From Wired.com "Mars Phoenix, NASA's immensely successful robotic lander, is on her its last legs.
Two days ago, with winter already threatening to coat the lander in carbon dioxide, an ill-timed dust storm sent Mars Phoenix into hibernation as the solar energy hitting the bot's photovoltaic panels fell too far.
NASA will make one last try to power the lander up this weekend, but it's likely that within days, Mars Phoenix's life will come to an end.
To mark this exciting, crowd-pleasing, Tweeting trip to the Martian north pole, we thought it'd be fun to mark the occasion with a Mars Phoenix Twitter-style epitaph contest. That means that these particular virtual headstones must be under 140 characters. Beyond that, it's up to you how you want to memorialize the mission.
And it's not just for pride: The voice of @MarsPhoenix, Veronica McGregor, has promised Wired Science official mission gear for the top three entries in the contest. Submit now, you've only got until Monday at 9 AM, Pacific time."
From MSNBC "A private group planning to launch a moon rover to the famed Apollo 11 landing site in a bid to win a $20 million prize announced an ambitious plan Thursday to send five more spacecraft to explore the lunar poles.
The Pittsburgh-based firm Astrobotic Technology Inc., led by Carnegie Mellon University roboticist William "Red" Whittaker, announced plans to launch its first rover to Tranquility Base in May 2010 to win the Google Lunar X Prize competition.
Astrobotic is one of 14 teams currently in the running for the prize, an international competition offering millions of dollars to the first privately funded team capable of landing a mobile spacecraft of the moon, driving it for a third of a mile (500 meters) and beaming home high-definition television of the feat. The first team to do so successfully by Dec. 31, 2010, wins the $20 million first prize. Second place and bonus prizes each garner about $5 million. "
From JohnMcCain.com "U.S. Senator John McCain today will deliver the following remarks as prepared for delivery at the McCain-Palin 2008 rally in Miami, FL: It's great to be back in Florida. We need to win Florida on November 4th, and with your help -- we're going to win here, and bring real change to Washington. We need a new direction, and we have to fight for it.
I've been fighting for this country since I was seventeen years old, and I have the scars to prove it. If I'm elected President, I will fight to shake up Washington and take America in a new direction from my first day in office until my last. I'm not afraid of the fight, I'm ready for it.
I have a plan to hold the line on taxes and cut them to make America more competitive and create jobs here at home. We're going to double the child deduction for working families. We will cut the capital gains tax. And we will cut business taxes to help create jobs, and keep American businesses in America. Raising taxes makes a bad economy much worse. Keeping taxes low creates jobs, keeps money in your hands and strengthens our economy.
If I'm elected President, I won't spend nearly a trillion dollars more of your money. Senator Obama will. And he can't do that without raising your taxes or digging us further into debt. I'm going to make government live on a budget just like you do.
I will freeze government spending on all but the most important programs like defense, veterans care, NASA, Social Security and health care until we scrub every single government program and get rid of the ones that aren't working for the American people. And I will veto every single pork barrel bill Congresses passes."
from MSNBC "NASA officials said Wednesday it might be possible to try out its new moonship a year earlier than its current target date of 2015.
That would mean just a four-year gap between the last space shuttle flight and the debut of the next-generation spacecraft, instead of five years. Many in Congress, including the two presidential candidates, are troubled by the prospect of the United States having to rely on Russia for trips to the international space station during that time.
NASA is midway through a study looking at ways to move up its March 2015 test launch of the new Orion-Ares spacecraft with a crew, in case the next president wants that. The new rocket would ultimately return the United States to the moon, but the initial flights would be to the space station."
India's Chandrayaan-1 lunar orbiter is closing in on the Moon. A series of orbit-raising maneuvers will put the instrument-loaded probe into orbit around the Moon on November 8.
Space engineers at the Indian Space Research Organization (ISRO) report that the spacecraft is performing well. The lunar orbiter was lofted on its mission to the Moon on October 22, taking some 15 days to reach its destination.
ISRO space planners are also blueprinting Chandrayaan-2 - a joint effort with Russia that entails landing a rover on the Moon's surface in 2011.
In terms of human spaceflight, ISRO leadership has stated they will begin training their own set of astronauts to begin piloted missions by 2015.
