
The Ares rockets will look similar to the Apollo capsules, but they will be capable of carrying more cargo and up to six astronauts.
The first rockets will be unmanned, with the first test flight scheduled for April 2009.
NASA plans to stop all manned shuttle flights in 2010 and resume them with the Ares rockets after four or five years. Around 2020, the new space transporters will carry astronauts to the moon for the first time since the 1972 Apollo 17 mission.
NASA’s three space shuttle orbiters — Discovery, Endeavor and Atlantis — then will take their “rightful place” in museums, including at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida and the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum in Washington, D. C., Dowdy said.
Several missions are planned for the interim, including the next space shuttle launch later this month. Discovery is scheduled to launch Oct. 23 for a two-week mission to the international space station. It will be the 23 rd mission to the station and Discovery’s 34 th flight into space.
NASA launched its Phoenix Mars Lander on Aug. 5. The probe is scheduled to land May 25 in the polar region of Mars, where it will collect data on the planet’s soil, ice and temperatures. The Dawn spacecraft launched Sept. 26 on a 3 billion mile journey that will take it to an asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter.
It is scheduled to explore the large Vesta asteroid in 2011 and the dwarf planet of Ceres in 2015.
Monday’s lecture was one of several speaking engagements for Dowdy and William W. Parsons, director of the Kennedy Space Center, since arriving Thursday in Northwest Arkansas, including visits to Wal-Mart Stores’ headquarters in Bentonville, West Fork High School, Farmington High School and UA’s Center for Management and Executive Education Emerging Leaders class.
Parsons returned to Orlando on Monday and was unable to attend the Walker Hall event, said Dixie Kline, director of communications for UA’s Sam M. Walton College of Business. The event was sponsored by the college’s Center for Retailing Excellence. Claudia Mobley, director of the center, said the university brought Dowdy in to educate students on the nation’s space program and the career opportunities there. NASA’s 10 centers offer a variety of career options ranging from research and development to business and public affairs. “Kennedy Space Center is a huge business,” she said.
To contact this reporter: cpark@arkansasonline. com
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