Space shuttle Discovery is scheduled to Launch on November 1st

Workers packed the special suits aboard Discovery at Launch Pad 39A at NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida as part of the continuing preparations for Monday's liftoff. The spacewalking suits are the familiar white versions that carry an astronaut’s power and life support systems. In that sense, each spacesuit is basically a small spacecraft for an astronaut outside the safety of the shuttle or the International Space Station. Mission Specialists Alvin Drew and Tim Kopra will don the suits for two spacewalks on the outside of the station. Spacewalking suits are considerably stronger than the orange partial pressure suits the whole crew wears for launch and landing.

Technicians also are continuing closeout work today on Discovery's aft compartment and preparations are under way to pressurize the main propulsion systems.

The STS-133 crew meets with its lead flight directors today at NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston and will conduct a conference with the Expedition 25 crew on board the space station. Discovery's six-person crew will fly to Kennedy on Thursday afternoon for the countdown and launch Monday at 4:40 pm. EDT.‪

During space shuttle Discovery's final spaceflight, the STS-133 crew members will take important spare parts to the International Space Station along with the Express Logistics Carrier-4. Discovery has been moved to Launch Pad 39A at NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida. STS-133 is slated to launch Nov. 1.

NASA Celebrating 10 Years on the International Space Station

Celebrating 10 Years on the International Space Station

How big is the International Space Station? Find out that and more as NASA looks back on 10 years of humans in orbit.
check here http://www.nasa.gov/externalflash/expedition_10_years/

NASA and OPTIMUS PRIME in Educating Youth

NASA has developed a contest to raise students' awareness of technology transfer efforts and how NASA technologies contribute to our everyday lives.

NASA is collaborating with Hasbro using the correlation between the popular TRANSFORMERS brand, featuring its leader OPTIMUS PRIME, and spinoffs from NASA technologies created for aeronautics and space missions that are used here on Earth. The goal is to help students understand that NASA technology 'transforms' into things that are used daily. These 'transformed' technologies include water purifiers, medical imaging software, or fabric that protects against UV rays.

The Innovative Partnerships Program Office at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md., in conjunction with NASA's Office of Education, has designed a video contest for students from third to eighth grade. Each student, or group of students, will submit a three- to five-minute video on a selected NASA spinoff technology listed in the 2009 Spinoff publication. Videos must demonstrate an understanding of the NASA spinoff technology and the associated NASA mission, as well as the commercial application and public benefit associated with the “transformed” technology. Video entries are due by December 31.

The videos will be posted on the NASA YouTube channel, and the public will be responsible for the first round of judging. The top five submissions from each of the two grade groups (third-fifth and sixth-eighth) will advance for final judging. A NASA panel will select a winning entry from each group, and the students will receive a glass OPTIMUS PRIME Spinoff Award at the Space Foundation's National Space Symposium in 2011. The innovators of the NASA technology highlighted in the winning videos also will receive trophies, along with their commercial partners.

NASA a major exhibitor at the USA Science and Engineering Festival in Washington, D.C

NASA will be a major exhibitor at the USA Science and Engineering Festival being held in Washington, D.C., this weekend. The Festival, which is free and open to the public, runs 10 a.m. until 5:30 p.m. EDT. Sat., Oct. 23, and Sun., Oct. 24. The NASA exhibits are located on the National Mall between 4th and 7th Streets, NW (directly in front of the National Museum of Natural History) and on the south side of Freedom Plaza between 13th and 14th Streets, NW.

From human space flight to aeronautics research, and from scientific study in the far reaches of the universe to our own planet's systems:

* Have you ever wondered how the Mars Rovers, Spirit and Opportunity, work? Here’s your chance to find out from the experts. You can even lie down on our Martian terrain and let a robotic rover amble its way across your back!
* Did you know that the Sun is the center of our solar system and is 93 million miles away from Earth? Even from that distance, its intensity can cause eye damage if you look directly at it. But NASA has a solution. Come and take a safe peek at Earth’s “SuperStar” through special solar telescopes.
* Do you remember learning ROYGBIV – the colors of the rainbow or electromagnetic spectrum? Many of NASA's observatories use the infrared part of that spectrum to make scientific discoveries. Do you want to understand how that works? See your image taken with our special infrared camera, then pop an ice cube in your mouth or hold a cold drink in your hand – what a difference you will see!
* Would you to meet a cartoon character who is mysterious and fun? Alkina’s ready to talk to you! She can share the intrigue of gamma rays, black holes, dark matter and other spooky things – just in time for Halloween.
* Guess what? Stars have stages of life just like we do. Stop by our Astro Camp booth to explore that concept using simple craft objects like string and beads.

