National Aeronautics

The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA, pronounced /ˈn誑ə/) is an agency of the United States government, responsible for the nation's public space program. NASA was established by the National Aeronautics and Space Act on July 29, 1958, replacing its predecessor, the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics (NACA). The agency became operational on October 1, 1958.[3][4] NASA has led U.S. efforts for space exploration ever since, resulting in the Apollo missions to the Moon, the Skylab space station, and later the Space Shuttle. Currently NASA is supporting the International Space Station and developing new Ares I and V launch vehicles.
In addition to the space program, it is also responsible for long-term civilian and military aerospace research. NASA Science is focused on better understanding Earth itself through the Earth Observing System,[5] advancing heliophysics through the efforts of the Science Mission Directorate's Heliophysics Research

NASA Apollo 17 Lunar Roving

Astronaut Eugene A. Cernan, commander, makes a short checkout of the Lunar Roving Vehicle (LRV) during the early part of the first Apollo 17 Extravehicular Activity (EVA-1) at the Taurus-Littrow landing site. This view of the "stripped down" LRV is prior to loading up. Equipment later loaded onto the LRV included the ground-controlled television assembly, the lunar communications relay unit, hi-gain antenna, low-gain antenna, aft tool pallet, lunar tools and scientific gear. This photograph was taken by scientist-astronaut Harrison H. Schmitt, lunar module pilot. The mountain in the right background is the east end of South Massif. While astronauts Cernan and Schmitt descended in the Lunar Module (LM) "Challenger" to explore the Moon, astronaut Ronald E. Evans, command module pilot, remained with the Command and Service Modules (CSM) "America" in lunar-orbit.

Astronomy Picture of the Day

Explanation: Happy Birthday, NASA! The National Aeronautics and Space Administration officially began operations on October 1, 1958, absorbing its forerunner organization the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics, NACA. Its landmark achievements in human spaceflight include the Mercury and Gemini Projects culminating in the Apollo Project moon landings in the 1960s and early 1970s, Apollo-Soyuz and Skylab in the 1970s, and the Space Shuttle program of the 1980s and 1990s. (Pictured is the June 1998 launch of the Space Shuttle Discovery.) NASA's science programs have produced the robotic exploration of our Solar System, views of the Universe across the electromagnetic spectrum, and valuable meteorological and remote-sensing Earth observations. At birth, NASA's priorities were largely driven by the pressures and competitions of the Cold War. But looking back over 40 years, the sum of its accomplishments have produced needed new technologies and a vital new perspective on Planet Earth and the Cosmos.

Slide Show: Students Gear Up for NASA's Annual Moon Buggy Race

THE ORIGINAL (CIRCA 1971): The Great Moonbuggy Race at NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center challenges high school and college students to engineer a rover under some of the same restrictions the space agency faced when building the original in the 1960s. Moon buggy rovers must first fit into a cube with four-foot (1.2-meter) sides, roughly the same dimensions in which the original lunar rover needed to fit for travel to the moon.

This image of Comet Hale-Bopp is courtesy of Fred Espenak, NASA GSFC.

The solar wind varies routinely through the 27-day rotation of the Sun, as well as sporadically, in response to violent eruptions in the corona. These eruptions can result in geomagnetic storms on Earth. Read more about space weather... The composition of the solar wind reflects the composition of the solar corona, modified by solar wind processes. The exact mechanism of solar wind formation is not known. Accurately measuring its composition aids in separating the effects of these processes from the original makeup of the corona.

For NASA no easy answer for next space destination

WASHINGTON (AP) -– Where to next? It's a simple question that NASA can't answer so easily anymore. The veteran space shuttle fleet is months from being mothballed and the White House has nixed a previous plan to fly to the moon.

For the first time in decades, NASA has no specific space destination for its next stop, although it has lots of places it wants to go. Future space flight, NASA officials say, now depends on new rocket science and where it can take us.

That uncertainty may not sit well with Congress, which will be grilling NASA chief Charles Bolden on Wednesday and Thursday in the first hearings since the George W. Bush moon mission was shelved.

There are only a few places in space where humans can go in the next couple of decades. NASA wants to go to all of them, with the ultimate destination, as always, being Mars.

“The suite of destinations has not changed over time,” NASA deputy administrator Lori Garver said in an interview. “The moon, asteroids, Mars — if you're going to go anywhere — is where we are going.” But with any itinerary there is a first stop. So what is that?

Check back in a couple of years. That's when new technology should be developed enough to answer that question, Garver said. President Barack Obama plans to divert billions of dollars from the Bush moon plan toward developing better rocketry. “The best way to get anywhere … is really invest in technologies that will reduce the cost, reduce the time, reduce the risk and so forth,” Garver said.

