Space Shuttle Endeavour to Launch No Earlier Than May 16

NASA is now aiming to launch the space shuttle Endeavour on its final flight no earlier than May 16 – pushing the mission back another week to give ground crews more time to complete and test repairs to the orbiter.

Top NASA managers met may6th afternoon to assess progress on repairs to failed heaters that caused the agency to call off its first launch attempt on April 29. The heaters protect a crucial power unit, and without them, the unit would likely freeze on orbit and be unable to serve its role as one of three power sources for Endeavour's hydraulic systems during re-entry and landing.

Technicians worked on repairs all week and will continue to test the electrical circuitry that caused the initial postponement of Endeavour's STS-134 mission. Repair work will continue through the weekend, NASA officials said, and mission managers will hold a news briefing on Monday (May 9) to discuss the status of the work.

NASA Selects Investigations for Future Key Missions

NASA has selected three science investigations from which it will pick one potential 2016 mission to look at Mars' interior for the first time; study an extraterrestrial sea on one of Saturn's moons; or study in unprecedented detail the surface of a comet's nucleus. NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif., would lead the Mars investigation.

Each investigation team will receive $3 million to conduct its mission's concept phase or preliminary design studies and analyses. After another detailed review in 2012 of the concept studies, NASA will select one to continue development efforts leading up to launch. The selected mission will be cost-capped at $425 million, not including launch vehicle funding.

NASA's Discovery Program requested proposals for spaceflight investigations in June 2010. A panel of NASA and other scientists and engineers reviewed 28 submissions. The selected investigations could reveal much about the formation of our solar system and its dynamic processes. Three technology developments for possible future planetary missions also were selected.

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NASA: Final Launch of Space Shuttle Endeavour Set for April 29

NASA's space shuttle Endeavour is ready to launch on its final voyage April 29, top mission managers decided on April 19. Shuttle officials approved the launch plan after a day-long meeting called the Flight Readiness Review (FRR), which allowed mission managers to discuss Endeavour's mission plan in detail and consider any possible issues that might delay liftoff.

None being found, officials decided to move forward with the target date of April 29 at 3:47 p.m. EDT for Endeavour's final blast off from NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral, florida. "The team was unanimous and we're ready to go fly," NASA's associate administrator for space operations, Bill Gerstenmaier, said during a press conference following the meeting.

Endeavour is slated to carry six astronauts, a cargo bay full of spare supplies, and a $2 billion astrophysics experiment to the International Space Station. "The potential science that it can return to understand the dark matter that lives in the universe and understand these unique high-energy particles that are out there in space, it's going to be tremendously important," Gerstenmaier said. "This is a pretty unique mission to close out Endeavour's career."

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Countdown for PSLV-C16 mission on

The countdown for the launch of PSLV-C16 that will put the country's latest remote sensing spacecraft Resourcesat-2 and two small satellites in orbit on April 20 began in the early morning on Monday at the spaceport of Sriharikota.

"The 54-and-a-half-hour-long countdown started on schedule this morning at 3.42 AM. All the proceedings are smooth. The fourth stage of filling liquid propellants is in progress now," Indian Space Research Organisation spokesman S Sathish said. "The weather is normal for the launch," he said. As per the schedule, the Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle (PSLV C-16) carrying Resourcesat-2, Youthsat and X-sat will lift-off from the launch pad at 10.12 am on Wednesday.

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Star Formation Linked to Sonic Booms

ESA's Herschel space observatory has revealed that nearby interstellar clouds contain networks of tangled gaseous filaments. Intriguingly, each filament is approximately the same width, hinting that they may result from interstellar sonic booms throughout our Galaxy. The filaments are huge, stretching for tens of light years through space and Herschel has shown that newly-born stars are often found in the densest parts of them. One filament imaged by Herschel in the Aquila region contains a cluster of about 100 infant stars.

