NASA Rules Out Earth Impact in 2036 for Asteroid Apophis

PASADENA, Calif. -- NASA scientists at the agency's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif., effectively have ruled out the possibility the asteroid Apophis will impact Earth during a close flyby in 2036. The scientists used updated information obtained by NASA-supported telescopes in 2011 and 2012, as well as new data from the time leading up to Apophis' distant Earth flyby yesterday (Jan. 9).

Discovered in 2004, the asteroid, which is the size of three-and-a-half football fields, gathered the immediate attention of space scientists and the media when initial calculations of its orbit indicated a 2.7 percent possibility of an Earth impact during a close flyby in 2029. Data discovered during a search of old astronomical images provided the additional information required to rule out the 2029 impact scenario, but a remote possibility of one in 2036 remained - until yesterday.

"With the new data provided by the Magdalena Ridge [New Mexico Institute of Mining and Technology] and the Pan-STARRS [Univ. of Hawaii] optical observatories, along with very recent data provided by the Goldstone Solar System Radar, we have effectively ruled out the possibility of an Earth impact by Apophis in 2036," said Don Yeomans, manager of NASA's Near-Earth Object Program Office at JPL. "The impact odds as they stand now are less than one in a million, which makes us comfortable saying we can effectively rule out an Earth impact in 2036. Our interest in asteroid Apophis will essentially be for its scientific interest for the foreseeable future."

The April 13, 2029, flyby of asteroid Apophis will be one for the record books. On that date, Apophis will become the closest flyby of an asteroid of its size when it comes no closer than 19, 400 miles (31,300 kilometers) above Earth's surface.

"But much sooner, a closer approach by a lesser-known asteroid is going to occur in the middle of next month when a 40-meter-sized asteroid, 2012 DA14, flies safely past Earth's surface at about 17,200 miles," said Yeomans. "With new telescopes coming online, the upgrade of existing telescopes and the continued refinement of our orbital determination process, there's never a dull moment working on near-Earth objects."
NASA detects and tracks asteroids and comets passing close to Earth using both ground and space-based telescopes. The Near-Earth Object Observations Program, commonly called "Spaceguard," discovers these objects, characterizes a subset of them and plots their orbits to determine if any could be potentially hazardous to our planet.

The Near-Earth Object Program Office at JPL manages the technical and scientific activities for NASA's Near-Earth Object Program of the Science Mission Directorate in Washington. JPL is a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena.

NASA's Kepler Mission Discovers 461 New Planet Candidates

NASA's Kepler mission Monday announced the discovery of 461 new planet candidates. Four of the potential new planets are less than twice the size of Earth and orbit in their sun's "habitable zone," the region in the planetary system where liquid water might exist on the surface of a planet.

Based on observations conducted from May 2009 to March 2011, the findings show a steady increase in the number of smaller-size planet candidates and the number of stars with more than one candidate.

"There is no better way to kickoff the start of the Kepler extended mission than to discover more possible outposts on the frontier of potentially life bearing worlds," said Christopher Burke, Kepler scientist at the SETI Institute in Mountain View, Calif., who is leading the analysis.

Since the last Kepler catalog was released in February 2012, the number of candidates discovered in the Kepler data has increased by 20 percent and now totals 2,740 potential planets orbiting 2,036 stars. The most dramatic increases are seen in the number of Earth-size and super Earth-size candidates discovered, which grew by 43 and 21 percent respectively.

The new data increases the number of stars discovered to have more than one planet candidate from 365 to 467. Today, 43 percent of Kepler's planet candidates are observed to have neighbor planets.

"The large number of multi-candidate systems being found by Kepler implies that a substantial fraction of exoplanets reside in flat multi-planet systems," said Jack Lissauer, planetary scientist at NASA's Ames Research Center in Moffett Field, Calif. "This is consistent with what we know about our own planetary neighborhood."

The Kepler space telescope identifies planet candidates by repeatedly measuring the change in brightness of more than 150,000 stars in search of planets that pass in front, or "transit," their host star. At least three transits are required to verify a signal as a potential planet.

Scientists analyzed more than 13,000 transit-like signals to eliminate known spacecraft instrumentation and astrophysical false positives, phenomena that masquerade as planetary candidates, to identify the potential new planets.

Candidates require additional follow-up observations and analyses to be confirmed as planets. At the beginning of 2012, 33 candidates in the Kepler data had been confirmed as planets. Today, there are 105.

"The analysis of increasingly longer time periods of Kepler data uncovers smaller planets in longer period orbits-- orbital periods similar to Earth's," said Steve Howell, Kepler mission project scientist at Ames. "It is no longer a question of will we find a true Earth analogue, but a question of when."

The complete list of Kepler planet candidates is available in an interactive table at the NASA Exoplanet Archive. The archive is funded by NASA's Exoplanet Exploration Program to collect and make public data to support the search for and characterization of exoplanets and their host stars.

Ames manages Kepler's ground system development, mission operations and science data analysis. NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) 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 JPL at 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. Kepler is NASA's 10th Discovery Mission and is funded by NASA's Science Mission Directorate at the agency's headquarters in Washington. 

Curiosity Rover Explores Yellowknife Bay

Snake River is a thin curving line of darker rock cutting through flatter rocks and jutting above sand. Curiosity's science team plans to get a closer look at it before proceeding to other nearby rocks.

"It's one piece of the puzzle," said the mission's project scientist, John Grotzinger of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena. "It has a crosscutting relationship to the surrounding rock and appears to have formed after the deposition of the layer that it transects."

The drive during the mission's 147th Martian day, or sol, on the Red Planet took Curiosity about 10 feet (3 meters) northwestward and brought the mission's total driving distance to 2,303 feet (702 meters). The rover is within a shallow depression called "Yellowknife Bay," which is a flatter and lighter-toned type of terrain from what the mission crossed during its first four months inside Gale Crater.

During a holiday break for the rover team, Curiosity stayed at a location within Yellowknife Bay from which the rover took images of its surroundings. The team is evaluating possible first targets for use of Curiosity's hammering drill in coming weeks. The drill will collect powdered samples from the interior of rocks for analysis by instruments inside the rover.

"We had no surprises over the holidays," said the mission's project manager, Richard Cook of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena. "Now, Curiosity is back on the move. The area the rover is in looks good for our first drilling target."

NASA's Mars Science Laboratory Project is using Curiosity to assess whether areas inside Gale Crater ever offered a habitable environment for microbes. JPL, a division of Caltech, manages the project for NASA's Science Mission Directorate in Washington.

Heliophysics 2012: Year in Review

 As the year 2012 comes to a close, we look back on the major news events coming from NASA’s Heliophysics Division, which studies the sun-Earth connection.

We ended 2011 with a great deal of excitement as provided by comet Lovejoy’s trip around the sun in December, which had scientists and the public amazed with extraordinary imagery provided by the entire Heliophysics solar fleet.

For more info, visit here: http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/sunearth/news/2012-review.html

A Fish Friendly Facility for the International Space Station

While aquariums provide a relaxing pastime for humans on Earth, recreation is not the goal behind the new Aquatic Habitat, or AQH, aboard the International Space Station. Instead, researchers will use this unique facility to look at how microgravity impacts marine life.

Sponsored by the Japanese Space Agency, or JAXA, this habitat is a closed-water circulatory system, which provides a new facility option for station research. Scientists will use the habitat to study small, freshwater fish on orbit. For the first investigations, they plan to examine the Medaka (Oryzias latipes) fish.

