NASA Space Shuttle, Moon, Mars, Station Informations

NuSTAR Spacecraft Arrives in California

2012-01-28T00:54:00.000-08:00

NASA's Nuclear Spectroscopic Telescope Array, or NuSTAR, mission arrived at Vandenberg Air Force Base in California this morning after a cross-country trip by truck from the Orbital Sciences Corporation's manufacturing plant in Dulles, Va. The mission is scheduled to launch from Kwajalein Atoll in the Pacific Ocean on March 14.

Once the observatory is offloaded at Vandenberg, it will be moved into a processing hangar, joining the Pegasus XL rocket that is set to carry it to space. Over the weekend, technicians will remove its shipping container so that checkout and other processing activities can begin next week. Once the observatory is integrated with the rocket in mid-February, technicians will encapsulate it in the vehicle fairing, which is also scheduled to arrive at Vandenberg today.

After processing is completed, the rocket and spacecraft will be flown on Orbital's L-1011 carrier aircraft to the Ronald Reagan Ballistic Missile Defense Test Site at Kwajalein Atoll for launch in March.

'We are the Champions' on the International Space Station

2012-01-27T01:36:00.000-08:00

In high school, there are champions of football and basketball and even music, but not many students can say they are champs on the International Space Station - but Alliance Rocket students from the United States and virtual participants Alliance CyberAvo, representing schools in Germany and Italy, have now earned that distinction.

Both teams were named the winners in the third annual NASA-sponsored Zero Robotics SPHERES Challenge competition for high school students from the United States and abroad.

NASA, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge sponsored the competition, which challenged students to write software code for small satellite robots on the station.

"This competition helps to build critical engineering skills for students, such as problem solving and teamwork, and helps us to find future scientists and engineers to work in space," said Leland Melvin, NASA associate administrator for education at NASA Headquarters in Washington. "The teams this year did not disappoint. The students were exceptional with their designs and flight programs."

Read More : http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/station/research/news/Zero_Robotics.html

The 'Un-Flyable' Space Shuttle

2012-01-23T02:20:00.001-08:00

The first time NASA engineer George Ware saw a model for the space shuttle, four decades ago, it had a straight wing and tail like a fighter airplane. It had elevators, a rudder and an engine.

It was un-flyable.

"It was their idea that it was going to enter the atmosphere at a 60-degree angle," said Ware, who had just joined the Vehicle Analysis Branch at NASA's Langley Research Center in Hampton, Va., which was tasked with testing shuttle configurations offered by the Johnson Space Center and contractors.

"At some lower speed, closer to transonic, it would pitch over and start flying like an airplane," said Ware, now retired. "It would be on a reusable booster as well."

It was supposed to fly up to 50 times a year at $10 million per trip. But that return to Earth was throwing everybody, because air flow onto the straight wing as it came into the atmosphere caused the plane to crash, at least on paper. Models of all four candidate configurations had problems, and the two boosters attached to them and tested in various combinations didn't help.

Ware still has lab books that look as though they have red-inked brushfires ignited by failed tunnel tests of shuttle and booster. Langley wind tunnels logged 59,200 hours from 1970-82, with the work spread over a dozen facilities. That included time spent with what was the eventual shuttle: a double-delta shaped craft.

For more info, visit : http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/shuttle/flyout/unflyable.html

NASA Moves Shuttle Engines From Kennedy To Stennis

2012-01-17T03:32:00.000-08:00

The relocation of the RS-25D space shuttle main engine inventory from Kennedy Space Center's Engine Shop in Cape Canaveral, Fla., is underway. The RS-25D flight engines, repurposed for NASA's Space Launch System, are being moved to NASA's Stennis Space Center in south Mississippi.

The Space Launch System (SLS) is a new heavy-lift launch vehicle that will expand human presence beyond low-Earth orbit and enable new missions of exploration across the solar system. The Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Ala., is leading the design and development of the SLS for NASA, including the engine testing program. SLS will carry the Orion spacecraft, its crew, cargo, equipment and science experiments to destinations in deep space.

"The relocation of RS-25D engine assets represents a significant cost savings to the SLS Program by consolidating SLS engine assembly and test operations at a single facility," said William Gerstenmaier, NASA’s Associate Administrator for Human Exploration and Operations Mission Directorate.

The RS-25Ds - to be used for the SLS core stage - be stored at Stennis until testing begins at a future date. Testing is already under way on the J-2X engine, which is planned for use in the SLS upper stage. Using the same fuel system - hydrogen and liquid oxygen - for both core and upper stages reduces costs by leveraging the existing knowledge base, skills, infrastructure and personnel.

For more info, visit: http://www.nasa.gov/exploration/systems/sls/rs25d.html

Cassini Testing Part of Its Radio System

2012-01-13T05:19:00.000-08:00

Engineers with NASA's Cassini mission are conducting diagnostic testing on a part of the spacecraft's radio system after its signal was not detected on Earth during a tracking pass in late December. The spacecraft has been communicating with Earth using a backup part.

The issue occurred with the ultra-stable oscillator, which is used for one type of radio science experiment and also as a means of sending data back to Earth. The spacecraft is currently using an auxiliary oscillator, whose frequency stability is adequate for transmitting data from the spacecraft to Earth. Tests later this month will help mission managers decide whether it will be possible to bring the ultra-stable oscillator back into service.

Some of the data collected for the radio science experiment using the auxiliary oscillator will be of lesser quality than that from the ultra-stable oscillator. Signals used for occultation experiments – where scientists analyze how radio signals are affected as they travel through Saturn's rings or the atmospheres of Saturn and its moons back to Earth – will be of lesser quality. A second kind of radio science investigation using gravity measurements to probe the internal structure of Saturn or its moons will not be affected. Cassini carries 12 science experiments.

The cause is still under investigation, but age may be a factor. The spacecraft launched in 1997 and has orbited Saturn since 2004. Cassini completed its prime mission in 2008 and has had two additional mission extensions. This is the first time its ultra-stable oscillator has had an issue.

The Cassini-Huygens mission is a cooperative project of NASA, the European Space Agency and the Italian Space Agency. NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena manages the mission for the agency's Science Mission Directorate in Washington.

NASA Propulsion Experiment Provides Data for More Efficient Jet Engines

2012-01-12T02:49:00.000-08:00

Aeronautics researchers at NASA's Dryden Flight Research Center recently completed flight tests of a unique experimental jet engine inlet design in the Channeled Center-body Inlet Experiment, or CCIE.

The experimental inlet was checked out on NASA Dryden's F-15B aeronautics research test bed aircraft, which continues to be an innovative and cost-effective tool for flight test of advanced propulsion concepts.

The CCIE project's primary research objective was to define the airflow through the experimental jet engine inlet, then compare it to the airflow through a standard inlet. Inside, airflow around two interchangeable center bodies installed in an air inlet tube was measured. The structures are designed to direct and compress airflow internally through the engine.

One center body is channeled; the other has a conventional, smooth shape. The slots cut along the length of the channeled center body simulate a simple device that in an actual inlet would allow optimization of the amount of air flowing into the engine, resulting in improved airflow efficiency at a wide variety of speeds. This would improve fuel efficiency as well.

Six flights were flown, three with each center body installed. Flight tests were made incrementally at speeds up to Mach 1.74, or about 1.7 times the speed of sound. Flight data from the smooth center body were used to benchmark performance data for the channeled center body. Data points that NASA Dryden engineers collected during the experiment included inlet mass airflow information, internal surface pressure distribution numbers, and airflow distortion, or turbulence, data at the exit end of the device.

For more info, visit : http://www.nasa.gov/centers/dryden/Features/ccie.html

Shuttle Model Move Shows Way for Atlantis

2012-01-11T01:02:00.000-08:00

Moving the high fidelity model of the space shuttle Dec. 10 called for an array of planning, about 100 people and a specialized trailer. It also called for the temporary removal of 18 light poles, four traffic signals and some signs.

It took the team about five hours to make the six-mile trip from the Kennedy Space Center Visitor Complex to the Turn Basin across the street from the Vehicle Assembly Building. The group started rolling at 7:30 a.m. so they wouldn't have to worry about the dark.

