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NASA'S J-2X locomotive kick Off 2012 With Power pack test

2012-01-25T22:05:00.000-08:00

A innovative sequence of tests on the locomotive that will help take humans to bottomless space will begin next week at NASA's Stennis Space Center in southern Mississippi. The test on the J-2X engine bring NASA one pace closer to the first human-rated liquid oxygen and liquid hydrogen rocket train to be urbanized in 40 years.

Tests will center on the power pack for the J-2X. This extremely well-organized and versatile higher rocket engine is being intended to power the upper stage of NASA's Space Launch System, a new heavy-lift launch vehicle capable of missions beyond low-Earth orbit. The power pack comprise components on the top portion of the engine, including the gas generator, oxygen and fuel turbo pumps, and related ducts and valves that bring the propellants jointly to make burning and make thrust.

"The J-2X upper stage engine is vital to achieve the full open ability of the heavy-lift Space Launch System," said William Gerstenmaier, NASA's associate manager for the Human examination and Operations Mission Directorate. "The testing today will help ensure that a key force element is ready to support exploration across the solar system."

About a dozen power pack tests of unreliable length are slated now from side to side summer at Stennis' A-1 Test Stand. By unraveling the engine mechanism the thrust chamber assembly, counting the main combustion chamber, main injector and needle engineers can more with no trouble push the various components to function over a wide variety of conditions to ensure the parts' integrity, show the safety margin and better appreciate how the turbopumps operate.

"By anecdotal the pressures, temperatures and flow rates, the power pack test series will evaluate the full range of operating circumstances of the engine components," said Tom Byrd, J-2X engine lead in the SLS Liquid Engines Office at NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Ala. "This will enable us to verify the components' design and validate our analytical models against performance data, as well as ensure structural stability and verify the combustion stability of the gas generator."

This is the second power pack test series for J-2X. The powerpack 1A was tested in 2008 with J-2S engine turbo machinery originally developed for the Apollo Program. Engineers tested these heritage components to obtain data to help them modify the design of the turbomachinery to meet the higher performance requirements of the J-2X engine.

"The test engineers on the A-1 test team are excited and ready to begin another phase of testing which will provide critical data in support of the Space Launch System," said Gary Benton, J-2X engine testing project manager at Stennis.J-2X is being developed for Marshall by Pratt & Whitney Rocketdyne of Canoga Park, Calif.

Innovative journey 30 team Members open to Station

2012-01-19T00:52:00.000-08:00

The Soyuz TMA-03M spacecraft transport three new Expedition 30 journey engineers’ launch from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan.

Expedition 30 Flight Engineers Don Pettit, Oleg Kononenko and Andre Kuipers launched at 8:16 a.m. EST on Wednesday, Dec. 21 (7:16 p.m. local time) from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan. The three new global Space Station crew members launch in their Soyuz TMA-03M spacecraft start a two-day trip to the orbiting settlement.

They are put to dock to the station's Rassvet mini-research module about 10:22 a.m. on Friday, Dec. 23. Expedition 30 Commander Dan Burbank and Flight Engineers Anton Shkaplerov and Anatoly Ivanishin will welcome their original crewmates on board the station a little while later at what time they open the hatches about 1 p.m.

Pettit, Kononenko and Kuipers are planned to live and work aboard the orbit laboratory until May. They will become member of the Expedition 31 crew under the authority of Kononenko when Burbank, Shkaplerov and Ivanishin undock in their Soyuz TMA-22 spaceship in March.

NASA To Host Media Teleconference On Probes' Moon Orbit Insertion

2012-01-09T04:15:00.000-08:00

NASA will hold a media teleconference at 11 a.m. PST on Wednesday, Dec. 28, to preview twin spacecraft being placed in orbit around the moon on New Year's Eve and New Year's Day.

NASA's twin lunar Gravity Recovery and Interior Laboratory (GRAIL) probes were launched from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station on Sept. 10, 2011. GRAIL-A is scheduled to arrive in lunar orbit beginning at 1:21 p.m. PST on Saturday, Dec. 31, and GRAIL-B on Sunday, Jan. 1, beginning at 2:05 p.m. PST. After confirmation they are in orbit and operating nominally, the two solar-powered spacecraft will fly in tandem orbits to answer longstanding questions about the moon and give scientists a better understanding of how Earth and other rocky planets in the solar system formed.

Participants are:
- Maria Zuber, principal investigator, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge
- David Lehman, project manager, NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), Pasadena, Calif.
To participate, reporters must contact the JPL Media Relations Office at 818-354-5011 by 10:30 a.m. PST on Dec. 28 for the call-in number and passcode.

For NASA Webb Telescope Engineers, COCOA this Winter Means Precision Testing

2011-12-29T02:11:00.000-08:00

Engineers working on NASA's James Webb Space Telescope are bringing out the COCOA this winter, but it's not a warm beverage. Rather, it’s a way to check that the mirrors are perfectly shaped and will work in the frosty environment of space.

COCOA stands for "Center of Curvature Optical Assembly." Curvature is important in a mirror, just as the convex side mirrors on your car are shaped to give you a wide field of vision behind and beside your car. COCOA tests on the Webb telescope's concave mirror segments are critical because they will tell engineers if all of the mirrors work together to make a telescope that has the correct shape.

"We need to check that the mirrors are of the right prescription, just like eyeglasses, so the images from our telescope are not blurry," said Lee Feinberg, Webb telescope Optical Telescope Manager at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Md.

The Webb telescope has 21 mirrors, with 18 of these being six-sided segments working together as one large 21.3-foot (6.5-meter) mirror. Every individual mirror has been previously tested to confirm it has the correct shape, but testing them all together as an assembled telescope with COCOA ensures that the telescope as a whole works correctly.

The COCOA is part of NASA's vacuum cryo equipment that will be used at NASA's Johnson Space Center in Houston to test the performance of the mirrors at operating temperatures. That's important because COCOA tells engineers if the full 18 segment mirror is functioning correctly in "operating temperatures" of 40 degrees Kelvin (-233 Celsius, or -387.4 Fahrenheit) prior to final assembly of the observatory before launch.

COCOA was built by ITT Exelis of Rochester, N.Y., with subcontractor Micro Instruments in Rochester, N.Y. ITT Exelis and Micro Instruments engineers are assembling the large Center of Curvature test system.

The Webb telescope is the world’s next-generation space observatory and successor to the Hubble Space Telescope. The most powerful space telescope ever built, the Webb telescope will provide images of the first galaxies ever formed, and explore planets around distant stars. It is a joint project of NASA, the European Space Agency and the Canadian Space Agency.

For more information visit http://www.nasa.gov/topics/technology/features/webb-cocoa.html

NASA's Cassini Delivers Holiday Treats From Saturn

2011-12-29T01:25:00.000-08:00

No team of reindeer, but radio signals flying clear across the solar system from NASA's Cassini spacecraft have delivered a holiday package of glorious images. The pictures, from Cassini's imaging team, show Saturn's largest, most colorful ornament, Titan, and other icy baubles in orbit around this splendid planet. The release includes images of satellite conjunctions in which one moon passes in front of or behind another. Cassini scientists regularly make these observations to study the ever-changing orbits of the planet's moons. But even in these routine images, the Saturnian system shines. A few of Saturn's stark, airless, icy moons appear to dangle next to the orange orb of Titan, the only moon in the solar system with a substantial atmosphere. Titan's atmosphere is of great interest because of its similarities to the atmosphere believed to exist long ago on the early Earth.

The images are online at: http://www.nasa.gov/cassini, http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov and http://ciclops.org .

While it may be wintry in Earth's northern hemisphere, it is currently northern spring in the Saturnian system and it will remain so for several Earth years. Current plans to extend the Cassini mission through 2017 will supply a continued bounty of scientifically rewarding and majestic views of Saturn and its moons and rings, as spectators are treated to the passage of northern spring and the arrival of summer in May 2017.

"As another year traveling this magnificent sector of our solar system draws to a close, all of us on Cassini wish all of you a very happy and peaceful holiday season, " said Carolyn Porco, Cassini imaging team lead at the Space Science Institute, Boulder, Colo.

More information about Cassini mission is online at http://www.nasa.gov/cassini and http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov .

The Cassini-Huygens mission is a cooperative project of NASA, the European Space Agency and the Italian Space Agency. The 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 is based at the Space Science Institute in Boulder, Colo.

For more information visit http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/cassini/whycassini/cassini20111222.html

Party dresses to make you brighter in parties

2011-12-28T04:01:00.000-08:00

Every woman likes to be present at festivities where she can completely explain her loveliness to others. And in parties ladies can be dressed in the majority good-looking dresses which are not good to be dressed in on other events. But several women experience hard to get appropriate party dresses to purchase, because such beautiful wears particularly necessitate women to be suspicious when wearing them for fear that the conflicting effect may be arrived.

Some dresses for women may be pleasant but may be not appropriate for a woman’s skin tone. Some others may be good-looking to wear but may be out of the fashion. Now evening gowns are very common and several women adore them. They give enormous materials of ranges for women to prefer anything they like. Here are some instructions about how to prefer a dress for party.

When selecting party dresses, women must fully think their own skin tone. Women must select the dresses which can make their skin tones appear brighter not darker. Pick the color of the dresses which are darker than women’s skin tones, which will accomplish a fine result and make the skin appear brighter.

NASA Presents Software of the Year Award

2011-12-19T02:05:00.000-08:00

Autonomous Exploration for Gathering Increased Science (AEGIS), novel autonomy software that has been operating on the Mars Exploration Rover Opportunity since December 2009, is NASA's 2011 Software of the Year recipient.

The AEGIS software, developed by NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif., autonomously directs Opportunity's cameras to interesting science targets. AEGIS was developed to enhance the usual targeting process involving scientists on the ground, which can require the rover to stay in the same place for a day or more while data are transmitted to Earth and targets are selected from preliminary images.

With AEGIS, the rover software analyzes images onboard, detects and prioritizes science targets in those images, and autonomously obtains novel, high-quality science data of the selected targets, within 45 minutes, with no communication back to Earth required. AEGIS chooses science targets based on pre-specified criteria set by the mission science team.

AEGIS can be used as soon as the rover reaches a new area and is especially beneficial during and after long drives. It enables high-quality data to be collected more often and in a significantly reduced time frame. The incorporation of AEGIS in the Mars Science Laboratory flight software is in progress, and it is also being considered for future NASA missions.

The AEGIS capability was developed as part of a larger autonomous science framework called OASIS (short for Onboard Autonomous Science Investigation System), which is designed to allow a rover to identify and react to serendipitous science opportunities. The AEGIS system takes advantage of the OASIS ability to detect and characterize interesting terrain features in rover images. This technology was created with assistance from NASA's Mars Exploration Rover Project and with funding from the New Millennium Program, the Mars Technology Program, the JPL Research and Technology Development Program, the JPL Interplanetary Network Development Program and the Intelligent Systems Program.

For more information visit http://www.nasa.gov/topics/technology/features/tech20111208.html

NASA Tests New Smart Card Access to Google Apps

2011-12-19T02:01:00.000-08:00

NASA recently began a pilot using Google Apps, a suite of applications that brings services such as Gmail, Google Docs and other products together to help workers in today's business environment. NASA IT Labs, a part of the Office of the Chief Information Officer (CIO), sponsored the pilot to meet the growing demand from workers to access resources on any device.

About 600 IT staff from 11 NASA centers and facilities are participating in the pilot, which offers cost savings by managing user's identities, credentials and access via cloud computing using on-demand software. Cloud computing refers to resources and applications that are available on the Internet from nearly any Internet-connected device. No sensitive NASA data is being placed in the cloud.

Under the pilot, NASA users can connect to Google Apps for Government using an existing NASA work ID, which also functions as a smart card in the card reader of compatible computers. The card was created as a common identification standard for federal employees and contractors to increase security and reduce opportunities for identify fraud.

The pilot complies with the Federal Information Security Management Act of 2002, which is designed to protect the nation's critical information infrastructure. Because no new ID or credential is needed, NASA complies with the law and workers can access secure materials from any smart device.

NASA also accepts and electronically verifies personal identity verification (PIV) credentials issued by other federal agencies through a credential registration process. With this capability, any authorized federal PIV card, which includes the DoD Common Access Card, may be used today for authentication to the Google Apps for Government NASA site.

For more information visit http://www.nasa.gov/topics/technology/features/google_apps.html

Curiosity and the Solar Storm

2011-12-16T01:30:00.000-08:00

On Nov. 26, 2011, Curiosity blasted off from Cape Canaveral atop an Atlas 5 rocket. Riding a plume of fire through the blue Florida sky, the car-sized rover began a nine month journey to search for signs of life Mars.

Meanwhile, 93 million miles away, a second lesser-noticed Mars launch was underway. Around the time that Curiosity's rocket was breaking the bonds of Earth, a filament of magnetism erupted from the sun, hurling a billion-ton cloud of plasma (a coronal mass ejection or CME) toward the Red Planet.

There was no danger of a collision -- Mars rover vs. solar storm. Racing forward at 2 million mph, the plasma cloud outpaced Curiosity's rocket by a wide margin.

Next time could be different, however. With solar activity on the upswing (Solar Max is expected in 2012-2013) it's only a matter of time before a CME engulfs the Mars-bound rover.

That suits some researchers just fine. As Don Hassler of the Southwest Research Institute (SWRI) in Boulder, Colorado, explains, "We look forward to such encounters because Curiosity is equipped to study solar storms."

Hassler is the principal investigator for Curiosity's Radiation Assessment Detector --"RAD" for short. The instrument, developed at SWRI and Christian Albrechts University in Kiel, Germany, counts cosmic rays, neutrons, protons and other particles over a wide range of energies. Tucked into the left front corner of the rover, RAD is about the size of a coffee can and weighs only three pounds, but has capabilities of Earth-bound instruments nearly 10 times its size.

Encounters with CMEs pose little danger to Curiosity. By the time a CME reaches the Earth-Mars expanse, it is spread so thin that it cannot truly buffet the spacecraft. Nevertheless, RAD can sense what happens as the CME passes by.

"RAD will be able to detect energetic particles accelerated by shock waves in some CMEs," says Arik Posner of NASA's Heliophysics Division in Washington DC. "This could give us new insights into the inner physics of these giant clouds."

There's more to this, however, than pure heliophysics. Future human astronauts will directly benefit from RAD's measurements during the cruise phase.

"Curiosity is nestled inside its spacecraft, just like a real astronaut would be," notes Frank Cucinotta, Chief Scientist for NASA's Space Radiation Program at the Johnson Space Center. "RAD will give us an idea of the kind of radiation a human can expect to absorb during a similar trip to Mars."

Of particular interest are secondary particles. Galactic cosmic rays and solar energetic particles hit the walls of the spacecraft, creating an inward spray of even more biologically dangerous neutrons and atomic nuclei. RAD will analyze the spray from the only realistic place to make such measurements—inside the spaceship.

In this way, "RAD is a bridge between the science and exploration sides of NASA," says Hassler. "The two objectives are equally exciting."

RAD was activated on Dec. 6, 2011. Of the rover's ten science instruments, it will be the only one active during the cruise to Mars. Daily transmissions to Earth will let Hassler and colleagues monitor what's going on "out there."

"We're very excited about the possibility of more solar storms," he adds.

As important as RAD’s cruise phase measurements are, the instrument’s primary mission doesn’t really begin until it lands on the Red Planet.

Mars has a very thin atmosphere and no global magnetic field to protect it from space radiation. Energetic particles reaching ground level might be dangerous to life--both future human astronauts and extant Martian microbes. RAD will find out how much shielding human explorers need on the surface of Mars. RAD will also help researchers estimate how far below ground a microbe might have to go to reach a radiation "safe zone."

For more information visit http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/sunearth/news/curiosity-cme.html

NASA Mars-Bound Rover Begins Research in Space

2011-12-14T23:38:00.000-08:00

NASA's car-sized Curiosity rover has begun monitoring space radiation during its 8-month trip from Earth to Mars. The research will aid in planning for future human missions to the Red Planet.

Curiosity launched on Nov. 26 from Cape Canaveral, Fla., aboard the Mars Science Laboratory. The rover carries an instrument called the Radiation Assessment Detector (RAD) that monitors high-energy atomic and subatomic particles from the sun, distant supernovas and other sources.

These particles constitute radiation that could be harmful to any microbes or astronauts in space or on Mars. The rover also will monitor radiation on the surface of Mars after its August 2012 landing.

"RAD is serving as a proxy for an astronaut inside a spacecraft on the way to Mars," said Don Hassler, RAD's principal investigator from the Southwest Research Institute in Boulder, Colo. "The instrument is deep inside the spacecraft, the way an astronaut would be. Understanding the effects of the spacecraft on the radiation field will be valuable in designing craft for astronauts to travel to Mars."

Previous monitoring of energetic-particle radiation in space has used instruments at or near the surface of various spacecraft. The RAD instrument is on the rover inside the spacecraft and shielded by other components of Mars Science Laboratory, including the aeroshell that will protect the rover during descent through the upper atmosphere of Mars.

Spacecraft structures, while providing shielding, also can contribute to secondary particles generated when high-energy particles strike the spacecraft. In some circumstances, secondary particles could be more hazardous than primary ones.

These first measurements mark the start of the science return from a mission that will use 10 instruments on Curiosity to assess whether Mars' Gale Crater could be or has been favorable for microbial life.

"While Curiosity will not look for signs of life on Mars, what it might find could be a game-changer about the origin and evolution of life on Earth and elsewhere in the universe," said Doug McCuistion, director of the Mars Exploration Program at NASA Headquarters in Washington. "One thing is certain: The rover's discoveries will provide critical data that will impact human and robotic planning and research for decades."

