Four hundred years after Galileo first turned his handmade telescope toward the heavens, the world's largest, most technologically advanced telescope is set to make its formal debut. The inauguration of the Gran Telescopio Canarias — with its 10.4-meter diameter mirror, the telescope has more light-collecting area than any other — is scheduled for July 24 in Spain's Canary Islands. Officials and astronomers from the University of Florida, the only U.S. institution that is part of the project, will join more than 500 astronomers, journalists and celebrities in a ceremony presided over by Spain's King Juan Carlos I and Queen Sofia.
"The completion and inauguration of the GTC is a huge milestone for astronomy and for the University of Florida in collaboration with its partners in Spain and Mexico," UF Provost Joe Glover said. "We look forward to our astronomers playing a central role in the major discoveries this uniquely powerful telescope will enable."
Perched 7,874 feet above sea level on a mountain on the island of La Palma, the GTC has 6 square meters more light collecting area than any of the roughly one dozen 8- to 10-meter telescopes worldwide. With a mirror composed of 36 hexagonal segments thought to have the smoothest surfaces ever made, it is also the world's most technologically advanced optical telescope. Sensors keep the mirrors aligned to counteract the force of gravity, with the result that they act as a single surface, even as the telescope is rotated and aligned in place.
Spain owns 90 percent, Mexico 5 percent and UF 5 percent of the telescope under construction since 2000. UF contributed $5 million toward the $180 million project — and its astronomers designed and built one of the first two astronomical instruments for the telescope, a multimillion dollar heat-sensing camera called CanariCam.
Stan Dermott, chairman of UF's astronomy department, said the GTC's size and technical attributes enable it not only to gather more light than any other telescope, but also resolve the light into sharper and clearer focus. For astronomers, he said, those capabilities make it a powerful tool to study cosmic origins – the early days of the universe and the very early moments in the mysterious births of stars, planets and galaxies.
"The interpretation of the structure of the disks where new planets form is highly dependent on the quality of the image," he said, adding that the GTC also will enable the discoveries of new planets, possibly including the first habitable planet.
The telescope gathers the light, but only astronomical instruments can reveal the mysteries it contains. The car engine-sized CanariCam, built at UF but now in La Palma and expected to become operational next year, "sees" the infrared light — the invisible light that accompanies heat — emitted by stars and planets as they form in space. It also sees the light that, in its visible form, is obscured by the dust clouds and gas in space.
CanariCam is unique among mid-infrared cameras in its ability to determine the direction of polarized light and accomplish coronagraphy, which blocks the bright light of stars to make faint planets nearby more visible. Those abilities will help it reveal cool planets and more about the role of magnetic fields in planet and star formation, said Charles Telesco, UF astronomy professor and the principal investigator on the CanariCam project.
UF astronomer Eric Ford became one of the first astronomers worldwide to use the GTC earlier this year. Dermott said he anticipates that about 60 astronomy faculty, graduate students, postdoctoral associates and others — most of the members of the department — will become involved with GTC-related observations or research. He stressed that access to such a prominent telescope is key to success in astronomical research.
"All the objects we study are remote, and you have to get your information from looking at images," he said. "If the competition has a better image than you, you are basically out of business. So having the GTC puts our students and faculty on the front line."
There is far more demand for the world's largest telescopes than available nights, with the result that most astronomers get far less time than they want — and in some years, none at all. UF's part ownership of the GTC means that its astronomers are guaranteed 20 nights each year. UF'S instrument-building program will result in additional nights, as will UF astronomers' collaborations with Mexican and Spanish astronomers, Dermott said.
Brian May, lead guitarist of the rock group Queen and an astronomer himself, is expected to be among the celebrities present for the inauguration. 2009, the International Year of Astronomy, celebrates Galileo's first telescope observations in 1609.
Officials at NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida called off Sunday's planned liftoff due to inclement weather. Cumulus clouds and lightning violated rules for launching Endeavour because of weather near the Shuttle Landing Facility. The runway would be needed in the unlikely event that Endeavour would have to make an emergency landing back at Kennedy.
The STS-127 astronauts left Launch Pad 39A at about 8:35 p.m. EDT to return to crew quarters at Kennedy's Operations & Checkout Building for the night.
Monday's live countdown coverage will begin at 1:30 p.m on NASA Television and NASA's Launch Blog.