From UniverseToday.com "In an initiative energized by Google Vice-President and Chief Internet Evangelist Vint Cerf, the International Space Station could be testing a brand new way of communicating with Earth. In 2009, it is hoped that the ISS will play host to an Interplanetary Internet prototype that could standardize communications between Earth and space, possibly replacing point-to-point single use radio systems customized for each individual space mission since the beginning of the Space Age.
This partnership opens up some exciting new possibilities for the future of communicating across vast distances of the Solar System. Manned and robotic space craft will be interconnected via a robust interplanetary network without the problems associated with incompatible communication systems…
"The project started 10 years ago as an attempt to figure out what kind of technical networking standards would be useful to support interplanetary communication," Cerf said in a recent interview. "Bear in mind, we have been flying robotic equipment to the inner and outer planets, asteroids, comets, and such since the 1960's. We have been able to communicate with those robotic devices and with manned missions using point-to-point radio communications. In fact, for many of these missions, we used a dedicated communications system called the Deep Space Network (DSN), built by JPL in 1964."
Indeed, the DSN has been the backbone of interplanetary communications for decades, but an upgrade is now required as we have a growing armada of robotic missions exploring everything from the surface of Mars to the outermost regions of the Solar System. Wouldn't it be nice if a communication network could be standardized before manned missions begin moving beyond terrestrial orbit?
"When we launch a spacecraft with a unique set of sensors onboard, we often end up writing special communication and application software that is adapted to that spacecraft's sensor systems and manipulators," Cerf said in response to the challenges space missions face each time they are designed.
The Internet uses standard TCP/IP protocols so billions of online entities are always compatible. Although there are limitations to the Internet, it has proven to be a highly flexible and scalable system, so with the help of Google, NASA hopes to push the Internet beyond Earth. "The Interplanetary Internet project is primarily about developing a set of communication standards and technical specifications to support rich networking in space environments," Cerf added."
From Wired.com "In the proud tradition of MTV musicians and Hollywood movie stars, NASA astronauts sent out a message today encouraging people to do their civic duty and vote.
Commander Michael Fincke and Flight Engineer and Science Officer Greg Chamitoff, who are currently on board the International Space Station, have already voted thanks to a 1997 effort by Texas legislators to develop a secure way for astronauts in space to vote.
Their local county clerks offices sent special secured ballots via Mission Control at Johnson Space Center in Houston up to the space station. The two astronauts must use a crew member-specific credential to access their secure ballots and then return them electronically to Earth."
The second day of NCASE started with a General Session with wonderful guest speakers.The first speaker was Astronaut Janice Voss.Janice discussed the research work that she did while on one of her shuttle flights that involved research and global mapping.In order to do this the shuttle crew had to work in shifts to constantly change the tape every 45 minutes.She added a light hearted note about learning to slam dunk the tape to demonstrate the human side of space flight.She also discussed the physiological challenges of flying in space with the shift in body fluids.She explained that in microgravity that fluids shift to the stomach and the first day is hard because it causes one to feel nauseous.In addition, she discussed the need to rehydrate upon landing and on one of her missions they were delay so in order to acquire more water they used the byproduct of the fuel cells on the shuttle, the water. Astronaut Voss’s presentation was informative and very interesting.
Following Janice Voss was Paula Lewis who is the Deputy Assistant Administrator for Regions and Center Operation for the FAA.Ms. Lewis provides leadership and guidance for operations at the nine FAA regional headquarters and Mike Monroney Aeronautical Centers.She works to enable student to enter aviation.Through the programs she works with over 100,000 students per year are involved in STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math) educational activities.The greatest debate that is centered on STEM education is involvement vs. commitment and believes we must do both.She discussed NASA’s Smart Skies program.This was an excellent introduction to our next speaker, Greg Condon, who created the Smart Skies programs.
Greg Condon is from Stanford and developed the Smart Skies programs.These programs are free and online where students use air traffic control with gaming to learn math.The lessons are aligned to the national math standards.He starts with a video to capture the interest of students that demonstrates the 40,000 commercial flights per day.Students are engaged in math activities from simple math to complex algebra.The target grade levels are 5th – 9th grade.There are two programs currently available:Fly by Math and Up with Math.In the Fly by Math the student participate in an experimental activity and work with the math whereas in the Up with Math they work with proportional reasoning and have a computer interactive simulator.All of this is available at www.smarskies.nasa.gov.There are teacher guides with work books available, teacher workshops, distance learning and they are partnering with the FAA.