These are just a few of the many different things you can learn by visiting the NASA booths at the USA Science and Engineering Festival. Rocket scientists, engineers and team members from NASA’s education and outreach programs will be on hand to help you become part of our exciting missions!

The Festival is also serving as a culminating event for NASA Education's successful 2010 Summer of Innovation pilot program, which reached more than 75,000 middle-schoolers during its inaugural year. Interactive NASA and SOI displays and exhibits will offer kids and parents alike the opportunity for hands-on experiences in our scientific and engineering missions and learn how you can be involved in the 2011 Summer of Innovation.

NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope Find Weird, Warm Spot on an Exoplanet

Observations from NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope reveal a distant planet with a warm spot in the wrong place.

The gas-giant planet, named upsilon Andromedae b, orbits tightly around its star, with one face perpetually boiling under the star's heat. It belongs to a class of planets termed hot Jupiters, so called for their scorching temperatures and large, gaseous constitutions.

One might think the hottest part of these planets would be directly under the sun-facing side, but previous observations have shown that their hot spots may be shifted slightly away from this point. Astronomers thought that fierce winds might be pushing hot, gaseous material around.

But the new finding may throw this theory into question. Using Spitzer, an infrared observatory, astronomers found that upsilon Andromedae b's hot spot is offset by a whopping 80 degrees. Basically, the hot spot is over to the side of the planet instead of directly under the glare of the sun.

"We really didn't expect to find a hot spot with such a large offset," said Ian Crossfield, lead author of a new paper about the discovery appearing in an upcoming issue of Astrophysical Journal. "It's clear that we understand even less about the atmospheric energetics of hot Jupiters than we thought we did."

The results are part of a growing field of exoplanet atmospheric science, pioneered by Spitzer in 2005, when it became the first telescope to directly detect photons from an exoplanet, or a planet orbiting a star other than our sun. Since then, Spitzer, along with NASA's Hubble Space Telescope, has studied the atmospheres of several hot Jupiters, finding water, methane, carbon dioxide and carbon monoxide.

In the new study, astronomers report observations of upsilon Andromedae b taken across five days in February of 2009. This planet whips around its star every 4.6 days, as measured using the "wobble," or radial velocity technique, with telescopes on the ground. It does not transit, or cross in front of, its star as many other hot Jupiters studied by Spitzer do.

Spitzer measured the total combined light from the star and planet, as the planet orbited around. The telescope can't see the planet directly, but it can detect variations in the total infrared light from the system that arise as the hot side of the planet comes into Earth's field of view. The hottest part of the planet will give off the most infrared light.

One might think the system would appear brightest when the planet was directly behind the star, thus showing its full sun-facing side. Likewise, one might think the system would appear darkest when the planet swings around toward Earth, showing its backside. But the system was the brightest when the planet was to the side of the star, with its side facing Earth. This means that the hottest part of the planet is not under its star. It's sort of like going to the beach at sunset to feel the most heat. The researchers aren't sure how this could be.

They've guessed at some possibilities, including supersonic winds triggering shock waves that heat material up, and star-planet magnetic interactions. But these are just speculation. As more hot Jupiters are examined, astronomers will test new theories.

"This is a very unexpected result," said Michael Werner, the Spitzer project scientist at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif., who was not a part of the study. "Spitzer is showing us that we are a long way from understanding these alien worlds."

The Spitzer observations were made before it ran out of its liquid coolant in May 2009, officially beginning its warm mission.

Check you favorite images, videos, missions and information in iPhone, iPod touch and iPad

The NASA App for iPhone, iPod touch and iPad, combines all of your favorite NASA images, videos, missions and information into one, easy-to-use, application. It's available free of charge on the App Store from Apple directly on iPhone, iPod touch and iPad or within iTunes.

for more info visit http://www.nasa.gov/centers/ames/iphone/index.html

The first snapshots of Aftermath of Possible Asteroid Collision

NASA's Hubble Space Telescope has captured the first snapshots of a suspected asteroid collision. The images show a bizarre X-shaped object at the head of a comet-like trail of material.

In January, astronomers began using Hubble to track the object for five months. They thought they had witnessed a fresh asteroid collision, but were surprised to learn the collision occurred in early 2009.