Such filaments in interstellar clouds have been glimpsed before by other infrared satellites, but they have never been seen clearly enough to have their widths measured. Now, Herschel has shown that, regardless of the length or density of a filament, the width is always roughly the same. "This is a very big surprise," says Doris Arzoumanian, Laboratoire AIM Paris-Saclay, CEA/IRFU, the lead author on the paper describing this work. Together with Philippe André from the same institute and other colleagues, she analysed 90 filaments and found they were all about 0.3 light years across, or about 20,000 times the distance of Earth from the Sun. This consistency of the widths demands an explanation.

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NASA's Next Generation Space Telescope Marks Key Milestone

The first six of 18 segments that will form NASA's James Webb Space Telescope's primary mirror for space observations will begin final round-the-clock cryogenic testing this week. These tests will confirm the mirrors will respond as expected to the extreme temperatures of space prior to integration into the telescope's permanent housing structure. The X-ray and Cryogenic Facility at NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Ala. will provide the space-like environment to help engineers measure how well the telescope will image infrared sources once in orbit.

Each mirror segment measures approximately 4.3 feet in diameter to form the 21.3 foot, hexagonal telescope mirror assembly critical for infrared observations. Each of the 18 hexagonal-shaped mirror assemblies weighs approximately 88 pounds. The mirrors are made of a light and strong metal called beryllium, and coated with a microscopically thin coat of gold to enabling the mirror to efficiently collect light.

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Houston Deserves a Space Shuttle for Display, Astronaut Spouses Say

The spouses of two astronauts who died in the space shuttle Columbia accident have joined Houston’s vociferous campaign to win a space shuttle for display once NASA retires the orbiter fleet this year. Houston, home of NASA's astronaut corps and shuttle mission control, is hoping to be among the few sites in the country awarded a shuttle for public display when the 30-year program comes to an end. Houston has stepped up its campaign recently as the competition has become increasingly fierce.

For its part, Space Center Houston has some grand plans in the works should it receive a shuttle. "We currently have a building, about 53,000 square feet, that would house the orbiter," Allen said. "The theme we're looking at for the exhibits is the human side of the orbiter, what the astronauts were able to accomplish." Allen's not being picky. He said any of NASA's orbiters Discovery, Endeavour or Atlantis — would be welcome in Houston."We think we could tell that story about any of the three vehicles," he said.The center receives about 750,000 visitors a year, he said, and has hosted almost 14 million people since it opened in 1992.

Hinode Observes Annular Solar Eclipse

On January 4, the Hinode satellite captured these breathtaking images of an annular solar eclipse. An annular eclipse occurs when the moon, slightly more distant from Earth than on average, moves directly between Earth and the sun, thus appearing slightly smaller to observers' eyes; the effect is a bright ring, or annulus of sunlight, around the silhouette of the moon. Hinode, a Japanese mission in partnership with NASA, NAOJ, STFC, ESA, and NSC, currently in Earth orbit, is studying the Sun to improve our understanding of the mechanisms that power the solar atmosphere and drive solar eruptions.

Rover Will Spend 7th Birthday at Stadium-Size Crater

The High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment (HiRISE) camera on NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter captured a Dec. 31, 2010, view of the Mars Exploration Rover Opportunity on the southwestern rim of a football-field-size crater called "Santa Maria."

Opportunity arrived at the western edge of Santa Maria crater in mid-December and will spend about two months investigating rocks there. That investigation will take Opportunity into the beginning of its eighth year on Mars. Opportunity landed in the Meridiani Planum region of Mars on Jan. 25, 2004, Universal Time (Jan. 24, Pacific Time) for a mission originally planned to last for three months.

Backpack, Communications Network Face Desert Test

Science experiments don't always involve bubbling beakers and people dressed in lab coats and goggles. In the case of NASA's Desert RATS project, an experiment can look like a plastic box bolted to a backpack frame and be carried around the Arizona desert for a month.

Inside the plastic box is a host of off-the-shelf electronics capable of telling the backpacker where he is, letting him talk to distant colleagues and beaming pictures of notable objects to geologists and other scientists.

"The backpack tells you where you are, where you were and it allows you to communicate and share your experience with someone in a different location," said Marc Seibert, a senior research engineer at NASA's Kennedy Space Center. "This backpack has been dreamed about for 10 years."