These speakers set the tone for the day, one of excitement and support for education.
Posted by crystal bloemen at 9:28 AM | Link | 0 comments
Look for NASA's Cassini spacecraft at Saturn to make a Halloween flyby over the south polar region of Enceladus - a moon of the ringed planet.
"Soon after closest approach, our cameras will be conducting another precision 'skeet shoot' maneuver to capture high-magnification glimpses of its famous tiger stripe fractures and jet sources," explains Carolyn Porco, Cassini Imaging Team Leader at the Space Science Institute in Boulder, Colorado.
The Cassini spacecraft is to fly within 171 kilometers of the icy moon on October 31. On this flyby, a gaggle of instruments are to capture high-resolution views of active vent regions on Enceladus.
By the way, this is Cassini's final Enceladus flyby of 2008...the next one will be over a year from now in early November 2009.
Be sure to check back, late Saturday morning (Mountain Time), on the Cassini Imaging Central Laboratory for Operations (CICLOPS) website - when the best images from the flyby are expected to arrive back here on Earth, Porco noted.
From NASA.gov "NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter has observed a new category of minerals spread across large regions of Mars. This discovery suggests that liquid water remained on the planet's surface a billion years later than scientists believed, and it played an important role in shaping the planet's surface and possibly hosting life.
Researchers examining data from the orbiter's Compact Reconnaissance Imaging Spectrometer for Mars have found evidence of hydrated silica, commonly known as opal. The hydrated, or water-containing, mineral deposits are telltale signs of where and when water was present on ancient Mars.
"This is an exciting discovery because it extends the time range for liquid water on Mars, and the places where it might have supported life," said Scott Murchie, the spectrometer's principal investigator at the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory in Laurel, Md. "The identification of opaline silica tells us that water may have existed as recently as 2 billion years ago."
Until now, only two major groups of hydrated minerals, phyllosilicates and hydrated sulfates, had been observed by spacecraft orbiting Mars. Clay-like phyllosilicates formed more than 3.5 billion years ago where igneous rock came into long-term contact with water. During the next several hundred million years, until approximately 3 billion years ago, hydrated sulfates formed from the evaporation of salty and sometimes acidic water.
The newly discovered opaline silicates are the youngest of the three types of hydrated minerals. They formed where liquid water altered materials created by volcanic activity or meteorite impact on the Martian surface. One such location noted by scientists is the large Martian canyon system called Valles Marineris.
"We see numerous outcrops of opal-like minerals, commonly in thin layers extending for very long distances around the rim of Valles Marineris and sometimes within the canyon system itself," said Ralph Milliken of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif.
Milliken is lead author of an article in the November issue of "Geology" that describes the identification of opaline silica. The study reveals that the minerals, which also were recently found in Gusev Crater by NASA's Mars rover Spirit, are widespread and occur in relatively young terrains. "
From Wired.com "A nearby solar system bears a striking similarity to our own solar system, raising the possibility it could harbor Earth-like planets.
Epsilon Eridani, located about 10.5 light-years from our sun, is surrounded by two asteroid belts that are shaped by planets, astronomers at SETI Institute and Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics announced today.
But it's the possibility that currently undetected smaller planets could lie within the innermost asteroid belt that make the solar system intriguing to astrobiologists.
"This system probably looks a lot like ours did when life first took root on Earth," said SETI's Dana Backman, lead author of a paper on the 850-million-year-old star that will appear next year in The Astrophysical Journal, in a release.
Back then, the Kuiper Belt of space objects beyond Neptune was much larger. Over time, many of those objects fell into the inner solar system during a period about four billion years ago known as the Late Heavy Bombardment. The barrage of large asteroids pockmarked the rocky planets and possibly created our moon when a large object collided with Earth, expelling a huge amount of material into space.
Epsilon Eridani's evolution could provide insight into how universal these processes are. That's important because our solar system contains a planet — Earth — just far enough from the sun not to be fried but close enough to capture enough energy to support life as we know it. Similar systems could end up with planets orbiting in the same biological sweet spot.
"Epsilon Eridani looks a lot like the young solar system, so it's conceivable that it will evolve similarly," said astronomer Massimo Marengo of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, a co-author of the paper."
