Expedition 24 Crew Members Prepare for landing on Friday in Kazakhstan

Expedition 24 Commander Alexander Skvortsov and Flight Engineers Tracy Caldwell Dyson and Mikhail Kornienko spent Monday preparing for their departure Thursday from the International Space Station. They packed items to be returned to Earth in their Soyuz TMA-18 spacecraft, reviewed deorbit and landing procedures and checked out their Sokol launch and entry suits.

Once they undock, Expedition 25 will begin its increment with Commander Doug Wheelock and Flight Engineers Shannon Walker and Fyodor Yurchikhin continuing their stay on the station. Skvortsov will ceremonially hand command of the station over to Wheelock Wednesday afternoon.

NASA Astronaut Scott Kelly and Russian Cosmonauts Alexander Kaleri and Oleg Skripochka will join Expedition 25 as flight engineers when they dock in the new Soyuz TMA-01M spacecraft next month.

Walker set up equipment for the Anomalous Long Term Effects in Astronauts' Central Nervous System experiment. Also known as ALTEA, the experiment uses several diagnostic technologies to measure the effect of the exposure of crew members to cosmic radiation. Specifically, ALTEA was set up Monday to measure the effectiveness of materials on the orbital complex designed to shield the crew from this radiation.

Meanwhile, Kornienko assisted Skvortsov in a session with the Russian Pilot-M experiment. Pilot-M tests piloting skill in simulations on a laptop under stopwatch control and studies the response of cosmonauts to the effects of stress factors in flight.

Yurchikhin worked with the Matryoshka-R experiment. The Russian payload is designed for sophisticated radiation studies and is named after the traditional Russian set of nested dolls.

Wheelock installed a cable that will send power to the Pressurized Multipurpose Module when it is delivered by the STS-133 crew aboard space shuttle Discovery later this year.

Caldwell Dyson set up the U.S. Sound Level Meter and performed an acoustic survey of the station, the data from which she later downloaded to controllers on the ground.

Come to the NASA Goddard Visitor Center for celebrating International Observe the Moon Night

Come to the NASA Goddard Visitor Center on Saturday, September 18, 2010 from 6:30 pm – 10:00 pm for a fun-filled evening celebrating International Observe the Moon Night. Enjoy guest speakers, hands-on activities, laser ranging facility tours*, a public unveiling of Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO) images, and of course, Moon observations! Learn why the Moon goes through phases, how it came to look like it does today, and what we’ve discovered as LRO orbits about 30 miles above Moon’s surface. The 2010 International Observe the Moon Night is our opportunity to celebrate the science returned from the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter, which was built at NASA Goddard and reached lunar orbit on June 23, 2009.

* Laser ranging facility tours are open to the first 100 people on a first-come, first-served basis, so arrive at 6:30 pm to ensure your space!

Agenda for the International Observe the Moon Night
(Hands-on activities and moon observations from 6:45 pm – 10:00 pm)

6:30 pm - Welcome and introduction
6:45 pm - Remote presentation by a scientist from the Lunar and Planetary Institute in Houston, TX
6:45 pm - Science On a Sphere shows every 15 minutes, hands-on activities begin
7:00 pm - Laser ranging tours begin and run every half hour, moon observation with amateur astronomers begins
7:30 pm - 8:15 pm - Presentation by local lunar expert
8:30 pm - 9:15 pm - Presentation by local lunar expert
9:15 pm - 10:00 pm – Hands-on activities, moon observation with amateur astronomers

NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory Finds Evidence for Stellar Cannibalism

Evidence that a star has recently engulfed a companion star or a giant planet has been found using NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory. The likely existence of such a "cannibal" star provides new insight into how stars and the planets around them may interact as they age.

The star in question, known as BP Piscium (BP Psc), appears to be a more evolved version of our Sun, but with a dusty and gaseous disk surrounding it. A pair of jets several light years long blasting out of the system in opposite directions has also been seen in optical data. While the disk and jets are characteristics of a very young star, several clues -- including the new results from Chandra -- suggest that BP Psc is not what it originally appeared to be.

Instead, astronomers have suggested that BP Psc is an old star in its so-called red giant phase. And, rather than being hallmarks of its youth, the disk and jets are, in fact, remnants of a recent and catastrophic interaction whereby a nearby star or giant planet was consumed by BP Psc.

When stars like the Sun begin to run of nuclear fuel, they expand and shed their outer layers. Our Sun, for example, is expected to swell so that it nearly reaches or possibly engulfs Earth, as it becomes a red giant star.

"It appears that BP Psc represents a star-eat-star Universe, or maybe a star-eat-planet one," said Joel Kastner of the Rochester Institute of Technology, who led the Chandra study. "Either way, it just shows it's not always friendly out there."

Several pieces of information have led astronomers to rethink how old BP Psc might be. First, BP Psc is not located near any star-forming cloud, and there are no other known young stars in its immediate vicinity. Secondly, in common with most elderly stars, its atmosphere contains only a small amount of lithium. Thirdly, its surface gravity appears to be too weak for a young star and instead matches up with one of an old red giant.

Chandra adds to this story. Young, low-mass stars are brighter than most other stars in X-rays, and so X-ray observations can be used as a sign of how old a star may be. Chandra does detect X-rays from BP Psc, but at a rate that is too low to be from a young star. Instead, the X-ray emission rate measured for BP Psc is consistent with that of rapidly rotating giant stars.

The spectrum of the X-ray emission -- that is how the amount of X-rays changes with wavelength -- is consistent with flares occurring on the surface of the star, or with interactions between the star and the disk surrounding it. The magnetic activity of the star itself might be generated by a dynamo caused by its rapid rotation. This rapid rotation can be caused by the engulfment process.

"It seems that BP Psc has been energized by its meal," said co-author Rodolfo (Rudy) Montez Jr., also from the Rochester Institute of Technology.

The star's surface is obscured throughout the visible and near-infrared bands, so the Chandra observation represents the first detection at any wavelength of BP Psc itself.

"BP Psc shows us that stars like our Sun may live quietly for billions of years," said co-author David Rodriguez from UCLA, "but when they go, they just might take a star or planet or two with them."

Although any close-in planets were presumably devastated when BP Psc turned into a giant star, a second round of planet formation might be occurring in the surrounding disk, hundreds of millions of years after the first round. A new paper using observations with the Spitzer Space Telescope has reported possible evidence for a giant planet in the disk surrounding BP Psc. This might be a newly formed planet or one that was part of the original planetary system.

"Exactly how stars might engulf other stars or planets is a hot topic in astrophysics today," said Kastner. "We have many important details that we still need to work out, so objects like BP Psc are really exciting to find."

These results appeared in The Astrophysical Journal Letters. Other co-authors on the study were Nicolas Grosso of the University of Strasbourg, Ben Zuckerman from UCLA, Marshall Perrin from the Space Telescope Science Institute, Thierry Forveille of the Grenoble Astrophysics Laboratory in France and James Graham from University of California, Berkeley.

NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Ala., manages the Chandra program for NASA's Science Mission Directorate in Washington. The Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory controls Chandra's science and flight operations from Cambridge, Mass.

A Snapshot of Arctic Sea Ice from NASA's Aqua satellite

Sad news for planet hunters

Bad news for planet hunters: most of the "hot Jupiters" that astronomers have been searching for in star clusters were likely destroyed long ago by their stars. In a paper accepted for publication by the Astrophysical Journal, John Debes and Brian Jackson of NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md., offer this new explanation for why no transiting planets (planets that pass in front of their stars and temporarily block some of the light) have been found yet in star clusters. The researchers also predict that the planet hunting being done by the Kepler mission is more likely to succeed in younger star clusters than older ones.