The backpack is an important part of Kennedy's role in the Desert Research and Technology Studies project, which is set up as a large-scale experiment to find out what equipment and operations scenarios NASA needs to explore the surface of an alien world, such as an asteroid, the moon or Mars.

A team of astronauts, scientists and engineers from several NASA centers head to Arizona's desert each year to simulate the unique environment of space explorers. The effort is meant to test equipment and people to find out the best way to explore another world.

Kennedy's engineers develop the communications, navigation and data transmission networks needed, a task that includes a semitrailer set up as a mission operations center, a command vehicle, a specialized RV, a pair of Humvees plus enough communications gear to set up a wireless network for a small crew of explorers to talk back to "Earth" like they will from other planets.

Equipment from other centers, such as a pair of large rovers, has to work on the same communications network. The rovers, for example, relay the signals from the backpacks to the mission operations center.

Although the area they test in is not a perfect stand-in for the moon or Mars in terms of having breathable air and normal gravity, the site does a pretty good job of isolating the participants, said Mike Miller, communications research engineer at Kennedy.

"We have to take everything to the site, just like we will to other planet surfaces," Miller said.

The research program began 13 years ago, and grows in complexity with each annual run. The 2010 program is focused largely on seeing how effectively astronauts can explore a foreign surface under different communications scenarios and rover modes of operation. It also will put pressure on the scientists to have daily plans ready when the explorers awake each day. That means long nights of studying the day's findings to find out what should be done the next.

"This is probably the highest fidelity lunar simulation that's ever been done," Seibert said.

The backpack carries a pair of cameras, a GPS antenna to pinpoint location and all the electronics needed to store then transmit information. The person wearing the backpack controls its systems using an electronic wrist display, supplied by NASA's Glenn Research Center in Ohio, that is generations ahead of the flip cards Apollo astronauts used during the first trips to the moon. Researchers will also test an iPod Touch from NASA's Johnson Space Center in Houston.

Image above: Mike Miller demonstrates one of the backpacks his team designed and built for the Desert Research and Technology Studies project's upcoming field test in Arizona. Miller led the team that developed the backpacks. The backpacks are equipped with GPS antennas, communications components and cameras. They are meant to show researchers what an astronaut might need to explore an alien world and give designers a look at the hardships the equipment could encounter. Photo credit: NASA/Frank Michaux

Right now, the backpack and its host of attached gear only has to stand up to the winds and heat of a desert on Earth.

"Environment is a big thing out there," Miller said. "The winds are very high, it gets very hot. We are pretty much out in the middle of nowhere."

Designers don't have to worry just yet about the life support systems that would be required for any astronaut working on another world. The life support functions will be incorporated into the backpacks as they evolve and improve. Other parts of the backpack design will be incorporated into the rover so the astronauts can quickly leave the vehicle for a spacewalk.

Miller said the month-long exercise should show them whether the design works technically and what can be improved.

Image above: Isaac Hutson assembles components at NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida for one of the backpacks that will be tested during the Desert Research and Technology Studies project's upcoming field test in Arizona. The backpacks are equipped with GPS antennas, communications components and cameras. Photo credit: NASA/Frank Michaux

"Success would be to have all the systems up and working, for the scientists to get the science data and the test team to meet their objectives," Miller said.

Miller and his team were given the backpack assignment only a couple months before the equipment had to be assembled and shipped out.

"We only had two to three months here for everything, the design and building, getting the parts, everything," Miller said as others on his team put the finishing touches on a couple of backpacks.

With the short time frame, Miller said his group worked with Glenn partners and with off-the-shelf equipment to get the job done. The software for the controls was written from scratch to make the gear work with each other and operate to their needs.

"The whole communications infrastructure has been upgraded this year," Miller said.

The biggest challenge, he said, was keeping the weight down since the individual components could not be made from scratch by Miller's team.

Between excursions, the Desert RATS participants catalog what they've learned and look at ways to incorporate changes for the next one, along with passing on changes to other in-depth research programs NASA runs.

The backpack's capabilities are designed with space exploration in mind, but the arrangement may have applications for earthbound explorers, too. Basically, a geologist or other explorer could make a solo trek with the backpack and, on his return, play back the whole trip or selected highlights for those who weren't on the journey.

