520-day flight simulation nears 'landing' on Mars

MOSCOW – After 233 days in a locked steel capsule, six researchers on a 520-day mock flight to Mars are all feeling strong and ready to "land" on the Red Planet, the mission director said Friday.
The all-male crew of three Russians, a Chinese, a Frenchman and an Italian-Colombian has been inside windowless capsules at a Moscow research center since June. Their mission aims to help real space crews in the future cope with the confinement and stress of interplanetary travel.
The researchers communicate with the outside world via emails and video messages — occasionally delayed to give them the feel of being farther than a few yards (meters) away from mission control. The crew members eat canned food similar to that eaten on the International Space Station and shower only once a week.
[Tell us: The 25th anniversary of the Challenger disaster is next week. Where were you?]
None of the men has considered abandoning the mission, although they are free to walk out at any time, mission director and former cosmonaut Boris Morukov told reporters on Friday.
"They are still motivated, but there is a certain fatigue, which is natural," he said.
The six men are due to "land" on Mars on Feb. 12 and spend two days researching the planet. They then begin the monthslong return flight to Earth, expected to be the most challenging part of the mission.
"It will be very tough on the boys because of the monotony," Morukov said. "The fatigue and the thought that the mission is over can be fraught with negative consequences."
The Mars-500 experiment is being conducted by the Moscow-based Institute for Medical and Biological Problems, the European Space Agency and China's space training center.
In an effort to reproduce the conditions of space travel, with exception of weightlessness, the crew has living quarters the size of a bus connected with several other modules for experiments and exercise. A separate built-in imitator of the Red Planet's surface is attached for the mock landing.
A real mission to Mars is decades away because of its huge costs and major technological challenges, particularly the task of creating a compact shield that would protect the crew from deadly space radiation.
Mission control will create mock emergencies for the crew to keep them busy on their way back to Earth, Morukov said Friday.
The six men had to spend a day in the dark in December, after mission control simulated an emergency blackout, leaving them with only a few back-up generators so they had to prioritize their needs.
The length of interplanetary missions is why the conditions of a Mars flight cannot be tested on astronauts at the International Space Station. The space station is in Earth orbit and in case of emergency the astronauts can always return to Earth in two hours' time. On interplanetary missions, there is no quick way back.
Although the crew is all-male, Morukov stressed that the organizers did not intentionally leave out women but just couldn't find the right candidate.
A similar experiment in 1999-2000 at the same Moscow research center went awry when a Canadian woman complained of being forcibly kissed by the Russian team captain. She also said two Russian crew members had a fist fight that left blood splattered on the walls. Russian officials downplayed the incidents, attributing them to cultural gaps and stress.
The organizers earlier said each crew member will be paid about $97,000 for taking part in the experiment.
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Online:
The Institute for Medical and Biological Problems at http://mars500.imbp.ru/en/index_e.html
The European Space Agency at http://www.esa.int/esaMI/Mars500/index.html
Source:Yahoo News

Memory of McAuliffe is vivid to still-grieving NH city

CONCORD, N.H. – In the 25 years since the Challenger exploded on liftoff, Felicia Brown has gone to college, become a psychologist, gotten married and had kids. Fresh in her mind, though, is the memory of Christa McAuliffe, a teacher at her high school and family friend who was to be the first teacher in space.
"I know how important her field trip into space was to her and how much she hoped to learn and share with students everywhere," said the Concord High School graduate, who at 43 is now older than McAuliffe was when she died at age 37. "I wouldn't want her sincerity to get lost in a textbook."
A whole generation — including McAuliffe's own students — has grown up since McAuliffe and six other astronauts perished on live TV on Jan. 28, 1986, a quarter-century ago this Friday. Now the former schoolchildren who loved her are making sure that people who weren't even born then know about McAuliffe and her dream of going into space.
[Tell us: Where were you when you heard about the Challenger disaster 25 years ago?]
Students who didn't know her now will when they attend a new school named in her honor.
Concord, a city of about 42,000 where the popular McAuliffe taught social studies, carries her legacy as a source of both fierce pride and painful memory. Some locals had mixed feelings when the name of space pioneer Alan Shepard, a New Hampshire native, was added to a planetarium originally named just for McAuliffe. Some people still tear up at the mention of her name.
[First Person: A Concord resident talks to neighbors about McAuliffe]
But in ways both quiet and public, the city she left behind is making sure she lives on where her husband still resides, her children grew up and her remains are buried.
Brown didn't have McAuliffe as a teacher, but was a family friend and baby-sat for her children. Last spring, when her third-grade daughter had to work on a Concord history project, she encouraged her to devote it to McAuliffe.
Brown's mother, Carol Berry, was watching in person at Cape Canaveral, Fla., when the Challenger blew up. She headed the children's division at the Concord Public Library and worked with McAuliffe on a space-related reading program and had kept a scrapbook of the events leading to the shuttle launch and afterward. She helped with the project and talked to her granddaughter's class.
"It's difficult to have it all brought back to the forefront in my mind again," said Berry, 71. "Every year, I think about it again. I just feel so badly; it took away a lot of talent and what could've been a really wonderful project, experience."
Keeping McAuliffe's memory alive is also important to Holly Merrow, who graduated from Concord High in 1986 and now teaches in Portland, Maine. Merrow, taught by McAuliffe in a class about women in history, recalled that she made lessons fun, interesting and real — and she tries to do the same.
Merrow teaches third grade but for several years taught a lesson about McAuliffe and the Challenger to students in the fifth grade and in middle school. She showed them a scrapbook full of NASA stickers, as well as articles on the explosion and McAuliffe's selection by NASA, in which she was chosen from more than 11,000 applicants in a contest to be the first civilian teacher on a space flight.
"I teach with teachers who weren't even alive then," she said. She admits it's been hard going back in time to give those lessons, saying, "I just well up sometimes."
The space mission would have been the ultimate field trip for McAuliffe, who stressed real-world, hands-on experience, high school alumni recalled. She volunteered after school with the Youth and Government club, which sent students to the Statehouse each year for a mock Legislature.
Former club member Daniel St. Hilaire, 43, now has an 18-year-old son and is on the state's Executive Council, which approves contracts and appointments. Long interested in astronomy, he worked at the planetarium in the 1990s and now is president of fundraising.
When he thinks about McAuliffe, he believes the most important lesson children can learn from her is to be involved in their community.
"A lot of people didn't realize that she had other interests. They always associate Christa with the space program," he said. "But really her love was for the kids and for involvement, and that's why she did the youth and government program. So the lesson learned here is to get involved, don't take a back seat, make a difference, and that's precisely what she did."
Brown and St. Hilaire were college freshmen at the time of the explosion and, like many other recent graduates, converged on their hometown seeking solace. Concord High held a special, private gathering in the gym.
Courtney Major, who graduated in 1988, was part of a Concord High class that was going to hear a lesson from McAuliffe from space and recalled the horror on students' faces — and the silence — when it became apparent the shuttle had exploded.
"It seemed like it took forever to find out if there was anybody alive," she said. The phones through which McAuliffe was supposed to conduct the lesson were quickly taken away.
Now 41, Major lives in Pittsburg, N.H., and takes cabin reservations in the Connecticut Lakes region. She has shared her McAuliffe memories with her children, including newspaper articles and an autographed picture.
The planetarium in Concord, the McAuliffe-Shepard Discovery Center, is holding a tribute to teachers on Friday, the night of the anniversary, followed by a program about McAuliffe.
The Concord school district has observed the anniversary quietly through the years. In a rare public comment, her husband, Steven McAuliffe, recently wrote a heartfelt letter to the board about the school being named after her.
"There is no honor that Christa would cherish more than to have her name associated with a school in the hometown that she loved so dearly," he wrote. "I hope generations of students, teachers and administrators who pass through the new school will be inspired by her most precious lesson — ordinary people can make extraordinary contributions when they remain true to themselves and follow their dreams."