"Planets are elusive creatures," says Jackson, a NASA Postdoctoral Program fellow at Goddard, "and we found another reason that they're elusive."

When astronomers began to search for planets in star-packed globular clusters about 10 years ago, they hoped to find many new worlds. One survey of the cluster called 47 Tucanae (47 Tuc), for example, was expected to find at least a dozen planets among the roughly 34,000 candidate stars. "They looked at so many stars, people thought for sure they would find some planets," says Debes, a NASA Postdoctoral Program fellow at Goddard. "But they didn't."

More than 450 exoplanets (short for "extrasolar planets," or planets outside our solar system) have been found, but "most of them have been detected around single stars," Debes notes.

"Globular clusters turn out to be rough neighborhoods for planets," explains Jackson, "because there are lots of stars around to beat up on them and not much for them to eat." The high density of stars in these clusters means that planets can be kicked out of their solar systems by nearby stars. In addition, the globular clusters surveyed so far have been rather poor in metals (elements heavier than hydrogen and helium), which are the raw materials for making planets; this is known as low metallicity.

Debes and Jackson propose that hot Jupiters—large planets that are at least 3 to 4 times closer to their host stars than Mercury is to our sun—are quickly destroyed. In these cramped orbits, the gravitational pull of the planet on the star can create a tide—that is, a bulge—on the star. As the planet orbits, the bulge on the star points a little bit behind the planet and essentially pulls against it; this drag reduces the energy of the planet's orbit, and the planet moves a little closer to the star. Then the bulge on the star gets bigger and saps even more energy from the planet's orbit. This continues for billions of years until the planet crashes into the star or is torn apart by the star's gravity, according to Jackson's model of tidal orbital decay.

"The last moments for these planets can be pretty dramatic, as their atmospheres are ripped away by their stars' gravity," says Jackson. "It has even been suggested recently the hot Jupiter called WASP-12B is close enough to its star that it is currently being destroyed."

Debes and Jackson modeled what would have happened in 47 Tuc if the tidal effect were unleashed on hot Jupiters. They recreated the range of masses and sizes of the stars in that cluster and simulated a likely arrangement of planets. Then they let the stars' tides go to work on the close-in planets. The model predicted that so many of these planets would be destroyed, the survey would come up empty-handed. "Our model shows that you don't need to consider metallicity to explain the survey results," says Debes, "though this and other effects will also reduce the number of planets."

Ron Gilliland, who is at the Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore and participated in the 47 Tuc survey, says, "This analysis of tidal interactions of planets and their host stars provides another potentially good explanation—in addition to the strong correlation between metallicity and the presence of planets—of why we failed to detect exoplanets in 47 Tuc."

In general, Debes and Jackson's model predicts that one-third of the hot Jupiters will be destroyed by the time a cluster is a billion years old, which is still juvenile compared to our solar system (about 4-1/2 billion years old). 47 Tuc has recently been estimated to be more than 11 billion years old. At that age, the researchers expect more than 96% of the hot Jupiters to be gone.

The Kepler mission, which is searching for hot Jupiters and smaller, Earth-like planets, gives Debes and Jackson a good chance to test their model. Kepler will survey four open clusters—groups of stars that are not as dense as globular clusters—ranging from less than half a billion to nearly 8 billion years old, and all of the clusters have enough raw materials to form significant numbers of planets, Debes notes. If tidal orbital decay is occurring, Debes and Jackson predict, Kepler could find up to three times more Jupiter-sized planets in the youngest cluster than in the oldest one. (An exact number depends on the brightness of the stars, the planets' distance from the stars, and other conditions.)

"If we do find planets in those clusters with Kepler," says Gilliland, a Kepler co-investigator, "looking at the correlations with age and metallicity will be interesting for shaping our understanding of the formation of planets, as well as their continued existence after they are formed."

If the tidal orbital decay model proves right, Debes adds, planet hunting in clusters may become even harder. "The big, obvious planets may be gone, so we'll have to look for smaller, more distant planets," he explains. "That means we will have to look for a much longer time at large numbers of stars and use instruments that are sensitive enough to detect these fainter planets."

The Kepler mission is managed by NASA's Ames Research Center, Moffett Field, Calif., for the Science Mission Directorate at NASA Headquarters in Washington.

Vote on your favorite song

The wakeup song has been a part of the space program since the days of the Apollo missions, and now NASA is giving you two chances to be a part of this history! We need your help selecting wakeup songs to be played during the final missions of the Space Shuttle Program! Select one or both of the missions below:

Listen to and vote on your favorite song from a list of 40 previously played wakeup songs.

The two songs with the most votes will be played during the STS-133 mission.

Cast your vote now through the mission launch date, currently scheduled for November 1, 2010. Winners will be announced during the STS-133 mission.

To vote Click here

NASA's eyes on Hurricane Earl as it heads for New England

NASA satellites and the International Space Station are keeping eyes on Hurricane Earl as it heads for New England. Watches and Warnings are posted in the U.S. northeast.

Having felt the effects of both increasing wind shear and cooler waters, Hurricane Earl weakened to a Category 2 storm on the Saffir-Simpson scale with winds still powerful at 90 knots (104 mph) as it neared the North Carolina coast. It was at this time that the Tropical Rainfall Measuring Mission (TRMM) satellite captured the data about TRMM's rainfall rates.

The rainfall pattern associated with Earl and was made using data from the TRMM satellite when it flew over the storm on September 3 at 08:22 UTC (4:22 a.m. EDT). Rainbands from Earl were visible over the outer banks, eastern North Carolina, and southeastern Virginia, but the storm no longer has a well-defined eye. TRMM observed moderate rainfall mostly to the north of Earl's center.

Meanwhile, from a second vantage point in space, at the International Space Station, Astronaut Douglas Wheelock caught an image of the eye of the storm on September 3. As the ISS flew over Hurricane Earl Wheelock noted that it looked like magnificent chaos from up there on the Space Station and called it incredibly breathtaking.

At 11 a.m. EDT on Sept. 3, Hurricane Earl's maximum sustained winds were near 85 mph. It was located about 350 miles south-southwest of Nantucket, Mass. near 36.8 North and 73.1 West. Earl's minimum central pressure was 961 millibars, and he was moving north-northeast at 21 mph.

Because Earl is now forecast to track farther away from the coast, many of the watches and warnings have been discontinued, but new watches and warnings are in place. The current watches and warnings in effect include: a hurricane warning is in effect for Woods Hole eastward around Cape Cod to Sagamore Beach Massachusetts, including Marthas Vineyard and Nantucket Island. In addition a Hurricane Watch is now in effect for Nova Scotia, Canada from Ecum Secum westward to Digby.

NASA and ATK Aerospace Systems successfully completed Segment Solid Rocket Motor Test

With a loud roar and mighty column of flame, NASA and ATK Aerospace Systems successfully completed a two-minute, full-scale test of the largest and most powerful solid rocket motor designed for flight. The motor is potentially transferable to future heavy-lift launch vehicle designs.

The stationary firing of the first-stage development solid rocket motor, dubbed DM-2, was conducted by ATK, a division of Alliant Techsystems of Brigham City, Utah. DM-2 is the most heavily instrumented solid rocket motor in NASA history, with a total of 53 test objectives measured through more than 760 instruments.

Prior to the static test, the solid rocket motor was cooled to 40 degrees Fahrenheit to verify the performance of new materials and assess motor performance at low temperatures during the full-duration test. Initial test data showed the motor performance met all expectations.

"For every few degrees the temperature rises, solid propellant burns slightly faster and only through robust ground testing can we understand how material and motor performance is impacted by different operating conditions," said Alex Priskos, first stage manager for Ares Projects at NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Ala. "Ground-testing at temperature extremes pushes this system to its limits, which advances our understanding of five-segment solid rocket motor performance."