"It went very well," said Gerald "Jay" Green, project manager for the move. "I felt a great sense of accomplishment when we got it done."

A similar move will be made next year when space shuttle Atlantis is taken the opposite direction to its display location at the Visitor Complex.

The model's convoy never traveled more than about 6 mph. It came to a stop many times along the way so the trailer's built-in jacks could raise or lower the wings to get past obstacles such as guard shacks and traffic lights.

"There were four or five really hard spots," Green said.

But then, moving space shuttles and full-scale model shuttles has always required extra consideration. For instance, crews moving a space shuttle through the mountains in California had to cut slots in the rock to make room for the wings.

Moving the model didn't require such an extreme action, but it took a month of planning and considerable study of potential routes. Even 3-D modeling was incorporated to find problem zones. All this was before Green and his group found out they would have to move it with the wings attached.

For more info, visit :

http://www.nasa.gov/centers/kennedy/news/explorermove.html

NASA Launches Mission to Study Moon From Crust to Core

2011-12-27T02:44:00.000-08:00

NASA's twin lunar Gravity Recovery and Interior Laboratory (GRAIL) spacecraft lifted off from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida at 9:08 a.m. EDT (6:08 a.m. PDT) Saturday, Sept. 10, to study the moon in unprecedented detail.

GRAIL-A is scheduled to reach the moon on New Year's Eve 2011, while GRAIL-B will arrive New Year's Day 2012. The two solar-powered spacecraft will fly in tandem orbits around the moon to measure its gravity field. GRAIL will answer longstanding questions about the moon and give scientists a better understanding of how Earth and other rocky planets in the solar system formed.

"If there was ever any doubt that Florida's Space Coast would continue to be open for business, that thought was drowned out by the roar of today's GRAIL launch," said NASA Administrator Charles Bolden. "GRAIL and many other exciting upcoming missions make clear that NASA is taking its next big leap into deep space exploration, and the space industry continues to provide the jobs and workers needed to support this critical effort."

The spacecraft were launched aboard a United Launch Alliance Delta II rocket. GRAIL mission controllers acquired a signal from GRAIL-A at 10:29 a.m. EDT (7:29 a.m. PDT). GRAIL-B's signal was received eight minutes later. The telemetry downlinked from both spacecraft indicates they have deployed their solar panels and are operating as expected.

NASA Selects Seven Firms to Provide Near-Space Flight Services

2011-12-13T03:47:00.000-08:00

NASA has selected seven companies to integrate and fly technology payloads on commercial suborbital reusable platforms that carry payloads near the boundary of space.

As part of NASA's Flight Opportunities Program, each successful vendor will receive an indefinite-delivery, indefinite-quantity contract. These two-year contracts, worth a combined total of $10 million, will allow NASA to draw from a pool of commercial space companies to deliver payload integration and flight services. The flights will carry a variety of payloads to help meet the agency's research and technology needs.

"Through this catalog approach, NASA is moving toward the goal of making frequent, low-cost access to near-space available to a wide range of engineers, scientists and technologists," said NASA Chief Technologist Bobby Braun at NASA Headquarters in Washington. "The government's ability to open the suborbital research frontier to a broad community of innovators will enable maturation of the new technologies and capabilities needed for NASA's future missions in space."

For more info, visit:
http://www.nasa.gov/centers/dryden/news/NewsReleases/2011/11-258.html

2011-12-08T04:06:00.000-08:00

NASA scientists have successfully completed flight tests in preparation for deployment of a multi-year airborne science campaign to study the humidity and chemical composition of air entering the tropical tropopause layer of the atmosphere. NASA's Airborne Tropical TRopopause EXperiment (ATTREX) will conduct the science campaign over the Pacific Ocean from three locations in 2013 and 2014.

Studies have shown that even small changes in stratospheric humidity may have climate impacts that are significant compared to those of decadal increases in greenhouse gases. Predictions of stratospheric humidity changes are uncertain, due to gaps in the understanding of the physical processes occurring in the tropical tropopause layer, which ranges from about eight to 11 miles above the ground.

"These were test flights, although we did get science-quality data, including samples from tropical thin cirrus clouds at about 55,000 feet altitude," said Leonhard Pfister, ATTREX deputy principal investigator at NASA’s Ames Research Center in Moffett Field, Calif. "These clouds regulate water vapor in the lower tropical stratosphere, which is important for Earth's radiation balance."

Pfister will discuss the ATTREX mission goals, objectives and planned research flights at the Monday, Dec. 5, afternoon poster session at the American Geophysical Union Fall meeting held at the Moscone Center, San Francisco, Calif.

Led by principal investigator Eric Jensen and project manager Dave Jordan of NASA Ames, scientists integrated instruments onto one of NASA's Global Hawk unmanned aircraft and verified their operation during four checkout flights from NASA's Dryden Flight Research Center at Edwards, Calif.

For more info, visit:
http://www.nasa.gov/centers/dryden/news/NewsReleases/2011/11-37.html

Growing Knowledge in Space

2011-12-06T03:07:00.000-08:00

Plants are critical in supporting life on Earth, and with help from an experiment that flew onboard space shuttle Discovery's STS-131 mission, they also could transform living in space.

NASA's Kennedy Space Center partnered with the University of Florida, Miami University in Ohio and Samuel Roberts Noble Foundation to perform three different experiments in microgravity.

The studies concentrated on the effects microgravity has on plant cell walls, root growth patterns and gene regulation within the plant Arabidopsis thaliana. Each of the studies has future applications on Earth and in space exploration.

"Any research in plant biology helps NASA for future long-range space travel in that plants will be part of bioregenerative life support systems," said John Kiss, one of the researchers who participated in the BRIC-16 experiment onboard Discovery's STS-131 flight in April 2010 and a distinguished professor and chair of the Department of Botany at Miami University in Ohio.

The use of plants to provide a reliable oxygen, food and water source could save the time and money it takes to resupply the International Space Station (ISS), and provide sustainable sources necessary to make long-duration missions a reality. However, before plants can be effectively utilized for space exploration missions, a better understanding of their biology under microgravity is essential.

We are in Antarctica

2011-12-05T05:12:00.000-08:00

Our military C-17 flight landed on 2.3-meter thick sea ice in McMurdo Sound. McMurdo has three airfields that are used at different times during the austral summer. The sea-ice runway is located a few miles from McMurdo, and it usually operates from October to December, until the sea ice begins to break.

For a large number of us, this is our first time on the southernmost continent on Earth and, as you can imagine, landing on McMurdo Sound’s sea ice felt very special. The first minutes off the plane everyone was looking around and smiling a lot.

Weather conditions on landing were nice, despite a low cloud that turned everything extremely bright and made it difficult to tell the sky from the snow-covered ice.

Shortly after stepping into the snow, we had to jump into one of the two charismatic vehicles that were ready to transport us to McMurdo Station. We could choose between the famous Ivan the Terra Bus (red as our parka, a.k.a. the Big Red) or an orange delta truck from the early 80s (that vehicle was already carrying people from the runway to McMurdo station before I was born!). Both vehicles have incredibly big tires.

Spacecraft Design

2011-12-02T04:33:00.000-08:00

MESSENGER's dual-mode, liquid chemical propulsion system is integrated into the spacecraft's structure to make economical use of mass. The structure is primarily composed of a graphite epoxy material. This composite structure provides the strength necessary to survive launch while offering lower mass. Two large solar panels, supplemented with a nickel-hydrogen battery, provide MESSENGER's power.

The "brains" of the spacecraft are redundant integrated electronics modules (IEMs) that house two processors each -- a 25-megahertz (MHz) main processor and a 10-MHz fault-protection processor.

Mercury Dual Imaging System (MDIS): This instrument consists of wide-angle and narrow-angle imagers that will map landforms, track variations in surface spectra and gather topographic information. A pivot platform will help point it in whatever direction the scientists choose. The two instruments will enable MESSENGER to "see" much like our two eyes do.

Gamma-Ray and Neutron Spectrometer (GRNS): This instrument will detect gamma rays and neutrons that are emitted by radioactive elements on Mercury's surface or by surface elements that have been stimulated by cosmic rays. It will be used to map the relative abundances of different elements and will help to determine if there is ice at Mercury's poles, which are never exposed to direct sunlight.

