James Dean

FLORIDA TODAY

SpaceX CEO Elon Musk recently offered a sneak peak at the ocean-going platform the company has built as a landing pad for returning Falcon rocket boosters, which could be put to the test next month.

In a Nov. 22 tweet, Musk showed a picture of the football field-length structure he called an "autonomous spaceport drone ship."

The ship emblazoned with a bull's eye SpaceX logo is equipped with thrusters repurposed from deep sea oil rigs that are able to hold its position within 10 feet even during a storm, Musk said.

SpaceX is targeting a 2:31 p.m. Dec. 16 launch from Cape Canaveral of a Falcon 9 rocket and Dragon capsule packed with cargo for the International Space Station. It's SpaceX's fifth of 12 resupply missions planned under a $1.6 billion NASA contract.

After the first stage booster separates at hypersonic speed, SpaceX will fire some of its nine Merlin engines in an attempt to guide the stage to a soft landing on the platform in the Atlantic Ocean.

Up to now SpaceX has soft-landed a couple of boosters in the water, where they promptly fell over and were smashed to pieces.

The upcoming flight will also feature new fins to try to improve the booster's control as it flies back. The grid fins are stowed at launch, deployed in an "x-wing" configuration during re-entry and can move independently.

Orion launch preparations continue

NASA's Orion capsule won't carry people for years, but its upcoming first test flight will measure the heating, vibration radiation a crew might experience. Orion's launch from Cape Canaveral is planned at 7:05 a.m. Thursday.

Final preparations over the weekend include a focus on the crew module's interior, NASA reported in a blog update (https://blogs.nasa.gov/orion).

Overall, the test spacecraft is equipped with about 1,200 sensors.

Meanwhile, launch pad teams began closing out systems at Launch Complex 37, where a United Launch Alliance Delta IV Heavy rocket stands poised to boost Orion to space for the first time.

Countdown clock replaced by new display

NASA Public Affairs Officer George Diller felt a twinge of emotion last week as crews carted away Kennedy Space Center's iconic countdown clock from the Launch Complex 39 Press Site.

The rectangular digital clock had stood in that spot since 1969. Diller remembered standing near it during the countdown to Apollo 17, the last moon landing mission, a few years later as a radio reporter for WTAN in Clearwater.

"It was a night launch," Diller recalled. "I remember sitting out there and watching that clock, and we went into a long hold and we nearly froze to death. Everyone was watching for that clock to start counting again."

A Saturn V rocket carrying Eugene Cernan, Harrison Schmitt and Ronald Evans blasted off from pad 39A at 12:33 a.m. Dec. 7, 1972.

The countdown clock was removed in three section and taken to the KSC Visitor Complex where, after some restoration, it may be set up near the entrance and keep time on future NASA countdowns.

By this weekend NASA hoped to have installed in the clock's place a $280,000 multimedia display system, just in time for Thursday's planned 7:05 a.m. launch of an Orion capsule on its first test flight.

The stadium-style, 24-panel screen provided by Los Angeles-based Mega LED Technology will stand slightly taller than the clock.

Diller performed an honorary ground breaking as crews prepared to dismantle the Apollo-era clock and install the new technology.

High bay, anyone?

NASA next month will seek interest from companies that might want to stack a rocket inside a spare high bay in Kennedy Space Center's towering Vehicle Assembly Building.

It will be the spaceport's latest effort to find outside users for infrastructure NASA doesn't need after the shuttle's retirement, and in the process reduce the agency's operating costs.

NASA has changed which high bay it is offering, from 1 to 2.

Studies showed that High Bay 1 would present more potential conflicts if NASA was working on its giant Space launch System rocket next door in High Bay 3. The rocket's initial configuration will stand 321 feet and feature huge solid rocket motors that will limit surrounding operations for safety reasons.

Clean audit

NASA last week reported that for the fourth consecutive year it has received an unmodified, or "clean", audit opinion on its fiscal year financial statements.

Congress gave NASA $17.6 billion for the 2014 fiscal year that ended Sept. 30.

NASA's 2014 financial report offers a snapshot of the agency's work force. NASA employed more than 17,500 civil servants, plus another 4,500 employees performing NASA-funded work at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in California.

Just over 2,000 of the civil servants were based at Kennedy Space Center, or about 11 percent. KSC's headcount was the fourth-highest among NASA centers behind Goddard Space Flight Center in Maryland, Johnson Space Center in Texas and Marshall Space Flight Center in Alabama.

The size of KSC's civil service team has remained steady for years, but the contractor work force has dropped sharply since the shuttle's retirement, from more than 11,000 five years ago to about 4,500 at the end of 2013.

Contact Dean at 321-242-3668 or jdean@floridatoday.com.

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