The first-stage solid rocket motor is designed to generate up to 3.6-million pounds of thrust at launch. Information collected from this test, together with data from the first development motor test last year, will be evaluated to better understand the performance and reliability of the design.

Although similar to the solid rocket boosters that help power the space shuttle to orbit, the five-segment development motor includes several upgrades and technology improvements implemented by NASA and ATK engineers. Motor upgrades from a shuttle booster include the addition of a fifth segment, a larger nozzle throat, and upgraded insulation and liner. The motor cases are flight-proven hardware used on shuttle launches for more than three decades. The cases used in this ground test have collectively launched 59 previous missions.

After more testing, the first-stage solid rocket motor will be certified to fly at temperature ranges between 40-90 degrees Fahrenheit. The solid rocket motor was built as an element of NASA's Constellation Program and is managed by the Ares Projects Office at Marshall. ATK Aerospace Systems is the prime contractor.

NASA has begun to study the sun closer than ever before

NASA has begun development of a mission to visit and study the sun closer than ever before. The unprecedented project, named Solar Probe Plus, is slated to launch no later than 2018.

The small car-sized spacecraft will plunge directly into the sun's atmosphere approximately four million miles from our star's surface. It will explore a region no other spacecraft ever has encountered. NASA has selected five science investigations that will unlock the sun's biggest mysteries.

"The experiments selected for Solar Probe Plus are specifically designed to solve two key questions of solar physics -- why is the sun's outer atmosphere so much hotter than the sun's visible surface and what propels the solar wind that affects Earth and our solar system? " said Dick Fisher, director of NASA's Heliophysics Division in Washington. "We've been struggling with these questions for decades and this mission should finally provide those answers."

As the spacecraft approaches the sun, its revolutionary carbon-composite heat shield must withstand temperatures exceeding 2550 degrees Fahrenheit and blasts of intense radiation. The spacecraft will have an up close and personal view of the sun enabling scientists to better understand, characterize and forecast the radiation environment for future space explorers.

NASA invited researchers in 2009 to submit science proposals. Thirteen were reviewed by a panel of NASA and outside scientists. The total dollar amount for the five selected investigations is approximately $180 million for preliminary analysis, design, development and tests.

The selected proposals are:

-- Solar Wind Electrons Alphas and Protons Investigation: principal investigator, Justin C. Kasper, Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory in Cambridge, Mass. This investigation will specifically count the most abundant particles in the solar wind -- electrons, protons and helium ions -- and measure their properties. The investigation also is designed to catch some of the particles in a special cup for direct analysis.

-- Wide-field Imager: principal investigator, Russell Howard, Naval Research Laboratory in Washington. This telescope will make 3-D images of the sun's corona, or atmosphere. The experiment actually will see the solar wind and provide 3-D images of clouds and shocks as they approach and pass the spacecraft. This investigation complements instruments on the spacecraft providing direct measurements by imaging the plasma the other instruments sample.

-- Fields Experiment: principal investigator, Stuart Bale, University of California Space Sciences Laboratory in Berkeley, Calif. This investigation will make direct measurements of electric and magnetic fields, radio emissions, and shock waves that course through the sun's atmospheric plasma. The experiment also serves as a giant dust detector, registering voltage signatures when specks of space dust hit the spacecraft's antenna.

-- Integrated Science Investigation of the Sun: principal investigator, David McComas of the Southwest Research Institute in San Antonio. This investigation consists of two instruments that will take an inventory of elements in the sun's atmosphere using a mass spectrometer to weigh and sort ions in the vicinity of the spacecraft.

-- Heliospheric Origins with Solar Probe Plus: principal investigator, Marco Velli of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif. Velli is the mission's observatory scientist, responsible for serving as a senior scientist on the science working group. He will provide an independent assessment of scientific performance and act as a community advocate for the mission.

"This project allows humanity's ingenuity to go where no spacecraft has ever gone before," said Lika Guhathakurta, Solar Probe Plus program scientist at NASA Headquarters, in Washington. "For the very first time, we'll be able to touch, taste and smell our sun."

The Solar Probe Plus mission is part of NASA's Living with a Star Program. The program is designed to understand aspects of the sun and Earth's space environment that affect life and society. The program is managed by NASA'S Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md., with oversight from NASA's Science Mission Directorate's Heliophysics Division. The Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory in Laurel, Md., is the prime contractor for the spacecraft.

NASA's Kepler spacecraft Discovers Two Planets Transiting the Same Star

NASA's Kepler spacecraft has discovered the first confirmed planetary system with more than one planet crossing in front of, or transiting, the same star.

The transit signatures of two distinct planets were seen in the data for the sun-like star designated Kepler-9. The planets were named Kepler-9b and 9c. The discovery incorporates seven months of observations of more than 156,000 stars as part of an ongoing search for Earth-sized planets outside our solar system. The findings will be published in Thursday's issue of the journal Science.

Kepler's ultra-precise camera measures tiny decreases in the stars' brightness that occur when a planet transits them. The size of the planet can be derived from these temporary dips.

The distance of the planet from the star can be calculated by measuring the time between successive dips as the planet orbits the star. Small variations in the regularity of these dips can be used to determine the masses of planets and detect other non-transiting planets in the system.

In June, mission scientists submitted findings for peer review that identified more than 700 planet candidates in the first 43 days of Kepler data. The data included five additional candidate systems that appear to exhibit more than one transiting planet. The Kepler team recently identified a sixth target exhibiting multiple transits and accumulated enough follow-up data to confirm this multi-planet system.

"Kepler's high quality data and round-the-clock coverage of transiting objects enable a whole host of unique measurements to be made of the parent stars and their planetary systems," said Doug Hudgins, the Kepler program scientist at NASA Headquarters in Washington.

Scientists refined the estimates of the masses of the planets using observations from the W.M. Keck Observatory in Hawaii. The observations show Kepler-9b is the larger of the two planets, and both have masses similar to but less than Saturn. Kepler-9b lies closest to the star with an orbit of about 19 days, while Kepler-9c has an orbit of about 38 days. By observing several transits by each planet over the seven months of data, the time between successive transits could be analyzed.

"This discovery is the first clear detection of significant changes in the intervals from one planetary transit to the next, what we call transit timing variations," said Matthew Holman, a Kepler mission scientist from the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics in Cambridge, Mass. "This is evidence of the gravitational interaction between the two planets as seen by the Kepler spacecraft."

In addition to the two confirmed giant planets, Kepler scientists also have identified what appears to be a third, much smaller transit signature in the observations of Kepler-9. That signature is consistent with the transits of a super-Earth-sized planet about 1.5 times the radius of Earth in a scorching, near-sun 1.6 day-orbit. Additional observations are required to determine whether this signal is indeed a planet or an astronomical phenomenon that mimics the appearance of a transit.

NASA's Ames Research Center in Moffett Field, Calif., manages Kepler's ground system development, mission operations and science data analysis. NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif., managed Kepler mission development.

Ball Aerospace and Technologies Corp. in Boulder, Colo., developed the Kepler flight system and supports mission operations with the Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics at the University of Colorado in Boulder. The Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore archives, hosts and distributes the Kepler science data.

Build a Life-Sized Model and Real Giant NASA Space Telescope

It takes many years to build a space telescope or a satellite and years to put one together. However, when it comes assembling and disassembling the life-sized model of NASA's James Webb Space Telescope, it takes a couple of days. That's how long it took to assemble the Webb model in New York City recently.