Gamma rays and high-energy X-rays from the Sun, striking Mercury's surface, can cause the surface elements to emit low-energy X-rays. XRS will detect these emitted X-rays to measure the abundances of various elements in the materials of Mercury's crust.

Magnetometer (MAG): This instrument is at the end of a 3.6 meter (nearly 12-foot) boom, and will map Mercury's magnetic field and will search for regions of magnetized rocks in the crust.

Mercury Laser Altimeter (MLA): This instrument contains a laser that will send light to the planet's surface and a sensor that will gather the light after it has been reflected from the surface. Together they will measure the amount of time for light to make a round-trip to the surface and back. Recording variations in this distance will produce highly accurate descriptions of Mercury's topography.

Mercury Atmospheric and Surface Composition Spectrometer (MASCS): This spectrometer is sensitive to light from the infrared to the ultraviolet and will measure the abundances of atmospheric gases, as well as detect minerals on the surface.

Energetic Particle and Plasma Spectrometer (EPPS): EPPS measures the composition, distribution, and energy of charged particles (electrons and various ions) in Mercury's magnetosphere.

Radio Science (RS): RS will use the Doppler effect to measure very slight changes in the spacecraft's velocity as it orbits Mercury. This will allow scientists to study Mercury's mass distribution, including variations in the thickness of its crust.

The Suzaku Spacecrafts and Instruments

2011-11-29T00:28:00.000-08:00

The Spacecraft

The Suzaku spacecraft weighs about 1,600 kg (3500 pounds) and it will be 7.1 meters (23 feet) long after the Extensible Optical Bench is extended in orbit. The five X-ray Telescopes (XRTs) and all the instruments (the X-Ray Spectrometer, the 4 X-ray Imaging Spectrometers, and the Hard X-ray Detector) will point in the same direction. This allows scientists to simultaneously study cosmic X-ray sources using the different capabilities of the various onboard instruments.

X-Ray Spectrometer (XRS)

The detectors in the X-Ray Spectrometer (XRS) are X-ray microcalorimeters. They work by monitoring the temperature of a tiny piece of silicon, and measuring the temperature rise that results when it absorbs an X-ray photon. As you might imagine, measuring the temperature increase from a single photon is fairly difficult. The detectors need to be kept extremely cold, almost to absolute zero (60 milliKelvin or 0.06 Kelvin, about -273 C, or about -460 F), requiring a complex cryogenic system which includes liquid helium and solid neon.

The XRS has a limited life of about 2.5 years before the neon and/or helium runs out. The XRS is special because, for the first time, it will provide both high spectral resolution (measuring small differences in the energies of X-ray photons) and high throughput (measuring lots of X rays) in one instrument.

X-ray Imaging Spectrometer (XIS)

There are 4 X-ray Imaging Spectrometers (XIS), each with a 1024x1024-pixel X-ray-sensitive Charge Coupled Device (a CCD, similar to what's in your digital camera, but sensitive to much more energetic light). The use of CCDs for astronomical X-ray spectroscopy was pioneered by the ASCA mission starting in 1993. The XIS has been developed by a collaboration of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, ISAS, the University of Kyoto, and the University of Osaka. It was fabricated by MIT's Lincoln Laboratory.

For more info, visit: http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/astro-e2/spacecraft/index.html

Mars Rover Well-Equipped for Studies

2011-11-28T02:53:00.000-08:00

The Mars Science Laboratory is taking a toolbox to Mars that any researcher would be proud of. A drill, metallic brush and even a laser are part of the gear set the Mars Science Laboratory called Curiosity is taking to the red planet in the most ambitious effort yet to discern exactly what is on the surface.

The spacecraft is to launch Nov. 26 atop a United Launch Alliance Atlas V rocket. Liftoff is slated for 10:02 a.m. It will take more than eight months for Curiosity to fly the 354 million miles on its path to Mars. Landing is expected in early August 2012.

Although calling the spacecraft a laboratory might suggest it will stay in one place, Curiosity actually is a rover that will travel some 12 miles inside Gale Crater during its 23-month mission. The size of a car or small SUV, the rover weighs nearly a ton and its scientific payload is 10 times more massive than the instrument sets taken to Mars by previous rovers.

"This is a vehicle on Mars, cruising around, drilling into rocks, chipping away at stuff to see what that planet's made out of," said Omar Baez, the launch director of the MSL mission. "And even if it didn't do that, if it just cruised around Mars and took pictures, the value in that is tremendous."

Curiosity will be the fourth NASA rover to touch down on Mars since July 1997, when the Pathfinder probe and its skateboard-sized Sojourner rover bounced onto the surface and began several months of analysis that suggested early Mars was a lot like Earth, with water at the surface and a thicker atmosphere.

Mars Science Laboratory Launch Milestones

2011-11-24T01:54:00.000-08:00

NASA's Mars Science Laboratory is tucked inside its Atlas V rocket, ready for launch on Saturday, Nov. 26, 2011 from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida. The Nov. 26 launch window extends from 7:02 a.m. to 8:45 a.m. PST (10:02 a.m. to 11:45 a.m. EST). The launch period for the mission extends through Dec. 18.

The spacecraft, which will arrive at Mars in August 2012, is equipped with the most advanced rover ever to land on another planet. Named Curiosity, the rover will investigate whether the landing region has had environmental conditions favorable for supporting microbial life, and favorable for preserving clues about whether life existed.

On Nov. 26, NASA Television coverage of the launch will begin at 4:30 a.m. PST (7:30 a.m. EST). Live launch coverage will be carried on all NASA Television channels. For NASA Television downlink information, schedule information and streaming video, visit: http://www.nasa.gov/ntv .  The launch coverage will also be streamed live on Ustream at http://www.ustream.tv/nasajpl .

NASA's NPP Satellite Acquires First VIIRS Image

2011-11-23T02:03:00.000-08:00

The Visible Infrared Imager Radiometer Suite (VIIRS) onboard NASA's newest Earth-observing satellite, NPP, acquired its first measurements on Nov. 21, 2011. This high-resolution image is of a broad swath of Eastern North America from Canada’s Hudson Bay past Florida to the northern coast of Venezuela. The VIIRS data were processed at the NOAA Satellite Operations Facility (NSOF) in Suitland, Md.

VIIRS is one of five instruments onboard the National Polar-orbiting Operational Environmental Satellite System Preparatory Project (NPP) satellite that launched from Vandenberg Air Force Base, Calif., on Oct. 28. Since then, NPP reached its final orbit at an altitude of 512 miles (824 kilometers), powered on all instruments and is traveling around the Earth at 16,640 miles an hour (eight kilometers per second).

"This image is a next step forward in the success of VIIRS and the NPP mission," said James Gleason, NPP project scientist at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Md.

VIIRS will collect radiometric imagery in visible and infrared wavelengths of the Earth's land, atmosphere, and oceans. By far the largest instrument onboard NPP, VIIRS weighs about 556 pounds (252 kilograms). Its data, collected from 22 channels across the electromagnetic spectrum, will be used to observe the Earth's surface including fires, ice, ocean color, vegetation, clouds, and land and sea surface temperatures.

International Team to Drill Beneath Massive Antarctic Ice Shelf

2011-11-19T00:36:00.000-08:00

An international team of researchers funded by NASA and the National Science Foundation (NSF) will travel next month to one of Antarctica's most active, remote and harsh spots to determine how changes in the waters circulating under an active ice sheet are causing a glacier to accelerate and drain into the sea.

The science expedition will be the most extensive ever deployed to Pine Island Glacier. It is the area of the ice-covered continent that concerns scientists most because of its potential to cause a rapid rise in sea level. Satellite measurements have shown this area is losing ice and surrounding glaciers are thinning, raising the possibility the ice could flow rapidly out to sea.

The multidisciplinary group of 13 scientists, led by Robert Bindschadler, emeritus glaciologist of NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md., will depart from the McMurdo Station in Antarctica in mid-December and spend six weeks on the ice shelf. During their stay, they will use a combination of traditional tools and sophisticated new oceanographic instruments to measure the shape of the cavity underneath the ice shelf and determine how streams of warm ocean water enter it, move toward the very bottom of the glacier and melt its underbelly.