"We expected the debris field to expand dramatically, like shrapnel flying from a hand grenade," said astronomer David Jewitt of the University of California in Los Angeles, who is a leader of the Hubble observations. "But what happened was quite the opposite. We found that the object is expanding very, very slowly."

The peculiar object, dubbed P/2010 A2, was found cruising around the asteroid belt, a reservoir of millions of rocky bodies between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter. It is estimated modest-sized asteroids smash into each other about once a year. When the objects collide, they inject dust into interplanetary space. But until now, astronomers have relied on models to make predictions about the frequency of these collisions and the amount of dust produced.

Catching colliding asteroids is difficult because large impacts are rare while small ones, such as the one that produced P/2010 A2, are exceedingly faint. The two asteroids that make up P/2010 A2 were unknown before the collision because they were too faint to be noticed. The collision itself was unobservable because of the asteroids' position in relation to the sun. About 10 or 11 months later, in January 2010, the Lincoln Near-Earth Research (LINEAR) Program Sky Survey spotted the comet-like tail produced by the collision. But only Hubble discerned the X pattern, offering unequivocal evidence that something stranger than a comet outgassing had occurred.

Although the Hubble images give compelling evidence for an asteroid collision, Jewitt says he still does not have enough information to rule out other explanations for the peculiar object. In one such scenario, a small asteroid's rotation increases from solar radiation and loses mass, forming the comet-like tail.

"These observations are important because we need to know where the dust in the solar system comes from, and how much of it comes from colliding asteroids as opposed to 'outgassing' comets," Jewitt said. "We also can apply this knowledge to the dusty debris disks around other stars, because these are thought to be produced by collisions between unseen bodies in the disks. Knowing how the dust was produced will yield clues about those invisible bodies."

The Hubble images, taken from January to May 2010 with the telescope's Wide Field Camera 3, reveal a point-like object about 400 feet wide, with a long, flowing dust tail behind a never-before-seen X pattern. Particle sizes in the tail are estimated to vary from about 1/25th of an inch to an inch in diameter.

The 400-foot-wide object in the Hubble image is the remnant of a slightly larger precursor body. Astronomers think a smaller rock, perhaps 10 to 15 feet wide, slammed into the larger one. The pair probably collided at high speed, about 11,000 mph, which smashed and vaporized the small asteroid and stripped material from the larger one. Jewitt estimates that the violent encounter happened in February or March 2009 and was as powerful as the detonation of a small atomic bomb.

Sunlight radiation then swept the debris behind the remnant asteroid, forming a comet-like tail. The tail contains enough dust to make a ball 65 feet wide, most of it blown out of the bigger body by the impact-caused explosion. The science journal Nature will publish the findings in the Oct. 14 issue.

"Once again, Hubble has revealed unexpected phenomena occurring in our celestial 'back yard," said Eric Smith, Hubble Program scientist at NASA Headquarters in Washington. "Though it's often Hubble's deep observations of the universe or beautiful images of glowing nebulae in our galaxy that make headlines, observations like this of objects in our own solar system remind us how much exploration we still have to do locally."

Astronomers do not have a good explanation for the X shape. The crisscrossed filaments at the head of the tail suggest that the colliding asteroids were not perfectly symmetrical. Material ejected from the impact, therefore, did not make a symmetrical pattern, a bit like the ragged splash made by throwing a rock into a lake. Larger particles in the X disperse very slowly and give this structure its longevity.

Astronomers plan to use Hubble again next year to view the object. Jewitt and his colleagues hope to see how far the dust has been swept back by the sun's radiation and how the mysterious X-shaped structure has evolved.

The Soyuz TMA-01M rocket launched

The Soyuz TMA-01M rocket launched from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan on Friday, Oct. 8, 2010 carrying Expedition 25 Soyuz Commander Alexander Kaleri of Russia, NASA Flight Engineer Scott J. Kelly and Russian Flight Engineer Oleg Skripochka to the International Space Station.

Expedition 25 Crew to Launch on Thursday at 7:10 p.m. EDT

The Expedition 25 crew has been working on the International Space Station’s treadmill located inside the Russian segment. The treadmill is disassembled, inspected then reassembled as part of its six-month maintenance schedule. Photographs are taken of the exercise device’s parts and downlinked to Earth for analysis by specialists.

Commander Doug Wheelock continues working on the Oxygen Generation System in the Destiny laboratory. Wheelock is installing a system that will combine carbon dioxide and hydrogen to create water and methane. The water will be used in the station’s Water Processing Assembly and the methane will be vented overboard.