Space Shuttle Mission: STS-127
The 16-day mission will feature five spacewalks and complete construction of the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency's Kibo laboratory. Astronauts will attach a platform to the outside of the Japanese module that will allow experiments to be exposed to space.
The STS-127 crew members are Commander Mark Polansky, Pilot Doug Hurley and Mission Specialists Dave Wolf, Christopher Cassidy, Tom Marshburn, Tim Kopra and Canadian Space Agency astronaut Julie Payette. Kopra will join the space station crew and replace Japanese astronaut Koichi Wakata. Wakata will return to Earth on Endeavour to conclude a three-month stay at the station.
STS-127 Additional Resources
› Mission Press Kit (6.9 Mb PDF)
› Mission Summary (429 Kb PDF)
› Meet the STS-127 Crew
Once Herschel's checkout is complete, in a few months or so, Herschel will begin probing the youthful side of our cosmos. It will investigate the raw materials for stars; baby stars still nestled in cocoons; and sprightly galaxies churning out new stars. NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif., developed and built crucial mission-enabling technology for two of the three instruments, the heterodyne instrument for the far infrared, and the spectral and photometric imaging receiver.
More information is online at http://www.esa.int/esaCP/SEMAYT6CTWF_index_0.html .
NASA's upcoming mission to study the sun in unprecedented detail and its effects on Earth, the Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO), arrived at NASA's Kennedy Space Center, Fla. on July 9.
The spacecraft left NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md., on July 7, where it was built and tested.
After the final tests are completed, SDO will move to launch complex 41 at the Cape Canaveral Air Force Station. A United Launch Alliance Atlas V rocket will launch the solar-studying spacecraft into orbit.
SDO will take measurements and images of the sun in multiple wavelengths for at least five years during its primary science mission. The spacecraft will collect a staggering 1.5 terabytes of data daily, the equivalent of downloading a half million songs a day.
Space weather results from changes on the sun, called solar activity. Active regions on the sun can erupt suddenly and violently, usually in the form of a solar flare or coronal mass ejection (CME).
Flares and CMEs can send millions of tons of solar material and charged particles streaming toward Earth on the solar wind. When the star stuff reaches Earth's atmosphere, it can damage orbiting satellites and wreak havoc on navigation systems and the power grid. Understanding space weather requires knowing the nature of changes that happen in the sun.SDO is the first space weather research network mission in NASA's Living With a Star Program. The spacecraft's long-term measurements will give solar scientists in-depth information about changes in the sun’s magnetic field and insight into how those changes affect Earth.
NASA's upcoming mission to study the sun in unprecedented detail and its effects on Earth, the Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO), arrived at NASA's Kennedy Space Center, Fla. on July 9.
The spacecraft left NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md., on July 7, where it was built and tested.
After the final tests are completed, SDO will move to launch complex 41 at the Cape Canaveral Air Force Station. A United Launch Alliance Atlas V rocket will launch the solar-studying spacecraft into orbit.
SDO will take measurements and images of the sun in multiple wavelengths for at least five years during its primary science mission. The spacecraft will collect a staggering 1.5 terabytes of data daily, the equivalent of downloading a half million songs a day.
Space weather results from changes on the sun, called solar activity. Active regions on the sun can erupt suddenly and violently, usually in the form of a solar flare or coronal mass ejection (CME).
Flares and CMEs can send millions of tons of solar material and charged particles streaming toward Earth on the solar wind. When the star stuff reaches Earth's atmosphere, it can damage orbiting satellites and wreak havoc on navigation systems and the power grid. Understanding space weather requires knowing the nature of changes that happen in the sun.SDO is the first space weather research network mission in NASA's Living With a Star Program. The spacecraft's long-term measurements will give solar scientists in-depth information about changes in the sun’s magnetic field and insight into how those changes affect Earth.
The following joint statement was issued today by NASA and the European Space Agency (ESA):On June 29 and 30 the NASA Associate Administrator for Science (Ed Weiler) and ESA Director of Science and Robotic Exploration (David Southwood) met in Plymouth, England, to establish a way for a progressive program for exploration of the Red Planet. The outcome of the bilateral meeting was an agreement to create a Mars Exploration Joint Initiative (MEJI) that will provide a framework for the two agencies to define and implement their scientific, programmatic and technological goals at Mars.