"The project aims to determine the underlying causes behind why Pine Island Glacier has begun to flow more rapidly and discharge more ice into the ocean," said Scott Borg, director of NSF's Division of Antarctic Sciences, the group that coordinates all U.S. research in Antarctica. "This could have a significant impact on global sea-level rise over the coming century."

Scientists have determined the interaction of winds, water and ice is driving ice loss from the floating glacier. Gusts of increasingly stronger westerly winds push cold surface waters away from the continent, allowing warmer waters that normally hover at depths below the continental shelf to rise. The upwelling warm waters spill over the border of the shelf and move along the sea floor, back to where the glacier rises from the bedrock and floats, causing it to melt.

The warm salty waters and fresh glacier melt water combine to make a lighter mixture that rises along the underside of the ice shelf and moves back to the open ocean, melting more ice on its way. How much more ice melts is what the team wants to find out, so it can improve projections of how the glacier will melt and contribute to sea-level rise.

For more information, visit,
http://www.nasa.gov/topics/earth/features/pine-island-glacier.html

The Long Voyage of Discovery

2011-11-18T00:24:00.000-08:00

It has flown to space more than any other craft, and it has carried more crew members to orbit. It was the first spacecraft to retrieve a satellite and bring it back to Earth. It has visited two space stations. It launched a telescope that has seen deeper in space and in time than ever before. And twice it has demonstrated the United States' will to persevere following devastating tragedy, returning America to orbit following the two worst accidents in space history.

Although all five vehicles that have comprised NASA's space shuttle fleet are unmatched in achievements, space shuttle Discovery is unique among the extraordinary.

In 38 trips to space, Discovery has spent 352 days in orbit, almost a full year. Discovery has circled Earth 5,628 times, all the while speeding along at 17,400 miles per hour. It has traveled almost 143 million miles. That equals 288 round trips to the moon or about one and a half trips to the sun.

Discovery has carried more crew members - 246 - than any space vehicle. Those have included the first female to ever pilot a spacecraft, the oldest person to fly in space, the first African-American to perform a spacewalk, the first cosmonaut to fly on an American spacecraft and the first sitting member of Congress to fly in space.

Dryden Tested Shuttle's Microwave Landing System

2011-11-16T01:20:00.000-08:00

From August 1976 to February 1982, a Lockheed JetStar research aircraft at NASA's Dryden Flight Research Center on Edwards Air Force Base was used to test and certify the space shuttle’s Microwave Scanning Beam Landing System (MSBLS). This aircraft navigation system provided the precise position of the shuttle orbiter in relation to the runway to the shuttle pilots during landing approach.

The MSBLS consisted of specialized equipment installed on the aircraft and on the ground near the runways. Dryden pilots logged 671 flight hours during 346 missions to check out MSBLS equipment at the three primary shuttle landing sites.

The JetStar was first flown to Long Island, N.Y., where the AIL Division of Cutler Hammer installed MSBLS equipment. Preliminary trials took place at the Grumman Corporation’s microwave test facility at Peconic, New York. In August 1976, NASA research pilots flew 21 MSBLS approaches to lakebed Runway 17 at Edwards. A laser tracking system provided the airplane’s exact position in flight to validate the accuracy of the MSBLS. These tests certified Runway 17 for use by the prototype orbiter Enterprise in the Approach and Landing Test program in 1977.

NASA Dryden's now-retired Lockheed JetStar flies a low landing approach to lakebed runway 35 at Edwards past the data monitoring system pole of the space shuttle's microwave scanning beam landing system in 1977. A second set of MSBLS ground stations were installed for the main 15,000-foot concrete runway at Edwards, and tested with the JetStar making numerous landing approaches over the course of 83 flights through October 1977.

Dryden pilots took the JetStar to NASA’s Kennedy Space Center, Fla., in April 1978 for certification of runway 33/15. By December, the crew had completed more than 100 data runs. A year later, the JetStar crew began a series of 46 MSBLS flight tests at Northrup Strip, later renamed White Sands Space Harbor, near White Sands, N.M.

Boosters Gave Fiery Muscle to Shuttle Launches

2011-11-10T23:52:00.000-08:00

When Atlantis’ STS-135 mission lifted off from Launch Pad 39A on July 8, 2011, on NASA’s final space shuttle launch, it was carried aloft by the last two solid rocket boosters (SRBs) assembled at Kennedy Space Center for the Space Shuttle Program. Two of the SRB’s major components also helped launch Columbia on the first space shuttle launch.

External Fuel Tank/SRB Vehicle Manager Alicia Mendoza said the cylinder on the left-hand forward motor segment and the forward skirt on the right-hand forward assembly flew on STS-1 in 1981.

“Components flown on the first and last missions of the program are a fitting testament to the robustness of the reusable design of the SRBs,” Mendoza said. “Even of greater significance is the professionalism of the unique team of thousands of individuals who have retrieved, refurbished and assembled the hardware during the past 30 years.”

For three decades, the twin SRBs provided the main thrust to help send space shuttles and hundreds of astronauts on 135 missions into space.

The SRBs generated a combined thrust of 5.3 million pounds, which is equivalent to 44 million horsepower or 400,000 subcompact cars. Each SRB was 149.2 feet tall, which is only two feet shorter than the Statue of Liberty. However, each 700-ton loaded booster weighed more than three times as much as the famous statue. The left SRB sported a black stripe on the forward assembly, just below the nose cone, to distinguish it from the right SRB during re-entry into the atmosphere and retrieval operations out in the Atlantic Ocean.

Several facilities at Kennedy were used to process the SRBs major components. The boosters arrived in eight segments by railcar from ATK in Utah. “It takes 22 days to build the four segments into a flight-ready SRB stacked on the platform,” Mendoza said.

At Kennedy, about 600 NASA, USA and ATK engineers and technicians worked to process the SRBs from beginning to retrieval until after launch. “Their skill, dedication and passion are the reasons for the success of this great nation’s Space Shuttle Program,” Mendoza said.

Drag Chute Reduced Shuttles' Brake and Tire Wear

2011-11-09T00:56:00.000-08:00

The landing of space shuttle Endeavour on the 15,000-foot concrete runway at Edwards Air Force Base, Calif., to conclude shuttle mission STS-49 in 1992 demonstrated a new capability for the shuttle fleet. A 39-foot-diameter braking parachute was used to slow the vehicle, relieving stress on the brakes and tires and reducing the landing rollout by as much as 2,000 feet.

Engineers had initially considered such a feature for the shuttle, but eliminated it from preliminary designs in 1974 after deciding it wouldn’t be needed for planned lakebed landings at Edwards. Endeavour was the first orbiter to be built with the drag chute that would soon become a standard feature on the shuttle fleet.

In 1990, researchers at NASA's Dryden Flight Research Center at Edwards used the center's modified NB-52B to test the drag parachute system that would be used on the shuttle orbiters. In a series of eight chute deployment tests, the B-52 landed at speeds ranging from 160 to 230 miles per hour on one of the lakebed runways, as well as on the 15,000-foot concrete strip.

Instrumentation on the B-52 obtained data during chute deployments to validate predicted loads that an operational shuttle orbiter would sustain with a drag chute deployed during landing and rollout. Successful test results led to incorporation of the drag chute system on Endeavour as it was being built. The other three orbiters – Columbia, Discovery and Atlantis – were retrofitted with the system as they underwent normal periodic maintenance.

Endeavour’s first landing on May 16, 1992 was the first operational demonstration of the system. The drag chute was deployed as the nose gear touched down, and the orbiter came to a stop following a landing roll of 9,490 feet. Though this fairly typical rollout was the result of conservative mission planning, subsequent landings of Endeavour demonstrated that the drag chute could reduce landing rollouts by 700 to 1,500 feet.

PHYSX - Pegasus Hypersonic Experiment Project

2011-11-04T02:09:00.000-07:00

Imagine a new breed of aircraft that could travel 3750 mph (at sea level) and make a trip from Los Angeles to New York City in a little more than 45 min.

NASA is working to make these aircraft of the future possible through research into the world of hypersonics, or flight at speeds faster than five times the speed of sound.