Welcome to NCASE, the National Conference on Aviation and Space Education, that we held on Oct 16 - 18 in Washington D.C. This is a premier education conference for teachers to learn about aviation and space education, to share best practices, and to hear from leaders in the industry.
Above: The Hanger Talk moderator with astronaut Janice Voss, space writer Frank Sietzen and NSS executive director George Whitesides. Photo credit: Barbara David
The opening evening began with an event called Hangar Talk. This is an informal session where leaders in industry or NASA talk about their experiences. Tonight we are honored to have Dr. Janice Voss, NASA astronaut that has 5 space flights with 49 days in space covering 18.8 million miles and is an active supporter of education; George Whitesides, Executive Director of the National Space Society (NSS) which was founded by Wernher von Braun, and is a Senior advisor to Virgin Galactic. In addition he is Co-founder and director of Vision to Dream that donates telescopes to under-privileged children. The last guest is Frank Sietzen who is a writer on space for the past 26 years and who will be have his new book released in December of 2008: The Astronaut and the Fireman: Stories of Space Technologies in Every Day Life.
George spoke about his route to space through entrepreneurship and public outreach. Frank became very interested in NASA technology when he was in the hospital with renal failure, and Janice became interested in 6th grade while reading her favorite story - A Wrinkle In Time by Madeleine L'Engle. George discussed that we are a precipice of a new age in space where space travel for the general public will become a reality.
All of the guest speakers discussed the future of space and the importance of knowing and sharing with other countries. Space represents the best of human kind and the best of humanity. According to George Whitesides in space we can get it right - make things work - build a better future for humanity.
At the conclusion of the evening the speakers did answer questions from the audience and were very welcoming of conversation. What a wonderful way to start an exciting conference.
Posted by crystal bloemen at 12:00 AM | Link | 0 comments
From Florida Today "Endeavour's seven crewmembers jetted into Kennedy Space Center on Sunday, less than three weeks before their planned Nov. 14 liftoff to the International Space Station.
The crew's three days of training culminate Wednesday in a launch countdown rehearsal, strapped into the shuttle in orange launch-and-entry spacesuits.
"We're glad to be here," said Chris Ferguson, the mission's commander.
Ferguson's crew stood at his side in blue flight suits: Pilot Eric Boe and mission specialists Steve Bowen, Shane Kimbrough, Sandra Magnus, Donald Pettit and Heidemarie Stefanyshyn-Piper.
Boe, Bowen and Kimbrough are rookie space flyers, while the others have flown one mission. Pettit spent more than 160 days in space as a member of the station's Expedition 6 in 2002-03.
The astronauts arrived from Houston by 3:45 p.m. in five T-38 training jets. The flights help some astronauts maintain pilot certifications and test crewmembers' teamwork under real flight conditions.
Ferguson and Boe immediately began practicing landings in Gulfstream jets called Shuttle Training Aircraft, whose controls have been modified to simulate the shuttle's handling on sharply angled descents.
Today, the crew will learn to drive an M113 tank they would ride to safety if an emergency forced them to flee the launch pad.
In a brief address to assembled news media, Ferguson outlined the 15-day mission's top three goals.
First, he said, is to deliver Magnus to the station so she can join two Expedition 18 crewmates ferried to the station earlier this month by a Russian Soyuz vehicle. Expedition 17 astronaut Greg Chamitoff will ride home on Endeavour in her place.
Second, under Pettit's guidance, roughly 18,000 pounds of supplies and furnishings will be unloaded from the shuttle. That gear will allow the station to double its crews from three to six people.
And finally, during four spacewalks, Boe, Bowen and Stefanyshyn-Piper will clean and lubricate rotating joints that allow the station's power-generating solar arrays to track the sun.
The crew arrived for its countdown practice, known as the Terminal Countdown Demonstration Test, a little more than a month after Atlantis astronauts went through the same routine."
From Reuters "NASA unveiled a new lunar rover on Friday which aims to transform space exploration by allowing astronauts to roam large distances without cumbersome spacesuits when they return to the moon by 2020.
A team of scientists is testing the Small Pressurized Rover Concept vehicle -- which resembles a small, futuristic recreational vehicle mounted on six sets of wheels -- 12 in all -- in trials in a rocky, barren corner of northern Arizona, selected for its similarities to the surface of the moon.
"This is the next generation of lunar exploration," said Doug Craig, NASA program's manager, as an astronaut took the vehicle for a spin over a broad lava field framed by craggy mountains.