Assembling a Life-Sized Model

The life-sized model is constructed mainly of aluminum and steel, weighs 12,000 lbs., and is approximately 80 feet long, 40 feet wide and 40 feet tall. It was specifically designed for an environment subject to gravity and weather. A specially manufactured material imported from France called "Ferrari recontraint" allows the sunshield to 'breathe.' The model requires 2 trucks to ship it over land, and assembly takes a crew of 12 approximately four days.

How Real Satellites/Space Telescopes Come About

It takes years to bring a real large space telescope from basic concept to hardware reality. First, a scientist comes up with an idea to study some aspect of the Earth or the cosmos. The idea is discussed, reviewed and developed by committees of scientists. It is proposed to NASA, who makes decisions on what missions to go forth on, and which missions to pass on. If a mission is selected for study a timeline is created to develop the mission.

One of the most difficult aspects of creating a new mission is convincing others to fund it. Once a mission is funded, the team of scientists and engineers "pitching" the mission can then investigate how it could come together. Later, NASA usually selects a prime contractor to help design the telescope and other systems that will fly on the satellite. Northrop Grumman was selected to build components for the Webb telescope. The instruments, or cameras, on the telescope are selected as well, with teams of scientists to watch over the design.

The design process usually includes a number of different designs, which are all tested to see which would yield the best result for the type of object the instrument would study. For example, various types of infrared cameras may be developed and tested, and the one that gives a scientist the best result, would be chosen to be built as a test unit.

Engineering Test Units

Engineering test units, or ETUs are created before an actual instrument is built, so that engineers and scientists can make sure it would work properly. ETUs are a replica of the flight unit that can perform certain flight functions for testing purposes. ETUs are also used when engineers are practicing installation of an instrument into a satellite's mainframe or "bus." The outcome of the tests on ETUs may lead to a change in handling procedures of the actual flight instrument, but not a change in its flight construction.

Once the ETUs test successful, then the actual instruments that will fly aboard a satellite or space telescope can be manufactured. Those instruments go through their own set of rigorous tests by the manufacturing contractor, NASA and other partners. On the Webb telescope, NASA is partnering with the European Space Agency and the Canadian Space Agency.

Testing the System

Satellite and space telescope instruments can endure harsh temperature swings as big as 200 degrees Fahrenheit, micro-meteor impacts and exposure to solar radiation. On top of that, before a spacecraft like the Webb can operate in orbit, it has to survive a ride on a rocket to get there. That's where environmental testing chambers like the ones at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md., come into play. Hardware gets run through NASA Goddard's centrifuge, acoustics and thermal vacuum chambers to ensure they can endure the rigors of launch.

The centrifuge simulates the increased feeling of gravity's pull during a launch. For astronauts, that's normally a few minutes at two or three times the force of Earth's gravity, measured in Gs. The Webb telescope can experience 6-7 G's due to the Ariane 5 rocket's combined acceleration and vibration. The Webb telescope will be launched on an Ariane 5 ECA rocket. The launch vehicle is part of the European contribution to the mission.

Launching a rocket carrying a satellite or space telescope creates extraordinarily loud noise, so engineers use an Acoustic Test Chamber to make sure an instrument can handle it safely. In Goddard's 42-foot-tall chamber, technicians expose payloads to the noise of a launch. To do that, they rely on 6-foot-tall speakers. The speakers (more accurately called horns) use an altering flow of gaseous nitrogen to produce a sound level as high as 143 decibels for one-minute tests. That's about the level of sound heard standing next to a jet engine during takeoff.

The hardware is also tested in the thermal vacuum which exposes them to conditions they will experience in space. The chamber has massive mechanical vacuum pumps and cryopumps to ensure that the hard vacuum of space is simulated in the test chamber. The cryopumps use gaseous helium to condense remaining gases out of the chamber once the mechanical pumps have done their work. The two types of pumps work together to eliminate all but the tiniest trace of air in the chamber, down to about a billionth of Earth's normal atmospheric pressure.

Because the Webb telescope is operating in the infrared portion of the electromagnetic spectrum it is designed to operate at very cold temperatures. To simulate this environment an additional cooling system, a helium refrigeration system, was added so the thermal vacuum chamber could reach temperatures in the -413 Fahrenheit (F) range. "The ISIM structure was tested in our thermal vacuum chamber down to about 26 Kelvin, or minus 413 F," said Jon F. Lawrence, Webb telescope Mechanical Systems Lead Engineer/Launch Vehicle Liaison at NASA Goddard.

This test program starts at the lowest level of assembly, instrument or spacecraft components and is repeated at each next level of assembly. Once the instruments pass these tests they are all put together into the structure which holds them and the unit is tested again. The instrument structure is connected to the telescope and the whole observatory is tested yet again. There isn't a vacuum chamber large enough to hold the entire Webb observatory at NASA Goddard, so the telescope will travel to NASA's Johnson Space Center in Houston, Texas, to be tested in a chamber that was originally built for testing the Apollo command module to simulate the trip to the moon. The next stop after that is launch into deep space.

Currently, ETUs or actual flight hardware for the Webb telescope are being tested in various ways.

The James Webb Space Telescope is the next-generation premier space observatory, exploring deep space phenomena from distant galaxies to nearby planets and stars. The Webb Telescope will give scientists clues about the formation of the universe and the evolution of our own solar system, from the first light after the Big Bang to the formation of star systems capable of supporting life on planets like Earth.

The Webb Telescope project is managed at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md. The telescope is a joint project of NASA, the European Space Agency and the Canadian Space Agency.

NASA Sensors to Guide Spacecraft for Safe Landing

NASA is developing technologies that will allow landing vehicles to automatically identify and navigate to the location of a safe landing site while detecting landing hazards during the final descent to the surface. This is important because future missions -- whether to the Moon, an asteroid, Mars or other location -- will need this capability to land safely near specific resources that are located in potentially hazardous terrain.

Langley Research Center, Hampton, Va., has designed three light detection and ranging (lidar) sensors that together can provide all the necessary data for achieving safe autonomous precision landing.

The sensor suite was flown over varied objects on Rogers Dry Lake to test the system's ability to detect potentially hazardous objects on the surface.

One is a three-dimensional active imaging device, referred to as flash lidar, for detecting hazardous terrain features and identifying safe landing sites. The second is a Doppler lidar instrument for measuring the vehicle velocity and altitude to help land precisely at the chosen site. The third is a high-altitude laser altimeter providing data prior to final approach for correcting the flight trajectory towards the designated landing area.

In conjunction with laser/lidar sensor development at Langley, NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif., is developing algorithms, or mathematical procedures, for analyzing the acquired three-dimensional lidar maps and determining the most suitable landing site. The resulting Doppler lidar and laser altimeter data are used by the navigation system being developed by NASA Johnson Space Center, Houston, and Charles Draper Laboratory, Cambridge, Mass., to control the spacecraft to the identified location.

These technologies have been integrated as part of NASA's Autonomous Landing and Hazard Avoidance Technology (ALHAT) project and are in the process of being demonstrated in a series of flight tests.

The most recent flight tests occurred at NASA's Dryden Flight Research Center, Edwards, Calif., in July.

"These were the first tests where we had all three of our laser systems on board and working together as a complete sensor suite," said Langley's Farzin Amzajerdian, technical lead for development of the sensors. "These tests are being viewed as critical by many within NASA."

Robert Reisse, Langley project manager, added, "We were pleased that the flight tests we've conducted so far have resulted in better than expected performance of these sensors."

The main objective of the first test, carried out in May 2008, was to demonstrate the application of 3-D imaging technology, or 'flash' lidar, for topography mapping and hazard detection.

The second round of flight tests, completed in August 2008, was to evaluate the capabilities of the Doppler lidar. This lidar provides high reliability vehicle velocity vector, altitude and attitude with about two orders of magnitude higher precision than radars.