"Any explorer could use this backpack," Seibert said.

For more information visit http://www.nasa.gov/centers/kennedy/moonandmars/desert_rats_backpack.html

This Month in Exploration - August

From the early days of experimental airplanes to NASA’s soaring space shuttles, the evolution of flight has mirrored the evolution of society. The ongoing scientific discoveries that are part of aeronautics and space flight have improved life on Earth and allowed humans to begin investigating the secrets of the universe. “This Month in Exploration” presents the rich history of human flight, contextualizing where we’ve been and examining the exploration history NASA is making today.

100 Years Ago

August 31, 1910: Glenn Curtiss established a record for longest flight over water when he completed a course from Euclid beach in Cleveland, Ohio to Cedar Point in Sandusky, Ohio. Flying his biplane over Lake Erie parallel to the shore, Curtiss completed the trip in about an hour and fifteen minutes.

A Loening Amphibian aircraft similar to the three used on the MacMillan Arctic Expedition. Credit: NASA

85 Years Ago

August 1, 1925: Under the command of Lt. Cmdr. Richard E. Byrd, a U.S. Naval Air detail began aerial exploration of a 30,000-square-mile area near Etah, North Greenland using three Loening amphibian seaplanes introduced the previous year. The excursion was part of the MacMillan Arctic Expedition, the United States’ contribution to the global race to Earth’s last unexplored frontiers, the North and South Poles.

75 Years Ago

August 28, 1935: The Equipment Laboratory at Wright Field tested automatic radio-navigation equipment, called the Sperry automatic pilot, by mechanically linking it to a standard radio compass.

50 Years Ago

August 12, 1960: NASA launched its first communications satellite, the Echo 1, via a Thor- Delta rocket from Vandenberg Air Force Base. The satellite transmitted a radio message from President Dwight D. Eisenhower across the nation, demonstrating the feasibility of global radio communications via satellites. Echo 1 was the most visible and largest satellite launched at that time. Although the mission was successful, it was quickly superseded by active-repeater communications satellites such as Telstar.

A static inflation test of the 135 foot satellite Echo 1. Credit: NASA

45 Years Ago

August 21-29, 1965: NASA launched the Gemini-V via Titan-II rocket. Several records were set during this eight-day orbital flight, including the single longest manned spaceflight, total U.S. manned hours in space and a new altitude record for an American spacecraft. American astronaut Gordon Cooper was also the first man to make a second orbital flight and achieved the record for the most spaceflight time.

35 Years Ago

August 20, 1975: NASA launched Viking 1 from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center, Fla. It was the first of two spacecraft on the historic mission to the planet Mars. The primary objectives of the Viking mission were to return high-resolution images of the Martian surface, analyze the structure and composition of the atmosphere and surface and search for evidence of life on Mars.

25 Years Ago

August 27, 1985: NASA launched space shuttle Discovery (STS-51I) from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center, Fla. The shuttle deployed three communications satellites and retrieved, repaired and re-launched the TELSAT-1 Communications Satellite, Syncom IV-3.

10 Years Ago

August 9, 2000: The European Space Agency launched the second pair of Cluster II mission satellites, named Rumba and Tango, aboard a Soyuz-Fregat rocket from Russia’s Baikonur Cosmodrome. The Cluster mission used simultaneous measurements from four satellites to provide detailed analysis of the effects of solar wind on Earth’s magnetic field. The mission is still in effect today and has resulted in around 1000 scientific publications in peer-reviewed journals.

Astronaut Neil A. Armstrong in the Lunar Module during the Apollo 11 lunar landing mission. Credit: NASA

5 Years Ago

August 12, 2005: NASA launched the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO) from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center, Fla. aboard the first Atlas V rocket used for an interplanetary mission. The ongoing mission was to map the physical features of Mars, including its atmosphere and its subterranean layering.

Present Day

August 5, 2010: Neil A. Armstrong turns 80 this year. Born in Wapakoneta, Ohio in 1930, Armstrong was the first person to walk on the moon. He is credited with the famous quote: "That's one small step for a man, one giant leap for mankind."