Some of those technologies seem like science fiction. The possibilities noted by experts inside and outside of NASA include the equivalent of an in-orbit gas station, electric-hybrid rockets, nuclear thermal rockets, inflatable parts for spaceships, and methods of beaming power between Earth and space.

Art and the Promotion of Space Exploration

NASA Lunar Base

A 1949 Gallup poll of Americans found that only 15% of the public believed that man would walk on the Moon by 2000. How is it that we accomplished this by 1969? Of course the Cold War and a series of Soviet space firsts played the lead role. But space art also played a role in providing for the population a visualization of what space exploration could be like.
Space art still has a role to play in exposing the public to the vision of what it would mean to truly become a spacefaring civilization. There is a precedent for art’s ability to shape public policy. One of my favorite artists is Thomas Moran, an outstanding painter of the Hudson River School. One of Moran’s landscape subjects was Yellowstone, which he visited as part of an expedition in 1871. His paintings of the landscape had such an impact on the public that in 1872 Yellowstone was made our nation’s first national park. If you would like to know more about Thomas Moran and his art, I recommend the book Thomas Moran.
Peter A. Nisbet, a well known landscape artist who was part of the NASA Art Program, said that “Art is about what words cannot express. Many things have happened in the exploration of space that people cannot know through photographs or newspapers/television reporting. It is the artist’s task to bring forth the mysterious, the exalted, the great beauty and power surrounding these events.”

Astronomy Picture of the Day

NASA's Latest Rockets: X-33
Credit: Vehicle Analysis Branch, LARC, NASA
Explanation: What will NASA rockets look like in the future? Today's announcement gave one indication. Today Vice- President Al Gore announced that the Lockheed Martin Corporation will work with NASA to produce a reusable rocket with a remote pilot. Currently designated the X-33 program, the flight demonstration rocket design will utilize only a single stage, cost relatively little per launch, and be ready for re-launch within days. It is expected that an X-33 type rocket will be in use by NASA by the the year 2000. Pictured above is an artistic depiction of the candidate vehicle.

Phoenix Landing Events Schedule

NOTE: The times below for the Phoenix spacecraft events on May 25 are for a nominal scenario. Remaining navigational adjustments before May 25 could shift the times by up to about half a minute. In addition, the times for some events relative to others could vary by several seconds due to variations in the Martian atmosphere and other factors. For some events, a "give or take" range of times is given, covering 99 percent of possible scenarios from the atmospheric entry time. For events at Mars, times are listed in "Earth-receive time" (ERT) rather than "spacecraft event time" (SCET). This means the listed time incorporates the interval necessary for radio signals traveling at the speed of light to reach Earth from Mars. On landing day, May 25, the two planets are 275 million kilometers apart (171 million miles), which means it takes the signal 15 minutes and 20 seconds to reach Earth. For some spacecraft events, engineers will not receive immediate radio confirmation

JPL Develops Six-Legged ATHLETE Robot

When your office environment is genuinely filled with people who are rocket scientists, chances are that you’re bound to come up a bright idea or two. Such is the case with JPL’s ATHLETE (All-Terrain Hex-Legged Extra-Terrestrial Explorer) robot, which was developed by JPL with the help of Boeing, Stanford University, and NASA’s Johnson and Ames Centers. According to the NASA ATHLETE project page, JPL has been hard at work on a new autonomous robotic vehicle concept that combines six legs (capped with wheels) that each feature six degrees of freedom (DOF).
The current version has a paylod capacity of 450 kg, but future variants will be larger and more capable. JPL hopes that robotic vehicles developed under the ATHLETE project will eventually be able to cross most terrain types, have a 10-year life cycle (under hostile conditions), and “Demonstrate a useful ‘voice and gesture’ command mode to enable suited astronauts to interact with these vehicles.”

THE MANNED MANEUVERING UNIT IN SPACE

Astronaut Bruce McCandless on a spacewalk using the manned maneuvering unit (MMU) on STS-41B, February 1984. NASA and Martin Marietta Corporation were awarded the Collier Trophy in 1984 for the development of the MMU, and for being the NASA teams that rescued three disabled satellites, with special recognition to astronaut Bruce MeCandless II, NASA's Charles E. Whitsett, Jr. and Martin Marietta's Walter W Bollendonk. (NASA photo no. 84-H-71).