As of 9 a.m. PST (noon EST) on Dec. 14, the spacecraft will have traveled 31.9 million miles (51.3 million kilometers) of its 352-million-mile (567-million-kilometer) flight to Mars. The first trajectory correction maneuver during the trip is being planned for mid-January.

Southwest Research Institute, together with Christian Albrechts University in Kiel, Germany, built RAD with funding from the Human Exploration and Operations Mission Directorate, NASA Headquarters, Washington, and Germany's national aerospace research center, Deutsches Zentrum für Luft- und Raumfahrt.

For more information visit http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/msl/news/msl20111213.html

Dryden Gave a LIFT for Shuttle's Return To Flight

2011-12-10T02:53:00.000-08:00

As part of NASA’s Return to Flight effort following the loss of the space shuttle Columbia and its crew during mission STS-107 on Feb. 1, 2003, NASA’s Johnson Space Center approached NASA's Dryden Flight Research Center for help in modeling thermal protection system foam loss from the shuttle’s external fuel tank.

The Columbia Accident Investigation Board, convened following that vehicle’s breakup during re-entry, found that the primary cause of the tragedy was a breach in the shuttle’s thermal protection system resulting from a piece of insulating foam that separated from the external tank’s left bipod ramp area.

The detached piece of foam struck the shuttle’s left wing near its leading edge, in the vicinity of the lower half of Reinforced Carbon Panel number eight. The foam strike occurred about 81 seconds after launch, punching an estimated 10-inch diameter hole in the panel. This damage went undiscovered throughout the mission.

During the shuttle’s fiery re-entry, the hole allowed the super-heated air surrounding the vehicle, called plasma, to penetrate through the gap in the thermal protection panel. The plasma melted the orbiter’s aluminum wing structure to the point of sufficient structural failure to cause an aerodynamic loss of control as it descended thhrough the upper reaches of the atmosphere, resulting in the breakup of Columbia. Heartbreak rolled across the nation and the world as a second space shuttle crew was lost.

Following the accident, Dryden geared up to provide flight data on foam loss requested by NASA engineers at the Johnson Space Center. Called the Lifting Insulating Foam Trajectory (LIFT) project, this effort utilized the center's F-15B Research Testbed aircraft to acquire data on how insulating foam debris or "divots" behaved when the small pieces were shed from the shuttle's external fuel tank during launch.

The unique capabilities of NASA’s supersonic F-15B Research test bed aircraft enabled it to garner the LIFT data in a real flight environment at altitudes up to 50,000 ft. and at speeds up to Mach 2. The project continued NASA Dryden’s shuttle program support of testing shuttle insulating materials begun with F-104 and F-15 test bed aircraft early in the program.

Though the fatal piece of foam that broke off the bipod ramp area of STS-107’s external tank was significantly larger, small-scale foam loss called divoting, or “popcorning,” had occurred throughout the entire space shuttle program. Immediately after the loss of Columbia, all foam-shedding issues took front-and-center attention in the shuttle program’s return to flight effort.

Divoting, as with most forms of shuttle foam loss, occurred when the foam’s adhesive failed. This happened as a result of decreasing atmospheric pressure combined with increased heating during Shuttle ascents, causing air trapped in or beneath the insulating foam to expand.

The LIFT flight tests on NASA’s F-15B required two new capabilities: an in-flight foam divot ejection system and a high-speed video system to track and record the paths of the divots in flight. Both capabilities were developed rapidly by Dryden engineers in just over two months.

Dryden's LIFT team designed, built and ground-tested four different divot ejection systems, completing 70 ground tests to determine and refine the best approach to use.

In addition, NASA Dryden engineers designed a digital video synchronization system used in the tests that linked the high-speed cameras with the divot ejection system. They also developed video analysis techniques to help track the foam.

Two primary questions were to be answered by the LIFT tests: understanding whether the divots broke up once they came off the external tank, and secondly, whether they trimmed and began to fly, or if they tumbled instead. The difference between trimming (flying) or tumbling made a huge difference in the amount of kinetic energy that a foam divot could impart to the shuttle, as tumbling pieces exerted more energy than trimmed divots, posing a greater risk of damage.

Following the rapid LIFT system design phase, ground test and flight test hardware construction and validation, Dryden successfully flight-tested the LIFT system on the F-15B, providing the much-needed divot trajectory test data.

Analysis of the high-speed video data showed that of the 36 successful supersonic foam divot ejections, all of the divots trimmed. This data helped engineers at Johnson validate the models that they used for debris transport analysis.

NASA' s Space Shuttle Systems Engineering and Integration office at the Johnson Space Center in Houston, Texas, funded the LIFT flight tests.

For more information visit http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/shuttle/flyout/lift.html

Save your time and money by booking your ticket in online

2011-12-09T02:34:00.000-08:00

People who ready to go for journey will give most preference to travel in bus and nowadays, they also started booking a ticket through online and cyberspace for saving their time and money. Booking a ticket through online or cyberspace will take more than a few seconds. In this fast moving world, online booking is good technique which will be like by every passenger. Online bus tickets can be booked through the internet and you can do at any time of day. The website is open for maximum hours and you can be sure that you do when you have time.

Every deluxe bus services like BUS NY TO DC provides this online booking for passenger convenient. Most people prefer to travel in bus since it is really affordable. For booking ticket all you need is an internet connection and credit cards and you can also easily book your ticket from your home. Purchase your online ticket in advance and also makes sure that you get the best seat in the bus, to grab a comfortable seat in the bus and have a great time with your family.

All Systems Go For Next Communication Spacecraft

2011-12-05T23:10:00.000-08:00

The most recent evaluations of NASA’s Tracking and Data Relay Satellite (TDRS) project confirmed all systems go for a third generation upgrade of the orbiting communications network. TDRS-K is scheduled for launch aboard an Atlas V rocket from Cape Canaveral, Florida in the fall of 2012.

Approval to move forward came during a recent Agency Project Management Council (APMC) meeting at NASA Headquarters. "I am very proud of the entire TDRS civil servant and contractor team for successfully completing this milestone and demonstrating that the TDRS project is ready to proceed into the integration phase,” said Jeff Gramling, TDRS Project Manager. “I am excited to see the TDRS-K satellite enter the thermal vacuum chamber and begin environmental testing." Testing will occur within the Boeing Space Systems Facility in El Segundo, California.

APMC approval allows the project to enter Phase D that will include spacecraft integration and testing. During this phase the spacecraft reflectors will be mounted, the thermal panels and batteries will be installed before the spacecraft will have to endure the rigors of the vibration and acoustic testing. Finally, the spacecraft must pass a pre-ship review prior to being transported to Florida for launch.

Prior to the APMC approval, the project successfully completed a combined Pre-Environment Review (PER) and Systems Integration Review (SIR) in August of this year. The SIR is a significant milestone in the NASA mission lifecycle. During the upcoming environmental test phase, various segments and subsystems are scrutinized for their viability under the same harsh conditions they will endure within the vacuum of space.

"Successful completion of the environmental testing phase of the project will be the last step before we ship the TDRS-K spacecraft to the launch site," said Dave Littmann, TDRS Deputy Project Manager. "Through a rigorous testing program, we will ensure this satellite, once on-orbit, is capable of meeting its functional and performance requirements, to provide reliable services to the customers of NASA’s Space Network."

This next generation space communications satellite is part of a follow-on spacecraft fleet being developed and deployed to replenish NASA’s Space Network. The TDRS Project Office at Goddard Space Flight Center manages the TDRS development effort. TDRS is the responsibility of the Space Communications and Navigation (SCaN) office within the Human Exploration and Operations (HEO) Mission Directorate at NASA Headquarters in Washington D.C. Operations of the network is the responsibility of the Space Network Project at Goddard.

In December 2007, NASA signed a contract for Boeing Space Systems to build two, third generation TDRS spacecraft for launch in 2012 and 2013. Within the contract were the required modifications that will enable the White Sands Complex ground system to support the new spacecraft.

The launch of TDRS-K will begin the replenishment of the fleet through the development and deployment of the next generation spacecraft. These satellites will ensure NASA’s Space Network continues to provide around-the-clock, high throughput communications services to NASA’s missions and serving the scientific community and human spaceflight program for years to come.

For more information visit http://www.nasa.gov/topics/technology/features/tdrs-go.html

NASA Legends Awarded Congressional Gold Medal

2011-11-23T05:07:00.000-08:00

Leaders of Congress honored astronauts John Glenn, Neil Armstrong, Buzz Aldrin and Michael Collins with congressional gold medals in a ceremony in the Capitol Rotunda on Nov. 16, 2011. The Gold Medal, Congress' highest expression of national appreciation for distinguished achievements and contributions, was first given to George Washington in 1776.

Glenn was the first American to orbit the Earth, achieving the feat aboard Friendship 7 on Feb. 20, 1962. On July 20, 1969, Armstrong and Aldrin became the first humans to set foot on the Moon, while Collins piloted Apollo 11's command module.

"We stand on the shoulders of the extraordinary men we recognize today," said NASA Administrator Charles Bolden at the ceremony. "Those of us who have had the privilege to fly in space followed the trail they forged."

"When, 50 years ago this year, President Kennedy challenged the nation to reach the moon, to "take longer strides" toward a "great new American enterprise," these men were the human face of those words," said Bolden. "From Mercury and Gemini, on through our landings on the Moon in the Apollo Program, their actions unfolded the will of a nation for the greater achievement of humankind."

Administrator Bolden also noted that five members of the most recent Astronaut Candidate Class were in attendance, pointing out that the new generation "will redefine space exploration in the years to come and continue to honor the legacy of John Glenn, Neil Armstrong, Buzz Aldrin, and Michael Collins."

All four astronauts have also received the NASA Distinguished Service Medal and the Presidential Medal of Freedom, awarded with distinction, as well as NASA's own Ambassador of Exploration Award.

For more information visit http://www.nasa.gov/topics/people/features/gold_medal.html

Stories of Missions Past: Early Explorers

2011-11-22T03:56:00.000-08:00

NASA announced the short list for five potential new "Explorer class" spacecraft. These missions are by definition small and relatively inexpensive, designed to be led by a small team.

The Explorer class missions are numbered at 92 so far, with more constantly planned. Explorer class spacecraft recorded the signature left over from the big bang. They mapped out the complex geometry of Earth's magnetic environment. They found gamma rays coming from everywhere in the sky. They help warn scientists of incoming radiation from solar flares.

"The neat thing about the Explorers is that they're tailored to a specific problem," says Wilt Sanders the program scientist for the Explorer’s Program. "That's their strength. They're relatively inexpensive but they've come up with game changing results."

And it all began over five decades ago.

The First Explorer

It was January 31, 1958 and a Juno 1 rocket was almost ready to launch. It carried precious cargo -- a satellite called Explorer 1, that everyone hoped would be the first U.S. satellite in space. The mood among those at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station, Fla. was tense. Not only had the Soviets already successfully launched Sputnik into space, but three months earlier, a rocket attempting to launch a U.S. satellite had flown a mere four feet before tumbling back to the ground.

The familiar countdown began: "10 . . . 9 . . . 8 . . . " and at 10:48 p.m. EDT, the Juno shot up, climbed over 200 miles into the sky, and released Explorer 1 into space. It wasn't until some two hours later, when the satellite had made its first complete orbit of Earth and was in close enough range to send a signal that it was operational, that the observers rejoiced. The very first U.S. satellite was officially a success.

For many, the tale of Explorer 1 stops here, a triumph of human ingenuity in reaching space. But, truly, that's only the beginning of the story. "Explorer 1 was also a science mission," says Willis Jenkins, the program executive for NASA's Explorer program. "This wasn't just launched to get a satellite up in space, it was meant to bring science data back."

And it certainly did. Explorer 1 contained experiments that turned our understanding of space upside down. To this day, scientists try to understand the dynamic, seething environment encircling Earth – known as the Van Allen radiation belts – that Explorer 1 helped discover.

Space Science Begins . . .

Explorer 1 was also, of course, the first in a long line of scientific workhorses.

Some of the latest explorers have names that are well known in the scientific community: the Swift Gamma Ray Burst Explorer (Swift) and the Cosmic Background Explorer (COBE). (The last one brought home data that earned a Nobel Prize.) But the early Explorers were simply named with numbers, and it is these that are some of the unsung heroes of space exploration – making new discoveries that scientist today take for granted.

Explorer 1 and Explorer 3, for example, launched in January and March of 1958, respectively. They carried an instrument built by the University of Iowa scientist James Van Allen that could detect energetic particles in space. This instrument was quite simply a single Geiger counter attached to a miniature tape recorder. As the satellites climbed upwards, the rates of the particles usually increased but, periodically, they zeroed out completely. Van Allen and his team realized this was neither because the particles disappeared nor because the instruments failed, but because the radiation counts were so high that the sensors overloaded. From this, Van Allen deduced that a swath of intensely energetic particles was trapped in a circle around Earth. Ultimately two such belts were found, and they're now known as the Van Allen Radiation Belts.

Not all was easy on those early missions. Neither Explorer 2 nor Explorer 5 even made it into orbit, due to launch rocket failure. While such losses were devastating, the amount of time going into building these early, simpler satellites was nothing like the years it takes today. All five of the first Explorers were launched within the first six months of 1958.

By the time of Explorer 10 in 1961, the Explorer Program was now run by the newly founded NASA. They'd also earned the right to have names as well as numbers, albeit modest ones: Explorer 10 was also known as P 14. It gathered data for only 52 hours since its goal was merely to fly up out of Earth's magnetic environment and bring back information from interplanetary space on the other side. But the satellite saw a far more complicated magnetic system than expected.

"At that point the magnetosphere was thought to be a sphere conforming to the shape of Earth," says Frank McDonald who became a project scientist for the Explorer Program at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md. in 1961 and is now a professor emeritus at the University of Maryland. "We didn't know how complex a shape it was, or that there was a magnetotail flurrying out behind."

Explorer 10 discovered this "magnetotail" as it moved through the night side of Earth, facing away from the sun. The instruments detected an area devoid of the electrically charged solar wind steadily streaming off the sun, since it was deflected by Earth's own magnetic field. This "shadow", the magnetotail, extends some 800,000 miles long, well past the orbit of the moon.

As the Explorer program grew, the satellites were eventually divided into those that study the sun-Earth system, or heliophysics, and those that study astrophysics. But in the early days this was originally considered all part of general space science. However, that was beginning to change.

The next, Explorer 11 or S15, was used to search for cosmic gamma radiation, and indeed found that it came from all directions, giving birth to the field of gamma ray astronomy. The field has matured significantly over the decades and now studies such things as gamma ray bursts that originate from the distant universe, thought to be the signatures of black holes and certain supernovae.

Explorer 12 launched in August of 1961, just over 50 years ago, but it remains a historical highlight for many a contemporary studier of space. This satellite cemented into cannon much information we know about space today. It was the first to identify Earth's "magnetopause" – the boundary between Earth's magnetic environment and interplanetary space. It also improved our understanding of the Van Allen radiation belts and Earth's magnetosphere. Notably, it helped establish that the radiation belts were not so strong that they would prevent manned spaceflight.

"We published science papers on solar activity almost every few weeks based on Explorer 12," says emeritus astrophysicist Thomas Cline at Goddard, whose first job at NASA focused on Explorer 12. "We had constant mini-discoveries. As soon as you put an instrument in space that has never been used before, you invariably observe things you've never seen before."

From Explorer 12 onward, many of the early Explorers had highly elliptical orbits that shot the spacecraft well outside of Earth's magnetosphere, into interplanetary space. Scientists like Cline would use these spacecraft to expand their understanding of interplanetary space. Explorers looked at the universe in many wavelengths, brought back information about the particles in space, and mapped out the structure of the early universe.

On the heliophysics side, while those early missions simply identified the shape of Earth's magnetic environment, today's spacecraft try to spot currents in that magnetotail, to determine the shape of Earth's magnetic fields, and to see how large inputs of energy from the sun cause space weather storms that can affect Earth.

When funding is available ,NASA selects new Explorers – and while the time it takes to build an Explorer is several years compared to the several months it often took in the 1950s and 1960s – the price tag still remains low and the scientific output prodigious.

For more information visit http://www.nasa.gov/topics/history/features/explorer1.html

NASA Develops New Game-Changing Technology

2011-11-18T02:37:00.000-08:00

Two NASA California centers have been selected to develop new space-aged technologies that could be game-changers in the way we look at planets from above and how we safely transport robots or humans through space and bring them safely back to Earth.

NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif., will use advanced compound semiconductor materials to develop new technologies for the High Operating Temperature Infrared Sensor Demonstration. The higher the temperature at which an infrared detector can operate, the less power is required to cool it. Reduced power needs can translate into operational cost and system weight savings. If successful, this sensor technology could be used in many future NASA Earth and planetary science instruments, as well as for U.S. commercial and defense applications.

"The technology demonstration effort is different in the fact that we're focused on affordability concurrently with performance," said Sarath Gunapala of JPL, who is project manager for the High Operating Temperature Infrared Sensor Demonstration. "This technology has excellent potential for transitioning from laboratory demonstration to NASA and commercial product lines."

The overall goal for this technology development effort is to achieve 100 percent cost savings as compared with traditional cryogenically cooled infrared sensors. The weight and volume savings allow for more compact instruments -- an important consideration for a spacecraft's payload size and cost. This state-of-the-art technology also will have spinoff applications for commercial instrument manufacturers.

Seeking to radically change the way heat shields protect spacecraft during atmospheric entry, NASA's Ames Research Center at Moffett Field, Calif., is developing the Woven Thermal Protection System. The project is a revolutionary approach to thermal protection system design and manufacturing for extreme environments. Ames is the lead center for the project, partnering with NASA's Langley Research Center in Hampton, Va.