One of these exciting areas of research is the Pegasus Hypersonic Experiment project, managed by the NASA Dryden Flight Research Center, Edwards, CA.

The experiment consists of a smooth, information-gathering "glove" installed on the first-stage wing of the Pegasus Space Launch Vehicle, which reaches speeds of Mach 8 and altitudes of 200,000 ft. The glove is bonded to the right wing and wraps from the underside of wing, over the leading edge and onto the upperside, although it does not cover the wing completely.

The experiment will gather information about how the air flows over the Pegasus wing. Scientists are particularly interested in the transition of air from smooth (laminar) to turbulent flow. The goal of the experiment is to discover when the airflow over the wing becomes turbulent and why.

Airflow has a great impact on how hot vehicles get. Turbulent air generates a lot of heat because of increased friction, which can cause burns on aircraft.

The hypersonic X-15 experienced such problems due to turbulence-induced friction. In addition, turbulent air creates more "drag," slowing down aircraft or making them less efficient.

For more information, visit: http://www.nasa.gov/centers/dryden/news/FactSheets/FS-053-DFRC.html

Hinode's First Light and Five More Years

2011-11-03T02:30:00.000-07:00

On October 28, 2006, the Hinode solar mission was at last ready. The spacecraft launched on September 22, but such missions require a handful of diagnostics before the instruments can be turned on and collect what is called “first light.”

Hopes were high. Hinode had the potential to provide some of the highest resolution images of the sun the world had ever seen - as well as help solve such mysteries as why the sun's atmosphere is a thousand times hotter than its surface and how the magnetic fields roiling through the sun create dramatic explosions able to send energy to the farthest reaches of the solar system.

The X-ray telescope (XRT) began taking images on October 23, the Solar Optical Telescope (SOT) opened its front door on October 25, and the Extreme Ultraviolet Imaging Spectrometer (EIS) started collecting spectroscopic images on October 28.

The images were beautiful, the data good; first light science had been achieved.

And so started five years in the life of a solar mission that would offer unprecedented details into the dynamics of the sun. Hinode – the word means "sunrise" in Japanese – is a mission led by the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) with collaboration from NASA and other partners in the US, Europe, and Japan. Its instruments produce fantastic detail of both visible and magnetic features on the sun's surface and in its atmosphere, the corona. Such detail was unprecedented at its launch and still prized today. Hinode has helped find the origin of the solar wind, discovered potential candidates for how the corona gets so hot, and provided images of the complex magnetic structures looping up and out of active regions on the sun.

Enterprise Pods Tested for Move

2011-11-02T05:32:00.000-07:00

Teams at NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida continue practicing rarely performed techniques for moving space shuttles among some of the nation's premier museums as next year's shuttle shuffle nears.

The latest rehearsal saw an inoperative orbital maneuvering system pod positioned with shuttle Endeavour to practice placing two of the pods on the prototype shuttle Enterprise for transportation next year. The inoperative pods were made for Enterprise to use during its approach and landing tests in 1977.

It also gave workers who have not dealt with the pods before a chance to practice and refine the process, Pannullo said. It takes about three days to install the ALTA pods.

The ALTA pods are replicas of the orbital maneuvering system pods, or OMS pods, that shuttle used to steer in space.

Although designed for Enterprise, which never went into orbit, the ALTA pods were used on all the shuttles when they were flown on the back of a modified 747 from Florida to the shuttle's factory in Palmdale, Calif., for periodic overhaul.

They were last used in 2001 when Columbia was brought back from the West Coast to Kennedy, Pannullo said.

The shuttles that flew into orbit during the 30-year program will be displayed with the operational pods they used, although those pods will have been drained of toxic residue and other potential hazards before they are put on display.

Weather and Climate Meet on NPP Satellite

2011-11-01T01:07:00.000-07:00

NASA’s newest Earth-observing satellite soared into space aboard a Delta II rocket after liftoff on October 28, 2011. The National Polar-orbiting Operational Environmental Satellite System Preparatory Project, or NPP, blasted off at 2:48 a.m. Pacific Daylight Time from Space Launch Complex 2 at Vandenberg Air Force Base in California.

The satellite successfully separated from the rocket 58 minutes after launch, and the first signal was acquired by the Tracking and Data Relay Satellite System shortly after. NPP's solar array deployed 67 minutes after launch to provide the satellite with electrical power. NPP was headed for a sun-synchronous polar orbit 824 kilometers (512 miles) above Earth.

NPP carries five science instruments to help meteorologists improve short-term weather forecasts and to help climatologists observe long-term patterns. The mission will extend more than 30 key long-term data sets that NASA has been tracking, including measurements of the ozone layer, land cover, ice cover, clouds, the ocean surface, and vegetation.

NPP serves as a bridge mission between NASA’s Earth Observing System (EOS) of satellites and the next-generation Joint Polar Satellite System, a National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) program that will also collect weather and climate data. The satellite will be operated from the NOAA Satellite Operations Facility in Maryland. NASA will operate NPP for the first three months after launch while the satellite and instrument are checked out. NPP operations will then be turned over to NOAA and the JPSS program for the remainder of the mission.

Neutron Generator of Instrument for Detecting Water-Bearing Minerals

2011-10-24T01:31:00.000-07:00

A Russian-built, neutron-shooting instrument on the Curiosity rover of NASA's Mars Science Laboratory mission will check for water-bearing minerals in the ground beneath the rover.

The instrument, named Dynamic Albedo of Neutrons, or DAN, has two major components: the pulsed neutron generator on the starboard side of the rover (location indicated by red outline), and the detector and electronics module on the port side. The pulsed neutron generator will shoot high-energy neutrons into the ground. If there is hydrogen in the shallow subsurface, the injected neutrons will bounce off the hydrogen atoms with a characteristic decrease in energy. Two detection devices in the detector and electronics module measure the rate and delay time of the reflected neutrons, yielding information about the amount and depth of any hydrogen. At the mission's near-equatorial landing area and in the oxidizing environment near the Martian surface, most hydrogen is expected to be in the form of water molecules or water-derived hydroxyl ions bound to minerals.

The Russian Federal Space Agency contributed DAN for the Mars Science Laboratory mission as part of broad collaboration between the United States and Russia in the exploration of space.

DAN was developed by the Space Research Institute, Moscow, in close cooperation with the N. L. Dukhov All-Russia Research Institute of Automatics, Moscow, and the Joint Institute of Nuclear Research, Dubna.

NASA will launch the Mars Science Laboratory spacecraft from Florida between Nov. 25 and Dec. 18, 2011. The rover will land on Mars in August, 2012. During a prime mission lasting one Mars year (nearly two Earth years), researchers will use the rover to investigate whether conditions in the Gale crater landing region have been favorable for microbial life and favorable for preserving evidence about whether life has existed.

MABEL flies her last science flight for Spring 2011

2011-10-21T21:52:00.000-07:00

MABEL flew her final science mission of 2011 (4/5) over White Sands Missile Range. The weather over this area was clear when we flew it, however, weather rolled into the area just as the plane left our target.

White Sands was chosen as a MABEL target because we have been using the area as a ground-control site since ICESat was launched in 2003. Two ICESat tracks crossed in the center of the dune field; where they cross, ICESat researchers have recently planted reflectors that we hope to see in the MABEL data. These reflectors will help us validate MABEL’s elevation determination accuracy.

Also on this flight, we also attempted to collect data from deciduous trees in Arkansas. From Dryden Flight Research Center, to New Mexico, on to Arkansas, and then back to Dryden is a 9 hour mission.

However, between White Sands and Arkansas, MABEL’s laser stopped firing. This is not something that we were prepared to deal with in the field. So, given that we were already near the end of this mission, we decided we’d call this trip a success, given all that MABEL had already accomplished and given the science objectives that the instrument deployment had met:

1) Hit ground-control points set up at White Sands to validate MABEL
2) Collect tree data for ICESat-2 vegetation scientists
3) Collect snow data for ICESat-2 glaciologists
4) Collect data over the ocean and bright clouds for ICESat-2 instrument scientists

Endeavour's Rendezvous Pitch Maneuver

2011-10-19T05:04:00.000-07:00

At 5:15 a.m. EDT today, Endeavour began the nine-minute Rendezvous Pitch Maneuver, or 'backflip,' on its last visit to the Inernational Space Station. With Commander Mark Kelly at the controls, Endeavour rotated 360 degrees backward to enable space station astronauts Dmitry Kondratyev, Paolo Nespoli and Cady Coleman to take high resolution pictures of the shuttle’s heat shield.