The battery powered rover travels at speeds of up to 6 mph. It is part of a range of systems and equipment being developed by the space agency for its planned return to the moon over the next decade.
NASA hopes to build a permanent manned base on the moon's surface as a prelude to subsequent exploration missions to Mars.
The new pressurized rover follows on from vehicles used by the Apollo series of moon shots in the early 1970s, when astronauts in spacesuits used rovers that looked like stripped-down jeeps to make short forays to gather rocks.
The new prototype has a pressurized cab and is fitted out with leather seats and bunks. It would allow a crew of two astronauts to take extended exploration trips for up to two weeks at a time, covering distances of up to 625 miles, Craig said."
“Building on the Past to Power the Future” October 21-22, 2008 Von Braun Center Huntsville, Alabama An AAS Symposium organized in conjunction with the Huntsville National Space Club and NASA Marshall Space Flight Center
Here at the Las Cruces Airport, two teams are competing for the Northrop Grumman Lunar Lander Challenge today (Friday, October 24, 2008) and tomorrow, if the prize is not won today. The competing teams are Armadillo Aerospace from Mesquite, Texas and TrueAer0 from Chicago.
The Northrop Grumman Lunar Lander Challenge is a two-level, two million dollar competition requiring a rocket-powered vehicle to simulate trips between the Moon's surface and lunar orbit. The X PRIZE Foundation manages the Challenge for the NASA Centennial Challenges Program, which provides the prize purse for the competition.
The Competition is divided into two levels. Level 1 requires a rocket to take off from a designated launch area, rocket up to 150 feet (50 meters) altitutde, then hover for 90 seconds while landing precisely on a landing pad 150 feet (50 meters) away.
The flight must then be repeated in reverse - and both flights, along with all of the necessary preparation for each, must take place within a two and a half hour period.
The more difficult course, Level 2, requires the rocket to hover for twice as long before landing precisely on a simulated lunar surface, packed with craters and boulders to mimic actual lunar terrain. The hover times are calculated so that the Level 2 mission closely simulates the power needed to perform a real lunar mission.
The Challenge is designed to accelerate commercial technological developments supporting the birth of a new generation of Lunar Landers capable of ferrying payloads or humans back and forth between lunar orbit and the lunar surface. Such a vehicle would have direct application to NASA's space exploration goals as well as the personal spaceflight industry, including the Google Lunar X PRIZE competitors. For more information on the Google Lunar X PRIZE, go to: http://www.googlelunarxprize.org
Here are a few visual highlights from the scene here:
Will Pomerantz, X PRIZE Foundation’s Director of Space Projects, lead Armadillo Aerospace’s truck carrying their lander "MOD" out to the launch pad before their first Lunar Lander Challenge attempt on Friday.
The Armadillo Aerospace crew heads out to the launch pad with their lunar lander MOD.
Armadillo’s first flight on Friday with their MOD lunar lander fell short of the 90 seconds they needed to fly to complete Level 1 of the two-level competition.
TrueZer0's lunar lander named "Ignignokt" is lead out to the launch pad for their first attempt to win the Lunar Lander Challenge.
Smoke from TrueZer0's heroic and historic launch. Although their lunar lander vehicle was not successful, the observers at the Las Cruces Airport enthusiastically honored their Wright Brothers-like attempt to win the Lunar Lander Challenge.
One of TrueZer0's lunar lander vehicle team members talks to the media after returning from their launch attempt. Their vehicle is in the back of their truck.
TrueZer0's team members speak to the media and observers at the Las Cruces Airport. The four-person team includes a father-son who own and operate a machine shop in Chicago.
John Carmack, fearless leader of Armadillo Aerospace, talks with X PRIZE Foundation Founder and CEO Peter Diamandis after his first lunar lander flight.
More photos and information will be posted soon...
- Posted by Barbara David of the Coalition for Space Exploration's Education Station
From Physorg.com "In an interview with AFP, the second man to set foot on the Moon said the Red Planet offered far greater potential than Earth's satellite as a place for habitation.
With what appears to be vast reserves of frozen water, Mars "is nearer terrestrial conditions, much better than the Moon and any other place," Aldrin, 78, said in a visit to Paris on Tuesday.
"It is easier to subsist, to provide the support needed for people there than on the Moon."