Partnering with the U.S. textile industry, NASA is employing an advanced, three-dimensional weaving approach in the design and manufacture of thermal protection systems. Today, lightweight aircraft parts are being manufactured using similar weaving technologies. This will be expanded to include spacecraft heatshield applications. The system will enhance performance using advanced design tools with cost savings from a shortened product development and testing cycle.

"Woven TPS has the potential to significantly impact future NASA missions by changing heat shield development from a challenge to be overcome into a mission-enabling component,” said NASA Langley's Ethiraj Venkatapathy, principal investigator of the project. "By delivering improved heat shield performance and affordability, this technology will impact all future exploration missions, from the robotic science missions to Mars, Venus and Saturn to the next generation of human missions."

NASA’s Game-Changing Technology Division focuses on maturing advanced space technologies that may lead to entirely new approaches for the agency's future space missions while finding solutions to significant national needs. NASA Langley oversees project management of the Game Changing Technology programs.

For more information visit http://www.nasa.gov/topics/technology/features/tech20111117.html

Idressonline conducting Thanksgiving Sale with special offers

2011-11-18T01:11:00.000-08:00

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NASA-Sponsored Robotics Teams Gear Up for 2012

2011-11-11T01:35:00.000-08:00

The CalGames robot contests have begun! NASA Ames Research Center, Moffett Field, Calif. is supporting two competitive high school robotics teams: Space Cookies Team 1868, and Cheesy Poofs Teams 252 and 254. All three teams recently won top ranking positions in the CalGames Western Region Robotics Forum (WRRF) at Archbishop Mitty High School, San Jose, Calif.

Each year, FIRST, or For Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology, challenges high school students to design, build, test and compete robots that can outperform their opponents. To help students compete, regional competitions are held to hone their skills for the national FIRST Robotics Competition (FRC) that starts this year in January. In addition, NASA engineers and scientists are encouraged to share their expertise and experiences by mentoring teams in an engineering laboratory with machinery and tools at NASA Ames.

“We couldn’t be more proud of our teams and their commitment to ‘rise to the challenge’ and produce outstanding software and technology, building and operating robots each year,” said Mark Leon, manager of NASA Robotics Alliance Project at NASA Ames.

No matter which is the favorite robot at these competitions, the stands generally are filled full of cheering fans watching 120-pound robots swivel, scoop and travel speeds up to nearly 20 feet per second to score a point. The outcome of the multiple two- minute-15-second matches is dependent upon both robot and human performances. The first 15 seconds of the match are called the autonomous period, and robots perform independently, according to team-written software programs. The final two minutes are all about human performance with a driver, operator and human player. The driver maneuvers the robot right, left, forward and backwards; the operator moves the single-arm extension and hand-tool; and the human player interacts with the robot on the field, feeding it the ball, or throwing the ball on the field, etc. All players must coordinate and understand each others’ moves to score points.

This year at the WRRF, NASA Ames “house teams,” the Cheesy Poofs, which entered two robots 252 and 254, and Space Cookies’ 1868 robot, won first, second and third place, respectively. The Cheesy Poofs, which has 137 members, entered a prototype robot 252, named Slipstream, and a developmental robot 254, called Slipstream Too. Space Cookies, sponsored also by the Girl Scouts of Northern Calif., has 40 members and entered robot 1868, dubbed Mazarine, after the butterfly; the girls thought the robot’s arm, going up and down, was like a blue butterfly opening and closing its wings. Space Cookies is the only all-girl team in the competitions.

“Regional competitions are fun events that help teams gear up for the new season that starts in January,” said Ann Wettersten, the adult leader of the Space Cookies Team 1868. “Even though there is no cash award or scholarship, winning a CalGames competition is an honor.”

The Cheesy Poofs Team 254 was founded in 1998, when NASA engineers Bob Holmes and Steve Kyramarios joined Jason Morella, then an English teacher at Broadway High School, San Jose, Calif. to form a team that would excite high school students about robotics. In 2000, the program was given a new home at Bellarmine College Preparatory, also in San Jose, Calif. Last year, the Cheesy Poofs won the FIRST World Championship, outcompeting more than 300 of the top FIRST teams in the world. In addition to winning the championship, they were awarded the Industrial Design Award, which recognizes form and function in an efficiently designed machine that effectively achieves the game challenge.

“We credit the win to the endless hours of hard work and dedication put in by our students, coupled with the many helpful and generous mentors who donate their time to helping our team. Without them, none of this would be possible,” said Nagy Hakim, the president of Cheesy Poofs Team 254.

Space Cookies also was a top contender for their robot’s performance, but this wasn’t always true for them. The team was formed in 2005, and started competing in 2006 with only 12 girls. Although few in number, they won the Silicon Valley Regional Rookie All-Stars championship and the Championship’s Judge’s Award. Each year, the team continued to grow in membership, improve performance and receive greater recognition.

Today, the team has almost quadrupled in size, and has members from 12 high schools in the San Francisco Bay Area. As team members, girls are given the opportunity to learn engineering design and fabrication; how to drive, scout, and work in the robot pits; and how to write a business plan, grant requests, and market a product.

“Any high school girl in the Bay Area is welcome to join the team. No experience is needed; we train as we go,” said Wettersten.

During the WRRF competition, the Cheesy Poofs won all of their matches, while the Space Cookies maintained and drove their robot to victory in seven out of eight matches. After each match, team members are expected to cart their 120-pound robots to the pits for a quick diagnosis, repair as needed, and then head to the next match. Space Cookies was able to quickly transport the robot to the team’s pit for fast repairs.

To be a winning contender, each team relies heavily on its pit crew of about ten members. Once a match is completed, a pit stop is made for robot repairs; crew members are expected to quickly and efficiently swap out the battery, grease the chains, check the connectors, fix the arm, and make other mechanical adjustments. If needed, they even test the electronics for failure.

“”Deep blue learning occurs in the pits,” said Leon. “Crew members have to perform fast and efficiently to first diagnose the problem, and then fix it.”

NASA plays a significant role in the robotics programs. Teams can be NASA mentored by one of the 12 NASA centers (category one), NASA sponsored (category two), or NASA supported, which gives teams access to NASA laboratories, machinery and tools.

Through the NASA Robotics Alliance Project, the agency provides grants to 297 teams and sponsors four regional student competitions, including a new FIRST regional competition in the South Florida Regional in Boca Raton, Florida. In addition, NASA sponsors FIRST Lego League (FLL) tournaments and helps coach the teams.

On Nov. 12, 2011, the fall FLL tournament will be sponsored by and held at NASA Ames. Teams need mentors in animation, mechanical, electrical and software development.

For more information visit http://www.nasa.gov/topics/technology/features/FIRST_2012.html

NASA Study of Clays Suggests Watery Mars Underground

2011-11-08T01:08:00.000-08:00

A new NASA study suggests if life ever existed on Mars, the longest lasting habitats were most likely below the Red Planet's surface.

A new interpretation of years of mineral-mapping data, from more than 350 sites on Mars examined by European and NASA orbiters, suggests Martian environments with abundant liquid water on the surface existed only during short episodes. These episodes occurred toward the end of a period of hundreds of millions of years during which warm water interacted with subsurface rocks. This has implications about whether life existed on Mars and how the Martian atmosphere has changed.

"The types of clay minerals that formed in the shallow subsurface are all over Mars," said John Mustard, professor at Brown University in Providence, R.I. Mustard is a co-author of the study in the journal Nature. "The types that formed on the surface are found at very limited locations and are quite rare."

Discovery of clay minerals on Mars in 2005 indicated the planet once hosted warm, wet conditions. If those conditions existed on the surface for a long era, the planet would have needed a much thicker atmosphere than it has now to keep the water from evaporating or freezing. Researchers have sought evidence of processes that could cause a thick atmosphere to be lost over time.

This new study supports an alternative hypothesis that persistent warm water was confined to the subsurface and many erosional features were carved during brief periods when liquid water was stable at the surface.

"If surface habitats were short-term, that doesn't mean we should be glum about prospects for life on Mars, but it says something about what type of environment we might want to look in," said the report's lead author, Bethany Ehlmann, assistant professor at the California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, and scientist at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, also in Pasadena. "The most stable Mars habitats over long durations appear to have been in the subsurface. On Earth, underground geothermal environments have active ecosystems."

The discovery of clay minerals by the OMEGA spectrometer on the European Space Agency's Mars Express orbiter added to earlier evidence of liquid Martian water. Clays form from the interaction of water with rock. Different types of clay minerals result from different types of wet conditions.

During the past five years, researchers used OMEGA and NASA's Compact Reconnaissance Imaging Spectrometer, or CRISM, instrument on the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter to identify clay minerals at thousands of locations on Mars. Clay minerals that form where the ratio of water interacting with rock is small generally retain the same chemical elements as those found in the original volcanic rocks later altered by the water.

The study interprets this to be the case for most terrains on Mars with iron and magnesium clays. In contrast, surface environments with higher ratios of water to rock can alter rocks further. Soluble elements are carried off by water, and different aluminum-rich clays form.

Another clue is detection of a mineral called prehnite. It forms at temperatures above about 400 degrees Fahrenheit (about 200 degrees Celsius). These temperatures are typical of underground hydrothermal environments rather than surface waters.

"Our interpretation is a shift from thinking that the warm, wet environment was mostly at the surface to thinking it was mostly in the subsurface, with limited exceptions," said Scott Murchie of Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory in Laurel, Md., a co-author of the report and principal investigator for CRISM.

One of the exceptions may be Gale Crater, the site targeted by NASA's Mars Science Laboratory mission. Launching this year, the mission’s Curiosity rover will land and investigate layers that contain clay and sulfate minerals.

NASA's Mars Atmosphere and Volatile Evolution Mission, or MAVEN, in development for a 2013 launch, may provide evidence for or against this new interpretation of the Red Planet's environmental history. The report predicts MAVEN findings consistent with the atmosphere not having been thick enough to provide warm, wet surface conditions for a prolonged period.

For more information visit http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/MRO/news/mro20111102.html

Which Way Does the Wind Blow? Let's Find Out!

2011-11-07T03:22:00.000-08:00

On a bluff overlooking the Atlantic, Grady Koch spent a month watching ocean winds.

He beamed a laser over the sea, day after day, measuring conditions offshore using an instrument called Doppler Aerosol Wind (DAWN) lidar.

What Koch learns from the experiment will be used by scientists to advance weather forecasting technology -- and also by a consortium hoping to develop a wind farm in the very spot where the wind data is being taken.

"It's been going well," said Koch, a scientist at NASA's Langley Research Center in Hampton, Va.

"It works. We're showing that we can measure wind at different heights. One issue we've been working is, how far can we see? We've been able to see pretty well out to 12 kilometers (7.5 miles)."

The wind farm is proposed by the Virginia Coastal Energy Research Consortium, a partnership of universities, state and local governments, and industry. The Virginia legislature formed the consortium in 2007 to develop coastal energy technologies.

Alternative Energy

A wind farm would provide Virginia with about 10 percent of its power demand, said George Hagerman, a scientist at Virginia Tech, a consortium partner.

"We're at a point now where offshore wind is not just an academic exercise," he said. I don't think it's a question of 'if.' It's a question of when."

The consortium, Hagerman said, is working with private and government agencies to ensure the potential wind farm is placed in an area where it does not interfere with shipping routes or military exercises, which are common in the waters off Virginia Beach.

The location under study is about 15 miles off the Atlantic coast in Virginia Beach, Va. and covers about 240 square miles. Companies wishing to place wind-powered energy generators in the area would have to sign leases with the federal government, which controls the waters, Hagerman said.

A huge requirement for persuading industry to invest is providing them with reliable data about wind speed and direction.

That's where NASA Langley comes in.

The DAWN laser used by Grady Koch is extremely powerful, and capable of compiling three-dimensional wind profiles. "It's much stronger than anything you can buy on the commercial market," Koch said.

DAWN is the product of three decades of development for use in weather forecasting.

Ultimate Goal

Last year, for example, DAWN was part of a research campaign called the Genesis and Rapid Intensification Process (GRIP) mission. The campaign was conducted to better understand how tropical storms form and develop into hurricanes.

The laser function of DAWN measures wind speed and direction by tracking dust and other particles blowing in the wind. The particles, in a sense, illuminate the wind.

For the current project, DAWN was fitted to a large trailer and towed from Langley to the experiment site. It's a stone's throw from the ocean at the Joint Expeditionary Base Little Creek-Fort Story, an Army/Navy installation at Cape Henry, where the Atlantic meets the Chesapeake Bay.

For NASA, the experiment will add much-needed marine wind data to an existing 30-year dataset about wind. That information will be used to improve the capabilities of instruments like DAWN.

The hope is to provide new data for meteorologists so they can make better forecasts about hurricane intensity, track, and landfall. Eventually, scientists hope, a DAWN-like instrument will be launched into space to provide continuous global coverage.

Said Koch of the wind-profiling project: "We're proving a concept."

For more information visit http://www.nasa.gov/topics/earth/features/dawn-lidar.html

Know about Foam and Foam Board Insulation

2011-11-01T01:12:00.000-07:00

A variety of materials like glass, foam, cellulose, aluminum foil etc are used for Attic insulation purposes. But one of the more favored insulation materials is foam. Despite the fact that foam insulation products are costlier than other types of insulating materials, it is widely used.

Higher price may however be deemed justifiable as R-values of the foam insulations range from R-4 to R-8 per inch of thickness. This is roughly three times more than most other insulating materials of similar thickness. It is also seen that if properly installed, foam insulation is a lot more effective than the rest.

When it comes to foam insulation there can be three options - molded expanded Polystyrene (MEPS)/ extruded expanded Polystyrene (XEPS) or Polyurethane or Polyisocyanurate. Any of these should provide you with very effective insulation. Foam insulation can be done as a liquid or using factory made foam boards.

Liquid foam insulation is done either by applying from small spray containers as a liquid or by means of a pressure sprayed product for heavy duty applications. Both types expand and solidify as the chemical mixture cures. Both spray foam and foam boards are equally versatile and can be used to insulate roofs, walls, foundations, entry and overhead garage doors, pipes and tanks, under basement slabs, or over a slab-on-grade floor.

Be it any type of foam insulation, you must take care to protect it from direct sunlight as the sun's ultraviolet rays have the potential to damage them. For roofs, it’s preferable to apply a coating of tar/ acrylic/ silicone/ rubberized paint. Or else, you can also cover the foam with a rubber or plastic membrane or a layer of asphalt and roofing felt.

Foam board insulation is very effective in preventing the oppressive summer heat from penetrating into your home. It also would help you conserve energy and save on your utility bills. Foam board insulation is a rigid foam sheet, usually four by eight feet (1.2 by 2.4 m) in size, used in nearly all aspects of building construction to provide thermal resistance in floors, ceilings and walls.

Polyurethane and Polyisocyanurate foam board are very similar in content. Foam board insulation is usually placed between the exterior finish and the studs of exterior walls. To prevent air infiltration, it is necessary to place rigid insulation boards tightly together and seal the seams with tape or caulk. Polystyrene foam board insulation is done in much the same way as Polyurethane and Polyisocyanurate foam boards, except for the differences in expansion.

Please bear in mind that foam board insulation is susceptible to deterioration through exposure to sun. Though foam insulation offers no food value to insects, still insects can bore holes into it. Therefore it will be necessary for you to take appropriate precautionary measures to protect your insulation from sun and insect damage.

Foam insulation is not easily combustible but if ignited, it burns and emits dense, black, smoke containing pernicious toxic gases. Because of these inherent perils, foams used for construction will require a covering as a fire barrier.

A lot of precaution is necessary to install foam insulation. You may have to use a mask helmet and gloves. It is even advisable to cover your whole body as foam is hyper allergen and it could lead to dermatological problems. It is wiser that you hire an experienced professional to do the job as the health risk is quite high.

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Spain Vacations-San Fermin Festival:Battle of the Bulls

2011-10-25T01:59:00.000-07:00

Enough cheering for Chicago bulls is it not time to witness the real wild bulls. When are we all going to get some live fiery action with our souls involved in it? Come on people am not talking about playing for the bulls but playing with the bulls. Now is the time to decide for it, how many of you know about the San Fermin Festival?. This amazing festival takes place in Spain and it has a lot of events in it and one of them is the wild Bull Run.
This event takes place during July 7th to July 14^th and all of us must try to visit Spain during this time and try our hand at this sport. It will give you a lot of thrills, fears, surprises, excitement and enjoyment all at once.So make it to Spain during this festival and enjoy the wild bull chase err I meant run. So book some Spain apartment or villas and enjoy your vacation. Check out some of the world’s most luxurious vacation rentals.

Solar power vents attics benefits

2011-10-16T23:44:00.000-07:00

Solar powered attic vents can be used to control heat and moisture. Today there are alternatives to roof louvers that are smart and effective. The solar varieties work of the principle of solar energy. These collect the energy from the rays of the sun during your day when your attic is at its warmest. Using this energy, it generates electricity. This electricity is used to operate an extremely high energy efficient motor that is placed inside the power vent. So what does this mean to you? You are generating free electricity and getting free power! You are not only reducing the total usage of electricity in your house but you are also using a source of energy that is renewable and works without leaving waste.

There are many types. The roof mounted is one of them. This has a durable high quality two piece construction. This utilizes a solar panel that will collect the rays from the sun and convert it into electricity. This unit will be used to operate a 24 volt DC motor that is housed in the inside of the power vent. These units are rust resistant and a have a steel dome that is galvanized. These are pretty low profile too. The solar panels are usually located in a separated location from the dome or the roof. There is no separate electrical outlet or installation that is required. Also this will work from sunrise to sunset without costing you any money.