Kelly then flew the shuttle through a quarter circle to a position about 400 feet directly in front of the station. Docking occurred about an hour later at 6:14 a.m.

NASA Releases New Interactive Space Communications Game

2011-10-17T00:07:00.000-07:00

NASA has released an interactive, educational video game called NetworKing that depicts how the Space Communication and Navigation (SCaN) network operates. The release of the video game coincides with the close of World Space Week, Oct. 4-10.

Developed by the Information Technology Office at NASA's Ames Research Center at Moffett Field, Calif., NetworKing gives players an insider's perspective into how astronauts, mission controllers and scientists communicate during space missions.

"For any young person who ever dreamed of one day contributing to space missions, NetworKing lets players develop a kingdom of multiple space communication networks working together to support space missions," said Barbara Adde, policy and strategic communications director for SCaN at NASA Headquarters in Washington.

To successfully construct fast and efficient communication networks, players must first establish command stations around the world and accept clients conducting space missions, such as satellites and space telescopes. Resources are earned throughout the game as players continue to acquire more clients. Players can strategically use accumulated resources to enhance and increase their networks' capabilities.

Players with the most integrated communications networks will have the ability to acquire more complex clients, such as the International Space Station, Hubble Space Telescope and the Kepler mission.

For more information visit: http://www.nasa.gov/multimedia/3d_resources/scan.html

Carina Nebula

2011-10-14T23:31:00.000-07:00

The Carina Nebula is a star-forming region in the Sagittarius-Carina arm of the Milky Way that is 7,500 light years from Earth and the Chandra X-Ray Observatory has detected more than 14,000 stars in the region.

Chandra's X-ray vision provides strong evidence that massive stars have self-destructed in this nearby star-forming region. Firstly, there is an observed deficit of bright X-ray sources in the area known as Trumpler 15, suggesting that some of the massive stars in this cluster were already destroyed in supernova explosions. Trumpler 15 is located in the northern part of the image and is one of ten star clusters in the Carina complex.

The detection of six possible neutron stars, the dense cores often left behind after stars explode in supernovas, provides additional evidence that supernova activity is increasing up in Carina. Previous observations had only detected one neutron star in Carina.

Dryden F-104 Flight-Tested Shuttle TPS Materials

2011-10-11T21:26:00.000-07:00

During the formative years of the space shuttle program, NASA Dryden F-15 and F-104 jets were used to flight-test various advanced Thermal Protection System (TPS) materials for the shuttles.

These tests included TPS materials from different locations on shuttle orbiters, and they were tested for everything from rain impact integrity, to air-loads strength and surface bonding.

During one such effort, NASA Dryden engineers conducted flight-testing of the orbiter’s advanced, flexible Felt Reusable Surface Insulation (FRSI) and Advanced Flexible Reusable Surface Insulation (AFRSI) TPS materials. These were the soft, sewn blanket-like materials that covered most of the upper surfaces of the orbiters, while black silicon tiles covered the underside, and reinforced carbon-carbon materials protected the nose and leading edges of the wings.

The objectives of the FRSI and AFRSI tests were to evaluate the performance of the materials at simulated shuttle launch aerodynamic loads, and also to provide a database for future advanced TPS flight tests.

These flights were flown mostly on Dryden’s F-104 test bed aircraft in the 1980s, with the TPS materials attached to a fin-like structure called the Flight Test Fixture (FTF) underneath the F-104.

Space Telescopes Reveal Secrets of Turbulent Black Hole

2011-10-11T01:16:00.000-07:00

A fleet of spacecraft including NASA's Hubble Space Telescope has uncovered unprecedented details in the surroundings of a supermassive black hole. Observations reveal huge bullets of gas being driven away from the gravitational monster and a corona of very hot gas hovering above the disk of matter that is falling into the black hole.

A team led by Jelle Kaastra of SRON Netherlands Institute for Space Research made use of data from ESA's XMM-Newton and INTEGRAL spacecraft (which study X-rays and gamma rays, respectively), the Hubble Space Telescope (for ultraviolet observations with the COS instrument), and NASA's Chandra (X-ray) Observatory and Swift (gamma-ray) satellites.The black hole that the team chose to study lies at the heart of the galaxy Markarian 509 (Mrk 509), nearly 500 million light-years away. This black hole is colossal, containing 300 million times the mass of the Sun, and is growing more massive every day as it continues to feed on surrounding matter, which glows brightly as it forms a rotating disk around the black hole. Mrk 509 was chosen because it is known to vary in brightness, which indicates that the flow of matter is turbulent.

The above image of Mrk 509 was taken in April 2007 with Hubble's Wide Field Planetary Camera 2. But using a large number of telescopes that are sensitive to different wavelengths of light gave astronomers unprecedented coverage running from the infrared, through the visible, ultraviolet, X-rays, and into the gamma-ray band.

ESA To Collaborate with NASA on Solar Science Mission

2011-10-10T02:29:00.000-07:00

On October 4, 2011, the European Space Agency announced it's two next science missions, including Solar Orbiter, a spacecraft geared to study the powerful influence of the sun. Solar Orbiter will be an ESA-led mission, with strong NASA contributions managed from Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md.

Solar Orbiter will venture closer to the Sun than any previous mission. The spacecraft will also carry advanced instrumentation that will help untangle how activity on the sun sends out radiation, particles and magnetic fields that can affect Earth's magnetic environment, causing aurora, or potentially damaging satellites, interfering with GPS communications or even Earth's electrical power grids.

"Solar Orbiter will use multiple gravity assists from Venus to tilt its orbit until it can see the poles of the Sun, and that's never been done before," said Chris St. Cyr, NASA's project scientist for Solar Orbiter at Goddard. "A full view of the solar poles will help us understand how the sun's magnetic poles reverse direction every 11 years, causing giant eruptions and flares, called space weather, that can affect the rest of the solar system."

Being so close to the sun also means that the Solar Orbiter will stay over a given area of the solar surface for a longer time, allowing the instruments to track the evolution of sunspots, active regions, coronal holes and other solar activity far longer than has been done before.

For more information about the Solar Orbiter program, visit: http://sci.esa.int/solarorbiter

Mars Science Laboratory Meets its Match in Florida

2011-10-08T01:06:00.000-07:00

In preparation for launch later this year, the "back shell powered descent vehicle" configuration containing NASA's Mars Science Laboratory rover, Curiosity, has been placed on the spacecraft's heat shield. The matchup was performed by technicians at NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida.

The heat shield and the spacecraft's back shell form an aeroshell that encapsulates and protects the rover from the intense heat it will experience during the final leg of the trip to Mars-the friction-filled descent through the Martian atmosphere.

The mission is scheduled for launch from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station during the period from Nov. 25 to Dec. 18. Arrival at Gale Crater on Mars is expected in August 2012.

After arrival, the Curiosity rover will investigate whether the landing region has had environmental conditions favorable for supporting microbial life and favorable for preserving clues about whether life existed.

The Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, manages the Mars Science Laboratory mission for the NASA Science Mission Directorate, Washington.

For more information visit, http://www.nasa.gov/msl and http://mars.jpl.nasa.gov/msl/ .

X-48B Blended Wing Body

2011-10-06T05:55:00.000-07:00

Boeing Phantom Works has partnered with NASA and the Air Force Research Laboratory to study the structural, aerodynamic and operational advantages of the Blended Wing Body concept, a cross between a conventional plane and a flying wing design.

The Air Force has designated the prototype the X-48B based on its interest in the design's potential as a multi-role, long-range, high-capacity military transport aircraft. The 8.5 percent scale, remotely piloted X-48B is dynamically scaled to fly much like the full-size aircraft would fly.

Following completion of installation of test instrumentation, one of two X-48B Blended Wing Body technology demonstrators began flight tests at NASA's Dryden Flight Research Center in early 2007, and those tests are continuing into 2008. Researchers at NASA's Langley Research Center in Hampton, Va., tested the second X-48B prototype aircraft in Langley's historic full-scale wind tunnel in the spring of 2006, and the flight tests are intended in part to validate the results of those wind tunnel tests.