It took Aldrin, Neil Armstrong and Michael Collins eight days to go to the Moon -- 380,000 kilometres (238,000 miles) from Earth -- and return in July 1969, aboard Apollo 11.
Going to Mars, though, is a different prospect.
The distance between the Red Planet and Earth varies between 55 million (34 million miles) and more than 400 million kms (250 million miles).
Even at the most favourable planetary conjunction, this means a round trip to Mars would take around a year and a half.
"That's why you [should] send people there permanently," said Aldrin. "If we are not willing to do that, then I don't think we should just go once and have the expense of doing that and then stop."
He asked: "If we are going to put a few people down there and ensure their appropriate safety, would you then go through all that trouble and then bring them back immediately, after a year, a year and a half?"
NASA and the European Space Agency (ESA) are sketching tentative plans for a manned mission to Mars that would take place around 2030 or 2040.
Based on experience culled from a planned return to the Moon, the mission would entail about half a dozen people, with life-support systems and other gear pre-positioned for them on the Martian surface. "
From Florida Today "NASA is struggling to resuscitate the Hubble Space Telescope and could decide this week that it's too risky to try to revive it before astronauts arrive on a servicing mission next year.
And that flight could be delayed until May if a critical spare control unit cannot be readied in time for a tentatively targeted launch in February.
An independent review team will meet today to assess the risks involved with further attempts to bring the telescope out of its scientific slumber.
Some engineers fear an attempt to restart a faulty low-voltage power supply on Hubble's Advanced Camera for Surveys could present a risk to one of its cameras and to plans for repairing two others.
Also under examination: the risk involved with a second attempt to turn on a backup instrument control and science data formatting unit, a device critical to restarting Hubble science observations.
A decision could be made to keep the observatory in scientific hibernation until NASA can stage its fifth and final Hubble servicing call.
"They are trying to decide which way to go," said Susan Hendrix, a spokeswoman for NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md. "They don't take anything lightly in the Hubble world."
Hubble dove back into scientific survival mode last week after ground controllers turned on the backup instrument control and science data formatter, which hadn't been activated since the telescope's 1990 launch."
From Reuters.com "Russia will spend billions of dollars over the next three years to consolidate its leading role in the space industry, Prime Minister Vladimir Putin said on Tuesday.
The former president, quoted by local news agencies, told a government meeting that Russia, which accounts for 40 percent of all space launches, would earmark more than 200 billion roubles ($7.68 billion) from the federal budget for development of the space industry in 2009-2011.
Russia's Soyuz manned spacecraft and Progress cargo vehicles have been the main workhorses serving the International Space Station (ISS) since the U.S. Shuttle Columbia disintegrated on re-entry in 2003.
"It is obvious that this status of a reliable international partner should be constantly upheld," Putin told the special meeting in Krasnoyarsk region in Siberia.
U.S. space agency NASA plans to mothball its entire Space Shuttle fleet by 2011.
"Evidently ... between 2011 and 2016 the United States will not possess a new spaceship to replace the Space Shuttle," news agencies quoted Anatoly Perminov, the head of Russia's space agency Roskosmos, as telling Putin."
From NASA.gov Members of the public can send their names around Earth on NASA's Glory satellite, the first mission dedicated to understanding the effects of particles in the atmosphere and the sun's variability on our climate.
The "Send Your Name Around the Earth" Web site enables everyone to take part in the science mission and place their names in orbit for years to come. The Web site, where participants can submit their information, is located at:
Participants will receive a printable certificate from NASA and have their name recorded on a microchip that will become part of the spacecraft. The deadline for submitting names is Nov. 1, 2008.
The Glory satellite will allow scientists to measure airborne particles more accurately from space than ever before. The particles, known as "aerosols," are tiny bits of material found in Earth's atmosphere, like dust and smog.
"Undoubtedly, greenhouse gases cause the biggest climatic effect," said Michael Mishchenko, the Glory project scientist at NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies in New York. "But the uncertainty in the aerosol effect is the biggest uncertainty in climate at the present." Glory will carry two scientific instruments, the Aerosol Polarimetry Sensor, or APS, and the Total Irradiance Monitor, or TIM, and two cameras for cloud identification. The APS instrument will help quantify the role of aerosols as natural and human-produced agents of climate change more accurately than existing measurement tools. The TIM instrument will continue 30 years of measuring total solar irradiance, the amount of energy radiating from the sun to Earth, with improved accuracy and stability. Understanding the sun's energy is an important key to understanding climate change on Earth.