The next type is the gable mounted type. This type is used in conjunction with the solar gable attic fans. The best part about these solar vents & spray foam insulation is that the installation of them is really simple. There is no electrical hookup required. This will save you all the trouble from finding a low priced electrician because there are no complicated wirings that you would have to deal with. All that you need to do is secure the solar panel and the fan. After they are secure, all that is required is the connection of a simple plug from one to another. These systems can be conveniently mounted on your home’s gable and hidden behind a decorative shutter. Also the solar panel will come with brackets. You can use these brackets to mount it on the roof easily.    The solar panels will absorb the incoming rays of the sun and convert it into electricity.

The main advantage of using solar vents is that you can save tons on the electricity that you would otherwise use on cooling or heating your home. You are not only conserving energy but also you are making use of a renewable source of energy that does not leave any waste behind. Also these will help to prevent moisture damage to your attic. Normally moisture would enter your attic through daily activities like laundry cooking or bathing. This moisture would get into your attic and cause damage. Using such a setup would prevent such damage by preventing them moisture to accumulate in the first place.
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spray foam insulation visit http://www.aaffordableinsulators.com/spray-foam.php

Teams Successfully Fly Over First Round of Competition Hurdles

2011-10-14T01:51:00.000-07:00

The Green Flight Challenge sponsored by Google has taken off! The competition in Santa Rosa, Calif., is challenging, pushing the envelope in aviation technology. As a result, only three of the 13 original registered teams remain in the competition for the NASA funded prize purse of $1.65 million. They are PhoEnix, Pipistrel-USA and e-Genius.

Yesterday was check in day for the teams and aircraft. Team Fueling notified CAFE that they were withdrawing from the competition due to mechanical problems. Emory Riddle Aeronautical University is flying demonstration flights as a noncompetitor.

Monday morning, as the early morning fog lifted, beautiful blue skies were revealed and the first round of competition took off.

A team briefing was held at 11:00 a.m. EDT to go over the plan for the days events which included completion of vehicle inspections, weight measurements, and takeoff noise and distance tests.

The noise and takeoff distance tests got underway shortly after 6:00 p.m. EDT. CAFE allowed media to go out near the runway and take video and photos as the planes took off and cleared the 50-foot height requirement and noise measurement. All were required to meet a noise level no greater than 78 dBA at full power takeoff, which was measured 250 feet sideways to take off distance. Takeoff distance was set for 2,000 feet from brake release to clear a 50-foot obstacle.

PhoEnix was first up, Pipistrel-USA was next, followed by e-Genius, and then ERAU. All were successful on their first attempts. The e-Genius team was offered and accepted a chance to do a second run due to unexpected background noise from another incoming aircraft across the field. They were again successful. All the planes were impressively quiet!

That concluded the first day of Green Flight Challenge competition, and the aircraft returned to the CAFE hanger campus to recharge their batteries for today's flight, which will cover about 200 miles. The weather is beautiful -- a perfect day for flight competition!

For More information visit http://www.nasa.gov/topics/technology/centennial/gfc_first_day.html

Save electricity bills by using radiant barriers

2011-10-12T23:19:00.001-07:00

Householders own multitude of choices for enhancement that may bump up the value of their home even as improving its comfort.

Are you a home owner and thinking to improve your house completely either by repainting a room or have you thought about projects which could add aesthetic value?

Reduce your house’s heat with the help of radiant barrier as it is easy to use, safe to handle and effectual at plummeting heat loss and it can also turn back the extreme rays of the sun during the summer time and keeping the house cooler too.

Radiant barrier is a comparatively latest item for consumption that consumers are gradually becoming aware of. It has a reflective opus placed in your attic that reflects heat before it enters your home. Just by applying a coat of paint under the decking surface heat could be transferred and it also seals up the cracks and crevices in the wall.

Radiant barriers are materials installed in buildings to condense summer heat gain and winter heat loss, also to cut building heating and cooling energy usage.

The main advantage of attic radiant barrier is that it helps in reducing air-conditioning cooling in warm or hot climates. Radiant barriers generally consist of a slight sheet or veneer of an extremely reflective material, typically aluminum applied to one or double sides of a number of substrate supplies. These substrates consist of Kraft paper, plastic films, cardboard, plywood sheathing, and air infiltration barrier material.

It is expected that a radiant barrier have the potential to slab 97% of the radiant heat immersed through a roof's surface; this can result in a 30-degree cutback in attic or creep space temperature.

Spray foam insulation: It is a general and an essential thing that we insulate our homes to condense speed of heat loss. The insulation is carried by using spray foam in the opening, chink and the crevice such that there is no amend of heat linking the walls of the house and the environment.

Some of the Benefits of Spray Foam Insulation Include:

Reduction in sound diffusion, better environment, Keep Pests Outdoors, reduction in noise levels, Reduction in moisture and the development of Mold, apart from this it also has certain benefits like generating improved environment by plummeting dust, dirt, and pollen, Saving Energy structuring effectiveness & a Green Environment, produces air tight thermal seal, stops air and dampness penetration, Makes your home more comfortable, trim down capacity requirements, maintenance and wear of HVAC equipment.

Attic ventilation keeps the loft cooler in the summer and dry in the winter. Attic ventilation keeps the loft cooler in the summer and dry in the winter. Good exposure to air boosts the act of your insulation, expands the life of your HVAC unit and saves you even more money on energy bills.

Benefits of attic ventilation: it extends the life of your roof, cut downs the load on your HVAC system, stops ice damming in colder regions, and diminishes moisture build-up in the loft.

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A Read up About Attic insulation

2011-10-10T23:30:00.001-07:00

When we are considering attic insulation, there are several factors that we should keep in mind. There are two main types of blow in attic insulation. These two are most commonly used. They are cellulose and fiberglass insulation. Also there is the blow in rock wool insulation but the use of it is not so common.

Cellulose, which is most commonly used, is a natural product of wood. It is primarily made out of natural newspaper. To meet the smoke development and flame spread requirements of today’s building codes; a fire retardant chemical is added to the cellulose. The fiberglass insulation material that is used is the same material that batts or roles of the fiberglass insulation except for the fact that it is chopped or cubed so that it can be easily installed with the help of the insulating blowing machine. The fiber glass insulation will typically consist of 20% to 30% of recycled glass.

The r value of the cellulose that is used is R-3.2 to 3.8 per square inch. The loose filled fiberglass will have an R-value of R-2.2 to 2.7 per inch cube. To achieve the desired R value, you will have to depend on both the depth of the insulation as well as the density.

There are varying R values for ceiling insulation based upon the energy codes as well the climate of your locality. Based on the type of attic that you have, the code requirements may also vary. For example for joist assembled roof assemblies as well as for attics with single rafter may vary. There is a typically a chart on the insulation bag that will have the accurate depths for the various R values.

There are depth markers that are required to be placed in attic space which the WSEC requires to help the inspector and the installer verify the depth of the insulation. These depth markers should be placed within every three hundred square feet of the attic area and these must face towards the attic.

The depth of the insulation is very important; however, checking the density of the insulation is also equally important. The blow in insulation type can be fluffed up after it is installed. This is done so that it meets the required depth without actually meeting the required R value. This will settle over time so that the desired R value is achieved as the R value is lowered after it settles down.

The attic card is the easiest way to document the amount of R value installation. These are usually found stapled near the attic access to the truss. This card will also have information that is cited by the federal trade commission. Sometimes a chart is also attached with this.

Source: If you’re Still Unclear about Attic Insulation Visit Our Website www.aaffordableinsulators.com

NASA is Painting the Skies Green Over Santa Rosa

2011-10-07T23:37:00.000-07:00

NASA and Centennial Challenge partner organization, the Comparative Aircraft Flight Efficiency, or CAFE, Foundation of Santa Rosa, Calif., are encouraging aerospace enthusiasts to attend the Green Flight Centennial Challenge, set to be held at the Sonoma County Airport in Santa Rosa from Sept. 25 to Oct. 1.

Teams from across the United States will test electric, biofueled and hybrid-powered aircraft, vying to be the most fuel-efficient small aircraft in the world. They're competing for a competition purse of $1.65 million -- the largest aviation prize ever offered.

Competitors will tackle a fuel efficiency competition Sept. 27 and a speed competition Sept. 29. To win the fuel competition, an aircraft must fly 200 miles in less than two hours, using less than one gallon of fuel per occupant, or an equivalent amount of electricity. If more than one aircraft meets that criteria, the competitor whose aircraft delivers the best combination of speed and efficiency will take home the prize, according to the competition guidelines.

The Green Flight Challenge's winning aircraft must exceed a fuel efficiency equivalent to 200 passenger miles per gallon (pax mpge). In comparison, typical general aviation aircraft have fuel efficiencies in the range of 5-50 pax mpge. Large passenger aircraft are in the 50-100 pax mpge range.

The winning aircraft also must achieve an average speed of at least 100 mph over a 200-mile race circuit; take off from a distance of less than 2,000 feet to clear a 50-foot obstacle; and deliver a decibel level below 78 dBA at full power takeoff, as measured from a 250-foot sideline.

The Green Flight Challenge also marks the first time in history that full-scale, electric-powered aircraft will fly in competition. This competition will include the first four-seat, electric aircraft ever to fly, as well as the largest battery pack ever developed for a flight vehicle.

Thirteen teams led by America innovators initially took on the challenge. Five successfully completed aircraft and flight qualification requirements and remain in competition for the prize purse.

Ten of the competing aircraft, including many of those still in competition, will be on display Saturday, Oct. 1, at Sonoma County Airport from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. PDT. The public is invited to visit the competition area during the week of Sept. 26 - Oct. 1 between 10 a.m. to 4 p.m.

The focus of the Green Flight Centennial Challenge is to advance technologies in fuel efficiency and reduced emissions with cleaner renewable fuels and electric aircraft. Such technologies and innovations include, but are not limited to, bio-fueled propulsion; breakthroughs in batteries, motors, solar cells, fuel cells and ultra-capacitors that enable electric-powered flight; advanced high lift technologies for very short takeoff and landing distances; ultra-quiet propellers; enhanced structural efficiency built on advances in materials science and nanotechnology; and safety features such as vehicle parachutes and air bags.

The Green Flight Challenge is one of five current NASA Centennial Challenge technology prize competitions. The program, which began in 2005, is named in recognition of the first centennial anniversary of powered flight, and honored the legacy of the Wright Brothers and other American innovators. In the spirit of their endeavors, the Centennial Challenge prizes are offered to independent inventors who work without government support, including small businesses, student groups and individuals.

The prize competitions are targeted at a range of technical challenges that support NASA's missions in aeronautics and space. The goal is to encourage novel solutions from non-traditional sources. In the Centennial Challenge program, NASA provides the prize money and each of the competitions is managed by an independent organization.

For more information visit http://www.nasa.gov/topics/technology/centennial/green_skies.html

Solar Activity Subsiding - Auroras Ablaze

2011-09-23T01:22:00.000-07:00

Solar activity is subsiding after last week's flurry of strong flares from sunspot 1283. The sunspot remains capable of M-class eruptions, but Earth would be unaffected by further blasts as the sunspot rotates over the sun's western limb.

A coronal mass ejection (CME) struck Earth's magnetic field on Sept. 9, sparking more than 18 hours of bright auroras around the Arctic Circle. In the United States, Northern Lights were spotted as far south as Michigan, Washington, Wisconsin, Vermont, Montana, Maine, Minnesota and North and South Dakota. A similar display could be in the offing on Sept. 12-13 when another CME from sunspot 1283 is expected to sail past Earth.

For more information visit http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/sunearth/news/News091211-aurora.html

Spray Foam Insulation – A Basic Guide to Do It Yourself

2011-09-22T04:18:00.000-07:00

One of the most popular types of insulation is Spray Foam insulation; it’s preferred by all and is effective too. So to insulate your home by this method (spray foam insulation) you would usually call a contractor in the insulation business and schedule an appointment to do this work.

Considerably one can call this a good option, but there is also another way to do it for the people who love to do things themselves, it’s the do it yourself thing. The salesman and shops are trying to make every possible thing available at your doorstep. You can easily get a spray foam kit by yourself which will likely have the instructions on how you need to go about it.

The spray foam kits are also available on various online stores so literally you are a click away from getting your own spray foam kit. So getting a Spray foam kit won’t be an issue, so let’s get on to the next step. Once you get the spray kit, you got to be the man who completes the task, just imagine yourself to be the man who wears the suit and sprays the foam all over your place. It’s necessary that you initially get prepared mentally to do this job, as you do not want to stop halfway through leaving your home in a mess. So back yourself to be the man to do this job successfully.

Now, you have got mentally prepared the next thing you must be trying to know is what action you are going to perform. Read the guidelines more than once, just take through your mind step by step, imagine yourself doing the work. The next thing to do will be to open up the kit, view the components and see where you got to use which and how according to the instructions.

Now get into the act, try to think of possible hazards that would occur like one maybe if the foam enters the switch board there can be some kind of short circuit and could cause fire. So cover up your electrical devices and stuff you consider to be a little dangerous, there is no use crying over spilt milk so it is better to be cautious.

Now we are talking about caution so the next thing that should come to our minds will be the protective gear, many spray foam kits come with a suit, gloves and glasses. Its better that you try them out and if you feel comfortable with it then you go on with it or else do get yourself a protective gear you feel highly comfortable in. The first reason is that you may need to work for a long duration so it’s essential you are comfortable in your attire and the last thing you would want is ending up the day trying to clean the foam all over you.

You have got ready now; view your home, select the patches in wall or the places in your home you want to get insulated. Once you decide, get yourself a feel of the gun and the spray foam. Once you get the knick of it go on with it and ensure you fill all the gaps by spraying the right amount of foam in the right angle.

Spray foam insulation is not something that an ordinary man cannot learn; it’s just an insulation method which can be done if one wishes to learn.

NASA Global Hawks Prepare for 2012 Hurricane Study

2011-09-19T01:49:00.000-07:00

A group of environmental scientists has set up an office in an aircraft hangar at NASA's Dryden Flight Research Center at Edwards, Calif., in preparation for a multi-year airborne science investigation of hurricane formation and intensification.

As they work on their computers, the scientists are also monitoring the installation and testing of specialized weather-monitoring instruments on one of NASA's Global Hawk remotely operated unmanned aircraft. This hands-on approach to research is part of a critical buildup to a hurricane study sponsored by NASA's Earth Venture Program that begins collecting data next summer.

NASA's Hurricane and Severe Storm Sentinel, or HS3, investigation is a multi-year study of the processes that underlie hurricane formation and intensity change in the Atlantic Ocean.

"The high-altitude and long-duration capabilities of NASA's Global Hawks allow HS3 to sample storms virtually anywhere in the Atlantic and for durations up to three times that of conventional aircraft," said principal investigator Scott Braun of NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md. "Being able to stay over a storm for 15 or more hours allows us to observe storms in ways that were simply not possible before."

HS3 conducted two checkout flights of one of NASA's Global Hawks, one of 24 hours duration Sept. 8 - 9 over the Pacific Ocean and the second of about 19.5 hours on Sept. 13 – 14 over the Gulf of Mexico. Data were gathered by three scientific instruments that will be used during the mission.

The payload included NOAA's Airborne Vertical Atmospheric Profiling System (the NOAA dropsonde) in the tail of the Global Hawk. Dropsondes are small devices designed to be dropped from an aircraft to collect atmospheric data as they fall to the ground or the ocean surface. This system was designed by the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, Colo.

In addition, the University of Wisconsin-Madison's Scanning High-Resolution Interferometer Sounder, or S-HIS, was mounted in the Global Hawk’s belly. The sensor measures emitted thermal radiation to obtain temperature and water vapor profiles of the atmosphere.

The third instrument was the High Altitude MMIC Sounding Radiometer, or HAMSR, developed by NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif. HAMSR provides measurements that can be used to infer the 3-D distribution of temperature, water vapor and cloud-liquid water in the atmosphere, even in the presence of clouds. Like S-HIS and the dropsondes, it provides information on the vertical profile of temperature and humidity.

The goal of the Pacific flight was to compare the temperature and humidity profiles from the S-HIS and HAMSR remote sensors with in situ measurements provided by the dropsondes. Given the uncertainty associated with measuring these quantities from a distance using infrared and microwave technologies, data from the two instruments will be compared to the accurate and much higher resolution data from the dropsondes.

During the 19.5-hour flight to the Gulf of Mexico, the Global Hawk rendezvoused with a NOAA Gulfstream IV. Both aircraft were equipped with dropsonde systems and this flight provided comparison data between them.

These checkout flights were flown to prepare for the deployment of two Global Hawks to NASA's Wallops Flight Facility in Wallops Island, Va., during the summer of 2012. NASA first used the Global Hawk for hurricane research in 2010 during the Genesis and Rapid Intensification Processes, or GRIP, experiment, but those flights operated from Dryden because the Global Hawk mobile operations facility had not yet been built. This meant that the aircraft had to traverse the southern United States to reach the Atlantic Ocean.

"For HS3, we will operate from Wallops because it gives us direct access to the Atlantic and increases our time near or over storms by up to 10 hours," added Braun.

The Global Hawk will carry sensors to collect data that address the controversial role of the Saharan Air Layer in tropical storm formation and intensification as well as the role of deep thunderstorms in the core region of tropical storms. The aircraft will deploy for about one month each summer in 2012, 2013 and 2014.

NASA’s Earth Science Project Office, located at Ames Research Center on Moffett Field, Calif., manages the Hurricane and Severe Storm Sentinel (HS3) project. The office is responsible for the project’s safety, technical integrity, performance and mission success.

The HS3 study is one of NASA's Earth Venture missions, part of NASA's Earth System Science Pathfinder program funded by the Earth Science Division of the agency's Science Mission Directorate in Washington. The small, targeted science investigations complement NASA's larger research missions. In 2007, the National Research Council recommended that NASA undertake these types of regularly solicited, quick-turnaround projects.

