Discovery arrived at the pad at 4:25 a.m. EDT Saturday on top of a giant crawler-transporter. The crawler-transporter left Kennedy's Vehicle Assembly Building at 11:47 p.m. Friday, traveling less than 1 mph during the 3.4-mile journey. The shuttle was secured on the launch pad at 6:06 a.m. Saturday.

Discovery is targeted to launch May 31 on a 13-day mission to the International Space Station. The shuttle's seven crew members will deliver the Kibo laboratory's large Japanese Pressurized Module, or JPM, and its remote manipulator system to the International Space Station. Three spacewalks will be conducted during the flight.

Mark Kelly will command the STS-124 mission. Ken Ham will be the pilot. The mission specialists are Karen Nyberg, Ron Garan, Mike Fossum, Greg Chamitoff and Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency astronaut Akihiko Hoshide. Chamitoff will remain on the station as a resident crew member, replacing station Flight Engineer Garrett Reisman, who will return home on Discovery.

The STS-124 astronauts and ground crews will participate in the practice countdown. The terminal countdown demonstration test provides each shuttle crew with an opportunity to participate in various simulated countdown activities, including equipment familiarization and emergency training.

STS-124 is the 123rd shuttle flight, the 35th flight for Discovery and the 26th flight to the station.

04.29.08
 An enhanced color view of the storm on Saturn. Image credit: NASA/JPL/Space Science Institute
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PASADENA, Calif. – As a powerful electrical storm rages on Saturn with lightning bolts 10,000 times more powerful than those found on Earth, the Cassini spacecraft continues its five-month watch over the dramatic events.

Scientists with NASA's Cassini-Huygens mission have been tracking the visibly bright, lightning-generating storm--the longest continually observed electrical storm ever monitored by Cassini.

Saturn's electrical storms resemble terrestrial thunderstorms, but on a much larger scale. Storms on Saturn have diameters of several thousand kilometers (thousands of miles), and radio signals produced by their lightning are thousands of times more powerful than those produced by terrestrial thunderstorms.

Color images of the storm are available at: http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov and http://www.nasa.gov/cassini and http://ciclops.org .
Lightning flashes within the persistent storm produce radio waves called Saturn electrostatic discharges, which the radio and plasma wave science instrument first detected on Nov. 27, 2007. Cassini's imaging cameras monitored the position and appearance of the storm, first spotting it about a week later, on Dec. 6.

"The electrostatic radio outbursts have waxed and waned in intensity for five months now," said Georg Fischer, an associate with the radio and plasma wave science team at the University of Iowa, Iowa City. "We saw similar storms in 2004 and 2006 that each lasted for nearly a month, but this storm is longer-lived by far. And it appeared after nearly two years during which we did not detect any electrical storm activity from Saturn."

The new storm is located in Saturn's southern hemisphere--in a region nicknamed "Storm Alley" by mission scientists--where the previous lightning storms were observed by Cassini. "In order to see the storm, the imaging cameras have to be looking at the right place at the right time, and whenever our cameras see the storm, the radio outbursts are there," said Ulyana Dyudina, an associate of the Cassini imaging team at the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, Calif.

Cassini's radio plasma wave instrument detects the storm every time it rotates into view, which happens every 10 hours and 40 minutes, the approximate length of a Saturn day. Every few seconds the storm gives off a radio pulse lasting for about a tenth of a second, which is typical of lightning bolts and other electrical discharges. These radio waves are detected even when the storm is over the horizon as viewed from Cassini, a result of the bending of radio waves by the planet's atmosphere.

NASA and The Chesapeake Bay

By studying the landscape around the Chesapeake, NASA spacecraft such as Landsat, Terra and Aqua are helping land managers figure out how to battle the harmful pollutants that have added to the destruction of the bay's once legendary productivity. While still a commercially important ecosystem -- home to some 3,600 species -- four centuries of local population growth have crippled the bay’s health, earning it a place on the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s “dirty waters” list and a 2007 overall grade of C-minus by the University of Maryland Center for Environmental Science.

Many of these harmful pollutants come from the Chesapeake Bay’s watershed, an area of about 64,000 square miles that covers parts of six states. Water from this massive region constantly drains into the bay, carrying with it sediments from erosion, excessive nutrients and other contaminants that hurt the bay’s water quality. This runoff also feeds large algae blooms that consume oxygen in the water; oxygen that crabs, fish and other bay species rely on.> Take an interactive Chesapeake tour
Runoff carries more pollutants when it travels over paved surfaces and cropland, versus marshland or forest. Land cover information from satellite imagers like Landsat and the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) help Bay managers identify the best places to curb non-point source pollution.

“The impervious, tree cover and land cover type map products derived from Landsat data are used on a daily basis by the Chesapeake Bay Program,” says Scott Goetz, a NASA-funded scientist at Woods Hole Research Center, whose team used Landsat data to create a series of Chesapeake watershed maps.
The Chesapeake Bay Program is a unique regional partnership that leads and directs the restoration of the bay. They often use Landsat data to help build models that predict the location of nutrient loads and identify areas where managers should take action towards conservation, restoration and growth.

In addition, NASA sensors SeaWiFS and MODIS detect water color, and are used to calculate sediment and chlorophyll concentrations. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s CoastWatch program provides this type of oceanographic data in near real-time to federal, state and local marine scientists, coastal resource managers and the general public.

Other organizations, such as the Virginia Department of Conservation and Recreation and the Maryland Department of Natural Resources, also use NASA-derived information to prioritize land conservation efforts. The states have now set nutrient and sediment reduction targets for each of the Chesapeake watershed sub-regions thanks to a Landsat-enabled assessment of relative pollution contributions.