Scientists have multiple studies planned to look at the impacts of radiation, bone degradation, muscle atrophy, and developmental biology. The investigations could last up to 90 days and provide data that may lead to a better understanding of related human health concerns here on Earth.

"We think studies on bone degradation mechanisms and muscle atrophy mechanisms are applicable to human health problems, especially for the aging society," said Nobuyoshi Fujimoto, associate senior engineer at JAXA's Space Environment Unitization Center.

Medaka fish are ideal specimens for many reasons. They are transparent, making it easy to view the inner workings of their organs. They also breed quickly and easily in microgravity environments, enabling multi-generation studies. Researchers can take advantage of a variety of genetic modifications to these fish, as well. Finally, scientists already have all of the Medaka genome identified, which makes it easier to recognize any alterations to the fishes’ genes, due to factors like space radiation.

The habitat will reside in the Japanese Experiment Module, or JEM, which is also known as Kibo, or "hope" in Japanese. It will attach to a multipurpose small payload rack for power and housing. The AQH launched on July 20, with the third Japanese H-II Transfer Vehicle, or HTV cargo vehicle flight, also called Konotouri.

This facility includes an improved water circulation system that monitors water conditions, removing waste while ensuring proper pressure and oxygen flow rates. The system’s design upgrades are based on lessons learned from previous habitats that flew on space shuttle missions STS-47, STS-65, and STS-90.

"In order to keep water quality in good condition for the health of the fish, we had to do many tests on the filtration system, especially the bacteria filter," said Fujimoto. "The special bacteria filter purifies waste materials, such as ammonia, so that we can keep fish for up to 90 days. This capability will make it possible for egg-to-egg breeding aboard station, which means up to three generations may be born in orbit. This would be a first for fish in space."

This habitat will provide automatic feeding for the fish, air-water interface, temperature control, and a specimen sampling mechanism. There will be two chambers for habitation, each sized at 15 by 7 by 7 cm, holding about 700 cc water and a stabilized area for oxygen that will enable fish to "peck" air. LED lights will simulate day and night cycles, while two video cameras record images of the fish to downlink to the ground, upon request.

The air-water interface design also makes it possible for the AQH to potentially house amphibians in future studies, though currently planned investigations only use fish. Small plastic plates at the upper side of each aquarium use a grid structure to trap a small amount of air, injected by the crew at the start of an investigation. The design, which was tested using parabolic flights, prevents the water from escaping into the microgravity environment.

When researchers are ready for the fish to participate on orbit, they will travel in a special transport container to the station, where the crew will then install them within the habitat for observation. While the AQH is not specifically an aquarium, hopefully the crew will enjoy a sense of relaxation in viewing the fish as they go about their duties aboard the orbiting laboratory.

Station Crew Celebrates Christmas

Aboard the orbiting International Space Station, Expedition 34 Commander Kevin Ford, Russian Flight Engineers Oleg Novitskiy, Evgeny Tarelkin and Roman Romanenko, NASA Flight Engineer Tom Marshburn and Canadian Space Agency Chris Hadfield celebrated Christmas on the orbital laboratory Dec. 25, 2012 through song and downlink messages of cheer for flight controllers on the ground.

PhoneSat: Smart, Small and Sassy

The fast-paced proliferation and popularity of mobile devices here on Earth, like smartphones loaded with powerful operating systems, will find a new niche market– this time in space, thanks to NASA’s trailblazing PhoneSat project.

To be rocketed into space early next year, PhoneSat is set to showcase use of lower cost, off-the-store-shelf, commercially available technology that enables space commerce, educational activities and citizen-exploration.

“PhoneSat demonstrates a philosophy of taking a creative idea, then building and testing that inspiration in a very rapid way…as opposed to long planning processes typical of larger spacecraft programs,” said Andrew Petro, NASA program executive for Small Spacecraft Technology within the Space Technology Program at NASA Headquarters in Washington.

Petro said PhoneSat is an out of the box activity, one novel pathway being explored for small-sized satellites that, quite literally, “chip away” at lowering the cost of constructing future spacecraft.
PhoneSat takes advantage of commercial products already imbued with speedy computing chips, lots of memory and ultra-tiny sensors like high-resolution cameras and navigation devices.
That’s a mix of attributes akin to what spacecraft require, Petro said. “Those are already built into a smart phone and that’s what we’re taking advantage of in the PhoneSat Project, which could ultimately lead to very low-cost satellite designs.”

Non-traditional hardware

“From the programmatic level, we’re exploring the use of non-traditional hardware and systems providers…outside of what you normally call the aerospace industries,” said Bruce Yost, manager of the Small Spacecraft Technology program at the NASA Ames Research Center at Moffett Field, Calif., home to a tight-knit team of engineers that conceived of and developed PhoneSat.
“PhoneSat is a way to find other ways to do some of our space missions in a non-traditional manner,” Yost said.

There are three prototype satellites built for launch in the PhoneSat Project, each a “nanosatellite” that is a 4-inch cube and weighs just three pounds. The three PhoneSats are dubbed Alexander, Graham, and Bell.
PhoneSat 1.0 makes use of Nexus One smartphone technology made by HTC Corporation and Google’s Android operating system.

A beta version of PhoneSat 2.0 joins the two battery-powered PhoneSat 1.0 spacecraft. PhoneSat 2.0 is built around an updated Nexus S smartphone made by Samsung Electronics which runs Google’s Android operating system to provide a faster core processor, avionics and gyroscopes.
PhoneSat 2.0 has solar panels to enable longer-duration missions and a GPS receiver. It also has magnetorquer coils—electro-magnets that interact with Earth’s magnetic field—as well as reaction wheels to actively control the satellite’s orientation in space.

“We’re providing a set of 3 satellites, inserted into a spring-loaded dispenser attached to the launch vehicle. They’re stacked in there like a toaster,” said Jim Cockrell, PhoneSat 1.0 project manager at NASA Ames.
An Orbital Sciences Corporation Antares booster, roaring skyward from NASA’s Wallops Flight Facility at Wallops Island, Va., will eject the trio of PhoneSat spacecraft into low Earth orbit in 2013.

Creative and cost-saving approach

A creative and cost-saving approach in fabricating the solar paneled PhoneSat 2.0 is the use of Triangular Advanced Solar Cells, or TASC. Purchased from Spectrolab of Sylmar, Calif. at a modest price, the solar cells are “leftovers” from the manufacturing process of larger solar cells.
Cockrell said the cells are very small so it took more of them to cover the given surface area available on the PhoneSat. The cells offer high efficiency (27 percent) and, as they are a byproduct of the fabrication of larger cells, they are sold very cheaply—about $250 for a quantity of 100, he noted.

Yet another cost-cutting avenue taken was the PhoneSat project’s use of economical, commercial off-the-shelf (COTS) brushless DC motors.
Cockrell said that the mass of the motors armatures provide all the momentum needed. “No external flywheel is attached, and they have built-in speed controllers,” he said, “so the mechanical and electrical designs have minimum moving parts and are simple.”

Because they are COTS hardware they are inexpensive. For comparison, Cockrell added, the least expensive, space-qualified, purpose-built attitude control system for CubeSats can cost two orders of magnitude more than the PhoneSat attitude control system made from COTS parts.

Technology demonstration

“The PhoneSat project is kind of a technology demonstration effort,” said Jasper Wolfe, technical lead for attitude determination and control of the launch vehicle for the PhoneSat Project at NASA Ames.
During the PhoneSat Project’s time in orbit, a global amateur radio community will be engaged, able to download and upload packets of data. Wolfe is anxious to see how they creatively utilize the Earth orbiting PhoneSats.

