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.

Astronomy & Astrophysics is publishing the first detection of a magnetic field on the star Vega, one of the brightest stars in the sky. Using the high-sensitivity NARVAL spectropolarimeter installed at the Bernard-Lyot telescope (Pic du Midi Observatory, France), a team of astronomers detected the effect of a magnetic field (known as the Zeeman effect) in the light emitted by Vega.

Vega is a famous star among amateur and professional astronomers. Located at only 25 light years from Earth in the Lyra constellation, it is the fifth brightest star in the sky. It has been used as a reference star for brightness comparisons. Vega is twice as massive as the Sun and has only one tenth its age. Because it is both bright and nearby, Vega has been often studied but it is still revealing new aspects when it is observed with more powerful instruments. Vega rotates in less than a day, while the Sun's rotation period is 27 days. The intense centrifugal force induced by this rapid rotation flattens its poles and generates temperature variations of more than 1000 degrees Celsius between the polar (warmer) and the equatorial regions of its surface. Vega is also surrounded by a disk of dust, in which the inhomogeneities suggest the presence of planets.

This time, astronomers analyzed the polarization of light emitted by Vega and detected a weak magnetic field at its surface. This is really not a big surprise because one knows that the charged particle motions inside stars can generate magnetic fields, and this is how solar and terrestrial magnetic fields are produced. However, for more massive stars than the Sun, such as Vega, theoretical models cannot predict the intensity and the structure of the magnetic field, so that astronomers had no clue to the strength of the signal they were looking for. After many unsuccessful attempts in past decades, both the high sensitivity of NARVAL and the full dedication of an observing campaign to Vega have made this first detection possible.

The strength of Vega magnetic field is about 50 micro-tesla, which is close to that of the mean field on Earth and on the Sun. This first observational constraint opens the way to in-depth theoretical studies about the origin of magnetic fields in massive stars. This detection also suggests that magnetic fields exist but have not been detected yet on many stars like Vega, but farther and more difficult to observe. Astronomers believe that this discovery will be a key step in understanding stellar magnetic fields and their influence on stellar evolution. As for Vega, it is now the prototype of a new class of magnetic stars and will definitely continue fascinating astronomers for years.

http://www.nasa.gov

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Mission News

Space Shuttle Mission: STS-127

On Aug. 22, 2008, NASA's Swift satellite reported multiple blasts of radiation from a rare object known as a soft gamma repeater, or SGR. Now, astronomers report an in-depth study of these eruptions using the European Space Agency's XMM-Newton and International Gamma-Ray Astrophysics Laboratory (INTEGRAL) satellites.

The object, designated SGR 0501+4516, was the first of its type discovered in a decade and is only the fifth confirmed SGR. "Some sources are extremely active, but others can be quiet for a decade or more," said Nanda Rea, University of Amsterdam, who led the study. "This suggests many members of this class remain unknown."

Astronomers think the eruptions of SGRs arise from the most highly magnetized objects in the universe -- magnetars. Magnetars are neutron stars -- the crushed cores of exploded stars -- that, for reasons not yet known, possess ultra-strong magnetic fields. With fields 100 trillion times stronger than Earth's, a magnetar placed half the moon's distance would wipe the magnetic strips of every credit card on the planet. "Magnetars allow us to study extreme matter conditions that cannot be reproduced on Earth," said Kevin Hurley, a team member at the University of California, Berkeley.

Both SGRs and a related group of high-energy neutron stars -- called anomalous X-ray pulsars -- are thought to be magnetars. But, all told, astronomers know of only 15 examples.

SGR 0501+4516, estimated to lie about 15,000 light years away, was only discovered because its outburst gave it away. Astronomers think an unstable configuration of the star's magnetic field triggers the eruptions. "Once the magnetic field resumes a more stable configuration, the activity ceases and the star returns to quiet and dim emission," Rea said.

Twelve hours after Swift pinpointed SGR 0501+4516, XMM-Newton began the most detailed study of a fading magnetar outburst ever attempted. The object underwent hundreds of small bursts over a period of more than four months. Only five days after the initial eruption, INTEGRAL detected X-rays from the object that were beyond the energy range XMM-Newton can see. It's the first time such transient high-energy X-ray emission has been detected during an SGR's outburst phase. This emission disappeared within ten days of the outburst. The findings were published online June 15 in the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society.

The team plans further observations of SGR 0501+4516 with XMM-Newton. They hope to detect the object in a quiet state in order to probe the calm after the storm.

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NASA researchers who normally study futuristic materials are using their high tech scanners to reveal the past.

Technicians at NASA's Langley Research Center in Hampton, Va., just finished inspecting a 400-year-old slate tablet recently recovered from an early 17^th century well at Historic Jamestowne, the 1607 site of the first permanent English settlement in North America.

NASA Langley has scanned dozens of artifacts for Preservation Virginia, since its Jamestowne Rediscovery archaeologists began the excavation of James Fort 15 years ago. But this is the first time researchers used a new, more sophisticated "micro-focus computed tomography x-ray system" that Langley installed last summer in its Nondestructive Evaluation Sciences laboratory.

"It's a three-dimensional imaging system that allows us to see inside materials without having to take them apart," said Ray Parker, nondestructive evaluation sciences engineer. "It's like a hospital CT scanner, only higher precision. We normally use it to inspect materials for aerospace use, like pieces of the shuttle or composites for hypersonic vehicles."

The eight-foot long, four-foot wide, six-foot high machine, called the X-Tek HMX-ST 225, uses X-rays and computer processing to create a 3-D "picture" of whatever it scans. In this case archaeologists are trying to determine what's written on the slate tablet they found.

"There's a deposit of rust on the tablet and it's covering up lettering and drawings," said Parker. "We're looking at the results of our scans to see if we read what's there."

This is the second time that Parker and technician John Grainger have worked with the Jamestown Rediscovery archaeologists. Last time they inspected a 16^th century Scottish pistol found in one of the fort's wells.

"I think it's fantastic they're finding all this stuff and we get to inspect some of it," Parker said. "I've always had an interest in history. When I grew up we used to visit the Historic Triangle -- Jamestown, Williamsburg and Yorktown, Va. -- frequently."

NASA Langley started working with Preservation Virginia more than seven years ago helping to identify artifacts. That role expanded when NASA teamed with Jamestown 2007 to promote the spirit of exploration then, now and in the future. During the 18-month long celebration to honor the 400^th anniversary of Jamestown, NASA even flew a small lead cargo tag, bearing the words "Yames Towne," and some commemorative mementoes on board the space shuttle Atlantis to commemorate the nation's pioneering spirit.