August 22, 2010: Science fiction writer Ray Bradbury was born 100 years ago on this day in Waukegan, Ill. He wrote “The Martian Chronicles” published in 1949. Among his poems is one inspired by a trip to NASA’s Kennedy Space Center, Fla. where he compared his tour of the Saturn hanger to “walking around inside Shakespeare’s head.”

For more information visit http://www.nasa.gov/exploration/thismonth/this_month_aug10.html

Exposed Ice in a Fresh Crater

At the center of this view of an area of mid-latitude northern Mars, a fresh crater about 6 meters (20 feet) in diameter holds an exposure of bright material, blue in this false-color image. The High-Resolution Imaging Science Experiment (HiRISE) camera on NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter made this observation on June 20, 2010.

Previous HiRISE images of fresh craters in the middle to high northern latitudes show exposed water ice on the poleward-facing slopes (see: http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/MRO/news/mro-20090924r.html). Here is another example. This crater formed sometime between April 2004 and January 2010, as determined from before-and-after images acquired by the Thermal Emission Imaging System camera on NASA's Mars Odyssey orbiter and the Context Camera on the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter. This HiRISE image was acquired in northern Mars' early summer, when frost at this latitude is not expected. Scientists propose that the bright material at the crater is subsurface ice exposed by the impact that excavated the crater.

This image spans a distance of about 170 meters (about 560 feet) and is presented in false color, which aids in distinguishing among surface materials and textures. It is a portion of the HiRISE observation catalogued as ESP_018273_2245, of an area at 44 degrees north latitude, 180 degrees east longitude. Other image products from this observation are available at http://hirise.lpl.arizona.edu/ESP_018273_2245.

NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, Calif., manages the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, Washington. Lockheed Martin Space Systems, Denver, built the spacecraft. The High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment is operated by the University of Arizona, Tucson, and the instrument was built by Ball Aerospace & Technologies Corp., Boulder, Colo.

Image Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/University of Arizona

For more information visit http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/MRO/multimedia/gallery/pia13315.html

Artist's Concept of Planned 2016 Mars Mission

NASA and the European Space Agency are jointly developing the ExoMar Trace Gas Orbiter mission for launch in 2016. This is an artist's concept of the planned spacecraft, which will carry five science instruments plus a European entry, descent and landing demonstrator vehicle. The orbiter will also serve as a communications relay for Mars surface missions.

Image Credit: ESA

For more information visit http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/mars/images/pia13310.html

Blowing in the Wind: Cassini Helps with Dune Whodunit

The answer to the mystery of dune patterns on Saturn's moon Titan did turn out to be blowing in the wind. It just wasn't from the direction many scientists expected.

Basic principles describing the rotation of planetary atmospheres and data from the European Space Agency's Huygens probe led to circulation models that showed surface winds streaming generally east-to-west around Titan's equatorial belt. But when NASA's Cassini spacecraft obtained the first images of dunes on Titan in 2005, the dunes' orientation suggested the sands – and therefore the winds – were moving from the opposite direction, or west to east.

A new paper by Tetsuya Tokano in press with the journal Aeolian Research seeks to explain the paradox. It explains that seasonal changes appear to reverse wind patterns on Titan for a short period. These gusts, which occur intermittently for perhaps two years, sweep west to east and are so strong they do a better job of transporting sand than the usual east-to-west surface winds. Those east-to-west winds do not appear to gather enough strength to move significant amounts of sand.

A related perspective article about Tokano's work by Cassini radar scientist Ralph Lorenz, the lead author on a 2009 paper mapping the dunes, appears in this week's issue of the journal Science.

"It was hard to believe that there would be permanent west-to-east winds, as suggested by the dune appearance," said Tokano, of the University of Cologne, Germany. "The dramatic, monsoon-type wind reversal around equinox turns out to be the key."