“Personally, one of the other benefits from PhoneSat is inspirational…demonstrating cool, cheap technologies that can inspire a lot of people to get involved in space,” Wolfe said. “We want to keep up with all the technologies that are coming out and continually find new applications for technologies from other industries, particularly low-cost industries.”
NASA’s Petro said the PhoneSat Project is a forerunner of things to come that can decrease the costs of future small spacecraft.

Hubble Eyes the Needle Galaxy

Like finding a silver needle in the haystack of space, the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope has produced this beautiful image of the spiral galaxy IC 2233, one of the flattest galaxies known.

Typical spiral galaxies like the Milky Way are usually made up of three principal visible components: the disk where the spiral arms and most of the gas and dust is concentrated; the halo, a rough and sparse sphere around the disk that contains little gas, dust or star formation; and the central bulge at the heart of the disk, which is formed by a large concentration of ancient stars surrounding the Galactic Center.

However, IC 2233 is far from being typical. This object is a prime example of a super-thin galaxy, where the galaxy’s diameter is at least ten times larger than the thickness. These galaxies consist of a simple disk of stars when seen edge on. This orientation makes them fascinating to study, giving another perspective on spiral galaxies. An important characteristic of this type of objects is that they have a low brightness and almost all of them have no bulge at all.

The bluish color that can be seen along the disk gives evidence of the spiral nature of the galaxy, indicating the presence of hot, luminous, young stars, born out of clouds of interstellar gas. In addition, unlike typical spirals, IC 2233 shows no well-defined dust lane. Only a few small patchy regions can be identified in the inner regions both above and below the galaxy’s mid-plane.

Lying in the constellation of Lynx, IC 2233 is located about 40 million light-years away from Earth. This galaxy was discovered by British astronomer Isaac Roberts in 1894.

This image was taken with the Hubble’s Advanced Camera for Surveys, combining visible and infrared exposures.

A Cosmic Holiday Ornament, Hubble-Style

Tis the season for holiday decorating and tree-trimming. Not to be left out, astronomers using NASA's Hubble Space Telescope have photographed a festive-looking nearby planetary nebula called NGC 5189. The intricate structure of this bright gaseous nebula resembles a glass-blown holiday ornament with a glowing ribbon entwined.

Planetary nebulae represent the final brief stage in the life of a medium-sized star like our sun. While consuming the last of the fuel in its core, the dying star expels a large portion of its outer envelope. This material then becomes heated by the radiation from the stellar remnant and radiates, producing glowing clouds of gas that can show complex structures, as the ejection of mass from the star is uneven in both time and direction.

A spectacular example of this beautiful complexity is seen in the bluish lobes of NGC 5189. Most of the nebula is knotty and filamentary in its structure. As a result of the mass-loss process, the planetary nebula has been created with two nested structures, tilted with respect to each other, that expand away from the center in different directions.

NASA Satellite Finds an Unusually Tall Storm-cell in Cyclone Evan

NASA's Tropical Rainfall Measuring Mission or TRMM satellite found an unusually tall towering thunderstorm in Cyclone Evan.

According to Owen Kelley of the TRMM satellite team at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md, the most startling feature of the December 16 overflight of Tropical Cyclone Evan was the extremely tall storm-cell in the north side of the eyewall. At the time TRMM passed overhead and captured an image of the storm, Evan was about to rake across the northern coast of the islands of Fiji.

The updrafts in this tower extended high enough to lift precipitation-size ice 17 km (10.5 miles) above the ocean surface. Tall precipitation cells are generally taken to be anything at least 14.5 km (9 miles) high and are nicknamed "hot towers," but what was seen in Evan's eyewall was a different category of storm cell.

Storm-cells as tall as the one in the eyewall of Evan have been long known to occur occasionally over land, but before the TRMM satellite, there were not thought to occur over ocean far from land. While field campaigns have periodically studied one location or other over the ocean, what TRMM has taught us is that such sporadic observations are insufficient if you want catch rare events. After 15 years of continuous operation, TRMM satellite reveals the rare features and challenges our understanding of how the weather works. The ocean is an unlikely place to find extremely tall oceanic cells because the ocean surface stays roughly constant in temperature, unlike the land which quickly heats up over the course of a day, increasing low-level instability, and encouraging tall cells to form.

During the first 10 years of the TRMM mission, only 5 thunderstorm cells as tall as the one seen in cyclone Evan were observed in South Pacific tropical cyclones. Due to their rarity, perhaps these 17-km-tall (10.5 mile) cells deserve their own nickname. To distinguish them from run-of-the-mill hot towers, one can call these cells "titans," "super towers," or just extremely tall.

Over all of the tropical oceans, only 174 such extremely tall cells were observed during the first 10 years of TRMM (1). That's 174 extremely tall cells out of the approximately 9 million oceanic storms that TRMM saw during that time. It is worth noting however, that even TRMM has its limitations. It does not observe the whole earth continuously and frequently misses short-lived events. With this in mind, these extremely tall cells most likely occur more often than TRMM observes them although they do make up a very small fraction of the ocean's weather.

TRMM also observed cloud top temperatures. At the north side of the eyewall, was the upper-level outflow from the extremely tall tower, i.e. the tower's "exhaust fumes." The exhaust moves outward horizontally in every direction, including toward the eye at the center of the tropical cyclone. It is through a process called "forced subsidence" that the exhaust from eyewall towers may warm the air in the tropical cyclone's eye. Warming the air in the eye lowers the surface pressure and encourages intensification of the winds circling the eye. 

New Trio Launches to Join Expedition 34

 

Three new crew members are on their way to join their Expedition 34 crewmates aboard the International Space Station. They launched aboard the Soyuz TMA-07M spacecraft at 7:12 a.m. EST (6:12 p.m. Baikonur time) Wednesday from the Baikonur Cosmodrome, Kazakhstan.

Flight Engineers Tom Marshburn, Roman Romanenko and Chris Hadfield will orbit the Earth for two days before docking to the Rassvet module at 9:12 a.m. Friday. The new trio will join Commander Kevin Ford and Flight Engineers Oleg Novitskiy and Evgeny Tarelkin who’ve been residing at the orbital laboratory since Oct. 26.

Hadfield last visited the station in April 2001 aboard space shuttle Endeavour as an STS-100 mission specialist. He helped install the Canadarm2, the station’s robotic arm, during two spacewalks. Hadfield will be Canada’s first station commander when Expedition 35 begins. Marshburn went to the station in July 2009 aboard shuttle Endeavour for the STS-127 mission. He performed three spacewalks to help complete the construction of the Japanese Kibo laboratory module.

Source: http://www.nasa.gov/

From Cassini for the Holidays: A Splendor Seldom Seen

NASA's Cassini spacecraft, in orbit around Saturn for more than eight years now, has delivered another glorious, backlit view of the planet Saturn and its rings.

On Oct. 17, 2012, during its 174th orbit around the gas giant, Cassini was deliberately positioned within Saturn's shadow, a perfect location from which to look in the direction of the sun and take a backlit view of the rings and the dark side of the planet. Looking back towards the sun is a geometry referred to by planetary scientists as "high solar phase;" near the center of your target's shadow is the highest phase possible. This is a very scientifically advantageous and coveted viewing position, as it can reveal details about both the rings and atmosphere that cannot be seen in lower solar phase.