Glory is scheduled for launch in June 2009 from Vandenberg Air Force Base in California. Glory will orbit as part of the Afternoon Constellation, or "A-Train," a series of Earth-observing satellites. The A-Train spacecraft follow each other in close formation, crossing the equator a few minutes apart shortly after 1:30 p.m. local time each day. The A-Train orbits Earth once every 100 minutes.
NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md., is responsible for Glory project management. Orbital Sciences Corporation in Dulles, Va., is responsible for development, integration and operations of the spacecraft. Raytheon in El Segundo, Calif., is responsible for development of the APS. The Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics in Boulder, Colo., is responsible for the development of the TIM. Glory's cloud cameras were built by Ball Aerospace and Technologies of Boulder.
From Discovery News "Ask Bob Bagdigian for a drink of water and you may get more than you bargained for. He's been working on a system that gives new life to urine and perspiration and it's ready for prime time aboard the International Space Station this fall.
Bagdigian, the project manager for NASA's Regenerative Environmental Control and Life Support System, explains to Discovery News' Irene Klotz why he still has friends."
From MSNBC Ben Bova - "People can watch the Olympics live from Beijing, and wonder what has space ever done for us? They don’t realize they’re seeing signals relayed by satellites. I live in Florida. We watch the weather satellites very, very closely, especially this time of year, when the hurricanes are brewing. Space technology has helped to produce the computer revolution, helped to change our lives. If you’re using a GPS system, if you’re unfortunate enough to have to be in an intensive-care unit in a hospital, if you’d like to go scuba diving, you are using technology derived from space. This has produced new industries, millions of new jobs, and yet people don’t realize it – because the investment we make in space come out of tax dollars, but the profits we make from space go to private companies.
So although we have profited fivefold or tenfold for every dollar we’ve spent on space, the bookkeeping is a little out of line."
From MSNBC "NASA's efforts to get the ailing Hubble Space Telescope working again have hit a snag, and engineers are trying to figure out their next step.
Officials had hoped to have the 18-year-old observatory back in business Friday, after it stopped sending pictures three weeks ago. But a pair of problems cropped up Thursday, and now recovery operations are on hold.
It's unclear how long the telescope will be prevented from transmitting its stunning photos of the cosmos.
The soonest it could be operating fully again is late this week, said Art Whipple, a Hubble manager. At worst, the observatory might remain inactive until astronauts arrive with a replacement part next year.
"We're still optimistic," he told reporters Friday.
Flight controllers at Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md., began the lengthy process of restoring data transmission on Wednesday. Everything was going well, until late Thursday afternoon."
India's first mission to the Moon -- the Chandrayaan-1 lunar orbiter -- is ready for blastoff on October 22, this Wednesday.
It will head toward the Moon from the Satish Dhawan Space Centre in Sriharikota in southern Tamil Nadu state - an island located on the east coast of India.
India's PSLV launcher will send the probe to the Moon.
According to news services in India, the countdown is on, with Chandrayaan-1 ready to begin a two-year mission that includes mapping the Moon's surface, to gauge its mineral, chemical and topographical makeup.
This newest of lunar orbiter missions weighs about 1.3 tons. It carries 11 payloads, five from India, with other nations -- including a U.S. high-tech radar -- also onboard.
From Universe Today "Imagine: You've just woken up on board the space station half-way through your six-month mission in zero-gravity. You probably feel a little home sick and you crave a drink that will pick up your mood, preparing you for a tough day of overseeing experiments in Kibo and keeping up with your station schedule for the day. You go to the galley for some coffee. Instant, bad tasting coffee at that. You put the instant coffee container into the microwave and heat up the sour, plastic-tasting brew. Did that make you feel any better? Or did it just make you crave the smell of real, freshly ground coffee beans you're used to on Earth?
Franklin Chang-Diaz, a veteran NASA astronaut who spent a lot of time on the International Space Station (ISS), knows all too well the taste of really bad microwaved space coffee. So, in an effort to make life a little better for the current astronauts in orbit, Chang has asked two engineering students to design a machine that can percolate fresh-ground coffee in space…
It may seem like a trivial problem. After all, astronauts on board the ISS are bound to suffer some inconveniences whilst working on space; they are strong, intelligent individuals who understand the sacrifices they need to make to belong to this exclusive group of space pioneers. However, as we spend more time in space, there is an increasing desire for the creature comforts of home, especially if you have to spend six months on board a cramped and (soon-to-be) crowded orbital outpost.