Cassini radar sees sand dunes on Saturn's giant moon Titan (upper photo) that are sculpted like Namibian sand dunes on Earth (lower photo). The bright features in the upper radar photo are not clouds but topographic features among the dunes. Image credit: NASA/JPL - upper photo; NASA/JSC - lower photo

The dunes track across the vast sand seas of Titan only in latitudes within 30 degrees of the equator. They are about a kilometer (half a mile) wide and tens to hundreds of kilometers (miles) long. They can rise more than 100 meters (300 feet) high. The sands that make up the dunes appear to be made of organic, hydrocarbon particles. The dunes' ridges generally run west-to-east, as wind here generally sheds sand along lines parallel to the equator.

Scientists predicted winds in the low latitudes around Titan's equator would blow east-to-west because at higher latitudes the average wind blows west-to-east. The wind forces should balance out, based on basic principles of rotating atmospheres.

Tokano re-analyzed a computer-based global circulation model for Titan he put together in 2008. That model, like others for Titan, was adapted from ones developed for Earth and Mars. Tokano added in new data on Titan topography and shape based on Cassini radar and gravity data. In his new analysis, Tokano also looked more closely at variations in the wind at different points in time rather than the averages. Equinox periods jumped out.

Equinoxes occur twice a Titan year, which is about 29 Earth years. During equinox, the sun shines directly over the equator, and heat from the sun creates upwelling in the atmosphere. The turbulent mixing causes the winds to reverse and accelerate. On Earth, this rare kind of wind reversal happens over the Indian Ocean in transitional seasons between monsoons.

The episodic reverse winds on Titan appear to blow around 1 to 1.8 meters per second (2 to 4 mph). The threshold for sand movement appears to be about 1 meter per second (2 mph), a speed that the typical east-to-west winds never appear to surpass. Dune patterns sculpted by strong, short episodes of wind can be found on Earth in the northern Namib sand seas in Namibia, Africa.

Scientists have used data from the Cassini radar mapper to map the global wind pattern on Saturn's moon Titan using data collected over a four-year period, as depicted in this image. Image credit: NASA/JPL/Space Science Institute

"This is a subtle discovery -- only by delving into the statistics of the winds in the model could this rather distressing paradox be resolved," said Ralph Lorenz, a Cassini radar scientist based at the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory in Laurel, Md. "This work is also reassuring for preparations for proposed future missions to Titan, in that we can become more confident in predicting the winds which can affect the delivery accuracy of landers, or the drift of balloons."

The Cassini-Huygens mission is a cooperative project of NASA, the European Space Agency and the Italian Space Agency. JPL manages the Cassini-Huygens mission for NASA's Science Mission Directorate. The Cassini orbiter was designed, developed and assembled at JPL. The radar instrument was built by JPL and the Italian Space Agency, working with team members from the United States and several European countries. JPL is a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena.

More Cassini information is available, at http://www.nasa.gov/cassini and http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov.

For more information visit http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/cassini/whycassini/cassini20100729.html

NASA's ATHLETE Warms Up for High Desert Run

Engineers from NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory are currently putting their All-Terrain, Hex-Limbed, Extra-Terrestrial Explorer (ATHLETE) through a series of long-drive tests on the long, dirt roads found adjacent to JPL. The JPL grounds do not include an unpaved area of sufficient size for testing such a large robot over a long distance. Some of the dirt roads in the Arroyo Seco (a wash located next to JPL) are wide enough for ATHLETE, and its close proximity to JPL allows the robot to be secured in its hangar between test runs.

The engineers want to test the moon rover's ability to meet a NASA milestone of traveling at least 40 kilometers (25 miles) over 14 days under its own power. The official demonstration is slated to begin in the Arizona high desert next month.

Engineers test the ATHLETE moon rover on one of the long dirt roads found just outside JPL. Image credit: NASA

ATHLETE is a 1/2-scale working prototype of a robot under development to transport habitats and other cargo on the surface of the Moon or Mars. The ATHLETE concept is a level cargo deck carried by six wheels, each on the end of a configurable leg. The prototype stands approximately 4.5 meters (15 feet) tall and 4.5 meters (15 ft) wide and weighs about (about 2,300 kilograms (2.5 tons). The robot moves relatively slowly, with a top speed during traverse of approximately 2 kilometers per hour (1.25 mph).

For more information about ATHLETE, including photos and video clips, visit: http://athlete.jpl.nasa.gov/.