The last time Cassini had such an unusual perspective on Saturn and its rings, at sufficient distance and with sufficient time to make a full system mosaic, occurred in September 2006, when it captured a mosaic, processed to look like natural color, entitled "In Saturn's Shadow." In that mosaic, planet Earth put in a special appearance, making "In Saturn's Shadow" one of the most popular Cassini images to date.
The mosaic being released today by the mission and the imaging team, in celebration of the 2012 holiday season, does not contain Earth; along with the sun, our planet is hidden behind Saturn. However, it was taken when Cassini was closer to Saturn and therefore shows more detail in the rings than the one taken in 2006.

"Of all the many glorious images we have received from Saturn, none are more strikingly unusual than those taken from Saturn's shadow," said Carolyn Porco, Cassini's imaging team lead based at the Space Science Institute in Boulder, Colo.

The Cassini-Huygens mission is a cooperative project of NASA, the European Space Agency and the Italian Space Agency. NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, manages the Cassini-Huygens mission for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, Washington. The Cassini orbiter and its two onboard cameras were designed, developed and assembled at JPL. The imaging team consists of scientists from the U.S., England, France and Germany. The imaging operations center is based at the Space Science Institute in Boulder, Colo.

X-48 Blended Wing Body Research Aircraft Makes 100th Test Flight

  

The Boeing X-48 Blended Wing Body subscale research aircraft made its 100th flight in late October at NASA's Dryden Flight Research Center at Edwards Air Force Base, Calif.

The milestone occurred Oct. 30 when the unmanned X-48C aircraft was flown on two separate 25-minute flights -- the seventh and eighth flights for the X-48C since it began flying Aug. 7. Between 2007 and 2010, the aircraft, then in the X-48B configuration, made 92 flights.

"Once again, working closely with NASA, we have been pleased to pass another flight-test milestone in our work to explore and validate the aerodynamic characteristics and efficiencies of the Blended Wing Body concept," said Boeing X-48 project manager Mike Kisska of Boeing Research and Technology.

"We are thrilled by the continued success of our flight testing and the useful data that we have collected during the first eight X-48C flights," added Heather Maliska, NASA Dryden's X-48C project manager.

Kisska noted that with 100 test flights flown, the X-48 has far surpassed the previous record of 40 flights performed by a single unmanned X-plane, held by one of the X-45A Joint Unmanned Combat Aircraft technology demonstrators, also developed by Boeing.

Typhoon Bopha

Infrared data from NASA's Aqua satellite have watched the strong thunderstorms in Typhoon Bopha fizzle and shrink in area over the weekend as wind shear increased. Bopha has now dissipated in the South China Sea, just west of Luzon, Philippines.

NASA's Aqua satellite has been providing data on Bopha since the day it formed on Nov. 26. In the storm's last days, Aqua's Atmospheric Infrared Sounder (AIRS) instrument captured infrared data of the storm and showed that cloud top temperatures warmed from Dec. 8 through Dec. 9 as cloud heights fell and thunderstorms lost their punch.

AIRS infrared data reveals where the coldest, highest cloud tops are located in a tropical cyclone. The coldest cloud tops indicate the strongest storms with the heaviest rain. On Dec. 8, AIRS data revealed a large area of strong thunderstorms surrounded the center of circulation as the storm skirted the west coast of Luzon, the northern Philippines. That same day, Bopha triggered more warnings for the Philippines.

Curiosity's 'Rocknest' Workplace

NASA's Curiosity Mars rover documented itself in the context of its work site, an area called "Rocknest Wind Drift," on the 84th Martian day, or sol, of its mission (Oct. 31, 2012). The rover worked at this location from Sol 56 (Oct. 2, 2012) to Sol 100 (Nov. 16, 2012).

The drift consists of sand trapped on the downwind side of a group of dark cobbles the team named Rocknest. This mosaic of 55 images from the Mars Hand Lens Imager (MAHLI) shows the first four of five places from which the rover's scoop obtained sand to clean the sample handling and processing system. The scooped material was ultimately delivered to the Chemistry and Mineralogy Experiment (CheMin) and the Sample Analysis at Mars (SAM) laboratory instruments housed inside the rover's body. The annotated version of this figure shows the location of a scoop taken at a later date -- the fifth and final scoop, and the only one that provided grains delivered to SAM.

Before scooping, the rover team put an approximately 20-inch-wide (about 50- centimeter-wide) wheel print on the Rocknest wind drift. This allowed MAHLI and the Alpha Particle X-Ray Spectrometer (APXS) to determine whether the drift really consisted of sand with small enough sizes to clean the Collection and Handling for In-Situ Martian Rock Analysis (CHIMRA) instrument and be delivered to CheMin and SAM. The drift material at the center of the wheel print, named "Portage" by the rover team, was examined by the APXS.

The rover's robotic arm is not visible in the mosaic because the MAHLI that took this mosaic is on the turret at the end of the arm. Wrist motions and turret rotations on the arm allowed MAHLI to acquire the mosaic's 55 images.

HS3 Hurricane Mission Ends for 2012

NASA's 2012 Hurricane and Severe Storms Sentinel, or HS3, mission came to an end Nov. 6 when a NASA unmanned Global Hawk aircraft flew a final data-collection mission in the North Pacific Ocean over a large storm in preparation for next year's campaign. 

The primary activity of the 2012 HS3 mission included a NASA Global Hawk aircraft that flew from NASA's Wallops Flight Facility in Wallops Island, Va., in September to investigate the environment and cloud structure of hurricanes Leslie and Nadine in the Atlantic Ocean with more than 148 hours flown over six science flights. A second Global Hawk equipped to examine hurricane precipitation and wind structure was unable to deploy to Wallops before the end of the hurricane campaign, but successfully completed its maiden science research voyage in the Pacific flight. 

The Global Hawk departed from NASA's Dryden Flight Research Center on Edwards Air Force Base, Calif., Nov. 5 and flew along the Pacific Coast to as far north as Washington state. The aircraft flew over four Pacific Ocean buoys and a low pressure system south of the Aleutian Islands in Alaska. The 24.2-hour flight allowed for testing of several instruments that will be flown during the 2013 HS3 campaign. All three instruments operated well and collected good data.

NASA Predicts Total Blackout in Dec. 2012

NASA predicts total blackout on 23-25 Dec 2012 during alignment of Universe.
US scientists predict Universe change, total blackout of planet for 3 days from Dec 23 2012.
It is not the end of the world, it is an alignment of the Universe, where the Sun and the earth will align for the first time. The earth will shift from the current third dimension to zero dimension, then shift to the forth dimension. During this transition, the entire Universe will face a big change, and we will see a entire brand new world.

The 3 days blackout is predicted to happen on Dec 23, 24, 25....during this time, staying calm is most important, hug each other, pray pray pray, sleep for 3 nights...and those who survive will face a brand new world....for those not prepared, many will die because of fear. Be happy, enjoy every moment now. Don't worry, pray to God everyday. There is a lot of talk about what will happen in 2012, but many people don't believe it, and don't want to talk about it for fear of creating fear and panic.

We don't know what will happen, but it is worth listening to USA's NASA talk about preparation. Whether it's true or not, better be prepared. No panic, stay calm, just prays. Remember to smile more, love more and forgive more...every day. Better avoid traveling during December.