For more information visit http://www.nasa.gov/topics/earth/features/HS-3_2012.html

NASA Satellite Rainmap Shows Extent of Tropical Storm Lee's Heavy Rainfall

2011-09-12T23:12:00.000-07:00

NASA has a rain gauge flying in space called TRMM, and data from that satellite has been used to create a map of the massive rainfall generated by landfalling Tropical Storm Lee.

After forming in the north central Gulf of Mexico, Tropical Storm Lee came ashore over south central Louisiana on the morning of Sunday September 4th, 2011. Over the next two and a half days, the slow-moving storm worked its way across central Louisiana and central Mississippi and into northern Alabama, dumping heavy rains along the way. Tropical Storm Lee joined a frontal system to soak the eastern U.S.

The primary mission of the Tropical Rainfall Measuring Mission or TRMM satellite is to measure rainfall over the global Tropics using a combination of passive microwave and active radar sensors. TRMM is a joint mission between NASA and the Japanese space agency JAXA. For expanded coverage, TRMM can be used to calibrate rainfall estimates from other satellites. Rainfall estimates from the TRMM-based, near-real time Multi-satellite Precipitation Analysis (TMPA) at the NASA Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md. are shown here for the period August 31 to September 8, 2011 for the eastern half of the U.S.

TMPA shows heavy rains extending inland from the northern Gulf of Mexico across eastern Louisiana, Mississippi, northwestern Alabama, and into central Tennessee. Rainfall totals in this region generally exceed 100 mm (~4 inches) with some parts of Mississippi and Louisiana receiving upwards of 250 mm (~10 inches) Chattanooga, Tennessee broke their all time 24-hour rainfall total with 9.69 inches.

After coming ashore, Tropical Storm Lee began to merge with a slowing-moving frontal system advancing eastward out of the Mississippi valley. This frontal system was associated with a quasi-stationary upper-level low pressure center located over the Ohio valley. As a result, tropical moisture was drawn up the eastern seaboard, bringing heavy rains from the mid-Atlantic up into the northern Appalachians.

TMPA rainfall totals of 125 mm (~5 inches, shown in bright green) to as much as 200 to 250 mm (~8 to 10 inches, shown in orange and red) extend from south central Pennsylvania up into central New York, where the Susquehanna River reached record flood levels in downtown Binghamton. Elsewhere across the mid-Atlantic, where pockets of rain exceed anywhere from 100 to 150 mm (~4 to 6 inches), numerous roads and streets were closed due to widespread localized flooding.

On Sept. 9, 2011 at 5 a.m. EDT, heavy rains associated with Lee's remnants are slowly coming to an end across the Mid-Atlantic. The large-scale extra-tropical low pressure area that absorbed Lee's moisture and energy was centered over Indiana and will continue weakening. Meanwhile, The National Weather Service's Hydrometeorological Prediction Center (HPC) expects "tropical moisture to continue streaming up from the Atlantic Ocean leading to the potential for another round of heavy rains across the region."

For updated rain totals from Tropical Storm Lee, visit the HPC's webpage: http://www.nhc.noaa.gov/text/refresh/MIAHPCAT3+shtml/090857.shtml.

While much of the nation east of the Mississippi received too much rain, there was no relief for Texas and parts of the Central Plains, which remain locked in a drought. TRMM satellite data is also helpful in determining areas of drought.

At NASA Goddard, TMPA rainfall anomalies were created for the one-month period from August 7 to September 7, 2011 that showed a stark contrast between the drought-stricken, well-below normal areas (nearly all of Texas and most of Kansas) and those with well-above normal rain along and east of the Mississippi due to the passage of Lee. The anomalies were constructed by computing the average rainfall rate over the period and then subtracting the 10-year average rate for the same period.

Those drought-stricken areas are hoping that Tropical Storm Nate, currently in the southwestern Gulf of Mexico will bring them some wet relief.

For more information visit http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/hurricanes/archives/2011/h2011_Lee.html

Cruising the Chesapeake for Water and Air Quality

2011-09-12T01:42:00.000-07:00

A NASA-led team of scientists took to the Chesapeake Bay this summer to study a diverse yet close-to-home ecosystem in a field campaign that will help the agency determine how to study ocean health and air quality in coastal regions from space.

Two weeks of research cruises throughout the Chesapeake during a steamy July provided scientists with a detailed wealth of data on what might be called the fundamentals of the ecosystem. How do nutrient levels, pollutants, organic matter, water temperature and dissolved oxygen change throughout the day? What is the makeup of particulate matter in the air, and how does poor air from nearby urban and industrial regions move around above the water and ultimately influence the bay? And how does the air, water and land – or in this case, wetland – affect one another?

Antonio Mannino, an oceanographer at Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Md., and Maria Tzortziou, an oceanographer and physicist at the University of Maryland and Goddard Space Flight Center, led the campaign as chief scientists. Both are working toward what would be a first for NASA and a significant milestone for their field: a geostationary satellite designed to make detailed measurements of ocean color and air quality along the coasts. Current and former NASA satellite instruments have measured ocean color – in essence, a measure of the amount of sediment, dissolved organics and phytoplankton in the water – from polar orbits. These have provided significant and long-term global data on the composition, productivity and health of the oceans. But NASA has never had a geostationary satellite – meaning it would occupy the same spot hundreds of miles above Earth, rather than orbiting around the planet – for ocean color. This would provide constant coverage of dynamic ecosystems, providing important information of the sort Mannino,Tzortziou and more than 20 other scientists from nine US academic and research institutes were gathering directly in the field this summer – how do air and ocean qualities change throughout a day, not just over long periods of time? And how can we measure this from space?

Toward GEO-CAPE

The Geostationary Coastal and Air Pollution Events (GEO-CAPE) mission was outlined by the National Research Council in its 2007 Earth science decadal survey as one of the most important goals for Earth science research from space. While it is years from being scheduled for launch, scientists such as Mannino and Tzortziou continue to lay the groundwork for a successful mission.

Like with any mission, Mannino said, "We can't build our dream instrument because of the cost. We're trying to understand what can we study given certain specs."

To that end, ten full days on the Chesapeake gave scientists plenty to start with. The Chesapeake was chosen because the campaign could tie in to a series of flights over the Baltimore -Washington region during the month of July as part of NASA's DISCOVER-AQ mission . But the diversity of the bay's different nooks and regions was an added benefit. Leaving from Annapolis, Md., every morning, a group of about 20 researchers made transects in all directions, released a drifter to take measurements wherever the currents led, anchored in one location throughout the day, and took a trip on a Zodiac inflatable power boat to sample shallow water near the marshes of the Blackwater Wildlife Refuge. One key question Tzortziou has been investigating is the influence of marshes and wetlands on nearby water quality and carbon cycling."The idea was to go as close as possible to wetlands, which act as sources of dissolved organic and inorganic carbon, and look at the tidal exchanges of carbon and nutrients at the land-ocean interface where rapid processes occur," Tzortziou said. "How far into the main stem of the Bay can you detect the signal of the marsh? And how can we use satellite observations to capture and understand wetland influences on estuarine biology and biogeochemistry?"

Scientists are studying nutrients, dissolved and particulate carbon, organic nitrogen, phytoplankton, chlorophyll pigment, primary production, and dissolved oxygen concentrations. They are also studying optics in the water, necessary to link biological and chemical measurements to satellite ocean color data, and levels of compounds deposited in the water by air pollution. The bay's notorious water quality struggles, particularly during the height of summer, revealed themselves one day as the ship came upon a fish kill of dozens of striped bass, one of the Chesapeake's signature species. "Unusually high nutrient pollution levels have resulted in a particularly large dead-zone in the Bay this year," said Tzortziou.

"We wanted to see how the biology, biogeochemistry, and optics were changing over time," Mannino said of the suite of measurements. "Typically with satellites, we're comparing pixels over a week or month. With GEO-CAPE, we expect to quantify changes such as phytoplankton growth more directly instead of inferring this from models and limited satellite data".

From the research ship (NOAA SRVx; NOAA Marine Sanctuaries Program) and from three research airplanes that performed flights over the ship and spiraled downward close to the water surface, the scientists measured trace gases and particulates in the air to get a measure of the impact of nearby major cities, traffic arteries and industry. These measurements will help toward GEO-CAPE's goal to measure both coastal air quality and marine ecosystem processes.

Next steps

Like with any field campaign, the part in the field is only the beginning. Mannino and Tzortziou said the campaign team has only just begun to process and analyze its data. In addition to scientists from Goddard and the University of Maryland, researchers from NOAA, University of New Hampshire, University of South Florida, Old Dominion University, East Carolina University, Johns Hopkins University, and the Smithsonian Environmental Research Center participated in the Chesapeake field campaign. High school, undergraduate and graduate students were involved in the campaign, gaining "hands on" experience at the field.

The Chesapeake turned out to be an ideal location, because it was both accessible and diverse. The northern bay, near Baltimore and Annapolis, provided a sediment-heavy region due to freshwater flow from the Susquehanna River. More polluted waters (and air) near Baltimore provided an opportunity to contrast the shallows near the more pristine Blackwater refuge. And waters farther south in the bay gave scientists a look at some of the clearer regions of the estuary. Future field campaigns will likely fill in knowledge gaps and answer questions toward making GEO-CAPE a reality, Mannino said.

"Ultimately, we're looking for the best satellite instruments possible for observing coastal ecosystems – instruments that will be able to make high quality ocean color observations within regions with high levels of sediment, colored dissolved organic matter, and phytoplankton," he said. "High resolution space-based observations from such instruments will help us understand ecosystem processes in highly dynamic coastal regions" added Tzortziou. "Having observations from such a diverse array of environments will help us plan future expeditions."

For more information visit http://www.nasa.gov/topics/earth/features/chesapeake-quality.html

Tributes to Terrorism Victims are on Mars

2011-09-08T23:38:00.000-07:00

In September 2001, Honeybee Robotics employees in lower Manhattan were building a pair of tools for grinding weathered rinds off rocks on Mars, so that scientific instruments on NASA's Mars Exploration Rovers Spirit and Opportunity could inspect the rocks' interiors.

That month's attack on the twin towers of the World Trade Center, less than a mile away, shook the lives of the employees and millions of others.

Work on the rock abrasion tools needed to meet a tight schedule to allow thorough testing before launch dates governed by the motions of the planets. The people building the tools could not spend much time helping at shelters or in other ways to cope with the life-changing tragedy of Sept. 11. However, they did find a special way to pay tribute to the thousands of victims who perished in the attack.

An aluminum cuff serving as a cable shield on each of the rock abrasion tools on Mars was made from aluminum recovered from the destroyed World Trade Center towers. The metal bears the image of an American flag and fills a renewed purpose as part of solar system exploration.

Honeybee Robotics collaborated with the New York mayor's office; a metal-working shop in Round Rock, Texas; NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif.; and the rover missions' science leader, Steve Squyres, at Cornell University, Ithaca, N.Y.

"It's gratifying knowing that a piece of the World Trade Center is up there on Mars. That shield on Mars, to me, contrasts the destructive nature of the attackers with the ingenuity and hopeful attitude of Americans," said Stephen Gorevan, Honeybee founder and chairman, and a member of the Mars rover science team.

On the morning of Sept. 11, 2001, Gorevan was six blocks from the World Trade Center, riding his bicycle to work, when he heard an airliner hit the first tower. "Mostly, what comes back to me even today is the sound of the engines before the first plane struck the tower. Just before crashing into the tower, I could hear the engines being revved up as if those behind the controls wanted to ensure the maximum destruction. I stopped and stared for a few minutes and realized I felt totally helpless, and I left the scene and went to my office nearby, where my colleagues told me a second plane had struck. We watched the rest of the sad events of that day from the roof of our facility."

At Honeybee's building on Elizabeth Street, as in the rest of the area, normal activities were put on hold for days, and the smell from the collapse of the towers persisted for weeks.

Steve Kondos, who was at the time a JPL engineer working closely with the Honeybee team, came up with the suggestion for including something on the rovers as an interplanetary memorial. JPL was building the rovers and managing the project.

To carry out the idea, an early hurdle was acquiring an appropriate piece of material from the World Trade Center site. Through Gorevan's contacts, a parcel was delivered to Honeybee Robotics from the mayor's office on Dec. 1, 2001, with a twisted plate of aluminum inside and a note: "Here is debris from Tower 1 and Tower 2."

Tom Myrick, an engineer at Honeybee, saw the possibility of machining the aluminum into the cable shields for the rock abrasion tools. He hand-delivered the material to the machine shop in Texas that was working on other components of the tools. When the shields were back in New York, he affixed an image of the American flag on each.

The Mars Exploration Rover Spirit was launched from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station, Fla., on June 10, 2003. Opportunity's launch followed on July 7. Both rovers landed the following January and completed their three-month prime missions in April 2004. Nobody on the rover team or at Honeybee spoke publicly about the source of the aluminum on the cable shields until later that year.

"It was meant to be a quiet tribute," Gorevan told a New York Times reporter writing a November 2004 story about Manhattan's participation in the rover missions. "Enough time has passed. We want the families to know."

Since landing on the Red Planet, both rovers have made important discoveries about wet environments on ancient Mars that may have been favorable for supporting microbial life. Spirit ended communications in March 2010. Opportunity is still active, and researchers plan to use its rock abrasion tool on selected targets around a large crater that the rover reached last month.

One day, both rovers will be silent. In the cold, dry environments where they have worked on Mars, the onboard memorials to victims of the Sept. 11 attack could remain in good condition for millions of years.

The Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif., a division of the California Institute of Technology, manages the Mars Exploration Rovers for NASA.

For more information visit http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/mer/news/mer20110908.html

Aquarius Makes First Ocean Salt Measurements

2011-09-08T05:10:00.000-07:00

NASA's Aquarius instrument has successfully completed its commissioning phase and is now "tasting" the saltiness of Earth's ocean surface, making measurements from its perch in near-polar orbit.

"This marks the end of the long odyssey to design, build and launch this mission, and the start of a new journey of scientific exploration," said Aquarius Principal Investigator Gary Lagerloef of Earth & Space Research, Seattle. "Scientists from around the world are ready and waiting to study this important new satellite measurement for ocean and climate research."

The Aquarius/SAC-D (Satélite de Aplicaciones Científicas) observatory, a collaboration between NASA and Argentina's space agency, Comisión Nacional de Actividades Espaciales (CONAE), launched from California's Vandenberg Air Force Base on June 10 aboard a United Launch Alliance Delta II rocket and was placed in its proper initial orbit. Ground controllers at the SAC-D Mission Operations Center in Teófilo Tabanera Space Center in Cordoba, Argentina, then began a complete in-orbit checkout of all SAC-D spacecraft systems.

With all observatory systems confirmed to be healthy, SAC-D spacecraft commissioning activities were completed on July 24. The spacecraft's propulsion system then underwent a series of tests, and preliminary orbit adjustments were performed in preparation for turning on the observatory's eight science instruments.

Aquarius will make NASA's first space observations of the salinity, or concentration of salt, at the ocean surface, a key variable in satellite studies of Earth. Variations in salinity influence the ocean's deep circulation, outline the path freshwater takes around our planet and help drive Earth's climate.

On Aug. 14, the Aquarius Instrument Flight Operations Team, together with the SAC-D Mission Flight Operations Team, began powering up the Aquarius instrument, and successfully completed deployment of the Aquarius antenna on Aug. 17. The team then began sequentially powering on the instrument's subsystems. On Aug. 20, the Aquarius radiometer, which collects the brightness temperature data from which salinity measurements are derived, was powered on for the first time in space and transmitted its first science data back to Earth, which were analyzed and found to be as expected. On Aug. 21, the team began powering on Aquarius' radar scatterometer, which corrects for the effects of ocean roughness on the radiometer readings. Commissioning of Aquarius was completed and regular data collection began on Aug. 24.

The Aquarius science team will spend the coming months analyzing and calibrating the measurements and releasing preliminary data.

With the Aquarius instrument commissioning now complete, the SAC-D Instruments Flight Operations Teams, together with the SAC-D Mission Flight Operations Team in Argentina, are now engaged in commissioning the other seven SAC-D instruments. Once all the observatory instruments are commissioned, a maneuver will be conducted to place Aquarius/SAC-D in its final orbit, 408 miles (657 kilometers) above Earth.

For more information visit http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/aquarius/news/aquarius20110901.html

2011-09-07T02:50:00.000-07:00

Driving down the price of taking people and cargo into space or to the other side of the world in two hours will depend on developing a system so reliable and reusable that a thousand flights or more can take place in a year, a space launch expert told a group of engineers and others Aug. 31 at NASA's Kennedy Space Center.

It's not a launch scenario envisioned for the immediate future, but it could develop in the decades afterward, Jay Penn of Los Angeles-based The Aerospace Corporation said during his "Beyond Next Generation Access to Space" presentation. The company studied potential business cases for pursuing different launch strategies.

The cost of taking a pound of anything into space ran about $10,000 aboard the space shuttle, but that price tag would fall dramatically if space agencies and companies model their research on developing launch systems on the commercial airline and air cargo industries, Penn said.

"Commercial aircraft operate at $2 to $3 per pound of payload around the world, but space is 5,000 times that," Penn said.

Getting the space transportation business down to that cost means building vehicles that are designed for operability – that is much less maintenance between flights with rapid turnaround to support much higher flight rates. Evolving systems that deliver people and cargo to anywhere on the planet in less than two hours, for example, will need to make multiple trips in the same day and operate out of three or more hubs around the world.

His study has shown that some new applications could emerge in the coming years to accelerate the demand for frequent and lower cost access to space. In fact, the development of such reusable and operable systems will require the promise of higher demand to justify their development. Among the markets that could provide that spark are orbital space tourism, even limited demand for space-based solar power generation, and high speed transport services to travel from point-to-point on the planet.