The third flight test campaign was conducted in June 2009 in which the flash lidar and laser altimeter were integrated and flown onboard a fixed-wing aircraft to assess its performance for terrain relative navigation and altimetry functions. Several flights were performed in areas of Death Valley and in the Nevada Test Site with various flight pro

NASA Langley students: Ping-Pong Balls to Float Crew Capsule Simulator

If ping-pong balls can float a sunken boat, they should be able to keep an uncrewed space capsule simulator from sinking.

Right?

That's what a team of summer students and engineers think at NASA's Langley Research Center in Hampton, Va. Langley is fabricating a proposed design of an astronaut crew module simulator for uncrewed flight-testing as part of the agency's effort to build a vehicle to replace the space shuttle.

The Orion crew exploration vehicle is the nation's next generation spacecraft designed to carry up to four astronauts to low Earth orbit and beyond.

Orion's first suborbital flight test will launch to 400,000 feet, or 75 miles above Earth. Because the crew module will not be pressurized during the test, it will not have the buoyancy of a pressurized spacecraft. This puts the simulated crew module at risk of sinking to the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean after splashdown.

To save the valuable test article for analysis and possible reuse, Langley called on a team of creative minds for a solution.

And as it turned out, inexpensive, lightweight ping-pong balls provided the answer. Langley engineer John DiNonno proposed the idea, and the Orion Flight Test Office told the team to study it.

The idea quickly became "very plausible," said student Caroline Kirk.


Way to go

"At first we didn't really realize that we were going to get so far in proving that it would be possible," said Kirk, a Suffolk, Va., native attending Virginia Tech as an aerospace engineering major. "But when we thought about everything logically, it just seemed like ping-pong balls were the way to go."

She and a team of seven other students worked the project in Langley's Mechanical Systems Branch, where they were assigned for the summer.

DiNonno got the idea from a Discovery Channel program about raising a sunken boat using 27,000 ping-pong balls.

Engineer David Covington said that when DiNonno suggested the ping-pong ball idea, "I just laughed. Not a 'what are you thinking' kind of laugh, but more of a 'that's the most awesome thing I've heard in a long time' laugh. I asked him 'are you serious?' and he said 'yeah, we're authorized to do a four-week study.' So we went straight to work."

Ensuring the outcome would be relatively low-cost was a top priority, said DiNonno.

"Recovering the capsule was not a requirement, but it was a desire," he said. "So there wasn't going to be a lot of investment in it."

Testing process

The students divided the tasks needed to determine if the idea was feasible, each becoming a "principal investigator" for a specific area.

They tested ping-pong balls of varying quality, much the way spacecraft hardware is tested. They studied how the balls would react to the near-vacuum at the edge of space. Using buoyancy tests, they determined how well the balls would float.

The students also subjected the ping-pong balls to mechanical loads using a hydraulic press, and heated them to see how they would react to the high temperatures of descent into the Earth's atmosphere. And they performed electrostatic discharge tests to determine if the balls would produce a static charge that could disrupt the space capsule's electronics.

The ping-pong balls passed all the challenges, said Heather Blount, a materials science engineering student at Virginia Tech.

"Through all our testing and calculations, we figured out that it could be a safe and viable option," said Blount, of Yorktown, Va.

Keeping the crew module afloat would take at least 150,000 ping-pong balls, the students estimate, at a retail price of 50 cents or less each -- a fraction of the cost of traditional options. The students hope to reduce the cost through a bulk purchase.

If the flight test is approved, the ping-pong ball concept would still need to be vetted with the flight test team and reviewed by NASA senior management. If implemented, the ping-pong balls probably will be put into netted bags and secured inside the crew module just prior to launch. They would virtually fill the available space inside the uncrewed capsule.

Then, when the unsealed capsule splashes down, the buoyancy of the ping-pong balls will offset the weight of incoming water and it will float instead of sink.

The ping-pong balls also will reduce the volume of air that needs to be vented from the capsule during ascent - as well as drawn in during descent - as the capsule travels through significant changes in atmospheric pressure.


'Awesome' students

Approval of the flight test, as well as a launch date, has yet to be determined. "Even if it is not used, it's an idea that's out there that someone else could use," said Langley engineer Amanda Cutright, a student mentor.

Cutright said she has been enthused by the students.

"It's awesome working with them," she said. "They bring a different perspective. I've been really impressed with how quickly they pick up new ideas and new technology. It seems each team of students that we mentor learns quicker and is able to provide creative ideas."

Kirk said the ping-pong ball project has been a unique experience. At school, she said, "we do lab experiments but nothing similar to this at all. Being able to develop an experiment that will be used for space flight tests is an opportunity of a lifetime."

NASA employees and contractors involved in the project include engineers Amanda Cutright; Brendan Shaughnessy, Analytical Services and Materials Inc.; David Covington, ATK Space Systems Inc.; and John DiNonno, all of the Mechanical Systems Branch.

X-48B Aircraft

Researchers at NASA's Langley Research Center in Hampton, Va., are testing the a 21-foot wingspan 8.5 percent scale prototype of a blended wing body aircraft in Langley's historic full-scale wind tunnel. Boeing Phantom Works has partnered with NASA and the Air Force Research Laboratory to study the structural, aerodynamic and operational advantages of the advanced aircraft concept, a cross between a conventional plane and a flying wing design.

A second X-48B blended-wing body prototype is due to arrive at NASA Dryden Flight Research Center in May, and after installation of test instrumentation and extensive checkout, begin flight tests later this year.




This closeup of Boeing Phantom Works' unique X-48B Blended Wing Body technology demonstrator shows off its unusual engine placement and supercritical airfoil.

Researchers at NASA's Langley Research Center in Hampton, Va., are testing the a 21-foot wingspan 8.5 percent scale prototype of a blended wing body aircraft in Langley's historic full-scale wind tunnel. Boeing Phantom Works has partnered with NASA and the Air Force Research Laboratory to study the structural, aerodynamic and operational advantages of the advanced aircraft 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. A second X-48B blended-wing body prototype is due to arrive at NASA Dryden Flight Research Center in May, and after installation of test instrumentation and extensive checkout, begin flight tests later this year.

Get ready for this year's Perseid meteor shower

Looking for a little excitement as the summer draws to a close? This year's Perseid meteor shower peaks on the night of Aug. 12-13, and it promises to be one of the best displays of the year. If forecasters are correct, the shower should produce a peak display of at least 80 meteors per hour. A waxing crescent moon will set before the shower becomes active, setting a perfect stage for meteor watching -- weather permitting, of course!

On Thursday, Aug. 12, stay up all night and observe the Perseids with NASA! Astronomer Bill Cooke from NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center will answer your questions about the Perseids. Joining the chat is easy. Simply log in to this page on Aug. 12 a few minutes before 11 p.m. EDT. A chat window will be active at the bottom of the page. Log in, then Bill will start answering your questions.

Once the chat begins, you're also invited to start tweeting questions to Bill Cooke's Twitter account, @MeteorScientist. Please add the hashtag #askmeteorscientist to your tweets so Bill knows that you have a question.

Fermi Detects gamma-rays from Supernova's Little Cousin for the first time

Fermi's Large Area Telescope saw no sign of a nova in 19 days of data prior to March 10 (left), but the eruption is obvious in data from the following 19 days (right). The images show the rate of gamma rays with energies greater than 100 million electron volts (100 MeV); brighter colors indicate higher rates. Credit: NASA/DOE/Fermi LAT Collaboration

Astronomers using NASA's Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope have detected gamma-rays from a nova for the first time, a finding that stunned observers and theorists alike. The discovery overturns the notion that novae explosions lack the power to emit such high-energy radiation.

A nova is a sudden, short-lived brightening of an otherwise inconspicuous star. The outburst occurs when a white dwarf in a binary system erupts in an enormous thermonuclear explosion.