Released to Public: Apollo 16 on the Moon, April 16, 1972 (NASA)

Public Use Permitted. Credit: NASA. . For more information Visit NASA's Multimedia Gallery You may wish to consult NASA's
image use guidelines. If you plan to use an image and especially if you are considering any commercial usage, you should be aware that some restrictions may apply.
________________________
NOTE: In most cases, NASA does not assert copyright protection for its images, but proper attribution may be required. This may be to NASA or various agencies and individuals that may work on any number of projects with NASA. Please DO NOT ATTRIBUTE TO PINGNEWS. You may say found via pingnews but pingnews is neither the creator nor the owner of these materials.
_________________
Additional information from source:

Astronaut Charles M. Duke Jr., Apollo 16 Lunar Module pilot, is photographed collecting lunar samples at Station No. 1 during the mission's first extravehicular activity at the Descartes landing site. This picture, looking eastward, was taken by Commander John W. Young. Duke is standing at the rim of Plum crater, which is 40 meters (131 feet) in diameter and 10 meters (about 33 feet) deep. The lunar rover can be seen in the background.

Advanced NASA Instrument Gets Close-up on Mars Rocks

 

NASA's Mars Science Laboratory rover, Curiosity, will carry a next generation, onboard "chemical element reader" to measure the chemical ingredients in Martian rocks and soil. The instrument is one of 10 that will help the rover in its upcoming mission to determine the past and present habitability of a specific area on the Red Planet. Launch is scheduled between Nov. 25 and Dec. 18, 2011, with landing in August 2012.

The Alpha Particle X-Ray Spectrometer (APXS) instrument, designed by physics professor Ralf Gellert of the University of Guelph in Ontario, Canada, uses the power of alpha particles, or helium nuclei, and X-rays to bombard a target, causing the target to give off its own characteristic alpha particles and X-ray radiation. This radiation is "read by" an X-ray detector inside the sensor head, which reveals which elements and how much of each are in the rock or soil.

Identifying the elemental composition of lighter elements such as sodium, magnesium or aluminum, as well as heavier elements like iron, nickel or zinc, will help scientists identify the building blocks of the Martian crust. By comparing these findings with those of previous Mars rover findings, scientists can determine if any weathering has taken place since the rock formed ages ago.

All NASA Mars rovers have carried a similar instrument – Pathfinder's rover Sojourner, Spirit and Opportunity, and now Curiosity, too. Improvements have been made with each generation, but the basic design of the instrument has remained the same.

NASA Probe Sees Solar Wind Decline

 

PASADENA, Calif. – The 33-year odyssey of NASA's Voyager 1 spacecraft has reached a distant point at the edge of our solar system where there is no outward motion of solar wind.

Now hurtling toward interstellar space some 17.4 billion kilometers (10.8 billion miles) from the sun, Voyager 1 has crossed into an area where the velocity of the hot ionized gas, or plasma, emanating directly outward from the sun has slowed to zero. Scientists suspect the solar wind has been turned sideways by the pressure from the interstellar wind in the region between stars.

The event is a major milestone in Voyager 1's passage through the heliosheath, the turbulent outer shell of the sun's sphere of influence, and the spacecraft's upcoming departure from our solar system.

"The solar wind has turned the corner," said Ed Stone, Voyager project scientist based at the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, Calif. "Voyager 1 is getting close to interstellar space."

Our sun gives off a stream of charged particles that form a bubble known as the heliosphere around our solar system. The solar wind travels at supersonic speed until it crosses a shockwave called the termination shock. At this point, the solar wind dramatically slows down and heats up in the heliosheath

Can WISE Find the Hypothetical 'Tyche'?

 
In November 2010, the scientific journal Icarus published a paper by astrophysicists John Matese and Daniel Whitmire, who proposed the existence of a binary companion to our sun, larger than Jupiter, in the long-hypothesized "Oort cloud" -- a faraway repository of small icy bodies at the edge of our solar system. The researchers use the name "Tyche" for the hypothetical planet. Their paper argues that evidence for the planet would have been recorded by the Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer (WISE).

WISE is a NASA mission, launched in December 2009, which scanned the entire celestial sky at four infrared wavelengths about 1.5 times. It captured more than 2.7 million images of objects in space, ranging from faraway galaxies to asteroids and comets relatively close to Earth. Recently, WISE completed an extended mission, allowing it to finish a complete scan of the asteroid belt, and two complete scans of the more distant universe, in two infrared bands. So far, the mission's discoveries of previously unknown objects include an ultra-cold star or brown dwarf, 20 comets, 134 near-Earth objects (NEOs), and more than 33,000 asteroids in the main belt between Mars and Jupiter.
Following its successful survey, WISE was put into hibernation in February 2011. Analysis of WISE data continues. A preliminary public release of the first 14 weeks of data is planned for April 2011, and the final release of the full survey is planned for March 2012.