"That's where you need to spend your energy, to make aircraft-like operations for these kinds of vehicles," Penn said.

Kennedy, with unique facilities such as the Vehicle Assembly Building and a runway long enough to host space-going vehicles, could find itself in key support roles for the new spacecraft.

Jim Ball, the deputy of Kennedy's Center Planning and Development Office, said his office is leading the effort to craft a future development concept and revised master plan for KSC to position it for future needs. The plan will provide a guide for the overall development of the center for the next several decades, Ball said.

Penn's study was not necessarily a prediction of where the space launch industry will be in the coming decades as much as a look at what it could be. For now, NASA is focused on a budding commercial industry aiming to launch cargo and astronauts to the International Space Station. The agency is also working toward a launch and space infrastructure supporting astronauts on missions to an asteroid, the moon or Mars.

So what would the spacecraft look like that could accomplish an unprecedented flight rate? Well, it would have a large first stage booster with wings and landing gear so it could land on a runway. It would weigh about as much as today's jumbo jets but may be a bit smaller.

The booster's main engines would operate on existing fuels, either kerosene or liquid hydrogen and it might even make its own oxygen in flight. Penn emphasized using fuels that can be handled easily on Earth between flights, and both kerosene and hydrogen have a long history of safe handling and remote loading.

The second stage would be either a similar winged booster with a small cargo bay, or a second stage holding a satellite. If the design is versatile enough, then two first stage boosters could be combined to launch a particularly large payload.

Getting that kind of design will start with combining new technologies rather than trying to come up with a single revolutionary invention, Penn said. Pulse detonation engines powering a Waverider-type craft made from carbon nanotubes would be a possible combination.

Designers also must focus on modular concepts that give operators flexibility. But mostly, they need to come up with space-worthy craft that operate like airplanes, with one kind designed for space operations and another destined to fly in and out of the atmosphere without going into orbit for carrying passengers and cargo between destinations on earth.

"It's going to be very challenging to build one vehicle to do both roles," Penn said.

In both cases, Penn said it is not necessarily an advantage to design a spacecraft that takes off from a runway like an airplane because additional weight would mean the craft would weigh up to three times more than a 747 or A380.

There is also the prospect of space tourism, he believes, with most of the demand being for going into orbit instead of just going into space briefly.

"We think there's a sweet spot where you can have 1,000 flights a year and get the ticket prices down to the point where people will want to pay," Penn said.

His advice for the future development of KSC? Be flexible and ready to adapt to these potential future markets that could dramatically increase flight rates and spur the development of vehicle systems that require much faster turnaround, and efficient ground servicing.

For more information visit http://www.nasa.gov/centers/kennedy/news/beyondnextgen.html

Next NASA Earth-Observing Satellite Arrives in California for Launch

2011-09-05T05:56:00.000-07:00

On Tuesday, Aug. 30, NASA's next earth-observing research satellite arrived at Vandenberg Air Force Base in California to begin preparations for an October launch.

The National Polar-orbiting Operational Environmental Satellite System Preparatory Project (NPP) is the first of a new generation of satellites that will observe many facets of our changing Earth.

The satellite will collect critical data to improve our understanding of long-term climate change and short-term weather conditions. With NPP, NASA continues many key data records initiated by the agency's Earth Observing System satellites by monitoring changes occurring in the atmosphere, oceans, vegetation, ice and solid Earth.

On Aug. 28, NPP was placed in a shipping container and loaded on a transport truck at Ball Aerospace & Technologies Corp. in Boulder, Colo. After Tuesday's arrival, the satellite was unloaded and moved into the clean room at the AstroTech facility for launch preparation.

"The NPP team has produced an outstanding satellite and kept to schedule over the past year and a half," said Ken Schwer, NPP project manager at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md. "The world is looking forward to NPP's scientific measurements."

The NPP spacecraft will undergo prelaunch processing at Vandenberg, including a solar array functional test; a spacecraft limited performance test; and testing of the science instruments. Following these tests and a spacecraft launch simulation, the satellite will be fueled with its attitude control propellant.

NPP will be launched on a United Launch Alliance Delta II 7920 expendable launch vehicle. The Delta II first stage was hoisted into position on the pad at NASA's Space Launch Complex 2 on July 20. By Aug. 2, the nine solid rocket boosters were attached, and the second stage was hoisted atop the first stage. Launch vehicle testing is under way.

The NPP spacecraft is scheduled to move to the pad and be mated with the rocket on Oct. 7. Launch is scheduled for Oct. 25 during a 9-minute and 10-second launch window from 5:48:01 to 5:57:11 a.m. EDT. The Delta II will place the satellite into a 512-mile high circular polar orbit.

NPP is the first satellite mission to address the challenge of acquiring a wide range of land, ocean, and atmospheric measurements for Earth system science while simultaneously preparing to address operational requirements for weather forecasting.

NPP serves as a bridge between NASA's Earth Observing System of satellites and the forthcoming Joint Polar Satellite System (JPSS). Previously called the National Polar-orbiting Operational Environmental Satellite System, JPSS satellites will be developed by NASA for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA).

NPP will carry five science instruments and test key technologies for the JPSS missions. Data from NPP will help scientists ensure a continuous record of environmental satellite data and also contribute to weather forecasting efforts. NOAA meteorologists will incorporate NPP data into their weather prediction models to produce accurate forecasts and warnings that will help emergency responders monitor and react to natural disasters.

Goddard manages the NPP mission on behalf of the Earth Science Division of the Science Mission Directorate at NASA Headquarters in Washington. The JPSS program is providing the ground system for NPP. NOAA will provide operational support for the mission. Launch management is the responsibility of the NASA Launch Services Program at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida.

For more information visit http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/NPP/news/cali-arrive.html

Hubble Movies Provide Unprecedented View of Supersonic Jets From Young Stars

2011-09-03T00:36:00.000-07:00

New movies created from years of still images collected by NASA's Hubble Space Telescope provide new details about the stellar birthing process, showing energetic jets of glowing gas ejected from young stars in unprecedented detail.

The jets are a byproduct of gas accretion around newly forming stars and shoot off at supersonic speeds of about 100 miles per second in opposite directions through space.

These phenomena are providing clues about the final stages of a star's birth, offering a peek at how our Sun came into existence 4.5 billion years ago.

Hubble's unique sharpness allows astronomers to see changes in the jets over just a few years' time. Most astronomical processes change over timescales that are much longer than a human lifetime.

A team of scientists led by astronomer Patrick Hartigan of Rice University in Houston, Texas, collected enough high-resolution Hubble images over a 14-year period to stitch together time-lapse movies of the jets ejected from three young stars.

Never-before-seen details in the jets' structure include knots of gas brightening and dimming over time and collisions between fast-moving and slow-moving material, creating glowing arrowhead features. The twin jets are not ejected in a steady stream, like water flowing from a garden hose. Instead, they are launched sporadically in clumps. The beaded-jet structure might be like a "ticker tape," recording how material episodically fell onto the star.

"For the first time we can actually observe how these jets interact with their surroundings by watching these time-lapse movies," said Hartigan. "Those interactions tell us how young stars influence the environments out of which they form. With movies like these, we can now compare observations of the jets with those produced by computer simulations and laboratory experiments to see what aspects of the interactions we understand and what parts we don't understand."

Jets are an active, short-lived phase of star formation, lasting only about 100,000 years. Astronomers don't know precisely what role jets play in the star-formation process or exactly how the star unleashes them. The jets appear to work in concert with magnetic fields. This helps bleed excess angular momentum from infalling material that is swirling rapidly. Once the material slows down it feeds the growing protostar, allowing it to fully condense into a mature star.

Hartigan and his colleagues used the Wide Field Planetary Camera 2 to study the jets, called Herbig-Haro (HH) objects, named in honor of George Herbig and Guillermo Haro, who studied the outflows in the 1950s. Hubble followed HH 1, HH 2, HH 34, HH 46, and HH 47 over three epochs, 1994, 1998, and 2008.

The team used computer software that wove together the observations to generate movies showing continuous motion.

"Taken together, our results paint a picture of jets as remarkably diverse objects that undergo highly structured interactions both within the material in the outflow and between the jet and the surrounding gas," Hartigan explained. "This contrasts with the bulk of the existing simulations, many of which depict jets as smooth systems."

Hartigan's team's results appeared in the July 20, 2011 issue of The Astrophysical Journal.

For more information visit http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/hubble/science/supersonic-jets.html

Florida- A vacation to go

2011-08-29T22:14:00.000-07:00

If you are the kind of person who enjoys being swept by the cool breeze of wind, while you are dozing off in a chaise longue on the golden sands of a beautiful beach and love to watch the blue sky dipping into the deep blue sea, then traveler you got to visit Florida. Florida is the much famed sunshine state but what makes it the great holiday destination is the fact that it can live up to the hype given by the tourists. Florida has a lot of places that travelers would love to see be it beaches, theme parks, museums and many more places that tourists would die to go for. Each beach in Florida has its own specialty, if you would like to row a boat in the peaceful seas then you got to try Dania beach or crescent beach. For the party animals you have to visit Miami Beach and south beach to experience night life at its heights. You will be in for good diving adventures when you visit Panama City beach, experience the underwater world of scuba diving, snorkeling etc here.

Don’t spend all your vacation at the beaches alone, there are some great theme parks in Florida like the Disneyworld theme park, it consist of a number of divisions like the magic kingdom, animal kingdom, Epcot and more. Universal is another theme park which has a lot of rides and attractions. There are a number of theme parks which are down the pipeline too, so you will be pleasantly surprised with a new attraction every year. Do visit Florida and enjoy your vacation booking one of the Florida villas or Orlando villas. Book a Florida villa now.

NASA Satellite Shows a Mean Irene's Fury

2011-08-29T01:44:00.000-07:00

After pounding North Carolina and Virginia on Aug. 27, Hurricane Irene made a second landfall near Little Egg Inlet, N.J., early Sunday morning, Aug. 28, still as a category one hurricane with maximum sustained winds of 75 mph (120 kilometers per hour). It then weakened slightly before making a third landfall over Coney Island, N.Y. as a 65-mph (100-kilometer-per-hour) tropical storm. Irene's heavy rains, winds and storm surge are causing widespread problems throughout the U.S. mid-Atlantic and Northeast.

This infrared image of Irene was taken by the Atmospheric Infrared Sounder (AIRS) instrument on NASA's Aqua spacecraft at 2:47 a.m. EDT on Aug. 27, a few hours before the storm's second landfall in New Jersey.

The AIRS data create an accurate 3-D map of atmospheric temperature, water vapor and clouds, data that are useful to forecasters. The image shows the temperature of Irene's cloud tops or the surface of Earth in cloud-free regions. The coldest cloud-top temperatures appear in purple, indicating towering cold clouds and heavy precipitation. The infrared signal of AIRS does not penetrate through clouds. Where there are no clouds, AIRS reads the infrared signal from the surface of the ocean waters, revealing warmer temperatures in orange and red.

AIRS is managed by NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif., under contract to NASA. JPL is a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena.

More information about AIRS can be found at http://airs.jpl.nasa.gov. More on NASA's hurricane research and Irene is online at NASA's hurricanes/tropical cyclones website: http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/hurricanes/main/index.html and the JPL TC-IDEAS hurricane website: http://hurricanes.jpl.nasa.gov .

NASA Satellite Confirms Irene as a Big Rainmaker, She Makes Landfall in NYC

Rainfall was Irene's biggest issue, and NASA's Tropical Rainfall Measuring Mission provided a look at heavy rains within the storm as it made its way from the North Carolina coast to a landfall in New York City at 9 a.m. EDT today, August 28, 2011.

The Tropical Rainfall Measuring Mission (TRMM) satellite can measure rainfall from its orbit high above the earth and on Saturday August, 27, 2011 at 1:50 p.m. EDT it revealed several areas of heavy rainfall within Irene around her eye and in her outer bands. At that time Irene's center of circulation was still well defined and Irene was dropping intense rainfall over Cape Hatteras east of the hurricane's center. Irene brought those heavy rains from North Carolina north to New England on Saturday, August 27 and Sunday, August 28.

By 9 a.m. EDT, on Sunday August 28, the National Hurricane Center reported Irene's center made landfall in New York City as a tropical storm landfall with maximum sustained winds of 65 mph. The heavy rainfall and the storm surge inundated New York City's Battery Park. Meanwhile, the Weather Channel reported 3.1 million people along the U.S. east coast were without power as a result of Hurricane Irene's strong winds and heavy rains.

NOAA's GOES-13 satellite, known as the Geostationary Operational Environmental Satellite has been providing infrared and visible images of Hurricane Irene before she was named last week. The NASA GOES Project out of NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md. created an image from GOES-13 at 8:32 a.m. EDT, just 28 minutes before Irene's landfall in New York City. The image showed Irene's huge cloud cover blanketing New England, New York and over Toronto, Canada. Shadows in Irene's clouds indicate the bands of thunderstorms that surround now tropical storm Irene.

So how much rain did the U.S. east coast states receive on August 27?

North Carolina impacts include widespread power outages, downed trees, downed power lines. Duck, N.C. reported widespread flooding. Eastern North Carolina received about a foot of rainfall, measuring between 10 to 14 inches in various locations. Cape Hatteras received a record-breaking 3.04 inches of rainfall on August 27. New Bern, N.C. received 4.49 inches of rainfall.

In Norfolk, Va., ABC 13 News reports that the Hampton Roads Bridge-Tunnel was reopened at 7:00 a.m. today because winds had subsided. Another tunnel remained closed. The Virginia Dept. of Transportation was clearing water outside of the floodgates of the closed Midtown Tunnel.

Rainfall was intense in some areas of eastern Virginia. Virginia's Hampton Roads area received about 9 inches of rainfall, with isolated totals reaching 16 inches in some areas. At Wallops Island, Va. on the eastern shore, where NASA's Wallops Island facility is located, a record-breaking 6.18 inches of rainfall was recorded and a wind gust hit 62 mph. Norfolk experienced heavy rainfall, gusty winds and flooding. A storm surge of 7.63 feet at Sewells Point was reported on Saturday night and local Television reporter WTKR's Kurt Williams reported chest-deep floodwaters at the time.

At Dulles Airport, outside of Washington, D.C., 1.17 inches of rain fell on August 27 and the highest wind gust reported was 45 mph. Further south and west where the fringes of Irene reached, Charlottesville, Va. received only 0.44 inches of rainfall.

The District of Columbia reported trees and powerlines down as Irene passed through. Washington National Airport recorded 3.33 inches of rain on August 27, 2011.

In Maryland, widespread power outages and downed trees were reported. Historic downtown Annapolis did not flood as it did during Hurricane Isabel. The Baltimore Washington International Airport recorded 3.59 inches of rainfall from Irene on August 27 and strongest wind gust to 51 mph. The heaviest rain came to Maryland between 6 p.m. on August 27 and early on August 28. On Maryland's eastern shore, closest to the eye of Hurricane Irene, Salisbury, Md. reported a record breaking total of 5.58 inches. On the eastern shore, the popular vacation spot of Ocean City, Md. reported about 12 inches of rain, according to the Baltimore Sun. Sustained winds were near 60 miles per hour as Irene's center passed by Ocean City some 40-50 miles east.

Delmarva Power, the power company that brings electricity to Maryland's eastern shore and Delaware noted early on Sunday, Aug. 28 that 93,500 customers were still without power. Delaware reported record-breaking rainfall totals on Saturday, August 27. Wilmington, Del. reported 5.38 inches. The highest wind gust reported reached 56 mph.

Philadelphia International Airport logged 4.55 inches of rainfall on Aug. 27 and the highest winds recorded gusted to 52 mph.

In New Jersey, Hurricane Irene's eye made landfall Little Egg Inlet, N.J., at 5:35 a.m. EDT this morning on its way to New York City. Trenton reported 3.91 inches of rain on Aug. 27, and Atlantic City reported 4.39 inches where winds gusted to 55 mph. More heavy rain continued to fall on Sunday, Aug. 28.

In New York City (NYC) Irene's center made landfall around 9 a.m. EDT today. The National Weather Service noted that Battery Park New York City reported a total water level near 8.6 feet at 8 a.m. EDT, Sunday, August 28. John F. Kennedy International Airport logged a gust of wind at 58 mph. Watches and warnings are all in effect in New Jersey and New York and through New England.

Because 2-5 inches of rain has fallen across the NY/NJ Region in the last 18 hours, the additional 2-6 inches of rain area expected is expected to cause more flooding. Highest rainfall amounts expected from the New York City Metro area north and west.

New England, New York and Pennsylvania face the threat of flooding rains today as Irene continues her journey. Cities included under threat are Burlington, Vt.; Albany, N.Y.; New York City and Philadelphia, Pa. Hurricane Irene will continue to move inland, and head north-northeast on its way to Canada.

Although Irene was grabbing all of the attention, another tropical storm developed this morning in the Atlantic but poses no threat. Tropical Storm Jose formed near Bermuda causing tropical storm warnings for the island. At 8 a.m. EDT, Jose had maximum sustained winds near 40 mph and was moving to the north near 16 mph, a track he is expected to stay on, keeping him away from the U.S. east coast. Jose was located about 115 miles south-southwest of Bermuda near 30.8 North and 65.7 West. Although Bermuda residents are in for another soaking from Jose, the U.S. east coast will not feel Jose's effects as he'll remain at sea.

For more information visit http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/hurricanes/archives/2011/h2011_Irene.html

The Orbital Perspective of Astronaut Ron Garan

2011-08-26T05:00:00.000-07:00

"Hello from space!" greets astronaut Ron Garan as an opening to his recently published video blog. Garan's goal is to show how this orbital research facility can help improve life on Earth, while also inspiring people to make a difference. How better to introduce the world at large to the International Space Station, than for Garan to welcome viewers on a guided tour of his amazing home and live-in laboratory.