In an effort to confront a personal grievance with his experiences in space, Franklin Chang-Diaz, a seasoned NASA astronaut who has flown on seven Shuttle missions and helped to build the ISS, has approached two students at the Technological Institute of Costa Rica to design and build a coffee machine. But this isn't any ordinary coffee machine, it is a coffee percolator that works in zero-G, dispensing with the need for instant microwaved coffee."
Congress has advised NASA about building a lunar outpost - called out in a just-issued NASA Authorization Act signed by President Bush.
A next step is for Congress to approve the measure that appropriates $20.2 billion for the space agency in 2009.
Within the act -- H.R. 6063 -- Congress has noted that as NASA works toward the establishment of a lunar outpost, the space agency shall make no plans that would require a lunar outpost to be occupied "to maintain its viability".
Such an outpost needs to be operable as a "human-tended" facility capable of "remote or autonomous operation for extended periods," the act points out.
Furthermore, the authorization bill states that the U.S. portion of the first human-tended outpost established on the Moon shall be designated the "Neil A. Armstrong Lunar Outpost" - a salute to the first human to set foot on the Moon back in July 1969.
It is also the sense of Congress that NASA should make use of commercial services to the maximum extent practicable in support of its lunar outpost activities."
There's official word on the X Prize Foundation's Northrop Grumman Lunar Lander Challenge.
The event is set for October 24-25 at the Las Cruces International Airport in Las Cruces, New Mexico. According to the Foundation, three teams plan to compete for the $2 million in prize money.
The Northrop Grumman Lunar Lander Challenge is a two-level, $2 million dollar competition requiring a rocket-powered vehicle to simulate trips between the Moon's surface and lunar orbit. NASA's Centennial Challenges Program provides the prize purse for the competition.
While the competition is not open to public viewing, the contest will be webcast live at:
So mark your calendars and set your clocks for next week's countdown of activities - Friday and Saturday, October 24-25, starting at 7:30 A.M. to 5:00 PM MDT - that's Mountain Daylight Time.
From MSNBC "The revival of the Hubble Space Telescope is going "exactly as we hoped," a NASA spokesman said today, and the world's best-known orbiting observatory is expected to be back in business on Friday.
Hubble's science operations went on the blink last month when the main system for handling commands and data going back and forth between the telescope's instruments and the ground failed. Controllers could still send commands up to Hubble and receive diagnostic readings, but the flow of imagery that made the telescope famous was cut off.
The sudden, unexpected snag forced the postponement of the space shuttle Atlantis' final service call, which was due for launch this week.
To revive Hubble, engineers at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center devised a plan to switch the flow of data from the main system that the 18-year-old telescope had always used, known as Side A, to a never-before-used backup system known as Side B. The space agency's top management gave the go-ahead for the remote-controlled switchover on Tuesday, and engineers went to work on Wednesday.
Engineers checked out Side B for the first time on Wednesday night, NASA spokesman Ed Campion told me today. "All that went exactly as we hoped, so after that, the Advanced Camera for Surveys and the Wide Field Planetary Camera 2 were retrieved out of safe mode to establish that each of them has a good working interface to Side B," he said.
Hubble's reconfigured electronics passed that test as well. "Everything worked the way we hoped it would," Campion said. "Now we're going to send commands to begin internal exposures and calibrations of the science instruments."
The test pictures won't be scientifically significant. They'll merely show things like the illuminated insides of the telescope itself. But they will give scientists at the Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore some Side B data to compare with Side A data captured before the glitch."
From Popular Mechanics "The Mars Phoenix Lander has been a shining success for NASA. Not only did the craft reach Mars and land successfully, it also found ice in the martian soil and saw snow in the sky. But the Phoenix is now racing against time to complete more of its groundbreaking research before the harsh martian winter brings its death, said the project's science leader, Peter Smith of the University of Arizona, at the first session of the Popular Mechanics Breakthrough Conference in New York today. "It's down to the wire," Smith
From Wired.com
From MSNBC
From Discovery.com
From NASA.gov
From Reuters.com
From Popular Mechanics