First Planets Found Around Sun-Like Stars in a Cluster

NASA-funded astronomers have, for the first time, spotted planets orbiting sun-like stars in a crowded cluster of stars. The findings offer the best evidence yet that planets can sprout up in dense stellar environments. Although the newfound planets are not habitable, their skies would be starrier than what we see from Earth.

The starry-skied planets are two so-called hot Jupiters, which are massive, gaseous orbs that are boiling hot because they orbit tightly around their parent stars. Each hot Jupiter circles a different sun-like star in the Beehive Cluster, also called the Praesepe, a collection of roughly 1,000 stars that appear to be swarming around a common center.

The Beehive is an open cluster, or a grouping of stars born at about the same time and out of the same giant cloud of material. The stars therefore share a similar chemical composition. Unlike the majority of stars, which spread out shortly after birth, these young stars remain loosely bound together by mutual gravitational attraction.

"We are detecting more and more planets that can thrive in diverse and extreme environments like these nearby clusters," said Mario R. Perez, the NASA astrophysics program scientist in the Origins of Solar Systems Program. "Our galaxy contains more than 1,000 of these open clusters, which potentially can present the physical conditions for harboring many more of these giant planets."

The two new Beehive planets are called Pr0201b and Pr0211b. The star's name followed by a "b" is the standard naming convention for planets.

"These are the first 'b's' in the Beehive," said Sam Quinn, a graduate student in astronomy at Georgia State University in Atlanta and the lead author of the paper describing the results, which was published in the Astrophysical Journal Letters.

Quinn and his team, in collaboration with David Latham at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, discovered the planets by using the 1.5-meter Tillinghast telescope at the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory's Fred Lawrence Whipple Observatory near Amado, Arizona to measure the slight gravitational wobble the orbiting planets induce upon their host stars. Previous searches of clusters had turned up two planets around massive stars but none had been found around stars like our sun until now.

"This has been a big puzzle for planet hunters," Quinn said. "We know that most stars form in clustered environments like the Orion nebula, so unless this dense environment inhibits planet formation, at least some sun-like stars in open clusters should have planets. Now, we finally know they are indeed there."

The results also are of interest to theorists who are trying to understand how hot Jupiters wind up so close to their stars. Most theories contend these blistering worlds start out much cooler and farther from their stars before migrating inward.

"The relatively young age of the Beehive cluster makes these planets among the youngest known," said Russel White, the principal investigator on the NASA Origins of Solar Systems grant that funded this study. "And that's important because it sets a constraint on how quickly giant planets migrate inward -- and knowing how quickly they migrate is the first step to figuring out how they migrate."

The research team suspects planets were turned up in the Beehive cluster because it is rich in metals. Stars in the Beehive have more heavy elements such as iron than the sun has.

According to White, "Searches for planets around nearby stars suggest that these metals act like a 'planet fertilizer,' leading to an abundant crop of gas giant planets. Our results suggest this may be true in clusters as well."

Was Kepler's Supernova Unusually Powerful?

n 1604, a new star appeared in the night sky that was much brighter than Jupiter and dimmed over several weeks. This event was witnessed by sky watchers including the famous astronomer Johannes Kepler. Centuries later, the debris from this exploded star is known as the Kepler supernova remnant. Astronomers have long studied the Kepler supernova remnant and tried to determine exactly what happened when the star exploded to create it. New analysis of a long observation from NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory is providing more clues. This analysis suggests that the supernova explosion was not only more powerful, but might have also occurred at a greater distance, than previously thought.

This image shows the Chandra data derived from more than eight days worth of observing time. The X-rays are shown in five colors from lower to higher energies: red, yellow, green, blue, and purple. These various X-ray slices were then combined with an optical image from the Digitized Sky Survey, showing stars in the field.

Previous analysis of this Chandra image has determined that the stellar explosion that created Kepler was what astronomers call a “Type Ia” supernova. This class of supernovas occurs when a white dwarf gains mass, either by pulling gas off a companion star or merging with another white dwarf, until it becomes unstable and is destroyed by a thermonuclear explosion.

Unlike other well-known Type Ia supernovas and their remnants, Kepler’s debris field is being strongly shaped by what it is running into. More specifically, most Type Ia supernova remnants are very symmetrical, but the Kepler remnant is asymmetrical with a bright arc of X-ray emission in its northern region. This indicates the expanding ball of debris from the supernova explosion is plowing into the gas and dust around the now-dead star.

The bright X-ray arc can be explained in two ways. In one model, the pre-supernova star and its companion were moving through the interstellar gas and losing mass at a significant rate via a wind, creating a bow shock wave similar to that of a boat moving through water. Another possibility is that the X-ray arc is caused by debris from the supernova expanding into an interstellar cloud of gradually increasing density.

The wind and bow shock model described above requires that the Kepler supernova remnant is located at a distance of more than 23,000 light years. In the latter alternative, the gas into which the remnant is expanding has higher density than average, and the distance of the remnant from the earth is between about 16,000 and 20,000 light years. Both alternatives give greater distances than the commonly used value of 13,000 light years.

In either model, the X-ray spectrum -- that is, the amount of X-rays produced at different energies -- reveals the presence of a large amount of iron, and indicates an explosion more energetic than the average Type Ia supernova. Additionally, to explain the observed X-ray spectrum in this model, a small cavity must have been cleared out around the star before it exploded. Such a cavity, which would have a diameter less than a tenth that of the remnant’s current size, might have been produced by a fast, dense outflow from the surface of the white dwarf before it exploded, as predicted by some models of Type Ia supernovas.

Evidence for an unusually powerful Type Ia supernova has previously been observed in another remnant with Chandra and an optical telescope. These results were independently verified by subsequent observations of light from the original supernova explosion that bounced off gas clouds, a phenomenon called light echoes. This other remnant is located in the Large Magellanic Cloud, a small galaxy about 160,000 light years from Earth, making it much farther away than Kepler and therefore more difficult to study.

These results were published in the September 1st, 2012 edition of The Astrophysical Journal. The authors of this study are Daniel Patnaude from the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory in Cambridge, MA; Carles Badenes from University of Pittsburgh in Pittsburgh, PA; Sangwook Park from the University of Texas at Arlington, TX, and Martin Laming from the Naval Research Laboratory in Washington DC.

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.

Hubble Watching Ancient Orbs

This sparkling picture taken by the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope shows the center of globular cluster M 4. The power of Hubble has resolved the cluster into a multitude of glowing orbs, each a colossal nuclear furnace.

M 4 is relatively close to us, lying 7200 light-years distant, making it a prime object for study. It contains several tens of thousands stars and is noteworthy in being home to many white dwarfs — the cores of ancient, dying stars whose outer layers have drifted away into space.

In July 2003, Hubble helped make the astounding discovery of a planet called PSR B1620-26 b, 2.5 times the mass of Jupiter, which is located in this cluster. Its age is estimated to be around 13 billion years — almost three times as old as the Solar System! It is also unusual in that it orbits a binary system of a white dwarf and a pulsar (a type of neutron star).

Amateur stargazers may like to track M 4 down in the night sky. Use binoculars or a small telescope to scan the skies near the orange-red star Antares in Scorpius. M 4 is bright for a globular cluster, but it won’t look anything like Hubble’s detailed image: it will appear as a fuzzy ball of light in your eyepiece.

Orion Parachute Test

A dart-shaped test vehicle that is used to simulate Orion’s parachute compartment descends above the skies of the U.S. Yuma Army Proving Ground in Arizona. Engineers were testing the maximum pressure Orion’s chutes might face when returning from exploration missions.