Garan treats his audience to a personal exploration of the station, starting with the Japanese Experiment Module or Kibo, which in Japanese means "Hope." He highlights the airlock and robotic arm, which places investigations onto an external platform in the vacuum of space. Garan also points out two of the Kibo experiment racks, where the crew conduct certain microgravity investigations. The Ryutai Experiment Rack facilitates studies to advance quality materials, medical diagnostics and micro and nano technology. The Saibo Experiment Rack houses plant growth experiments, an essential element of future long-duration space exploration that also is important for improving crop efficiencies here on Earth.

Next, Garan leads viewers into the European module, dubbed Columbus. The crew conducts biological and human research in this laboratory area. Other research includes the Geoflow-1 investigation, which helps to increase understanding of Earth's core, contributing to scientists' ability to predict natural disasters. Facilities aboard this European module include the Biological Experiment Laboratory, or BioLab; the European Physiology Module, or EPM; and the European Modular Cultivation System, or EMCS.

This tour, however, offers only a brief synopsis of the overarching capabilities of the space station. "Other research is leading to things like new emergency sutureless wound closure and disinfection, breakthroughs in the understanding and the protection against bacteria -- such as Salmonella, the treatment of osteoporosis and skin disorders," said Garan. "And the development of a NASA bioreactor, which is being used in laboratories around the world for research in things like cancer, regenerative medicine, artificial organs, diabetes, AIDS, vaccine production, and infectious disease."

As the tour continues, Garan introduces the U.S. Destiny Laboratory, where the Microgravity Science Glovebox, or MSG, and EXPRESS racks enable even more microgravity research. The Combustion Integrated Rack, or CIR, for instance, helps with studies on fuel efficiency, pollution, and fire safety both on spacecraft and on Earth. The Fluids Integrated Rack, or FIR, also in Destiny, contributes to fluid physics investigations that lead to advancements in clean energy and the elimination of hazardous waste.

While showing the Destiny Lab, Garan was not able to give viewers a peek inside the Window Observational Research Facility, or WORF, because of an active investigation called the International Space Station Agricultural Camera, or ISSAC. This camera takes frequent images to help monitor Earth crop conditions and rapidly changing global phenomena, such as natural disasters.

Moving on to the Russian module, Garan points out two additional facilities with ongoing investigations. The first is the Mini-Research Module, or MRM2. Also known as Poisk, which means "Explore" in Russian, this module enables such research as the impact of electromagnetic fields on crystal development in microgravity. The other study takes place in the Lada Greenhouse and looks at the impact of hydroponics -- a method of growing plants without soil -- on wheat and vegetables. Garan takes time to mention the Earth-facing windows in the Russian module that allow for Earth observations, such as the Rusalka investigation that studies Earth's environment and atmosphere.

Garan comments that station technologies, such as those developed to meet the need for sustainable resources in orbit, have already led to proven Earth benefits. For instance, NASA engineers volunteered their time in Rwanda to develop a sustainable water treatment system that used station technology. "That project led to a project in Kenya providing household-scale water treatment systems for 4 million people," said Garan. "It is the largest water treatment project of its kind in the world."

International cooperation was key in the development of the space station and continues to be instrumental in the success of this orbiting resource. "The ISS is truly a global asset; the result of 15 nations working together sharing planning, technology, scientific advances and the talent of its people," said Garan.

Continuing to learn how people exist in extreme environments can help prepare humans for future exploration to Mars. What Garan conveys with this video tour is that the knowledge from his orbital residence also benefits his Earthly home on a global level. To learn more and share in Garan's orbital perspective, visit Fragileoasis.org.

For more information visit http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/station/research/news/Ron_Garan.html

East Coast Shakes from Va.-Centered Earthquake

2011-08-25T05:49:00.000-07:00

The U.S. East Coast shook from an unusually strong earthquake for the area on Aug. 23, 2011, centered near Mineral, Va., about 40 miles from Richmond.

The U.S. Geological Survey rated the quake's magnitude as 5.8. The earthquake lasted about 45 seconds. It was centered five miles southwest of Mineral, Va., a small town in the central part of the state, located in Louisa County. Mineral is about 39 miles from Richmond and 83 miles southwest of Washington, D.C.

The depth of the quake was 3.7 miles, according to USGS, the federal government agency that monitors earthquakes in the United States. The quake occurred at about 1:53 p.m. EDT and was felt up and down the East Coast. Reports of the quake came from as far north as Ottawa, Canada, to as far south as North Carolina. The quake's rumblings even extended west to Alabama and Ohio.

The Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer, or MODIS instrument captured a cloud-free, visible-light image of Virginia in November 2004, used here to describe the earthquake. MODIS instruments fly aboard NASA's Aqua and Terra satellites.

USA Today noted that the shallow depth of the quake and the east coast's geology enabled it to be felt over a large distance than might otherwise have been expected.

For more information visit http://www.nasa.gov/topics/earth/features/va-quake.html

Training Our Future Astronauts

2011-08-23T21:47:00.000-07:00

Ron Shaneyfelt called "heads up" and scanned the sky.

After approving the rocket's pathway, the students began a countdown from five. After "one," all the students yelled, "blast off!" and watched the rocket soar into the sky.

Shaneyfelt, an informal educator who went by "Rocket Man," led 22 students on a rocket-building and launching exercise.

"With this project, the students have the opportunity to build and launch their rocket within hours," Shaneyfelt said.

After the rockets were built and the glue dried, the students, who were addressed as "rocketeers," went out to the lawn to launch the rockets one at a time at Thomas Nelson Community College's Williamsburg campus.

The rockets soared to about 200 to 300 feet and then fell back to land with parachutes deployed.

Kenneth, 10, described his rocket launch: "It went high, it could have almost got stuck in a tree."

The rocketeers got to build something and watch it fly.

Launching rockets was part of a day's activities for one of the camps held August 1-5. NASA Langley's informal education team worked with children from Big Brothers/Big Sisters organization.

For the second year, NASA Langley's Summer of Innovation program aims to give underrepresented students a chance to be involved with content otherwise not accessible.

The Summer of Innovation is an agency-wide program, with each center reaching 1,500 students. The camps work with rising fourth through ninth graders for a minimum of 20 hours of instruction, as well as follow-up months later.

NASA Langley partners with the Virginia Air and Space Center, Big Brothers/ Big Sisters and the Migratory Education Program throughout the year.

Big Brothers/Big Sisters program allows for a mentor or "big brother" for children.

"The informal education team provides hands-on activities," said Ivelisse Gilman, a NASA educator. "These activities help the children learn by exploring."

The camps were themed as a "mission to Mars," and the students were treated as astronauts in training. The informal educators hope to excite the children to pursue education and careers in science, technology, engineering or math (STEM).

"This group is the right age to be the next astronauts to Mars, so we are training them to become future astronauts," said Bonnie Murray, a NASA educator.

The students were taught about rocketry, sustainability, arrangement of planets, characteristics of living off Earth and protection of astronauts in space. Many activities were hands-on.

They could build their own solar oven, which aimed to show the students that survival strategies would be different than the microwave available here on Earth. They were supplied materials and urged to think like an engineer while trying to make a working oven. If the oven captured the solar energy, the reward was sweet. They were able to enjoy a s’more snack.

Kiersten, 10, said her favorite part of the weeklong camp was making her own solar oven and then cooking her s'more.

A highlight of this year’s camps was students getting to ask questions and virtually touring the "rock yard" with the astronauts in training at Johnson Space Center. The astronauts connected with the students via the technology ClearSea, which allowed them to connect to the Digital Learning Network using a cell phone.

"They learn about topics they will experience in school," Murray said. "Our hope is that as they do exciting hands-on activities, that they can really understand Newton’s law or other lessons. When they get back into the classroom, their experience will help make sense of the information."

According to Gilman, it's also important that, "their experience was a positive, fun one."

At the end of a camp, students have a new curiosity.

"The questions they start to ask as time goes on is amazing," Murray said. "They are starting to wonder more and more."

Summer of Innovation will continue to reach students throughout the month of August and will conduct follow-ups. They hope to spark a lifelong fascination in STEM.

For more information visit http://www.nasa.gov/centers/langley/news/researchernews/rn_SOI2011.html

NASA Sees Heavy Rain in Hurricane Irene

2011-08-23T00:02:00.000-07:00

Before Irene even reached hurricane status, a NASA satellite saw heavy rainfall and hot towering thunderstorm clouds around the storm's center this weekend. That heavy rainfall is expected as Irene continues to track through the Caribbean today.

The Tropical Rainfall Measuring Mission (TRMM) satellite passed over Irene when it was a tropical storm on August 21, 2011 at 0024 UTC (8:24 p.m. EDT August 20). Data collected with this orbit showed that Irene contained numerous powerful thunderstorms with TRMM's Precipitation Radar revealing that some thunderstorm towers near the center of the storm were reaching to heights above 15 km (~9.3 miles).

Those "hot towers" are called "hot" because they rise to such altitude due to the large amount of latent heat. Water vapor releases this latent heat as it condenses into liquid.

Back in 2004, researchers Owen Kelley and John Stout of NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Md., found that a tropical cyclone with a hot tower in its eyewall was twice as likely to intensify within the next six hours than a cyclone that lacked a tower. Irene had those hot towers and did intensify into a hurricane.

The National Hurricane Center noted on August 22 that Irene is expected to produce total rainfall accumulations of 5 to 10 inches across Puerto Rico, The Virgin Islands, the Dominican Republic, Haiti, the Southeastern Bahamas and The Turks and Caicos Islands. Isolated maximum amounts of rainfall may reach up to 20 inches.

In addition to the TRMM satellite, NOAA's Geostationary Operational Environmental Satellite, GOES-13 has documented the birth of Irene from a low pressure area called System 99L over the weekend. The NASA GOES Project at NASA Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md. compiled four days of animations to show the development and movement of Hurricane Irene and former Tropical Storm Harvey.

A GOES-13 animation from August 19 through August 22 (1545 UTC/11: 45 a.m. EDT) shows the progression of Tropical Storm Harvey through the western Caribbean Sea. Over the weekend, Harvey made landfall in Belize and is moving into Mexico today. Farther to the east, the animation shows the development of the low pressure area called System 99L into Hurricane Irene on August 20 that moved over Puerto Rico and is now moving west-northwest into the eastern Caribbean today. Irene's maximum sustained winds on the morning of August 22 were near 75 mph. The 35 second video shows more than three days of development and movement of Harvey and Irene.

The National Hurricane Center has posted a whole host of hurricane warnings and watches today. A Hurricane Warning is in effect for the North Coast of the Dominican Republic from the Haiti border east to Cabo Engano. A Hurricane Watch is in effect for the north coast of Haiti from Le Mole St. Nicholas eastward to the Dominican Republic border and the central Bahamas. Tropical storm conditions will reach the northern portion of the Dominican Republic by this afternoon.

A Tropical Storm Warning is in effect for the U.S. Virgin Islands, the British Virgin Islands, the south coast of the Dominican Republic, all of Haiti and the southeastern Bahamas and the Turks and Caicos Islands. The warning has been changed from hurricane to tropical storm warning for Puerto Rico, Vieques and Culebra as Irene is moving away.

At 9 a.m. EDT, August 22, Irene was moving away from Puerto Rico and toward the Southeastern Bahamas. Irene's maximum sustained winds were near 75 mph (120 kmh) and it was moving to the west-northwest near 14 mph (22 kmh). Irene's center was about 55 miles (90 km) west-northwest of San Juan, Puerto Rico near 18.8 North and 66.8 West. Irene's minimum central pressure was 987 millibars.

Irene is forecast to reach Florida later this week and if it makes landfall as a hurricane, it would be the first landfalling hurricane in the mainland U.S. in three years. The last landfalling U.S. storm was Hurricane Ike in Galveston, Texas in 2008.

For more information visit http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/hurricanes/archives/2011/h2011_irene.html

NASA's G-III Completes Alaskan Volcanoes Imaging Mission

2011-08-21T23:33:00.000-07:00

NASA's Gulfstream III environmental research aircraft completed its brief mission to radar image volcanoes in Alaska the first week in August, and now the lengthy work of analyzing the data begins.

During the four-day mission from Aug. 1 through Aug. 4, the G-III flew several flights from its deployment base at Elmendorf Air Force Base near Anchorage, Alaska. The UAVSAR synthetic aperture radar installed in a pod slung under the belly of the G-III imaged volcanoes in the Aleutian Island chain to detect and measure small changes in the Earth's surface of geophysical interest. While the aircraft was en route from its home base at NASA's Dryden Aircraft Operations Facility in Palmdale, Calif., the radar imaged volcanoes in the Cascade Range over California, Oregon and Washington.

"All indications are that data were collected successfully," said scientist Paul Lundgren of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif., where the specialized radar was developed. "However, to detect changes in activity requires computation of differential interferograms from the new and previously collected data. This processing....typically [takes] several months, so we will know months from now whether there was any volcanic deformation over the past year."

Differential Global Positioning System satellite information is being used in conjunction with the aircraft's precision autopilot to enable the aircraft to repeat flight lines within 15 feet of the originals flown in August 2010. The system depends on corrections received from Iridium and Inmarsat satellites. The radar’s electronically steered antenna compensates for aircraft altitude and heading changes as the radar makes repeat passes over areas of interest.

For more information visit http://www.nasa.gov/centers/dryden/status_reports/G-III_status_08_10.html

NASA Research Leads to First Complete Map of Antarctic Ice Flow

2011-08-18T23:40:00.000-07:00

NASA-funded researchers have created the first complete map of the speed and direction of ice flow in Antarctica. The map, which shows glaciers flowing thousands of miles from the continent's deep interior to its coast, will be critical for tracking future sea-level increases from climate change. The team created the map using integrated radar observations from a consortium of international satellites.

"This is like seeing a map of all the oceans' currents for the first time. It's a game changer for glaciology," said Eric Rignot of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif., and the University of California (UC), Irvine. Rignot is lead author of a paper about the ice flow published online Thursday in Science Express. "We are seeing amazing flows from the heart of the continent that had never been described before."

Rignot and UC Irvine scientists Jeremie Mouginot and Bernd Scheuchl used billions of data points captured by European, Japanese and Canadian satellites to weed out cloud cover, solar glare and land features masking the glaciers. With the aid of NASA technology, the team painstakingly pieced together the shape and velocity of glacial formations, including the previously uncharted East Antarctica, which comprises 77 percent of the continent.

Like viewers of a completed jigsaw puzzle, the scientists were surprised when they stood back and took in the full picture. They discovered a new ridge splitting the 5.4 million-square-mile (14 million-square-kilometer) landmass from east to west.

The team also found unnamed formations moving up to 800 feet (244 meters) annually across immense plains sloping toward the Antarctic Ocean and in a different manner than past models of ice migration.

"The map points out something fundamentally new: that ice moves by slipping along the ground it rests on," said Thomas Wagner, NASA's cryospheric program scientist in Washington. "That's critical knowledge for predicting future sea level rise. It means that if we lose ice at the coasts from the warming ocean, we open the tap to massive amounts of ice in the interior."

For more information visit http://www.nasa.gov/topics/earth/features/antarctica20110818.html

NASA's NPP Satellite Completes Comprehensive Testing

2011-08-18T01:55:00.000-07:00

The NASA National Polar-orbiting Operational Environmental Satellite System (NPOESS) Preparatory Project (NPP) has successfully completed its most comprehensive end-to-end compatibility test of the actual satellite and all five scientific instruments at Ball Aerospace & Technologies Corp's production and test facility in Boulder, Colo.

During the four-week NPP Compatibility Test 4 (NCT4), all segments of the ground system were assessed including active commanding of the satellite as well as monitoring the flow of both satellite health and safety and science data (both actual and simulated). NASA utilized two tracking and data networks in support of this mission test, the primary tracking antenna site located in Svalbard, Norway, and the Tacking and Data Relay Satellite System networks.

Data transfers involved all ground system command and control components located at the NOAA Satellite Operations Facility in Suitland, Md., and data processing centers located at Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md., as well as other centers in Colorado, North Carolina and Nebraska. Mission team member participation included: NASA, NOAA, the United States Air Force and the Department of Defense.

"The successful completion of this test has all of our NPP team members excited," stated Raymond J. Pages, the NPP Project Integration Manager. "It’s a major milestone that supports our readiness to launch in October."

The NCT4 also served as a high-fidelity operational “dress rehearsal” called Mission Rehearsal 3 (MR3), which simulated on-orbit operations beginning with the launch phase and continuing through instrument activation. The successful completion of NCT4 and MR3 signifies that all mission systems are ready to proceed to launch. Additional testing will be performed during the remaining two-and-a-half months prior to launch to maintain operational and system proficiency.

NPP contains a suite of five sensors that will make measurements to continue producing key data products about Earth including, for example, measurements of cloud, vegetation, and ice cover, ocean color, and sea and land surface temperatures.

The five instruments are the Visible/Infrared Imager Radiometer Suite (VIIRS); the Cross-track Infrared Sounder (CrIS); the Clouds and Earth Radiant Energy System (CERES); the Advanced Technology Microwave Sounder (ATMS); and the Ozone Mapping and Profiler Suite (OMPS).

Data from NPP will be used in a range of situations to address an array of research questions. Earth scientists will use the data to enhance their understanding of climate change. NOAA meteorologists will incorporate the data into their weather and climate prediction models to produce accurate, life-saving forecasts and warnings. Also NPP will help emergency responders monitor and react to natural disasters.

The NPP mission will help link the current generation of NASA Earth-observing satellites called the Earth Observing System (EOS) to a next-generation of operational polar-orbiting environmental satellites called the Joint Polar Satellite System (JPSS), managed by NOAA. NPP data will also be used as input to numerical weather models until the JPSS system is deployed.