Discussions between NASA and ESA began in December 2008, driven by the ESA Ministerial Council's recommendation to seek international cooperation to complete the ExoMars mission and to prepare further Mars robotic exploration missions. At the same time, NASA was reassessing its Mars Exploration Program portfolio after the launch of its Mars Science Laboratory was delayed from 2009 to 2011. This provided NASA and ESA with an opportunity to increase cooperation and expand collective capabilities. To investigate the options in depth, a joint NASA/ESA engineering working group was established, along with a joint executive board to steer the efforts and develop final recommendations on how to proceed.
At the bilateral meeting in Plymouth, the executive board recommended NASA and ESA establish MEJI, spanning launch opportunities in 2016, 2018 and 2020, with landers and orbiters conducting astrobiological, geological, geophysical and other high-priority investigations, and leading to the return of samples from Mars in the 2020's. The director and associate administrator agreed, in principle, to establish the Initiative and continue studies to determine the most viable joint mission architectures.
NASA and ESA also agreed to establish a joint architecture review team to assist the agencies in planning the mission portfolio. As plans develop, they will be reviewed by ESA member states for approval and by the U.S. National Academy of Sciences. This unique collaboration of missions and technologies will pave the way for exciting discoveries at Mars.
Based on a blend of observations from the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) and the Advanced Microwave Scanning Radiometer for EOS (AMSR-E) on NASA’s Aqua satellite and MODIS on the Terra satellite, the image shows temperatures that are generally warm enough to sustain hurricanes in yellow, orange and red. The waters of the Caribbean Sea (south of Cuba), the Gulf of Mexico, and the Atlantic off the Southeast coast were all warm enough to fuel hurricanes, while most of the tropical Atlantic between the Americas and Africa was still too cool.
The northwestern Caribbean Sea, the Gulf of Mexico, and the nearshore waters of Florida, Georgia, and the Carolinas are all considered “likely” areas for June tropical storm formation (white dashed outline), but storms are especially likely in the northeastern Gulf of Mexico (white oval). The black lines on the image show the average paths that June storms tend to follow. One track takes storms through the Caribbean Sea, brushing the western tip of Cuba, and arcing across northern Florida to follow the warm waters of the Gulf Stream. The other track favored by June storms is in the western Gulf of Mexico. Storms cross Mexico’s Yucatan Peninsula and head north toward the Texas side of the U.S. Gulf Coast.
Storms occur often enough in June and July for those months to be considered part of the hurricane season, but named storms don’t really start to accumulate until August. By the end of July there still will have been fewer than two named storms on average; by the end of August, the number is closer to five.
If you've never seen a spaceship with your own eyes, now's your chance.The International Space Station (ISS) has recently started a remarkable series of flybys over the United States. Beginning the first weekend of July, the station has been appearing once, twice, and sometimes three times a day successively. No matter where you live, you should have at least a few opportunities to see the biggest spaceship ever built.
Check NASA's ISS Tracker for flyby times.
The ISS has been under construction for nearly 11 years, and it has grown very large and very bright. The station is now more than 350 ft wide (wider than a football field), has 12,600 cubic feet of labs and living quarters, and on Earth would weigh about 670,000 lb. Sunlight illuminating the massive outpost makes it shine fifteen times brighter than Sirius, the brightest star in the sky.
Sometimes it is even brighter than that. Sunlight glinting from the station's flat surfaces (mainly solar arrays) produce dazzling flares as much as six hundred times brighter than Sirius. For astronomers: On the scale of visual magnitudes, space station flares register -8.
"The station flared spectacularly on May 22 when it passed over my backyard observatory in the Netherlands," reports amateur astronomer Quintus Oostendorp. "I knew the ISS was coming, so I had my telescope ready and I was able see exactly what happened."
At present, the flares are unpredictable. No one knows when they will happen or exactly how bright they will be. Any given flyby could be interrupted by one—and that's what makes the watch so much fun.
The marathon of space station flybys won't stop until mid-to-late July (depending on your location). That gives space shuttle Endeavour, currently scheduled to launch on July 11, time to reach the space station and join the show. As the shuttle approaches station for docking, many observers will witness a memorable double flyby—Endeavour and the ISS sailing side by side across the starry night sky.