This image from Steve O'Connor in St. Georges, Bermuda, shows the nova (red star, center) on March 17, about a week into the eruption. Credit: Steve O'Connor

"In human terms, this was an immensely powerful eruption, equivalent to about 1,000 times the energy emitted by the sun every year," said Elizabeth Hays, a Fermi deputy project scientist at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md. "But compared to other cosmic events Fermi sees, it was quite modest. We're amazed that Fermi detected it so strongly."

Gamma rays are the most energetic form of light, and Fermi's Large Area Telescope (LAT) detected the nova for 15 days. Scientists believe the emission arose as a million-mile-per-hour shock wave raced from the site of the explosion.

A paper detailing the discovery will appear in the Aug. 13 edition of the journal Science.

The story opened in Japan during the predawn hours of March 11, when amateur astronomers Koichi Nishiyama and Fujio Kabashima in Miyaki-cho, Saga Prefecture, imaged a dramatic change in the brightness of a star in the constellation Cygnus. They realized that the star, known as V407 Cyg, was 10 times brighter than in an image they had taken three days earlier.

The team relayed the nova discovery to Hiroyuki Maehara at Kyoto University, who notified astronomers around the world for follow-up observations. Before this notice became widely available, the outburst was independently reported by three other Japanese amateurs: Tadashi Kojima, Tsumagoi-mura Agatsuma-gun, Gunma prefecture; Kazuo Sakaniwa, Higashichikuma-gun, Nagano prefecture; and Akihiko Tago, Tsuyama-shi, Okayama prefecture.

On March 13, Goddard's Davide Donato was on-duty as the LAT "flare advocate," a scientist who monitors the daily data downloads for sources of potential interest, when he noticed a significant detection in Cygnus. But linking this source to the nova would take several days, in part because key members of the Fermi team were in Paris for a meeting of the LAT scientific collaboration.

"This region is close to the galactic plane, which packs together many types of gamma-ray sources -- pulsars, supernova remnants, and others in our own galaxy, plus active galaxies beyond them," Donato said. "If the nova had occurred elsewhere in the sky, figuring out the connection would have been easier."

The LAT team began a concerted effort to identify the mystery source over the following days. On March 17, the researchers decided to obtain a "target-of-opportunity" observation using NASA's Swift satellite -- only to find that Swift was already observing the same spot.

"At that point, I knew Swift was targeting V407 Cyg, but I didn't know why," said Teddy Cheung, an astrophysicist at the Naval Research Laboratory (NRL) in Washington, D.C., and the lead author of the study. Examining the Swift data, Cheung saw no additional X-ray sources that could account for what Fermi's LAT was seeing.

V407 Cyg had to be it.

Half an hour later, Cheung learned from other members of the LAT team that the system had undergone a nova outburst, which was the reason the Swift observations had been triggered. "When we looked closer, we found that the LAT had detected the first gamma rays at about the same time as the nova's discovery," he said.

V407 Cyg lies 9,000 light-years away. The system is a so-called symbiotic binary containing a compact white dwarf and a red giant star about 500 times the size of the sun.

"The red giant is so swollen that its outermost atmosphere is just leaking away into space," said Adam Hill at Joseph Fourier University in Grenoble, France. The phenomenon is similar to the solar wind produced by the sun, but the flow is much stronger. "Each decade, the red giant sheds enough hydrogen gas to equal the mass of Earth," he added.

The white dwarf intercepts and captures some of this gas, which accumulates on its surface. As the gas piles on for decades to centuries, it eventually becomes hot and dense enough to fuse into helium. This energy-producing process triggers a runaway reaction that explodes the accumulated gas.

The white dwarf itself, however, remains intact.

The blast created a hot, dense expanding shell called a shock front, composed of high-speed particles, ionized gas and magnetic fields. According to an early spectrum obtained by Christian Buil at Castanet Tolosan Observatory, France, the nova's shock wave expanded at 7 million miles per hour -- or nearly 1 percent the speed of light.

The magnetic fields trapped particles within the shell and whipped them up to tremendous energies. Before they could escape, the particles had reached velocities near the speed of light. Scientists say that the gamma rays likely resulted when these accelerated particles smashed into the red giant's wind.

"We know that the remnants of much more powerful supernova explosions can trap and accelerate particles like this, but no one suspected that the magnetic fields in novae were strong enough to do it as well," said NRL's Soebur Razzaque.

Supernovae remnants endure for 100,000 years and affect regions of space thousands of light-years across.

Kent Wood at NRL compares astronomical studies of supernova remnants to looking at static images in a photo album. "It takes thousands of years for supernova remnants to evolve, but with this nova we've watched the same kinds of changes over just a few days," he said. "We've gone from a photo album to a time-lapse movie."

Info on GRIP Mission and Images

The Genesis and Rapid Intensification Processes (GRIP) experiment is a NASA Earth science field experiment in 2010 that will be conducted to better understand how tropical storms form and develop into major hurricanes. This campaign will be conducted to capitalize on a number of ground networks, airborne science platforms, and space-based assets. The field campaign will be executed according to a prioritized set of scientific objectives.

The astronauts met Robonaut at NASA's Johnson Space Center before the launch of Discovery

Getting into space isn't necessarily easy for astronauts, and it's not much easier for a robotic astronaut, either.

Cocooned inside an aluminum frame and foam blocks cut out to its shape, Robonaut 2, or R2, is heading to the International Space Station inside the Permanent Multipurpose Module in space shuttle Discovery's payload bay as part of the STS-133 mission.

Once in place inside the station, R2, with its humanlike hands and arms and stereo vision, is expected to perform some of the repetitive or more mundane functions inside the orbiting laboratory to free astronauts for more complicated tasks and experiments. It could one day also go along on spacewalks.

Making sure the first humanoid robot to head into space still works when it gets there has been the focus of workers at NASA's Kennedy and Johnson space centers. Engineers and technicians with decades of experience among them packing for space have spent the last few months devising a plan to secure the 330-pound machine against the fierce vibrations and intense gravity forces during launch.

"I think back in May we realized we had a huge challenge on our hands," said Michael Haddock, a mechanical engineer designing the procedures and other aspects of preparing R2 for launch, including careful crane operations inside the Space Station Processing Facility's high bay.

Though it was fast-paced, intense work, the payoff of getting to help R2 into space added extra motivation for the engineers involved.

By spaceflight standards, planning for the packing effort moved quite quickly, particularly considering R2 is perhaps the heaviest payload to be taken into space inside a cargo module.

"The mass is what's driving the crane operations, otherwise we'd be handling the robot by hand," Haddock said. "But the robot itself weighs on the order of 333 pounds and when it is installed in the structural launch enclosure, it will weigh over 500 pounds."

As they must when loading anything for spaceflight, the engineers designed the packaging so astronauts could easily remove R2 from its launch box, known by its acronym SLEEPR or Structural Launch Enclosure to Effectively Protect Robonaut.

"We were trying to do something very unique and very fast," said Scott Higginbotham, payload manager for the STS-133 mission. "And we've got the best team in the world for dealing with things like that."

There was talk of simply strapping the robot into the empty seat on the shuttle's middeck, Higginbotham said, but R2 was too heavy for that. So the teams came up with a plan to fasten R2 to a base plate and use struts to support the back and shoulders. Then dense foam will provide more support, followed by an aluminum frame. A clamshell of foam tops off the package.

Assembling the packing precisely is important for R2 because a space shuttle accelerates to more than three times the force of gravity during its eight-minute climb into orbit.

"The team had to educate ourselves, learn the uniqueness of it as well as learn how to install it into the vehicle," said Ken Koby, lead systems engineer for Boeing. "That's what the team has basically been doing every day for the last three months, educating ourselves about Robonaut."