NASA's 'Mighty Eagle' Robotic Prototype Lander Aces Major Exam

Overcast skies didn't deter the "Mighty Eagle," flying high above the historic F-1 test stand - formerly used to test turbopumps for Saturn first stage engines.

Radiation from ‘solar whip’ on Sun to hit Earth today

London:NASA scientists have discovered an eight lakh kilometer long 'solar whip' on the surface of the Sun and have warned that some radiation from it is headed for the Earth today.

NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO) has captured a very long, whip-like solar filament in a long arc above the Sun's surface, the Daily Mail reported.

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's space weather prediction centre has estimated that a cloud of radiation from the eruption will reach the Earth today.

The radiation cloud will create a minor to moderate geomagnetic storm, bringing the northern lights to parts of North America.

A 'solar whip' or filament is caused when a red glowing loop of plasma erupts, releasing the plasma out in huge loops hundreds of thousands of miles into space.

The image and video of the filament released by NASA, covers August 6 to 8, 2012.

"Towards the end of the video part of the filament seems to break away, but its basic length and shape seem to have remained mostly intact," NASA said.

Astronauts Complete Second Expedition 32 Spacewalk

NASA Flight Engineer Sunita Williams and Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency Flight Engineer Akihiko Hoshide completed the second spacewalk of the Expedition 32 mission at 4:33 p.m. EDT Thursday, Aug. 30. They began the spacewalk at 8:16 a.m.

During the 8-hour, 17-minute spacewalk, Williams and Hoshide were unable to install a new Main Bus Switching Unit (MBSU) on the International Space Station’s s-zero truss. After removing and stowing the failed unit, the spacewalkers had difficulties driving the bolts to secure the replacement switching unit in the s-zero truss.

Williams and Hoshide used a long-duration tie-down tether to secure the replacement MBSU to the space station for a future spacewalk.

Prior to this task, Williams was able to successfully connect one of two power cables in preparation for the future arrival of a Russian laboratory module. The third objective, replacing a camera on the Canadarm2 robotic arm, was not completed.


The spacewalk was the fifth for Williams and the first for Hoshide. Hoshide is the third Japanese astronaut in history to conduct a spacewalk. The spacewalk was the 164th in support of station assembly and maintenance and was the first U.S.-based spacewalk since July 2011.

The first Expedition 32 spacewalk was performed by Commander Gennady Padalka and Flight Engineer Yuri Malenchenko on Aug. 20. The primary task during their 5-hour, 51-minute excursion was the move of the Strela-2 cargo boom from the Pirs docking compartment to the Zarya module. Other tasks included the installation of micrometeoroid debris shields on the exterior of the Zvezda service module and the deployment of a small science satellite.

NASA's GRAIL Moon Twins Begin Extended Mission Science

PASADENA, Calif. – NASA's twin, lunar-orbiting Gravity Recovery and Interior Laboratory (GRAIL) spacecraft began data collection for the start of the mission's extended operations.

"The data collected during GRAIL's primary mission team are currently being analyzed and hold the promise of producing a gravity field map of extraordinary quality and resolution," said Maria Zuber, principal investigator for GRAIL from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge. "Mapping at a substantially lower altitude during the extended mission, and getting an even more intimate glimpse of our nearest celestial neighbor, provides the unique opportunity to globally map the shallow crust of a planetary body beyond Earth."

The science phase of GRAIL's extended mission runs from Aug. 30 to Dec. 3. Its goals are to take an even closer look at the moon's gravity field, deriving the gravitational influence of surface and subsurface features as small as simple craters, mountains and rilles. To achieve this unprecedented resolution, GRAIL mission planners are halving the operating altitude – flying at the lowest altitude that can be safely maintained.

During the prime mission, which stretched from March 1 to May 29, the two GRAIL spacecraft, named Ebb and Flow, orbited at an average altitude of 34 miles (55 kilometers). The average orbital altitude during extended mission will be 14 miles (23 kilometers), which places the GRAIL twins within five miles (eight kilometers) of some of the moon's higher surface features.

"Ebb and Flow, and our mission operations team, are both doing great, which is certainly notable considering all the milestones and challenges they have experienced," said David Lehman, GRAIL project manager from NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif. "The twins have endured the lunar eclipse of June 4, 2012, and 26 rocket burns since arriving in lunar orbit at the beginning of the year. Down here in our control room, with all the planning and mission operations we have been doing, it feels as though we've been riding right along with them. Of course, they have the better view."

Science data are collected when the Lunar Gravity Ranging System transmit radio signals between the two spacecraft, precisely defining the rate of change of distance between Ebb and Flow. The distance between the twins change slightly as they fly over areas of greater and lesser gravity caused by visible features, such as mountains and craters, and by masses hidden beneath the lunar surface.

Mission scientists calculated that even as the last data were downlinked, four of the mission's six principal science measurement goals had already been achieved. The objective of the GRAIL mission is to generate the most accurate gravity map of the moon and from that derive the internal structure and evolution of Earth's natural satellite.

JPL manages the GRAIL mission for NASA's Science Mission Directorate in Washington. The GRAIL mission is part of the Discovery Program managed at NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Ala. Lockheed Martin Space Systems in Denver built the spacecraft.

Mighty Eagle' Lander Takes 100-Foot Free Flight

With a whistle and a roar, the "Mighty Eagle," a NASA robotic prototype lander, sailed to an altitude of 100 feet during another successful free flight Aug. 28 at NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Ala.

During the 35-second run, the vehicle was "open loop" -- navigating autonomously without the command of the onboard camera and flying on a preprogrammed flight profile. Once it reached the 100-foot mark, the "Mighty Eagle" identified a new, larger target on the ground about 100 feet away, took pictures, processed the images and safely landed. Today's test is part of a new series of free flights testing the robotic prototype lander's autonomous rendezvous and capture capabilities. Testing will continue through September.

"We met our goal for this flight, which was to test the new software at triple the height of our last flight," said Dr. Greg Chavers, "Mighty Eagle" test lead at the Marshall Center. "The higher we go, the more realistic the scenario is compared to an actual descent."

"This test article is a vehicle system and requires a lot of team interaction," said Jake Parton, test conductor on today's flight. Parton is one of several young engineers gaining experience and getting guidance from senior engineers on the "Mighty Eagle" project. The test team's ages range from 25 to 71.

"We are getting good experience in handling flight hardware and reacting to real-time conditions and anomalies," said Parton. "Each time we test, we load propellant, launch the vehicle, fly the vehicle and land the vehicle. It’s hands-on flight experience for young engineers."

Nicknamed the "Mighty Eagle" after one of the characters in the popular "Angry Birds" game, the vehicle is a three-legged prototype that resembles an actual flight lander design. It is 4 feet tall and 8 feet in diameter and, when fueled, weighs 700 pounds. It is fueled by 90 percent pure hydrogen peroxide and receives its commands from an onboard computer that activates its onboard thrusters to carry it to a controlled landing using a pre-programmed flight profile.

NASA will use the "Mighty Eagle" to mature the technology needed to develop a new generation of small, smart, versatile robotic landers capable of achieving scientific and exploration goals on the surface of the moon, asteroids or other airless bodies.

The "Mighty Eagle" was developed by the Marshall Center and Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory in Laurel, Md., for NASA’s Planetary Sciences Division, Headquarters Science Mission Directorate. Key partners in this project include the Von Braun Center for Science and Innovation, which includes the Science Applications International Corporation, Dynetics Corp., and Teledyne Brown Engineering Inc., all of Huntsville.