Endeavour is on yet another space station construction mission. This time it will deliver a "space porch" to be added to Japan's Kibo science laboratory module. The porch is not a place where astronauts can sit, relax and watch the stars drift by (although that is not a bad idea); it is a science platform. When an experiment needs to be exposed to the hard vacuum or energetic radiation of space, it can placed outside on the porch to take advantage of the space station's unique research environment. The official name of the porch is the Kibo Japanese Experiment Module Exposed Facility and it will add its own small contribution to the station's reflected luminosity in the night sky.
For more information, go to the story on ESA’s Planck site at http://www.esa.int/SPECIALS/Planck/SEM0Y5S7NWF_0.html
A pulsar is the rapidly spinning and highly magnetized core left behind when a massive star explodes. Most of the 1,800 cataloged pulsars were found through their periodic radio emissions. Astronomers believe these pulses are caused by narrow, lighthouse-like radio beams emanating from the pulsar's magnetic poles.
"Fermi has truly unprecedented power for discovering and studying gamma-ray pulsars," said Paul Ray of the Naval Research Laboratory in Washington. "Since the demise of the Compton Gamma Ray Observatory a decade ago, we've wondered about the nature of unidentified gamma-ray sources it detected in our galaxy. These studies from Fermi lift the veil on many of them."
The Vela pulsar, which spins 11 times a second, is the brightest persistent source of gamma rays in the sky. Yet gamma rays -- the most energetic form of light -- are few and far between. Even Fermi's Large Area Telescope sees only about one gamma-ray photon from Vela every two minutes.
"That's about one photon for every thousand Vela rotations," said Marcus Ziegler, a member of the team reporting on the new pulsars at the University of California, Santa Cruz. "From the faintest pulsar we studied, we see only two gamma-ray photons a day."
Radio telescopes on Earth can detect a pulsar easily only if one of the narrow radio beams happens to swing our way. If not, the pulsar can remain hidden.
A pulsar's radio beams represent only a few parts per million of its total power, whereas its gamma rays account for 10 percent or more. Somehow, pulsars are able to accelerate particles to speeds near that of light. These particles emit a broad beam of gamma rays as they arc along curved magnetic field lines.
This all-sky map shows the positions and names of 16 new pulsars (yellow) and eight millisecond pulsars (magenta) studied using Fermi's LAT. The famous Vela, Crab, and Geminga pulsars (right) are the brightest ones Fermi sees. The pulsars Taz, Eel, and Rabbit have taken the nicknames of nebulae they are now known to power. The Gamma Cygni pulsar resides within a supernova remnant of the same name.
Credit: NASA/DOE/Fermi LAT Collaboration
> Larger image
> Larger image (unlabeled)
"Before launch, some predicted Fermi might uncover a handful of new pulsars during its mission," Ziegler added. "To discover 16 in its first five months of operation is really beyond our wildest dreams."
Like spinning tops, pulsars slow down as they lose energy. Eventually, they spin too slowly to power their characteristic emissions and become undetectable.
But pair a slowed dormant pulsar with a normal star, and a stream of stellar matter from the companion can spill onto the pulsar and increase its spin. At rotation periods between 100 and 1,000 times a second, ancient pulsars can resume the activity of their youth. In the second study, Fermi scientists examined gamma rays from eight of these "born-again" pulsars, all of which were previously discovered at radio wavelengths.
"Before Fermi launched, it wasn't clear that pulsars with millisecond periods could emit gamma rays at all," said Lucas Guillemot at the Center for Nuclear Studies in Gradignan, near Bordeaux, France. "Now we know they do. It's also clear that, despite their differences, both normal and millisecond pulsars share similar mechanisms for emitting gamma rays."
NASA's Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope is an astrophysics and particle physics partnership, developed in collaboration with the U.S. Department of Energy, along with important contributions from academic institutions and partners in France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Sweden, and the U.S.
JPL scientist Bjorn Lambrigtsen goes on hurricane watch every June. He is part of a large effort to track hurricanes and understand what powers them. Lambrigtsen specializes in the field of microwave instruments, which fly aboard research planes and spacecraft, penetrating through thick clouds to see the heart of a hurricane. While scientists are adept at predicting where these powerful storms will hit land, there are crucial aspects they still need to wrench from these potentially killer storms.Here are thoughts and factoids from Lambrigtsen in the field of hurricane research.