NASA Mars Rovers Win Popular Mechanics 'Breakthrough' Award

2011-10-04T05:02:00.000-07:00

More than seven years after completing their three-month prime missions on opposite sides of Mars, NASA rovers Spirit and Opportunity have been selected for lifetime achievement award honors as part of the Breakthrough Awards presented by Popular Mechanics magazine.

The magazine today announced recipients of awards to be presented Oct. 10 in New York. The announcement cites the Mars rovers' engineers, as well as the robots themselves, "for overcoming great challenges in their dogged pursuit of new discoveries on the Red Planet."

Both rovers continued for years of bonus, extended missions after completing their prime missions in 2004. Both made important discoveries about wet environments on ancient Mars that may have been favorable for supporting microbial life. Spirit, which drove 4.8 miles (7.7 kilometers), ceased communications in 2010. Opportunity is still active, has driven more than 20.8 miles (33.5 kilometers), and is currently examining the rim of 14-mile-diameter (22-kilometer-diameter) Endeavour crater.

For more information, visit:http://marsrovers.jpl.nasa.gov

NASA Ames Tweetup Features SOFIA Airborne Observatory

2011-10-03T04:27:00.000-07:00

NASA's Ames Research Center at Moffett Field near San Jose, Calif., will host a Tweetup for 50 of NASA's Twitter followers Oct. 14, focusing on the Stratospheric Observatory for Infrared Astronomy (SOFIA), which will be on site at Ames. In addition to a personal tour of the SOFIA flying observatory, Tweetup guests will have the chance to speak with NASA officials, managers and SOFIA scientists, and mingle with fellow Tweeps and the staff behind the tweets on @NASA, @NASAAmes and @SOFIATelescope. Tweetup registration opens at 7 a.m. PDT on Monday, Oct. 3, and closes at 2 p.m. PDT on Tuesday, Oct. 4, with 50 participants randomly selected from online registrations.

Unmanned Aircraft Systems Integration in the National Airspace System

2011-09-30T21:52:00.000-07:00

NASA’s Dryden Flight Research Center at Edwards Air Force Base, Calif., is leading a project designed to help integrate unmanned air vehicles into the world around us. The Unmanned Aircraft Systems Integration in the National Airspace System project, or UAS in the NAS, will contribute capabilities designed to reduce technical barriers related to safety and operational challenges associated with enabling routine UAS access to the NAS.

Unmanned aircraft systems such as NASA's Global Hawks (above) and Predator B named Ikhana (below), along with numerous other unmanned aircraft systems large and small, are the prime focus of the UAS in the NAS effort to integrate them into the national airspace. (NASA photos)

The project falls under the Integrated Systems Research Program office managed at NASA Headquarters by the agency’s Aeronautics Research Mission Directorate. NASA’s four aeronautics research centers – Dryden, Ames Research Center, Langley Research Center, and Glenn Research Center – are part of the technology development project.

With the use and diversity of unmanned aircraft growing rapidly, new uses for these vehicles are constantly being considered. Unmanned aircraft promise new ways of increasing efficiency, reducing costs, enhancing safety and saving lives.

The UAS in the NAS project envisions performance-based routine access to all segments of the national airspace for all unmanned aircraft system classes, once all safety-related and technical barriers are overcome.

Noctilucent cloud cover on the Southern Pole

2011-09-30T04:44:00.001-07:00

High up in the sky near the poles some 50 miles above the ground, silvery blue clouds sometimes appear, shining brightly in the night. First noticed in 1885, these clouds are known as noctilucent, or "night shining," clouds. Their discovery spawned over a century of research into what conditions causes them to form and vary – questions that still tantalize scientists to this day. Since 2007, a NASA mission called Aeronomy of Ice in the Mesosphere (AIM) has shown that the cloud formation is changing year to year, a process they believe is intimately tied to the weather and climate of the whole globe.

"The formation of the clouds requires both water and incredibly low temperatures," says Charles Jackman, an atmospheric scientist at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md., who is NASA's project scientist for AIM. "The temperatures turn out to be one of the prime driving factors for when the clouds appear."

So the appearance of the noctilucent clouds, also known as polar mesospheric clouds or PMCs since they occur in a layer of the atmosphere called the mesosphere, can provide information about the temperature and other characteristics of the atmosphere. This in turn, helps researchers understand more about Earth's low altitude weather systems, and they've discovered that events in one hemisphere can have a sizable effect in another.

For More information,read http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/aim/news/notilucent-change.html

Flight Tests CV-990 on Solved Shuttle Tire Failure

2011-09-29T05:20:00.000-07:00

Space shuttle Discovery touched down on the Shuttle Landing Facility runway at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida on April 19, 1985 at the conclusion of mission STS-23 (51D), the 16th shuttle flight. Although the touchdown was uneventful, what happened at the end of the rollout was anything but.

This was the fifth time an orbiter had landed at Kennedy on the new runway built especially for space shuttle landings. At touchdown, Discovery weighed just over 198,000 lbs, one of the lowest weights of a returning orbiter to that point. At very nearly the end of the roll out, the unexpected happened - the inside tire on right main landing gear blew.

"The whole orbiter shook-I thought one of the fuel tanks had blown up," recalls Jeffrey Hoffman, a mission specialist on the flight. While engineers found high tire wear on previous landings, the tire failure on 51D's landing shocked everyone.

There were several contributing factors to the blown tire, the only time a shuttle tire failed during a mission. The crosswind was not an obvious factor, particularly since it did not exceed the maximum allowable crosswind for a shuttle landing.

NASA Updates on Asteroid Search Findings

2011-09-27T21:57:00.000-07:00

NASA will hold a news conference at 1 p.m. EDT (10 a.m. PDT) on Thurs., Sept. 29, to reveal near-Earth asteroid findings and implications for future research. The briefing will take place at NASA Headquarters in Washington.

NASA's Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer (WISE) mission, launched in December 2009, captured millions of images of galaxies and objects in space. During the news conference, panelists will discuss results from an enhancement of WISE called Near-Earth Object WISE (NEOWISE) that hunted for asteroids.

NASA's Space Shuttle Bus for Satellites

2011-09-23T05:07:00.000-07:00

Three satellites stand out for their role in Earth science: the Earth Radiation Budget Satellite, the Upper Atmosphere Research Satellite, and the Laser Geodynamic Satellite 2.

Launched from Challenger in October 1984 (top image), the Earth Radiation Budget Satellite was designed to investigate how energy from the Sun is absorbed and re-radiated by the planet, also known as the energy budget. The mission lasted 21 years, collecting key data on weather and climate, atmospheric ozone depletion, and the effects of fossil fuel burning.

The seven-ton Upper Atmosphere Research Satellite (UARS) (middle photo) was carried into space by shuttle Discovery in September 1991. UARS housed ten instruments to collect data on a variety of chemicals-including carbon dioxide, ozone, chlorine, methane, nitrogen oxides, and chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs)-and the processes that create, destroy, and mix them in the stratosphere, a region scarcely studied before the launch.

October 1992 brought the launch of the Laser Geodynamic Satellite 2 (LAGEOS) from a spinning solid fuel rocket (bottom image). Follow-on to LAGEOS 1, launched in 1979, the golf-ball shaped satellite was a simple aluminum sphere covered in tiny reflectors. Scientists could flash a pulse of laser light from the ground to the satellite to measure the geoid, or the shape of the Earth, and the movement of the planet’s tectonic plates.

Six CMEs in 24 Hours

2011-09-22T05:24:00.000-07:00

The sun let loose with at least six coronal mass ejections (CMEs) -- solar phenomena that can send solar particles into space and affect electronic systems in satellites -- from 7 PM ET on September 18, 2011 until 1 PM on September 19. The ejections appear to come from points scattered over the surface of the sun. Two CME's dissipated quickly, but four continue to spread outward from the sun. NASA models suggest that the leading edge of one CME will pass by Earth at around 5 PM ET on Sep 21, at which point sky watchers should be on the lookout for auroras.