With a whistle and a roar, the "Mighty Eagle," a NASA robotic prototype lander, sailed to an altitude of 100 feet during another successful free flight Aug. 28 at the Marshall Center. During the 35-second run, the vehicle was "open loop" -- navigating autonomously without the command of the onboard camera and flying on a preprogrammed flight profile.

Curiosity Communicates with Help From its Friends

This animation shows how NASA's Curiosity rover talks to Earth with the help of orbiting satellites.

Atlas V Launch Attempt Scrubbed for Weather

The second attempt to launch the Atlas V rocket set to carry the twin RBSP spacecraft was scrubbed due to weather.

Sun Has "Eureka!" Moment

This bulbous CME certainly resembled a light bulb. It has the thin outer edge and a bright, glowing core at its center. CMEs are often bulbous, but it has been years since we’ve seen one with the elements (pun intended) of a light bulb.

The frames were taken by Solar and Heliospheric Observatory's (SOHO) Large Angle and Spectrometric Coronagraph (LASCO) C2 instrument. LASCO is able to take images of the solar corona by blocking the light coming directly from the Sun with an occulter disk, creating an artificial eclipse within the instrument itself. The position of the solar disk is indicated in the images by the white circle. The C2 image shows the inner solar corona up to 8.4 million kilometers (5.25 million miles) away from the Sun.

What's It's Like to Land on Mars

This video steps viewers through a portion of the choreography needed to land NASA's Curiosity rover on Mars. It starts with a computer simulation from NASA's Eyes on the Solar System program and uses actual images from Curiosity's Mars Descent Imager. It ends with a high-resolution color image from Curiosity's Mast Camera.

Cretaceous Footprint Found on Goddard Campus

Dinosaur tracker Ray Stanford describes the cretaceous-era nodosaur track he found on the Goddard Space Flight Center campus this year.

NASA is Tracking Electron Beams from the Sun

In the quest to understand how the world's weather moves around the globe, scientists have had to tease apart different kinds of atmospheric movement, such as the great jet streams that can move across a whole hemisphere versus more intricate, localized flows. Much the same must currently be done to understand the various motions at work in the great space weather system that links the sun and Earth as the sun shoots material out in all directions, creating its own version of a particle sea to fill up the solar system.

"People think of the sun as giving out light and heat," says Ruth Skoug, a space scientist at Los Alamos National Laboratory in Los Alamos, N.M. "But it is also always losing particles, losing mass."

For example, the sun sends out a steady outflow of solar particles called the solar wind and additionally giant, sudden explosions of material called coronal mass ejections or CMEs erupt out into space. Skoug studies a third kind of particle flow: jets of high-energy electrons streaming from the sun known as electron strahl. Through a new five-year study of observations of the strahl, Skoug and her colleagues have researched another piece of this giant space weather puzzle around Earth.

Skoug says that each fast-moving electron is by and large constrained to move along magnetic field lines that flow out from the sun, some of which loop back to touch the sun again, others which extend out to the edges of the solar system. The charge on an electron interacts with the field lines such that each particle sticks close to the line, somewhat like a bead on an abacus – with the added motion that the electron gyrates in circles around the field lines at the same time.

In general, the magnetic fields get weaker further away from the sun. A physical law that applies in those cases in which electrons are not pushed off course, or “scattered,” demands that the electron gyrations get smaller and more stretched out along the field line. If this were the only physics at work, therefore, one would expect the strahl to become a more and more focused, pencil-thin beam when measured near Earth. This measurement is done by NASA's Advanced Composition Explorer (ACE) mission, but it shows that the expected focusing doesn’t quite happen.

"Wherever we look, the electron strahl is much wider than we would have expected," says Eric Christian, the NASA's deputy project scientist for ACE at NASA Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md. "So there must be some process that helps scatter the electrons into a wider beam."

Indeed, the strahls come in a wide variety of sizes, so Skoug and her colleagues sifted through five years worth of ACE data to see if they could find any patterns. While they spotted strahls of all widths, they did find that certain sizes showed up more frequently. They also found that strahls along open field lines, those that do not return to the sun, have different characteristics than those on closed field lines, those that do return to the sun. On the open field lines, the most common width by far is about ten times the size of the thin beam of electrons expected if there had been no extra scattering. The closed field lines, however, showed a nearly equal number of strahls at that width and at a width some four times even larger.

The strahls on the closed field lines showed an additional pattern. While the strahls might differ in width, they did not tend to differ in the total number of electrons passing by. This suggests that the different shaped strahls – which often come from similar places on the sun -- may have been the same in composition when they left the sun, but were altered by the path they traveled and scattering they encountered along their journey.

While each piece of statistical information like this may seem slightly esoteric, together they help constrain what kinds of scattering might be at work in space.

"We don't yet know how the electrons get scattered into these different widths," says Skoug. "The electrons are so spread out that they rarely bump into each other to get pushed off course, so instead we think that electromagnetic waves add energy, and therefore speed, to the particles."

There are numerous types of these waves, however, traveling at different speeds, in different sizes and in different directions, and no one yet knows which kinds of waves might be at work. Research like this helps start the process of eliminating certain scattering options, since the correct version must, of course, cause the specific variations seen by Skoug and her colleagues.

The Radiation Belt Storm Probes

The Radiation Belt Storm Probe mission (RBSP) will explore the Van Allen Radiation Belts in the Earth's magnetosphere. The charge particles in these regions can be hazardous to both spacecraft and astronauts. The mission will explore space weather changes in Earth's space environment caused by the sun which can affect our technology.

Morpheus Flight Test

Housekeeping Aboard Space Station

NASA astronaut Joe Acaba, Expedition 32 flight engineer, uses a vacuum cleaner during housekeeping operations in the Permanent Multipurpose Module (PMM) of the International Space Station.

NASA’s big moment: Mars rover Curiosity all set for Sunday landing

Pasadena, California:

The Mars rover Curiosity, the most sophisticated mobile science lab ever sent to another world, hurtled closer to the Red Planet on Saturday, on track “to fly through the eye of the needle” for a precise, safe landing on Sunday night, NASA officials said.

Mission control engineers at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory near Los Angeles acknowledge that delivering the one-ton, six-wheeled, nuclear-powered rover in one piece is a highly risky proposition under the best of circumstances.

But JPL’s team said the spacecraft and its systems were all healthy and performing flawlessly, and that weather forecasts over the landing zone on Mars were favourable, as Curiosity streaked to within 2.8 million miles (4.5 million km) of its destination.

NASA, facing deep cuts in its science budget and struggling to regain its footing after cancellation of the space shuttle program, the agency’s centerpiece for 30 years, has a lot riding on a successful Mars landing.

Mars is the chief component of NASA’s long-term deep space exploration plans. Curiosity is designed primarily to search for evidence that the planet most similar to Earth may have once harbored ingredients necessary for microbial life to evolve.



After an eight-month voyage of more than 350 million miles (567 million km), engineers said they were hopeful that the rover will land precisely as planned near the foot of a tall mountain rising from the floor of a vast impact basin called Gale Crater.

“We’re on target to fly through the eye of the needle,” Arthur Amador, the Mars Science Laboratory mission manager, told reporters at a briefing about 36 hours before landing time.

With Curiosity in the final stretch of its journey encased in a capsule-like shell, the spacecraft is essentially flying on automatic pilot, guided by a computer packed with pre-programmed instructions.