1. Pinpointing the moment of birth
Most Atlantic hurricanes start as a collection of thunderstorms off the coast of Africa. These storm clusters move across the Atlantic, ending up in the Caribbean, Gulf of Mexico or Central America. While only one in 10 of these clusters evolve into hurricanes, scientists do not yet know what triggers this powerful transformation. Pinpointing a hurricane's origin will be a major goal of a joint field campaign in 2010 between NASA and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA).
2. Predicting intensity
Another focus of next year's research campaign will be learning how to better predict a storm's intensity. It is difficult for emergency personnel and the public to gauge storm preparations when they don't know if the storm will be mild or one with tremendous force. NASA's uncrewed Global Hawk will be added to the 2010 research armada. This drone airplane, which can fly for 30 straight hours, will provide an unprecedented long-duration view of hurricanes in action, giving a window into what fuels storm intensity.
3. Deadly force raining down
Think about a hurricane. You imagine high, gusting winds and pounding waves. However, one of the deadliest hurricanes in recent history was one that parked itself over Central America in October 1998 and dumped torrential rain. Even with diminished winds, rain from Hurricane Mitch reached a rate of more than 4 inches per hour. This caused catastrophic floods and landslides throughout the region.
4. Replenishing "spring"
Even though hurricanes can wreak havoc, they also carry out the important task of replenishing the freshwater supply along the Florida and southeastern U.S. coast and Gulf of Mexico. The freshwater deposited is good for the fish and the ecological environment.
5. One size doesn't fit all
Hurricanes come in a huge a variety of sizes. Massive ones can cover the entire Gulf of Mexico (about 1,000 miles across), while others are just as deadly at only 100 miles across. This is a mystery scientists are still trying to unravel.
NASA and NOAA conduct joint field campaigns to study hurricanes. The agencies use research planes to fly through and above hurricanes, and scientists collect data from NASA spacecraft that fly overhead. NOAA, along with its National Hurricane Center, is the U.S. government agency tasked with hurricane forecasting.
For more information on how NASA and JPL study hurricanes, go towww.nasa.gov/hurricane and http://tropicalcyclone.jpl.nasa.gov
Expedition 20 Commander Gennady Padalka and Flight Engineers Mike Barratt of NASA and Koichi Wakata of the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency will undock the Soyuz TMA-14 return spacecraft, from the Zvezda service module and fly a short distance to the Pirs docking compartment. The flight is expected to take about 30 minutes.
NASA TV coverage will begin at 4 p.m. CDT with undocking planned for 4:26 p.m.
While Padalka, Barratt and Wakata are aboard the Soyuz, Expedition 20 Flight Engineers Roman Romanenko of Russia, Bob Thirsk of the Canadian Space Agency and Frank De Winne of the European Space Agency will monitor the move from inside the station. Their Soyuz return craft, the TMA-15, is docked to the Earth-facing port of the station's Zarya module.
The relocation of Soyuz TMA-14 opens the Zvezda docking port for the arrival of a new Russian Progress cargo vehicle in late July.
For information about the International Space Station, visit:
Ulysses, a joint NASA and European Space Agency mission, officially ceased operations today, after receiving commands from ground controllers to do so. The spacecraft, which operated for more than 18 years, charted the unexplored regions of space above the poles of the sun. As planned via commands beamed to the spacecraft earlier in the day, Ulysses switched to its low-gain antenna at 1:09 p.m. PDT (4:09 p.m. EDT, or 2009 UTC). As a result, ground controllers were no longer able to pick up a signal from Ulysses, which had also been commanded to switch off its transmitter completely at 1:15 p.m. PDT (4:15 p.m. EDT, or 2015 UTC).
When space shuttle Discovery launched Ulysses on Oct. 6, 1990, it had an expected lifetime of five years. The mission gathered unique information about the heliosphere, the bubble in space carved by the solar wind, for nearly four times longer than expected.
"This has been a remarkable scientific endeavor," said Richard Marsden, Ulysses mission manager and project scientist at the European Space Agency. "The results Ulysses obtained have exceeded our wildest dreams many times over."
Ulysses made nearly three complete orbits of the sun. The probe revealed for the first time the three-dimensional character of galactic cosmic radiation, energetic particles produced in solar storms and the solar wind. Not only has Ulysses allowed scientists to map constituents of the heliosphere in space, its longevity enabled them to observe the sun over a longer period of time than ever before.