It takes a lot of hard work, ingenuity and creativity to build a rover like ATHLETE. And it takes a lot of creativity of a different sort to make ATHLETE "dance." See the results of that effort in a fast-action video of ATHLETE bustin' a move.

For more information visit http://www.nasa.gov/topics/moonmars/features/athlete20100730.html

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Martian Dust Devil Whirls into Opportunity's View

In its six-and-a-half years on Mars, NASA's Mars Exploration Rover Opportunity had never seen a dust devil before this month, despite some systematic searches in past years and the fact that its twin rover, Spirit, has seen dozens of dust devils at its location halfway around the planet.

A tall column of swirling dust appears in a routine image that Opportunity took with its panoramic camera on July 15. The rover took the image in the drive direction, east-southeastward, right after a drive of about 70 meters (230 feet). The image was taken for use in planning the next drive.

"This is the first dust devil seen by Opportunity," said Mark Lemmon of Texas A&M University, College Station, a member of the rover science team.

Spirit's area, inside Gusev Crater, is rougher in ground texture, and dustier, than the area where Opportunity is working in the Meridiani Planum region. Those factors at Gusev allow vortices of wind to form more readily and raise more dust, compared to conditions at Meridiani, Lemmon explained. Orbiters have photographed tracks left by dust devils near Opportunity, but the tracks are scarcer there than near Spirit. Swirling winds at Meridiani may be more common than visible signs of them, if the winds occur where there is no loose dust to disturb.

This is the first dust devil that NASA's Mars Exploration Rover Opportunity has observed in the rover's six-and-a-half years on Mars. Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Cornell University/Texas A&M

Just one day before Opportunity captured the dust devil image, wind cleaned some of the dust off the rover's solar array, increasing electricity output from the array by more than 10 percent.

"That might have just been a coincidence, but there could be a connection," Lemmon said. The team is resuming systematic checks for afternoon dust devils with Opportunity's navigation camera, for the first time in about three years.

Opportunity and Spirit arrived on Mars in January 2004 for missions designed to last for three months. NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, manages the Mars Exploration Rover Project for the NASA Science Mission Directorate, Washington. For more information about the project and images from the rovers, visit http://www.nasa.gov/rovers .

For more information visit http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/mer/news/mer20100728.html

Mars Curiosity Takes First Baby Steps

Like proud parents savoring their baby's very first steps, mission team members gathered in a gallery above a clean room at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory to watch the Mars Curiosity rover roll for the first time.

Engineers and technicians wore "bunny suits" while guiding Curiosity through its first steps, or more precisely, its first roll on the clean room floor. The rover moved forward and backward about 1 meter (3.3 feet).

Mars Curiosity team members gather in the gallery above the clean room at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory to watch the rover roll for the first time. Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech

Mars Science Laboratory (aka Curiosity) is scheduled to launch in fall 2011 and land on the Red Planet in August 2012. Curiosity is the largest rover ever sent to Mars. It will carry 10 instruments that will help search an intriguing region of the Red Planet for two things:

1. Environments where life might have existed
2. The capacity of those environments to preserve evidence of past life

Learn more about Curiosity at http://mars.jpl.nasa.gov/msl/.

For more information visit http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/msl/msl20100723-b.html

NASA Spacecraft Camera Yields Most Accurate Mars Map Ever

PASADENA, Calif. -- A camera aboard NASA's Mars Odyssey spacecraft has helped develop the most accurate global Martian map ever. Researchers and the public can access the map via several websites and explore and survey the entire surface of the Red Planet.

The map was constructed using nearly 21,000 images from the Thermal Emission Imaging System, or THEMIS, a multi-band infrared camera on Odyssey. Researchers at Arizona State University's Mars Space Flight Facility in Tempe, in collaboration with NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif., have been compiling the map since THEMIS observations began eight years ago.

The pictures have been smoothed, matched, blended and cartographically controlled to make a giant mosaic. Users can pan around images and zoom into them. At full zoom, the smallest surface details are 100 meters (330 feet) wide. While portions of Mars have been mapped at higher resolution, this map provides the most accurate view so far of the entire planet.