Shoulder Motor Balks on Opportunity Rover's Robotic Arm

 

A small motor in the robotic arm of NASA's Mars Exploration Rover Opportunity that began stalling occasionally more than two years ago has become more troublesome recently.

Rover engineers at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif., are diagnosing why the motor, one of five in the robotic arm, stalled on April 14 after much less motion that day than in the case of several earlier stalls. They are also examining whether the motor can be used and assessing the impact on Opportunity's work if the motor were no longer usable.

The motor controls sideways motion at the shoulder joint of the rover robotic arm. Other motors provide up-and-down motion at the shoulder and maneuverability at the elbow and wrist. A turret at the end of the arm has four tools that the arm places in contact with rocks and soils to study their composition and texture.

"Even under the worst-case scenario for this motor, Opportunity still has the capability to do some contact science with the arm," said JPL's John Callas, project manager for the twin rovers Opportunity and Spirit. "The vehicle has quite a bit of versatility to continue the high-priority investigations in Victoria Crater and back out on the Meridiani plains after exiting the crater."

The performance of the motor in the past week is consistent with increased resistance in the electrical circuit, such as from degrading of wire in the winding, rather than a mechanical jam. Additional tests are planned for checking whether the apparent resistance is localized or intermittent.

Boiling Bubbles are Cool in Space

It may seem illogical, but boiling is a very efficient way to cool engineering components and systems used in the extreme environments of space.

An experiment to gain a basic understanding of this phenomena launched to the International Space Station on space shuttle Discovery Feb. 24. The Nucleate Pool Boiling Experiment, or NPBX, is one of two experiments in the new Boiling eXperiment Facility, or BXF.

Nucleate boiling is bubble growth from a heated surface and the subsequent detachment of the bubble to a cooler surrounding liquid. As a result, these bubbles can efficiently transfer energy from the boiling surface into the surrounding fluid. This investigation provides an understanding of heat transfer and vapor removal processes that happen during nucleate boiling in microgravity. Researchers will glean information to better design and operate space systems that use boiling for efficient heat removal.

Bubbles in microgravity grow to different sizes than on Earth. This experiment will focus on the dynamics of single and multiple bubbles and the associated heat transfer.

Good Progress on Troubleshooting

Orbital Sciences and NASA engineers are making good progress in troubleshooting the ground support equipment issue that caused the postponement of the Glory launch on Feb. 23. Launch will be no earlier than March 4.

Data from the Glory mission will allow scientists to better understand how the sun and tiny atmospheric particles called aerosols affect Earth's climate. Both aerosols and solar energy influence the planet's energy budget -- the amount of energy entering and exiting Earth's atmosphere. An accurate measurement of these impacts is important in order to anticipate future changes to our climate and how they may affect human life.

Project management for Glory is the responsibility of NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md. The launch management for the mission is the responsibility of NASA's Launch Services Program at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida. Orbital Sciences Corp. of Dulles, Va., is the launch service provider to Kennedy of the four-stage Taurus XL rocket and is also builder of the Glory satellite for Goddard

“New Words and Slang

NASA Satellite Image

Miriam-Webster online dictionary’s “New Words and Slang” list has made it official—Snowmageddon is a word (then again according to the site, so is jeggings and Belieber). The user-submitted word is defined as, “a large snowstorm.” A quick Google search reveals last year’s Snowmageddon was more than just a snowstorm, however, to those who experienced it. From the many followers who created dedicated Facebook fan pages to thousands of YouTube videos to a Zazzle t-shirt its near celebrity status lives on

NASA World Wind

NASA World Wind,  is an Open Source virtual globe developed by NASA for use on personal computers running Microsoft Windows. The program overlays NASA satellite imagery and United States Geological Survey aerial photography on a 3D model of the Earth, Moon and Mars. (Venus and Jupiter are also available in the File menu, as well as the four Galilean moons of Io, Ganymede, Europa and Callisto). Microsoft has allowed World Wind to incorporate Virtual Earth data for non-commercial use. Users interact with the selected planet by rotating it, and zooming in and out. Five million placenames, political boundaries, latitude/longitude, and other location criteria are included. World Wind provides the ability to browse maps and other imagery on the internet using the Open Geospatial Consortium Web Map Service, import ESRI shapefiles and placemarks from kml/kmz files. This is an example of how World Wind allows anyone to deliver their imagery. The benefit that gold prospectors get from using World Wind is you can get topo maps, aerials, LandSat data all in one easy to use location. Plus it provides real time GPS tracking and you can upload all USGS Mine (MAS/MILS) data through the KML/KMZ import feature. Research made easy - for free.