"The sun's activity varies with an 11-year cycle, and now we have measurements covering almost two complete cycles," said Marsden. "This long observation has led to one of the mission's key discoveries, namely that the solar wind has grown progressively weaker during the mission and is currently at its weakest since the start of the Space Age."
In addition to measuring the solar wind and charged particles, Ulysses instruments measured small dust particles and neutral gases from local interstellar space that penetrate into the heliosphere. Ulysses had an unprecedented three chance encounters with comet tails, registered more than 1,800 cosmic gamma-ray bursts, and provided findings for more than 1,000 scientific articles and two books.
"The breadth of science addressed by Ulysses is truly astonishing," said Ed Smith, Ulysses project scientist at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif. "The data acquired during the long lifetime of this mission have provided an unprecedented view of the solar activity cycle and its consequences and will continue to keep scientists busy for many years to come."
Ulysses' successes have not been confined to scientific data. The extended mission presented significant challenges to the NASA-European operations team. In particular, critical parts of the spacecraft became progressively colder with time. In recent years, a major effort was needed to prevent the onboard hydrazine fuel from freezing. The operations team continually created methods to allow the aging space probe to continue its scientific mission.
Earlier this month, the Ulysses mission team received a NASA Group Achievement Award. Another milestone was reached on June 10 when Ulysses became the longest-running ESA-operated spacecraft, overtaking the International Ultraviolet Explorer which logged 18 years and 246 days of operations.
"The Ulysses team performed exceptionally by building and operating a research probe that would return scientific data for analysis no matter what challenges it encountered," said Arik Posner, Ulysses program scientist at NASA Headquarters in Washington. "The knowledge gained from Ulysses proves what can be achieved through international cooperation in space research."
The Ulysses orbital path is carrying the spacecraft away from Earth. The ever-widening gap has progressively limited the amount of data transmitted. Ulysses project managers, with the concurrence of ESA and NASA, decided it was an appropriate time to end this epic scientific adventure.
ESA Ulysses Mission Operations Manager Nigel Angold points out that more than a year ago, "We had estimated Ulysses would not survive further than July 2008. However, the spacecraft didn't stop surprising us and kept working a full year, collecting invaluable science data. It's nice to be going out in style."
After the spacecraft was placed into low Earth orbit in 1990, a combination of solid fuel motors propelled Ulysses toward Jupiter. Ulysses swung by Jupiter on Feb. 8, 1992. The giant planet's gravity bent the spacecraft's flight path southward and away from the ecliptic plane, putting the probe into a final orbit that would take it over the sun's south and north poles.
The European Space Agency's European Space Research and Technology Centre and European Space Operations Centre managed the mission in coordination with the Jet Propulsion Laboratory. Ulysses is tracked by NASA's Deep Space Network. A joint ESA/NASA team at JPL oversaw spacecraft operations and data management. Teams from universities and research institutes in Europe and the United States provided the 10 instruments on board.
More information about the mission is available at http://ulysses.jpl.nasa.gov .
After reviewing more than 3500 applications, NASA has selected nine men and women for the 2009 astronaut candidate class. They will begin training at NASA’s Johnson Space Center, Houston, in August.“This is a very talented and diverse group we've selected,” said Bill Gerstenmaier, NASA associate administrator for Space Operations. “They will join our current astronauts and play very important roles for NASA in the future. In addition to flying in space, astronauts participate in every aspect of human spaceflight, sharing their expertise with engineers and managers across the country. We look forward to working with them as we transcend from the shuttle to our future exploration of space, and continue the important engineering and scientific discoveries aboard the International Space Station."
The new astronaut candidates:
Serena M. Aunon, 33, of League City, Texas; University of Texas Medical Branch-Wyle flight surgeon for NASA’s Space Shuttle, International Space Station and Constellation Programs; born in Indianapolis, Ind. Aunon holds degrees from The George Washington University, University of Texas Health Sciences Center in Houston, and UTMB.
Jeanette J. Epps, 38, of Fairfax, Va.; technical intelligence officer with the Central Intelligence Agency; born in Syracuse, N.Y. Epps holds degrees from LeMoyne College and the University of Maryland.