The NPP satellite is scheduled to be delivered to the Vandenberg Air Force Base in Lompoc, Calif., on August 24 to undergo final preparations for a planned October 25 launch.

For more information visit http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/NPP/news/npp-compatibility.html

Robotic Refueling Module, Soon To Be Relocated to Permanent Space Station Position

2011-08-17T01:08:00.000-07:00

NASA’s groundbreaking Robotic Refueling Mission (RRM) will reach a key milestone in September when the International Space Station (ISS) robots transfer the module to its permanent home on space station’s ExPRESS Logistics Carrier-4. Robotic operations for the technology demonstration are currently slated to begin soon afterwards.

A joint effort between NASA and the Canadian Space Agency, RRM is designed to demonstrate the technologies, tools, and techniques needed to robotically service satellites, especially those not built with servicing in mind.

The results of this two-year technology test bed are expected to the reduce risks associated with satellite servicing as well as lay the foundation and encourage future robotic servicing missions. Such future missions could include the repair and repositioning of orbiting satellites.

President Obama called the RRM demonstration “innovative” during a July 15 phone call to STS-135 astronauts onboard the ISS noting its potential future benefits to the commercial satellite industry. “It’s a good reminder of how NASA technology and research often times has huge spillover effects into the commercial sector, and makes it all that much more important in terms of peoples’ day to day lives.”

Launched to the ISS in July onboard the last shuttle mission, RRM marks the first use of the space station’s Dextre robot beyond robotic station maintenance for technology research and development. It is also the first on-orbit demonstration to test, prove and advance the technology needed to perform robotic servicing on spacecraft not designed for refueling and repair.

"Robotic refueling and satellite servicing could extend the lifetimes of satellites, offering significant savings in delayed replacement costs," said Frank Cepollina, Associate Director of the Satellite Servicing Capabilities Office (SSCO) at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center. "Such servicing has the potential to allow human and robotic explorers to reach distant destinations more efficiently and effectively."

The RRM module is about the size of a washing machine and weighs approximately 550 pounds, with dimensions of 33" by 43" by 45.” RRM includes 0.45 gallon (1.7 liters) of ethanol that will be used to demonstrate fluid transfer on orbit.

On July 12, space station astronauts Mike Fossum and Ron Garan removed the RRM module from the cargo bay of shuttle Atlantis and placed the module onto a temporary platform on the Dextre robot. In September, the Canadarm2 robot will permanently secure RRM on the ExPRESS Logistics Carrier-4 (ELC-4), an external platform also built at Goddard. The ISS will provide command, telemetry and power support for the module through ELC-4 during the experiment’s two-year window of operations.

After the transfer to ELC-4, mission operators will release the launch locks on the four RRM tools to be used at a later date by Dextre. This will be followed by a series of vision tasks, to develop machine vision algorithms against the harsh lighting on orbit verifying the RRM can see during future demonstrations.

The first set of refueling demonstration tasks are currently scheduled for January 2012. These activities will verify that on-orbit satellite repairs can be performed with today’s technology.

Satellite servicing with astronauts is not new for NASA. Skylab, NASA's first space station, was repaired in space in 1973. Solar Maximum and Syncon IV, with help from the shuttle, were successfully repaired in the 1980's. In the 1990's NASA serviced the Compton Gamma Ray Observatory, Intelsat 6 and executed a series of highly successful servicing missions to the Hubble Space Telescope.

"You know NASA has been doing space servicing for quite some time now," said Cepollina. "We will be demonstrating abilities that will allow for the servicing of existing satellites and could influence the build of future satellites to allow easy on-orbit access for refueling and repair."

More recently, human and robotic servicing capabilities have contributed to the assembly, upkeep and repair of the ISS. With RRM, NASA can begin the work of confirming the robotic satellite-servicing technologies needed for the development of future robotic servicing spacecraft.

Cepollina believes it is just a matter of time before such servicing could become routine. "If we are to venture further from Earth, the need for robotic servicing will increase," said Cepollina. "With the build of the space station we see the increase of collaboration between human and robotic abilities in space servicing."

RRM operations will be entirely remote controlled by flight controllers at Goddard, Johnson Space Center, Marshall Space Flight Center, and the Canadian Space Agency's control center in St. Hubert, Quebec. The station's two-armed robotic system, Canada’s Special Purpose Dexterous Manipulator, or “Dextre,” will manipulate the tools necessary for the demonstrations.

Included within the RRM module are four unique tools developed at Goddard: the Wire Cutter/Blanket Manipulation Tool, the Multifunction Tool, the Safety Cap Removal Tool, and the Nozzle Tool. Each tool will be stowed in its own storage bay until Dextre retrieves it for use. Each tool contains two integral cameras with built-in LEDs to give mission controllers the ability to see and control the tools.

Drawing upon 20 years of experience servicing the Hubble Space Telescope, NASA’s SSCO initiated the development of RRM in 2009. Atlantis, the same shuttle that carried tools and instruments for the final, astronaut-based Hubble Servicing Mission 4, launched RRM to space. The last shuttle mission carried the first step to robotic refueling and satellite servicing to orbit—a new era sprung from the old.

For more information visit http://www.nasa.gov/topics/shuttle_station/features/rrm-issposition.html

Famous Vacationer appeal in Hawaii

2011-08-16T05:29:00.000-07:00

In today’s world Hawaii is considered as one of the best beach holiday destinations. Apart from gifting the best of the sun, sea and sand in the US, Hawaii also has a rich and bright colorful history and culture to take in and bounty of tourist attraction. Because of all its attraction Hawaii is now economically dependent on tourism as well as on the US military.

There are more than 19 distinct volcanic islands which are located exactly in the heart of the Pacific which is the geological "hot spot". Among these islands 6 are open to tourism and they are: Hawaii or the "Big Island"; Oahu or the "Gathering Place"; Maui or the "Valley Isle"; Kauai or the "Garden Isle"; Molokai or the "Friendly Isle"; and Lanai. If you have an idea to visit Hawaii, you can easily look for Hawaii beach vacation rentals in these islands.

If you have a plan to travel to Hawaii, please do consider having a Hawaii vacation in Waikiki particularly if you are looking to have a memorable vacation.

Kauai is the best island that has the most breathtaking natural wonders. The island is covered with lush green trees and it is famous for its beaches and rivers that offer a wide choice of activities for tourists. There are many options in the river and beaches like snorkeling, swimming, sunning or surfing. Apart from these there are options like hiking and biking on its many trails. Some of the other outdoor leisure activities that you can do on the island comprise having river tubing adventures, back-country ATV trips and a lot more.

To experience the best of the nature then, Hawaii is the place to be considered. Choose from one of the island destinations or one of the Hawaii vacation specials and Hawaii vacation offers and book a Hawaii vacation rental or that would fit your travel needs and budget and you would surely have a holiday that you would never forget.

NASA's 747 SCAs--Birds of a Feather Flock Together

2011-08-16T02:32:00.000-07:00

For the first time ever, NASA's two highly modified Boeing 747 Shuttle Carrier Aircraft briefly flew in formation over the Edwards Air Force Base test range Aug. 2. Both aircraft were scheduled to be in the air on the same day, NASA 911 (foreground) on a flight crew proficiency flight, NASA 905 (rear) on a functional check flight following maintenance operations. Since both aircraft were scheduled to be in the air at the same time, SCA pilot Jeff Moultrie of Johnson Space Center's Aircraft Operations Directorate took the opportunity to have both SCA's fly in formation for about 20 minutes while NASA photographer Carla Thomas captured still and video imagery from a NASA Dryden F/A-18. In addition to Moultrie, NASA 905's check flight crew included pilot Arthur "Ace" Beall and flight engineer Henry Taylor while NASA 911 was flown by Larry LaRose, Steve Malarchick and Bob Zimmerman from NASA Johnson and Frank Batteas and Bill Brockett from NASA Dryden.

For more information visit http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/shuttle/behindscenes/birds_of_a_feather.html

GRAIL Launch Less Than One Month Away

2011-08-11T23:11:00.000-07:00

GRAIL-A and GRAIL-B - completed their final inspections and were weighed one final time at the Astrotech Space Operations facility in Titusville, Fla., on Tuesday. The two Gravity Recovery and Interior Laboratory (GRAIL) spacecraft will orbit the moon in formation to determine the structure of the lunar interior from crust to core and to advance understanding of the thermal evolution of the moon. GRAIL's launch period opens Sept. 8, 2011, and extends through Oct. 19. For a Sept. 8 liftoff, the launch window opens at 5:37 a.m. PDT (8:37 a.m. EDT) and remains open through 6:16 a.m. PDT (9:16 a.m. EDT).

Later this week, the two spacecraft will be loaded side-by-side on a special adapter and packaged inside a payload fairing that will protect them during their launch into space. Next week, GRAIL is expected to make the trip from Astrotech to Launch Complex 17 at the Cape Canaveral Air Force Station where it will be mated with its United Launch Alliance Delta II Heavy rocket.

GRAIL-A and GRAIL-B will fly in tandem orbits around the moon for several months to measure its gravity field in unprecedented detail. The mission will answer longstanding questions about Earth's moon, and provide scientists a better understanding of how Earth and other rocky planets in the solar system formed.

For more information visit http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/grail/news/grail20110811.html

NASA's DC-8 Flying Lab Validates Laser Instruments

2011-08-09T23:20:00.000-07:00

Twenty scientists went aloft aboard NASA’s DC-8 flying laboratory in late July to conduct an airborne test of four very different laser techniques for remotely measuring atmospheric carbon dioxide and two laser instruments that remotely measured oxygen. The DC-8 also carried two “truth” instruments – devices that are known to produce accurate data – that took air samples to be compared with the laser measurements.

As part of a research campaign dubbed Active Sensing of CO2 Emissions over Night, Days and Seasons II, or ASCENDS II, the aircraft flew over central California July 28.

The focus of this mission, which is funded by the Earth Science division of NASA's Science Mission Directorate, is the further development of laser-based Earth-observing satellite instruments designed to measure atmospheric carbon dioxide.

"Satellite instruments start in a laboratory and mature to a point where they need to be used in the atmosphere," said DC-8 project manager Frank Cutler at NASA’s Dryden Aircraft Operations Facility in Palmdale, Calif. "The cheapest way to test is first on the ground and then to get the instruments into the air for in-flight analysis.

"The DC-8 flying laboratory is often used to facilitate these assessments," Cutler added. "It is interesting to observe what an instrument that will fly on a satellite goes through to be certified for operational use."

During an instrument-validation flight over central California, the DC-8 first flew descending and ascending spiral patterns above the Castle Airport area near Merced to take sample gas measurements with the truth instruments. The laser instruments were then flown over the airport at various altitudes up to 40,000 feet so that their data could be compared with that of the truth instruments.

The aircraft flies the instruments over different land surfaces, from snow and ice to oceans, forests and deserts, to test the surface reflectance effects on each instrument's performance. These are the same types of surfaces that a laser instrument would find when studying components of the Earth’s atmosphere from space.

Additional flights will take the aircraft over the California and Nevada deserts and offshore over the Pacific Ocean. During an early August flight to British Columbia, Canada, the instruments collected data over snowfields in mountainous regions. The aircraft will also deploy briefly to Minneapolis and St. Paul, Minn., to fly over atmospheric radiation measurement sites for comparison of airborne to ground-based measurements.

"Conducting unique flight experiments on the DC-8 is very exciting and is as close as many of us will get to being a modern day explorer," said ASCENDS II mission scientists Edward Browell of NASA’s Langley Research Center in Hampton, Va., who has conducted more than 25 DC-8 science missions around the world since 1987.

The instrument teams are from NASA’s Langley Research Center in Hampton, Va., NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md., ITT Geospatial Systems in Fort Wayne, Ind., and NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif. A similar ASCENDS instrument validation mission was previously flown in July 2010.

For more information visit http://www.nasa.gov/topics/earth/features/dc-8_flying_lab.html

NASA Mars Rover Approaches Long-Term Goal

2011-08-08T23:21:00.000-07:00

The NASA Mars rover Opportunity has gained a view of Endeavour crater from barely more than a football-field's distance away from the rim. The rim of Endeavour has been the mission's long-term goal since mid-2008.

Endeavour offers the setting for plenty of productive work by Opportunity. The crater is 14 miles (22 kilometers) in diameter -- more than 25 times wider than Victoria crater, an earlier stop that Opportunity examined for two years. Observations by orbiting spacecraft indicate that the ridges along Endeavour's western rim expose rock outcrops older than any Opportunity has seen so far. The selected location for arrival at the rim, "Spirit Point," is at the southern tip of one of those ridges, "Cape York," on the western side of Endeavour.

Opportunity and Spirit completed their three-month prime missions on Mars in April 2004. Both rovers continued for years of bonus, extended missions. Both have made important discoveries about wet environments on ancient Mars that may have been favorable for supporting microbial life. The mission of the Spirit rover, for which Spirit Point was named, was concluded in May, 2011, after the rover did not re-establish communications following the Martian winter.

For more information visit http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/mer/news/mer20110808.html

Atlantis' Final Mission Included Successful Kennedy-Developed Plant Experiment

2011-08-07T23:03:00.000-07:00

Atlantis carried many science and research experiments in its middeck during NASA’s last shuttle flight, STS-135, in July. Among these was a plant experiment developed at Kennedy Space Center’s Space Life Sciences Laboratory (SLSL) that could have an impact on long duration missions to the moon or Mars.

Principal Investigators Dr. Gary Stutte and Dr. Michael Roberts with QinetiQ NA, and NASA Project Scientist Dr. Howard Levine created the Biological Research in Canisters-Symbiotic Nodulation in a Reduced Gravity Environment (BRIC-SyNRGE). A first of its kind to fly on a space shuttle, the purpose of the experiment was to study the symbiotic relationship between plants similar to alfalfa, which is in the legume family, and specific nitrogen-reacting bacteria in microgravity.

"It’s a distinct honor to have had an experiment onboard Atlantis, the final space shuttle mission, and I am indebted to everyone who worked so hard to make it possible to be a part of this historic mission," Stutte said.

About four hours after Atlantis landed at Kennedy’s Shuttle Landing Facility, the BRIC-SyNRGE experiment was retrieved and returned to the SLS Laboratory. Stutte said that initial reviews show that there was 100 percent germination of the plant seeds and excellent growth was observed.

"The SyNRGE science team has begun processing the samples and looks forward to learning the effects of microgravity," Stutte said. "Plants and the microbial world have been of interest at Kennedy for many years."

According to Stutte, the bacteria were introduced to each plant sample’s root hairs in order to study the effect. What he and the SyNRGE team are hoping to find is that the plants have formed specialized nodules where the bacteria can convert atmospheric nitrogen into a form the plants can use to produce proteins.

The alfalfa-like plant, Medicago truncatula, was grown in a plant chamber at the SLSL. The day before Atlantis’ launch, several laboratory rooms were abuzz with activity. In one lab, samples were carefully harvested and inserted into Petri dish units. In another lab, technicians added the nitrogen-fixing bacteria and a liquid preservative to the dishes. In yet another room, plant units were inserted into the canisters. A total of 120 Petri dishes were installed in eight canisters. Each canister contained five units and a temperature sensor. The experiment was transported to the launch pad and added to Atlantis middeck as a late stowage item the evening before launch.

Stutte said this kind of study could provide a path for better food production, improve agricultural areas in third world countries, and reduce resupply costs for fertilizer. It could also have an impact on how food sources are grown during long duration space missions.

"Legumes are a major direct source of food for man," Stutte said. "These include soybeans, peas and beans. Also, forage for livestock, including alfalfa and clover."

During the STS-135 mission, crew members monitored the temperature of the BRIC-SyNRGE samples, added a fixing liquid to half of the samples to preserve them and left the other half untouched.

"We hope that our results provide information on how synergistic relationships form between plants and bacteria, and that we use that knowledge to benefit food and fiber production on Earth," Stutte said. "We hope our research brings us closer to achieving sustainable life support systems that permit long term habitation and colonization of space."

Levine said funding for the project was initiated in September of 2010 for the experiment to fly in July of 2011.

"It takes an incredible amount of skill and effort on the part of both the science and engineering teams. They are all to be commended." Levine commented.

For more information visit http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/shuttle/behindscenes/bricsynrge.html

Juno Spacecraft to Carry Three Figurines to Jupiter Orbit

2011-08-05T01:28:00.000-07:00

NASA's Jupiter-bound Juno spacecraft will carry the 1.5-inch likeness of Galileo Galilei, the Roman god Jupiter and his wife Juno to Jupiter when the spacecraft launches this Friday, Aug. 5. The inclusion of the three mini-statues, or figurines, is part of a joint outreach and educational program developed as part of the partnership between NASA and the LEGO Group to inspire children to explore science, technology, engineering and mathematics.

In Greek and Roman mythology, Jupiter drew a veil of clouds around himself to hide his mischief. From Mount Olympus, Juno was able to peer through the clouds and reveal Jupiter's true nature. Juno holds a magnifying glass to signify her search for the truth, while her husband holds a lightning bolt. The third LEGO crew member is Galileo Galilei, who made several important discoveries about Jupiter, including the four largest satellites of Jupiter (named the Galilean moons in his honor). Of course, the miniature Galileo has his telescope with him on the journey.

The launch period for Juno opens Aug. 5 and extends through Aug. 26. For an Aug. 5 liftoff, the launch window opens at 8:34 a.m. PDT (11:34 a.m. EDT) and remains open through 9:43 a.m. PDT (12:43 p.m. EDT). The spacecraft is expected to arrive at Jupiter in 2016. The mission will investigate the gas giant's origins, structure, atmosphere and magnetosphere. Juno's color camera will provide close-up images of Jupiter, including the first detailed glimpse of the planet's poles.

For more information visit http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/juno/news/lego20110803.html