Flight Engineer Fyodor Yurchikhin continued his work in the Russian segment of the International Space Station. Yurchkihin updated the Inventory Management System and replaced equipment in the Zarya control module. He also inspected filters and checked coolant levels.

The Soyuz TMA-01M spacecraft is at the launch pad in Kazakhstan and set for a Thursday launch at 7:10 p.m. EDT to carry three new Expedition 25 crew members to the International Space Station. Flight Engineers Scott Kelly, Alexander Kaleri and Oleg Skripochka are due to arrive at the orbiting laboratory Saturday and dock to the Poisk module at 8:02 p.m

A team of planet hunters Finds First Potentially Habitable Exoplanet

This artist's conception shows the inner four planets of the Gliese 581 system and their host star, a red dwarf star only 20 light years away from Earth. The large planet in the foreground is the newly discovered GJ 581g, which has a 37-day orbit right in the middle of the star's habitable zone and is only three to four times the mass of Earth, with a diameter 1.2 to 1.4 times that of Earth.

A team of planet hunters from the University of California (UC) Santa Cruz, and the Carnegie Institution of Washington has announced the discovery of a planet with three times the mass of Earth orbiting a nearby star at a distance that places it squarely in the middle of the star's "habitable zone."

This discovery was the result of more than a decade of observations using the W. M. Keck Observatory in Hawaii, one of the world's largest optical telescopes. The research, sponsored by NASA and the National Science Foundation, placed the planet in an area where liquid water could exist on the planet's surface. If confirmed, this would be the most Earth-like exoplanet yet discovered and the first strong case for a potentially habitable one.

To astronomers, a "potentially habitable" planet is one that could sustain life, not necessarily one where humans would thrive. Habitability depends on many factors, but having liquid water and an atmosphere are among the most important.

The new findings are based on 11 years of observations of the nearby red dwarf star Gliese 581using the HIRES spectrometer on the Keck I Telescope. The spectrometer allows precise measurements of a star's radial velocity (its motion along the line of sight from Earth), which can reveal the presence of planets. The gravitational tug of an orbiting planet causes periodic changes in the radial velocity of the host star. Multiple planets induce complex wobbles in the star's motion, and astronomers use sophisticated analyses to detect planets and determine their orbits and masses.

"Keck's long-term observations of the wobble of nearby stars enabled the detection of this multi-planetary system," said Mario R. Perez, Keck program scientist at NASA Headquarters in Washington. "Keck is once again proving itself an amazing tool for scientific research."

Steven Vogt, professor of astronomy and astrophysics at UC Santa Cruz, and Paul Butler of the Carnegie Institution lead the Lick-Carnegie Exoplanet Survey. The team's new findings are reported in a paper published in the Astrophysical Journal and posted online at:http://arxiv.org

"Our findings offer a very compelling case for a potentially habitable planet," said Vogt. "The fact that we were able to detect this planet so quickly and so nearby tells us that planets like this must be really common."

The paper reports the discovery of two new planets around Gliese 581. This brings the total number of known planets around this star to six, the most yet discovered in a planetary system outside of our own. Like our solar system, the planets around Gliese 581 have nearly-circular orbits.

Comparing the Gliese 581 to Our Solar System

The orbits of planets in the Gliese 581 system are compared to those of our own solar system. The Gliese 581 star has about 30% the mass of our sun, and the outermost planet is closer to its star than we are to the sun. The fourth planet, G, is a planet that could sustain life.

The new planet designated Gliese 581g has a mass three to four times that of Earth and orbits its star in just under 37 days. Its mass indicates that it is probably a rocky planet with a definite surface and enough gravity to hold on to an atmosphere.

Gliese 581, located 20 light years away from Earth in the constellation Libra, has two previously detected planets that lie at the edges of the habitable zone, one on the hot side (planet c) and one on the cold side (planet d). While some astronomers still think planet d may be habitable if it has a thick atmosphere with a strong greenhouse effect to warm it up, others are skeptical. The newly-discovered planet g, however, lies right in the middle of the habitable zone.

The planet is tidally locked to the star, meaning that one side is always facing the star and basking in perpetual daylight, while the side facing away from the star is in perpetual darkness. One effect of this is to stabilize the planet's surface climates, according to Vogt. The most habitable zone on the planet's surface would be the line between shadow and light (known as the "terminator").