Rock promoter Kirshner dies in Florida at age 76

LAS VEGAS – Don Kirshner, a rock promoter and music publisher who helped garner hits for the make-believe groups The Monkees and The Archies and boosted the careers of Billy Joel, Neil Diamond and the Police, has died. He was 76.
Promoter Jack Wishna, a close friend and business associate, told The Associated Press on Tuesday that Kirshner, whom Time magazine once dubbed "The Man with the Golden Ear," was in a hospital in Boca Raton being treated for an infection when he died on Monday.
"Donny Kirshner would take a kid off the street ... and turn him into Neil Diamond, Carole King, James Taylor, on and on," Wishna said. "I haven't spoken to anyone in the music business that Donny hasn't either discovered, promoted, or touched in some way.
"I've never seen anybody like this in my life," he said.
The Bronx-born Kirshner started off in the business as a songwriter, penning "My First Love" for Bobby Darin. But he had more success in tapping songwriting talents like Diamond, King and Neil Sedaka.
Kirshner's songwriters were tapped in the 1960s to create music for a group manufactured for TV — The Monkees. They became a huge sensation in both the TV and the rock world and had hits including "I'm a Believer," which Diamond wrote.
Kirshner also was behind the music that made magic for The Archies, based off the comic strip characters, including the classic "Sugar Sugar."
"Don Kirshner's Rock Concert," which premiered in 1972 and ran a decade, gave national exposure to musicians including Joel and the Police. Kirshner also helped launch the careers of Prince, The Eagles, Lionel Richie and Ozzy Osborne. The show also boosted careers of comics including Billy Crystal, Arsenio Hall and David Letterman.
Paul Shaffer, Letterman's musical director, used to give a deadpan performance during his imitation of Kirshner on Saturday Night Live. Shaffer and Kirshner worked together on the short-lived sitcom, A Year at the Top, according to Shaffer's manager.
Pop singer Tony Orlando, whom Kirshner hired for $50 a week to record demos, said his mentor was like the Thomas Edison of music.
"Every dream I ever had as a kid, he was my genie," Orlando told AP.
Orlando said Kirshner was responsible for so many careers, "it would make your head spin."
"This was not just a song guy, this was a man who created the cornerstones of American pop music as we know it today," Orlando said. "Without Donny Kirshner, the music we know of today would not be the same. He was a game-changer, and I tell you that me and my family feel this tremendous loss for this man."
Wishna said Kirshner was a mentor who knew the art of discovering talent and cared about the artists he worked with.
"He was a father to these people even though some of them were three or four years younger than him," Wishna said.
Wishna said Kirshner, who was honored by the Songwriter's Hall of Fame in 2007, was a pioneer who developed a system for singer-songwriters to share in the profits of selling music.
Howard Kramer, curatorial director at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, said Kirshner will be most remembered for "nurturing and developing an early, unprecedented amount of artists, mostly songwriters, and also a television pioneer for bringing live rock 'n' roll to television."
Kirshner also ran three labels, Dimension Records, Colgems Records and Kirshner Records.
Before he died, Kirshner was chief creative officer of Rockrena, a company launching this year to find and promote talent online.
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Associated Press writer Suzette Laboy in Miami and Music Writer Nekesa Mumbi Moody in New York contributed to this report.
Source: Yahoo News