The new map is available at: http://www.mars.asu.edu/maps/?layer=thm_dayir_100m_v11 .

Advanced users with large bandwidth, powerful computers and software capable of handling images in the gigabyte range can download the full-resolution map in sections at: http://www.mars.asu.edu/data/thm_dir_100m .

Valles Marineris, the "Grand Canyon of Mars," sprawls wide enough to reach from Los Angeles to nearly New York City, if it were located on Earth. The red outline box shows the location of a second, full-resolution image. Credit: NASA/JPL/Arizona State University

"We've tied the images to the cartographic control grid provided by the U.S. Geological Survey, which also modeled the THEMIS camera's optics," said Philip Christensen, principal investigator for THEMIS and director of the Mars Space Flight Facility. "This approach lets us remove all instrument distortion, so features on the ground are correctly located to within a few pixels and provide the best global map of Mars to date."

Working with THEMIS images from the new map, the public can contribute to Mars exploration by aligning the images to within a pixel's accuracy at NASA's "Be a Martian" website, which was developed in cooperation with Microsoft Corp. Users can visit the site at: http://beamartian.jpl.nasa.gov/maproom#/MapMars .

"The Mars Odyssey THEMIS team has assembled a spectacular product that will be the base map for Mars researchers for many years to come," said Jeffrey Plaut, Odyssey project scientist at JPL. "The map lays the framework for global studies of properties such as the mineral composition and physical nature of the surface materials."

Other sites build upon the base map. At Mars Image Explorer, which includes images from every Mars orbital mission since the mid-1970s, users can search for images using a map of Mars at: http://themis.asu.edu/maps .

"The broad purpose underlying all these sites is to make Mars exploration easy and engaging for everyone," Christensen said. "We are trying to create a user-friendly interface between the public and NASA's Planetary Data System, which does a terrific job of collecting, validating and archiving data."

This image shows a 90-mile-wide portion of the giant Valles Marineris canyon system. Landslide debris and gullies in the canyon walls on Mars can be seen at 100 meters (330 feet) per pixel. Credit: NASA/JPL/Arizona State University

Mars Odyssey was launched in April 2001 and reached the Red Planet in October 2001. Science operations began in February 2002. The mission is managed by JPL for NASA's Science Mission Directorate in Washington. Lockheed Martin Space Systems in Denver is the prime contractor for the project and built the spacecraft. NASA's Planetary Data System, sponsored by the Science Mission Directorate, archives and distributes scientific data from the agency's planetary missions, astronomical observations, and laboratory measurements.

For more information about NASA's Odyssey spacecraft, visit: http://mars.jpl.nasa.gov/odyssey .

JPL is managed for NASA by the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena.

For more information visit http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/odyssey/odyssey20100723.html

Test Image by Mars Descent Imager

The Mars Descent Imager for NASA's Mars Science Laboratory took this image inside the Malin Space Science Systems clean room in San Diego, Calif., during calibration testing of the camera in June 2008. It shows the instrument's deputy principal investigator, Ken Edgett, holding a six-foot metal ruler that was used as a depth-of-field test target. The camera is focused at 7 meters (23 feet) so that everything between about 2 meters (7 feet) and infinity is in focus.

This image shows a slightly out-of-focus rock (a rounded cobble of Icelandic basalt with tiny crystals and vesicles) at a distance of about 70 centimeters (2.3 feet), equivalent to the distance the camera will be from the ground after the rover has landed.

Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Malin Space Science Systems

For more information visit http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/msl/multimedia/gallery/pia13281.html

Mars Descent Imager for Curiosity

This Mars Descent Imager (MARDI) camera will fly on the Curiosity rover of NASA's Mars Science Laboratory mission.

The downward-looking camera will take about four frames per second at nearly 1,600 by 1,200 pixels per frame for about the final two minutes before Curiosity touches down on Mars in August 2012. Malin Space Science Systems, San Diego, Calif., supplied MARDI and two other camera instruments for the mission. A pocketknife provides scale for the image.

Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Malin Space Science Systems

For more information visit http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/msl/multimedia/gallery/pia13283.html