PRECISE APPROACH

So precise has the vessel’s approach to Mars been that NASA engineers passed on one last opportunity to perform a trajectory adjustment by remote control on Friday.

On Sunday, mission control will activate the craft’s backup computer, ensuring that it will assume onboard command of the vessel should the primary computer fail during entry into the Martian atmosphere and its tricky descent to the surface.

Two hours before atmospheric entry, mission control will send its very last transmission to Curiosity, a “parameter update” giving the craft its exact position in space.

After that, controllers will have little to do but anxiously track Curiosity’s progress as it flies into Mars’ upper atmosphere at 13,000 miles (20,921 km) per hour, 17 times the speed of sound, and begins a descent and landing sequence NASA refers to as “the seven minutes of terror.”

Curiosity’s fate will then hinge on a complex series of maneuvers that include a giant parachute deployment and a never-before-used jet-powered “sky crane” that must descend to the right spot over the planet, lower the rover to the ground on nylon tethers, cut the cords and fly away.

“This is the most challenging landing we’ve ever attempted,” said Doug McCuistion, NASA’s Mars Exploration Program director.

If everything works according to plan, controllers at JPL will know within a minute or two that the Curiosity is safely on the ground, alerted by a terse radio transmission relayed to Earth from the Mars orbiter Odyssey flying overhead.

If no landing signal comes, it could take hours or days for scientists to learn if radio communications with the rover were merely disrupted or that it crashed or burned up during descent.

Flight controllers anticipate clear and calm conditions at Gale Crater for landing, which will occur in the Martian late afternoon. There may be some haze in the planet’s pink skies from ice clouds, typical for this time of year, with temperatures at about 10 degrees Fahrenheit.

From 154 million miles (248 million kilometers) away, 1,400 scientists, engineers and guests are expected to tensely wait at JPL to learn Curiosity’s fate. Another 5,000 people will be watching from the nearby California Institute of Technology, the academic home of JPL.

A NASA Television broadcast from mission control will take over the giant Toshiba screens in Times Square in New York City.

What's Up for August 2012

Curiosity lands on the surface of Mars while Saturn, Mars and the bright star Spica form a trio almost all month long.

Nasa Outburst

Outburst
NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory has discovered an extraordinary outburst by a black hole in the spiral galaxy M83, located about 15 million light years from Earth. Using Chandra, astronomers found a new ultraluminous X-ray source, or ULX. These objects give off more X-rays than most normal binary systems in which a companion star is in orbit around a neutron star or black hole.

The Return of the Rings!

Now that Cassini has gone off on a new trajectory taking it above and below the equatorial plane of Saturn, we’re back to getting some fantastic views of the rings — the likes of which haven’t been seen in over two and a half years!


The image above shows portions of the thin, ropy F ring and the outer A ring, which is split by the 202-mile (325-km) -wide Encke gap. The shepherd moon Pan can be seen cruising along in the gap along with several thin ringlets. Near the A ring’s outer edge is a narrower space called the Keeler gap — this is the home of the smaller shepherd moon Daphnis, which isn’t visible here (but is one of my personal favorites!)

The scalloped pattern on the inner edge of the Encke gap downstream from Pan and a spiral pattern moving inwards from that edge are created by the 12.5-mile-wide (20-km-wide) moon’s gravitational influence.

Other features that have returned for an encore performance are the so-called propellers, spiral sprays of icy ring material created by tiny micro-moons within the rings. Individually too small to discern (less than half a mile in diameter) these propeller moons kick up large clumps of reflective ring particles with their gravity as they travel through the rings, revealing their positions.



The three images above show a propeller within the A ring. Nicknamed “Sikorsky” after Russian-American aviator Igor Sikorsky, the entire structure is about 30 miles (50 km) across and is one of the more well-studied propellers.

Scientists are eager to understand the interactions of propellers in Saturn’s rings as they may hold a key to the evolution of similar systems, such as solar systems forming from disks of matter.

“One of the main contributing factors to the enormous success we on the Cassini mission have enjoyed in the exploration of Saturn is the capability to view the planet and the bodies around it from a variety of directions,” Cassini Imaging Team Leader Carolyn Porco wrote earlier today. “Setting the spacecraft high into orbit above Saturn’s equator provides us direct views of the equatorial and middle latitudes on the planet and its moons, while guiding it to high inclination above the equator plane affords the opportunity to view the polar regions of these bodies and be treated to vertigo-inducing shots of the planet’s glorious rings.”

AR1515 Finally Releases X-class Solar Flare

This movie shows the July 6, 2012 X1.1 flare in the 171 Angstrom wavelength as captured by NASA’s Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO). The source region, Sunspot AR1515, has been shooting M-class flares almost daily for the last week.

New NASA spaceship arrives in Florida for test flight

First two test flights will not include crew
* Goal is to reach asteroid by 2025, then head to Mars

By Irene Klotz
CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla., July 2 (Reuters) - An Orion space capsule being developed to fly astronauts to asteroids, the moon and eventually to Mars arrived at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida for a 2014 test flight, NASA said on Monday.

The spacecraft, built by Lockheed-Martin is targeted for launch aboard an unmanned Delta 4 Heavy rocket from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station, adjacent to the NASA spaceport.

Though designed to carry a crew of four, Orion will make its first two flights unmanned.

“"It's not a PowerPoint chart. It's a real spacecraft," Kennedy Space Center director Bob Cabana said during a ceremony Monday marking the capsule's arrival.

The 2014 launch is intended to test Orion's heat shield, parachutes and other systems.

It is expected to reach about 3,450 miles (5,552 km) above Earth - more than 10 times beyond where the International Space Station flies - then slam back into the planet's atmosphere with 84 percent of the force that a spaceship returning from the moon would have.

"“It's really going to stress the heat shield, which is exactly what we're trying to do," said NASA program manager Mark Geyer.

A second test flight in 2017 using NASA's planned heavy-lift Space Launch System rocket, is intended to put an unmanned Orion capsule around the moon. The third test flight, targeted for 2021, is expected to include astronauts.

By 2025, NASA intends to send astronauts to explore a near-Earth asteroid and then head on to Mars in the 2030s.

Humans have not flown beyond a few hundred miles above Earth since 1972 when the Apollo missions to the moon ended.

With the retirement of the space shuttles last summer, NASA is dependent on Russia to fly crews to the space station, a $100 billion project of 15 countries that orbits about 240 miles (386 km) above the planet.

In hopes of breaking Russia's monopoly, NASA is partnering with four companies interested in developing spaceships to fly government astronauts, as well as private researchers and tourists to the station and other planned outposts in orbits close to Earth.

A new round of partnership agreements is expected to be announced this month, said NASA Administrator Charlie Bolden.

The Obama administration's budget request for the deep-space Orion capsule and NASA's heavy-lift, shuttle-derived rocket is $2.3 billion for the year beginning Oct. 1. It also requested $830 million for the Commercial Crew program.

Legislators are leaning toward increasing the amount spent on the government program and shaving about $300 million off NASA's investment in commercial spaceships.

The Delta 4 rocket which will be used for Orion's second test flight is made by United Launch Alliance, a partnership of Lockheed-Martin and Boeing. Boeing also is the prime contractor for the Space Launch System core stage, which consists of a modified space shuttle fuel tank.

Pratt & Whitney Rocketdyne, a division of United Technologies Corp is developing the rocket's J-2X upper stage.

ATK is manufacturing a variant of the shuttle's solid-fuel booster rockets for the heavy-lift follow-on program.