Jack D. Fischer, Major U.S. Air Force, 35, of Reston, Va.; test pilot; U.S. Air Force Strategic Policy intern (Joint Chiefs of Staff) at the Pentagon; born in Boulder, Colo. Fischer is a graduate of the U.S. Air Force Academy and Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
Michael S. Hopkins, Lt. Colonel U.S. Air Force, 40, of Alexandria, Va.; special assistant to the Vice Chairman (Joint Chiefs of Staff) at the Pentagon; born in Lebanon, Mo. Hopkins holds degrees from the University of Illinois and Stanford University.
Kjell N. Lindgren, 36, of League City, Texas; University of Texas Medical Branch-Wyle flight surgeon for NASA’s Space Shuttle, International Space Station and Constellation Programs; born in Taipei, Taiwan. Lindgren has degrees from the U.S. Air Force Academy, Colorado State University, University of Colorado, the University of Minnesota, and UTMB.
Kathleen (Kate) Rubins, 30, of Cambridge, Mass.; born in Farmington, Conn.; principal investigator and fellow, Whitehead Institute for Biomedical Research at MIT and conducts research trips to the Congo. Rubins has degrees from the University of California-San Diego and Stanford University.
Scott D. Tingle, Commander U.S. Navy, 43, of Hollywood, Md.; born in Attleboro, Mass.; test pilot and Assistant Program Manager-Systems Engineering at Naval Air Station Patuxent River. Tingle holds degrees from Southeastern Massachusetts University (now University of Massachusetts Dartmouth) and Purdue University.
Mark T. Vande Hei, Lt. Colonel U.S. Army, 42, of El Lago, Texas; born in Falls Church, Va.; flight controller for the International Space Station at NASA’s Johnson Space Center, as part of U.S. Army NASA Detachment. Vande Hei is a graduate of Saint John’s University and Stanford University.
Gregory R. (Reid) Wiseman, Lt. Commander U.S. Navy, 33, of Virginia Beach, Va.; born in Baltimore; test pilot; Department Head, Strike Fighter Squadron 103, USS Dwight D. Eisenhower, based out of Oceana Virginia. Wiseman is a graduate of Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute and Johns Hopkins University.
NASA Television’s Video File will include b-roll of astronaut training. For NASA TV streaming video, schedules and downlink information, visit:
http://www.nasa.gov/ntv
For more information about the International Space Station, visit:
http://ww.nasa.gov/station
For more information about astronaut selection and training, visit:
http://nasajobs.nasa.gov/astronauts/
Survey any number of airline passengers and you may not hear the most positive reaction to air travel these days. Seats are cramped. Planes are crowded. And don't even get anybody started on delays, security procedures or extra costs. So what would possess anyone to live on an airplane for a month and endure 30 days of conditions many people would prefer to avoid? Meet Mark Malkoff.
The 33-year-old comedian/writer/filmmaker is staying on an AirTran airplane the entire month of June and sharing his experiences with the public via the web. According to his website, markonairtran.com, "Although I'll switch planes, I'll never set foot in an airport. I'll change flights by way of the tarmac."
How does somebody keep busy on a plane for an entire month? Malkoff's videos show he's already memorized the SkyMall catalogue, played Twister and called Bingo over the airplane microphone. But he's also been meeting new people, including aerospace engineer Anna McGowan from NASA's Langley Research Center in Hampton, Va.
McGowan visited with Malkoff at the nearby Newport News - Williamsburg Airport to help him learn more about flying and especially about the research NASA is doing to make more it efficient and environmentally friendly.
"We're developing technologies for the next generation of flight," said McGowan. "We're working on engines that have a much lower fuel consumption. We're also reducing the weight of airplanes using innovative materials that are lighter weight but stronger than they are today."
Malkoff started his journey "to get over my fear of flying. I've struggled with the fear for years." He says flying has definitely gotten easier. "If the fear started at a 10 ... it's now about a two," he said.
But even after flying 197 hours and 82,000 miles (approx. 132,000 km), Malkoff still had questions about why planes do some of the things they do. He asked McGowan why planes have to bank or fly at a "tilt".
"The pilot is trying very carefully to make a smooth one-G turn, so that your glasses aren't sliding off the edge of your tray and so that everybody stays level in the airplane," said McGowan. "He wants to avoid side slip."
Joining McGowan at the airport was Johnny Alonso, one of the hosts of "NASA 360," a half hour NASA TV program that explores NASA's contributions to everyday life. NASA 360 and a crew that follows Malkoff both videotaped the conversation for future shows.
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