Coincidentally, detailed analysis showed that R2's best position to withstand the launch forces will be the same as the astronauts -- facing toward the nose of the shuttle with the back taking all the weight.

"The orientation is just like the crew flies," Koby said. "The crew will be facing straight up on their backs and Robonaut will be the same direction, obviously 30 feet behind them in the module here."

Although the robot is fundamentally a very complex machine full of state-of-the-art sensors and operated by phenomenally sophisticated software, it is its shape that stirs fascination. Designed by NASA and General Motors as a robotic assistant for astronauts working in space, R2 looks like the upper torso of a sculpted bodybuilder and is topped with a helmeted head that includes two cameras to give it three-dimensional vision plus other sensors.

Its look has been compared to Star Wars bounty hunter Boba Fett, the endoskeleton from the Terminator films and the animated robot that plays football on Fox Sports.

"It's rather intimidating at first sight because of its size, its physique and you can't see its eyes," Haddock said.

"From the moment you walk into the room and see R2, it's everything you'd expect from a robot, from the gold-shield face to the thickness, the broadness of his shoulders," Koby said. "It's truly very science fiction-like, but it's all fact in this case."

It also has a pair of beefy arms and two hands, complete with four fingers and one thumb each, that can shake hands. Its programming is sensitive enough to respond to a handshake with the same amount of force as the person squeezing R2's hands. In other words, it can hold a piece of equipment in space without crushing it.

"It really grabs people's attention," said Higginbotham. "It's so incredibly cool. It can use the same tools and procedures as an astronaut."

This Robonaut was not meant to fly at first. Instead, it was strictly a developmental model to be tested and perfected on the ground. However, it was adapted for flight and has tested well for launch. That is a bit of a theme for the STS-133 mission because the Permanent Multipurpose Module that Discovery is taking to the station also was retrofitted to add more capabilities. The PMM was formerly a Multipurpose Logistics Module known as Leonardo and was built to stay in space for only short periods at a time. But its mission has changed and engineers built up its armor and added some interior features so it can be permanently attached to the station and used as more of a storage closet than the moving van first envisioned.

NASA and General Motors have come together to develop the next generation dexterous humanoid robot. The robots – called Robonaut 2 – were designed to use the same tools as humans, which allows them to work safely side-by-side humans on Earth and in space.



Robonaut 2 surpasses previous dexterous humanoid robots in strength, yet it is safe enough to work side-by-side with humans. It is able to lift, not just hold, this 20-pound weight (about four times heavier than what other dexterous robots can handle) both near and away from its body.

Chris Ihrke, senior project engineer for General Motors, works with the new dexterous humanoid robot developed by NASA and General Motors at Johnson Space Center.



Robonaut 2 surpasses previous dexterous humanoid robots in strength, yet it is safe enough to work side-by-side with humans. It is able to lift, not just hold, this 20-pound weight (about four times heavier than what other dexterous robots can handle) both near and away from its body.

Future Mission – Glory – Understanding Earth’s Energy Balance

The Glory spacecraft, set to launch in November of 2010, will study how the sun and airborne particles called aerosols affect Earth's climate.

Scientists have a thorough understanding of how greenhouse gases impact the energy budget, but the roles that two other critical elements of the climate system—the sun's total solar irradiance (TSI) and atmospheric aerosol particles—play are somewhat less certain. The Glory mission, which contains two key scientific instruments, will improve understanding of both.

One of these instruments—the Aerosol Polarimetery Sensor (APS)--will offer scientists new measurements of aerosols, which can affect climate by either absorbing or reflecting light depending on their type. The unique instrument measures polarized light to make aerosol measurements and should thus help scientists distinguish between aerosols types, such as dust and black carbon, from space. The other instrument, the Total Irradiance Monitor (TIM), will continue a long-running record of the sun's brightness with unprecedented accuracy.

Results from both instruments will be used to fine-tune global climate models and to help scientists predict how climate change will impact different regions of the planet. Glory will join a fleet of other Earth observing satellites known as the A-Train. It is scheduled to launch aboard a Taurus XL launch vehicle no earlier than November 22, 2010.

Galactic Collision in Space

A beautiful new image of two colliding galaxies has been released by NASA's Great Observatories. The Antennae galaxies, located about 62 million light years from Earth, are shown in this composite image from the Chandra X-ray Observatory (blue), the Hubble Space Telescope (gold), and the Spitzer Space Telescope (red).

The collision, which began more than 100 million years ago and is still occurring, has triggered the formation of millions of stars in clouds of dusts and gas in the galaxies. The most massive of these young stars have already sped through their evolution in a few million years and exploded as supernovas.

The X-ray image from Chandra shows huge clouds of hot, interstellar gas that have been injected with rich deposits of elements from supernova explosions. This enriched gas, which includes elements such as oxygen, iron, magnesium and silicon, will be incorporated into new generations of stars and planets. The bright, point-like sources in the image are produced by material falling onto black holes and neutron stars that are remnants of the massive stars. Some of these black holes may have masses that are almost one hundred times that of the Sun.

The Spitzer data show infrared light from warm dust clouds that have been heated by newborn stars, with the brightest clouds lying in the overlap region between the two galaxies. The Hubble data reveal old stars in red, filaments of dust in brown and star-forming regions in yellow and white. Many of the fainter objects in the optical image are clusters containing thousands of stars.

The Antennae galaxies take their name from the long antenna-like "arms," seen in wide-angle views of the system. These features were produced by tidal forces generated in the collision.

NASA International Space Station managers Delayed Spacewalks to Saturday and Wednesday

NASA International Space Station managers have delayed two spacewalks to replace a faulty cooling system component to Saturday and Wednesday.

Saturday’s spacewalk now is officially scheduled to begin at 6:55 a.m. EDT, and will be followed by a second spacewalk Wednesday to complete replacement of the ammonia pump module that failed last Saturday.

Teams of flight controllers, engineers, and spacewalk and robotics experts have made significant progress in preparing for the spacewalk, but need an additional day to finish working out all the details.

The additional time to prepare for the first spacewalk allows for the final procedures to be uplinked late today and gives the station crew one full day to review the plans that have been developed by Mission Control. Managers also moved the second spacewalk to Wednesday to give the crew additional time to rest and prepare.

During the first spacewalk the pump module will be removed and replaced. The crew will complete connecting fluid ammonia lines to the replacement pump during the second excursion Wednesday.

The spacewalks are challenging because the crew will be handling ammonia lines at full operating pressure, which makes the lines stiff during reconnection and mating. The timeline for the spacewalk will require numerous “off ramps” to ensure there is enough time to complete decontamination procedures if the crew comes in contact with ammonia.

NASA managers have stored spare pumps on the station for just this purpose, because hardware will periodically need to be replaced throughout the station’s lifetime. There are four replacement pumps on the station, delivered during previous space shuttle missions. These spares are attached to storage platforms at various locations on the station’s structure. Both the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency’s H-II Transfer Vehicle and future commercial resupply craft will be able to deliver additional spare parts as needed.

Aboard the station, Wheelock, Caldwell Dyson and Flight Engineer Shannon Walker participated in conferences with Mission Control to review spacewalk procedures.

On Wednesday, fellow astronauts Robert Satcher Jr. and Rick Sturckow were underwater, practicing the spacewalking tasks in the Johnson Space Center’s Neutral Buoyancy Laboratory (NBL). Astronauts Cady Coleman and Suni Williams spent Monday afternoon in the NBL helping to prepare for the spacewalks as well.