 

ALTIMETRIC SATELLITES

                                                                              

                                GEOS-3 altimetric satellite (credit SAO and NASA)         SEASAT altimetric satellite (credit NASA. JPL)                GEOSAT altimetric satellite (NASA, US NAVY)

 
                                                                                                               
                                            ERS1/2 altimetric satellites (credit ESA)             TOPEX/POSEIDON  altimetric satellite (credit AVISO)          JASON-1 altimetric satellite (credit AVISO)

  

                                                                     
               GEOSAT Follow On altimetric mission (credit US NAVY)                              ENVISAT satellite mission (credit ESA)                         CryoSat satellite mission (credit ESA)

 

 

Students Help NASA Decommission Satellite

CU-Boulder student command controllers Melanie Dubin, left, and Andrew Berg, center, work with professional command controller Matt Dahl to upload commands to a satellite at the Mission Operations Center at the Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics. (Credit: Photo by Glenn Asakawa/University of Colorado) The satellite, known as the Ice, Cloud and Land Elevation Satellite, or ICESat, orbited Earth for seven years, gathering valuable data on the polar regions and helping scientists develop a better understanding of ice sheets and sea ice dynamics. The CU-Boulder control team at the Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics -- made up primarily of undergraduates who work side-by-side with LASP professionals -- uploaded commands for the satellite to burn its remaining fuel and switched off the transmitter.

New York Times interactive graphic

A NASA satellite image from September 16, 2007 and released on September 21, 2007, shows Arctic summer sea ice. Arctic sea ice declined this year to the lowest levels registered since satellite assessments started in the 1970s, extending a trend fueled by human-caused global warming, scientists said on Monday.

A combination photo of NASA satellite images from September 21, 2005 (top) and September 16, 2007 (bottom) and released on September 21, 2007 shows Arctic summer sea ice coverage in 2005 and 2007 respectively.

Loss of sea ice in graphics created by the NY Times (Oct. 1, 2007).
This web page details in clear graphics just how devastating the loss of arctic ice really is.

See the New York Times interactive graphic

MSU satellite set to launch on NASA mission

• • 

Topics: MSU satellite, NASA, Bozeman

BOZEMAN - The first Montana satellite chosen to ride on a NASA space mission.
The satellite is a small research satellite that involved more than 125 Montana State University students over five years.
Director of MSU's Space Science and Engineering Laboratory (SSEL) David Klumpar says the satellite is set to launch on February 23rd, and If all goes as planned, MSU's Explorer-1 (Prime) will blast off at 3:08:43 a.m. Mountain time aboard a Taurus XL rocket from the Vandenberg Air Force Base in Santa Maria, California.
The satellite is already bolted onto the rocket, but the launch must occur within a specific 48-second window or it will be rescheduled for the next day.
Eleven MSU students, faculty and staff from the SSEL and Montana Space Grant Consortium will watch the launch in person.
MSU's satellite is one of only three university-built satellites that were chosen to fly on NASA's Glory mission.
The others come from the University of Colorado and several Kentucky universities that combined their efforts to become the Kentucky Space Consortium.
All three satellites are called CubeSats because they are aluminum cubes that measure about four inches on each side and weigh no more than 2.2 pounds (the standard size that allows the satellites to ride together in an enclosed box-called a P-POD that's attached to a rocket).
Explorer-1 [Prime] is expected to orbit the Earth about 15 years before reentering and disintegrating in the upper atmosphere.
MSU's satellite will replicate the scientific mission of the Explorer-1 mission, which was launched on Jan. 31, 1958.

NASA to Launch Small Science Satellites From Alaska

Artist's concept of NASA's FASTSAT satellite, which is set to launch Nov. 19 carrying six different scientific payloads. CREDIT: NASA View full size image

NASA is preparing for the launch of two small satellites packed with experiments, including a solar sail prototype, from Alaska this week.

The two main satellites, known as FASTSAT and O/OREOS, will each carry multiple piggyback payloads of their own, mission scientists said. The small solar sail is one of these parasite payloads.

The satellites will ride to space aboard a Minotaur 4 rocket, which is slated to blast off from the Alaska Aerospace Corporation's Kodiak Launch Complex on Friday (Nov. 19) at 8:24 p.m. EST (0124 Nov. 20 GMT).

Both satellites' missions involve technology demonstrations as well as research objectives. They're part of a broader NASA effort to find ways to perform research in space cheaply and reliably, agency officials said.

"We wanted to enable a low-cost platform into orbit," said Mark Boudreaux, FASTSAT project manager at NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Ala. "We're very excited about that.