Columbia Tank Found on Lakebed

2011-09-21T04:10:00.000-07:00

A newly discovered aluminum tank from space shuttle Columbia's STS-107 mission will be recovered from the shoreline of Lake Nacogdoches in east Texas and eventually will likely be made available to researchers as are other parts of the Columbia debris, NASA's project manager for the recovery said.

"It's very important for us to bring all of Columbia home and we've done that since the accident in 2003," said Mike Ciannilli, the project manager for Columbia's recovery.

The sphere was one of 18 cryogenic tanks Columbia carried during its 16-day mission. It had been underwater for the past eight and half years, having landed there Feb. 1, 2003, when the shuttle broke up over east Texas during re-entry. It was uncovered recently when the lake's water level diminished by about 11 feet during an ongoing drought.

"Recently we got a call from the local authorities in Nacogdoches about a metal sphere and we asked the authorities to take a picture for us and send it to us," Ciannilli said. "We analyzed that with our teams here at the Cape and determined it to be a piece of space shuttle Columbia."

The Last Launch of Space Shuttle Endeavour

2011-09-20T06:04:00.000-07:00

Two days ago, powerful yet controlled explosions rocketed the Space Shuttle Endeavour on its final trip into Earth orbit. The above image was taken seconds after liftoff as the massive orbiter and six astronauts began a climb to a height where the atmosphere is so thin it is unbreathable. The shuttle, on mission STS-134, is expected to dock with the International Space Station (ISS) today.

The Endeavour will deliver to the ISS, among other things, an ambitious detector called the Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer 2 (AMS), a detector that over the next few years could detect a significant abundance of specific types of dark matter, charged antimatter, and even a strangely possible variation of familiar matter called strangelets. The very last trip for any space shuttle is currently planned for mid-July when Atlantis will also visit the space station.

Cassini Present Saturn Moon Quintet

2011-09-19T06:12:00.000-07:00

With the artistry of a magazine cover shoot, NASA's Cassini spacecraft captured this portrait of five of Saturn's moons poised along the planet's rings.
From left to right are Janus, Pandora, Enceladus, Mimas and finally Rhea, bisected by the right side of the frame. The view was acquired at a distance of approximately 684,000 miles (1.1 million kilometers) from Rhea and 1.1 million miles (1.8 million kilometers) from Enceladus.
The image was taken in visible green light with the Cassini spacecraft narrow-angle camera on July 29, 2011. Image scale is about 4 miles (7 kilometers) per pixel on Rhea and 7 miles (11 kilometers) per pixel on Enceladus.
The Cassini-Huygens mission is a cooperative project of NASA, the European Space Agency and the Italian Space Agency. The Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, manages the mission for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, Washington. The Cassini orbiter and its two onboard cameras were designed, developed and assembled at JPL. The imaging operations center is based at the Space Science Institute in Boulder, Colo.

Space Shuttle Discovery

2011-09-16T05:08:00.000-07:00

Discovery (OV-103), the third of NASA's fleet of reusable, winged spaceships, arrived at Kennedy Space Center in November 1983. It was launched on its first mission, flight 41-D, on August 30, 1984. It carried aloft three communications satellites for deployment by its astronaut crew.

Other Discovery milestones include the deployment of the Hubble Space Telescope on mission STS-31 in April 1990, the launching of the Ulysses spacecraft to explore the sun's polar regions on mission STS-41 in October of that year and the deployment of the Upper Atmosphere Research Satellite (UARS) in September 1991.

Discovery is named for two famous sailing ships; one sailed by Henry Hudson in 1610-11 to search for a northwest passage between the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans, and the other by James Cook on a voyage during which he discovered the Hawaiian Islands.

Space Shuttle Launch and Landing

2011-09-15T05:04:00.000-07:00

Beginning with space shuttle Columbia's 1979 delivery to NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida, the center has been home to each of the five flown shuttle orbiters for the duration of the Space Shuttle Program. Space shuttle Atlantis completed the program on July 21, 2011, wrapping up the STS-135 mission with a predawn touchdown on the same runway where Columbia first arrived more than 30 years earlier.

NASA's shuttle fleet -- Columbia, Challenger, Discovery, Atlantis and Endeavour -- flew a total of 135 missions. Each one began at Kennedy's Launch Complex 39. Of those missions, 78 ended with a Kennedy landing; 54 concluded with a touchdown on the dry lake bed at Edwards Air Force Base in California; and one landed at White Sands Space Harbor in New Mexico.

Each mission began with a thundering liftoff as the shuttle's twin solid rocket boosters ignited, pushing the vehicle with its crew and cargo beyond the bounds of gravity and into the hostile environment of space. Missions typically lasted one to two weeks, concluding with an hourlong reentry descent through Earth's atmosphere and a precision landing. Because a returning shuttle orbiter was essentially an unpowered glider, there were no second chances -- every touchdown had to be perfect.

The shuttle then was towed to the nearby Vehicle Assembly Building, where it was joined to its tank and boosters. Finally, the completed launch vehicle and its mobile launcher platform rolled out to the launch pad atop a sturdy, slow-moving crawler-transporter. A spectacular liftoff was the reward for each processing flow, and upon landing, the sequence began once again.

NASA Launches Mission to Study Moon From Crust to Core

2011-09-14T02:33:00.000-07:00

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. -- NASA's twin lunar Gravity Recovery and Interior Laboratory (GRAIL) spacecraft lifted off from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida at 9:08 a.m. EDT (6:08 a.m. PDT) Saturday, Sept. 10, to study the moon in unprecedented detail.

Space Shuttle Atlantis

2011-09-12T22:26:00.000-07:00

Atlantis (OV-104) was delivered to Kennedy Space Center in April 1985. It lifted off on its maiden voyage on Oct. 3, 1985, on mission 51-J, the second dedicated Department of Defense flight. Later missions included the launch of the Galileo interplanetary probe to Jupiter on STS-34 in October 1989, and STS-37, with the Gamma Ray Observatory (GRO) as its primary payload, in April 1991.

Atlantis is named after a two-masted sailing ship that was operated for the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute from 1930 to 1966.

Atlantis also served as the on-orbit launch site for many noteworthy spacecraft, including planetary probes Magellan and Galileo, as well as the Compton Gamma Ray Observatory. An impressive array of onboard science experiments took place during most missions to further enhance space research in low Earth orbit.

Starting with STS-71, Atlantis pioneered the Shuttle-Mir missions, flying the first seven missions to dock with the Russian space station. When linked, Atlantis and Mir together formed the largest spacecraft in orbit at the time. The missions to Mir included the first on-orbit U.S. crew exchanges, now a common occurrence on the International Space Station. On STS-79, the fourth docking mission, Atlantis ferried astronaut Shannon Lucid back to Earth after her record-setting 188 days in orbit aboard Mir.

In recent years, Atlantis has delivered several vital components to the International Space Station, including the U.S. laboratory module, Destiny, as well as the Joint Airlock Quest and multiple sections of the Integrated Truss structure that makes up the Station's backbone. As NASA seeks to fulfill the Vision for Space Exploration, beginning with the completion of the Station, Atlantis will be called upon for many missions to come.

NASA's 747 SCAs--Birds of a Feather Flock Together

2011-09-08T23:43:00.000-07:00

For the first time ever, NASA's two highly modified Boeing 747 Shuttle Carrier Aircraft briefly flew in formation over the Edwards Air Force Base test range Aug. 2. Both aircraft were scheduled to be in the air on the same day, NASA 911 (foreground) on a flight crew proficiency flight, NASA 905 (rear) on a functional check flight following maintenance operations.

Since both aircraft were scheduled to be in the air at the same time, SCA pilot Jeff Moultrie of Johnson Space Center's Aircraft Operations Directorate took the opportunity to have both SCA's fly in formation for about 20 minutes while NASA photographer Carla Thomas captured still and video imagery from a NASA Dryden F/A-18.

In addition to Moultrie, NASA 905's check flight crew included pilot Arthur "Ace" Beall and flight engineer Henry Taylor while NASA 911 was flown by Larry LaRose, Steve Malarchick and Bob Zimmerman from NASA Johnson and Frank Batteas and Bill Brockett from NASA Dryden.