› View video of Wednesday spacewalk practice session
› View video of Monday spacewalk practice session

Robotics experts continue to refine the procedures that will be used by Walker to guide the station’s robotic arm, Canadarm2, as she moves Wheelock into position to swap the failed unit with the spare unit, stored on External Stowage Platform 2. That spare parts carrier is attached to the Quest airlock that Wheelock and Caldwell Dyson will use to exit and reenter the station.

The station’s Mobile Transporter was moved to the Starboard 1 truss on Tuesday. With the Mobile Transporter in position, the ground team will be able to gather additional data to confirm power resources are sufficient for Canadarm2 to support the spacewalk.

Each pump module weighs 780 pounds and is 5 ½ feet long (69 inches) by 4 feet wide (50 inches), and is 3 feet tall (36 inches). The spacewalkers will need to disconnect and reconnect five electrical connectors, four fluid quick-disconnect devices, one adjustable grapple bar and four bolts. The spare pump module that will be used to replace the failed unit was delivered to the station on the STS-121/Utilization Logistics Flight-1 mission in July 2006.

Wheelock, who will be designated as EV1, or extravehicular crew member 1, wearing the spacesuit bearing the red stripes, will be making the fourth spacewalk of his career. Caldwell Dyson, designated as EV2, wearing the unmarked spacesuit, will be making her first spacewalk.

› View Aug. 2 spacewalk briefing graphics
› Read more about the cooling loop loss
› View the ISS Active Thermal Control System Overview (1.2 Mb PDF)

Read about the station's Thermal Control System on page 63 of the "Systems" section of the Reference Guide to the International Space Station. View the entire guide here.

NASA's Lightning Research Happens in a Flash

Lightning's connection to hurricane intensification has eluded researchers for decades, and for a riveting 40 days this summer, NASA lightning researchers will peer inside storms in a way they never have before.

Earth scientists and engineers at NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Ala., will soon fly the Lightning Instrument Package, or LIP, a flight instrument designed to track and document lightning as hurricanes develop and intensify. In August and September, LIP will fly on a remotely piloted Global Hawk airplane over the Gulf of Mexico and Atlantic Ocean at an altitude of 60,000 feet. LIP will be part of a NASA hurricane study called Genesis and Rapid Intensification Processes, or GRIP for short. The study involves three storm chaser planes mounted with 15 instruments. LIP and the other instruments will work together to create the most complete view of hurricanes to date.

"We're now putting LIP on an aircraft that can stay in the air for 30 hours," said Richard Blakeslee LIP principal investigator and Earth scientist at the the Marshall Center. "That’s unprecedented. We typically fly on airplanes that fly over a storm for a period of 10-15 minutes. But this plane can stay with a storm for hours."

"We'll be able to see a storm in a way we’ve never seen it before," he added. "We'll see how the storm develops over the long term, and how lightning varies with all the other things going on inside a hurricane. It's the difference between a single photograph and a full-length movie. That’s quite a paradigm shift."

While scientists know an increase in lightning means the storm is changing, it remains a mystery as to whether that increase signifies strengthening or weakening. Though scientists have quite a few ideas, they lack the data to firmly establish a concrete relationship. Researchers hope LIP's upcoming flights will change that. If scientists can figure out the ties between lightning and hurricane severity, meteorologists may be able to greatly improve their short-term forecasts. Researchers have connected lightning to everything from strong winds to flooding to tornadoes, and a few extra minutes of warning time can save lives each year.

"We can use lightning as a natural sensing tool to see into the heart of a storm," said Blakeslee. "Lightning allows us to get at rain and other processes going on within a storm."

For Blakeslee and the rest of the LIP team, the hurricane study this fall presents a tremendous opportunity. In its nearly 15-year lifespan, LIP has flown nearly 100 missions in 10 major field campaigns, soaring over more than 800 storms. That's unparalleled for a lightning instrument, according to Blakeslee, and LIP researchers hope it will continue its long tradition of successful research.

The Guts of the Lightning Instrument Package

LIP's instruments may look simple, but they're surprisingly complex. To measure the electric field in a storm, the instrument relies on electric field mills, devices that allow scientists to measure the amount of lightning a storm produces. Originally developed at NASA, the mills look like big cans -- each about a foot long and approximately 8 inches across. As the instrument flies through the air, a plate covering each can rotates, covering and uncovering four metal disks housed inside. Uncover a disk and electricity from the storm rushes in. Cover the disk and it rushes back out. The whole process converts the electrical current from DC to AC and back to DC, allowing scientists to measure how strong a storm's electric field is, and how prone to lightning it might be. A sudden shift in the strength of the electrical field allows scientists to determine that a lightning strike has occurred.

In addition, a conductivity probe reveals how easily electrical current can flow through the storm to the upper part of the atmosphere. The probe is a small nose-cone shaped device with two sensor tubes attached to each side. As the plane flies near a hurricane, small electrical particles called ions rush through the tube, allowing the team to count them.

The LIP team uses all that data to determine how much lightning a hurricane produces and where it originates within the storm. By combining that data with wind speed, rainfall rate and other information, researchers can connect how lightning relates to hurricane intensification. And because Blakeslee and his team get their data real time, they can redirect the plane as needed to improve the likelihood of quality results.

After the summer hurricane study ends in September, the team will analyze, evaluate, and eventually release the data, a process which should take several months. Following that, the Lightning Instrument Package will continue to fly in hurricane and storm studies in hopes of collecting more data. The more data, the better the forecasts, Blakeslee said -- and the nearer scientists move to understanding these powerful storms.

The Long Journey of LIP

Of course, Blakeslee and the rest of the LIP team have had to overcome their fair share of challenges.

"When we first started out, we didn’t even know if what we do now was possible," Blakeslee said. "One of my colleagues told me, 'You won’t be able to make current measurements over storms.' But I said, 'Yes we can.' And now we do."

"It's a pretty rewarding feeling," he said. "The biggest challenge now is that there’s always more to study than we possibly can. We've got to pick and choose, and sometimes that can be frustrating."

But for Blakeslee, there's nothing else he'd rather do.

"Lightning is just cool," he laughed. "I've always enjoyed hands-on science, and everything about lightning measurements is hands-on science. You build the instruments. You put them on airplanes. You go out and fly them. You get back the data. And then there's the satisfaction that it’s not all abstract -- we can actually apply what we're learning to real people, real situations and real problem-solving."

For now, the LIP team looks forward with anticipation to sending their instrument out on an unprecedented journey -- hopefully one that will bring scientists one step closer to solving one of science’s biggest mysteries.

A solar tsunami

On August 1st around 0855 UT, Earth orbiting satellites detected a C3-class solar flare. The origin of the blast was Earth-facing sunspot 1092. C-class solar flares are small (when compared to X and M-class flares) and usually have few noticeable consequences here on Earth besides aurorae. This one has spawned a coronal mass ejection heading in Earth's direction.

Coronal mass ejections (or CMEs) are large clouds of charged particles that are ejected from the Sun over the course of several hours and can carry up to ten billion tons (1016 grams) of plasma. They expand away from the Sun at speeds as high as a million miles an hour. A CME can make the 93-million-mile journey to Earth in just three to four days.


When a coronal mass ejection reaches Earth, it interacts with our planet’s magnetic field, potentially creating a geomagnetic storm. Solar particles stream down the field lines toward Earth’s poles and collide with atoms of nitrogen and oxygen in the atmosphere, resulting in spectacular auroral displays. On the evening of August 3rd/4th, skywatchers in the northern U.S. and other countries should look toward the north for the rippling dancing “curtains” of green and red light.

The Sun goes through a regular activity cycle about 11 years long. The last solar maximum occurred in 2001 and its recent extreme solar minimum was particularly weak and long lasting. These kinds of eruptions are one of the first signs that the Sun is waking up and heading toward another solar maximum expected in the 2013 time frame.