In all these ways, NASA satellites are helping Chesapeake Bay managers reduce harmful pollutants. If the bay is ever to recover enough to be taken off of the "dirty waters" list, NASA data will be essential for deciding how to best care for our troubled neighbor.

NASA TO BROADCAST EARTH VIEWS IN HIGH DEFINITION TELEVISION

HOUSTON -- Since humans first flew in space, nothing has captivated astronauts more than the view of home out the window of their spacecraft. In honor of Earth Day, April 22, NASA will make those views available to people here on Earth with an event highlighting imagery taken by astronauts and the science behind it.

For the first time ever, NASA Television will air a special hour-long broadcast of views of Earth taken in High Definition, or HD, by astronauts on past space shuttle and International Space Station missions.
The special HD broadcast will air between 6 a.m. and 8 a.m. EDT on Friday, April 18, and replay at the same time on Monday, April 21. It will air every hour from 6 a.m. to 8 p.m. on Tuesday, April 22.

The Friday HD broadcast will feature a silent version of the Earth views. The broadcasts on Monday and Tuesday will include a discussion of the views by Dr. Justin Wilkinson, a scientist with the Crew Earth
Observations Office at NASA's Johnson Space Center in Houston.

The footage also will air on standard NASA TV during regularly scheduled Video File broadcasts. For technical information on how to receive the special broadcast in high definition, and for NASA TV
streaming video, downlink and scheduling information, visit: http://www.nasa.gov/ntv

Image above: Flight Engineer Yuri Malenchenko and Commander Peggy Whitson monitor the approach of the Jules Verne Automated Transfer Vehicle on Monday. Credit: NASA TV

The Expedition 16 crew of the International Space Station returned to science and station maintenance activities Tuesday after Monday’s successful test approach of the Jules Verne Automated Transfer Vehicle (ATV).

Commander Peggy Whitson and Flight Engineer Garrett Reisman worked together to set up equipment for a periodic physical fitness evaluation. Reisman exercised on the station’s cycle ergometer while wearing a heart rate monitor. Whitson collected data from this session, which exercise physiologists and flight surgeons will use to assess Reisman’s health and make adjustments to his exercise regimen if needed.

Later, Reisman worked in the Quest airlock, performing maintenance on the cooling loops of the U.S. spacesuits.

In preparation for the ATV docking on Thursday, Flight Engineer Yuri Malenchenko checked the hardware needed to perform leak checks in the event of a failure in the power unit of the cargo carrier’s depress valve.

The Jules Verne approached the station on Monday for its "Demo Day 2" practice maneuvers. It moved to within 36 feet of the Zvezda Service Module in a rehearsal for docking on Thursday.
The ATV reached its closest point to the station at 12:38 p.m. EDT, at which time it was commanded by the crew to retreat to a point 62 feet away. From there it executed an "escape" command to depart the station for its three-day phasing prior to final approach and docking around 10:41 a.m. Thursday.

NASA Satellite Detects Record Whopper Gamma Ray Burst Explosion Halfway Across Universe 3-19-2008
 
 WASHINGTON - A powerful stellar explosion detected March 19 by NASA's Swift satellite has shattered the record for the most distant object that could be seen with the naked eye.

The explosion was a gamma ray burst. Most gamma ray bursts occur when massive stars run out of nuclear fuel. Their cores collapse to form black holes or neutron stars, releasing an intense burst of high-energy gamma rays and ejecting particle jets that rip through space at nearly the speed of light like turbocharged cosmic blowtorches. When the jets plow into surrounding interstellar clouds, they heat the gas, often generating bright afterglows. Gamma ray bursts are the most luminous explosions in the universe since the big bang.

"This burst was a whopper," said Swift principal investigator Neil Gehrels of NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md. "It blows away every gamma ray burst we've seen so far."
Swift's Burst Alert Telescope picked up the burst at 2:12 a.m. EDT, March 19, and pinpointed the coordinates in the constellation Boötes. Telescopes in space and on the ground quickly moved to observe the afterglow. The burst is named GRB 080319B, because it was the second gamma ray burst detected that day.

Swift's other two instruments, the X-ray Telescope and the Ultraviolet/Optical Telescope, also observed brilliant afterglows. Several ground-based telescopes saw the afterglow brighten to visual magnitudes between 5 and 6 in the logarithmic magnitude scale used by astronomers. The brighter an object is, the lower its magnitude number. From a dark location in the countryside, people with normal vision can see stars slightly fainter than magnitude 6. That means the afterglow would have been dim, but visible to the naked eye.

Later that evening, the Very Large Telescope in Chile and the Hobby-Eberly Telescope in Texas measured the burst's redshift at 0.94. A redshift is a measure of the distance to an object. A redshift of 0.94 translates into a distance of 7.5 billion light years, meaning the explosion took place 7.5 billion years ago, a time when the universe was less than half its current age and Earth had yet to form. This is more than halfway across the visible universe.

"No other known object or type of explosion could be seen by the naked eye at such an immense distance," said Swift science team member Stephen Holland of Goddard. "If someone just happened to be looking at the right place at the right time, they saw the most distant object ever seen by human eyes without optical aid."

GRB 080319B's optical afterglow was 2.5 million times more luminous than the most luminous supernova ever recorded, making it the most intrinsically bright object ever observed by humans in the universe. The most distant previous object that could have been seen by the naked eye is the nearby galaxy M33, a relatively short 2.9 million light-years from Earth.
Analysis of GRB 080319B is just getting underway, so astronomers don't know why this burst and its afterglow were so bright. One possibility is the burst was more energetic than others, perhaps because of the mass, spin, or magnetic field of the progenitor star or its jet. Or perhaps it concentrated its energy in a narrow jet that was aimed directly at Earth.

GRB 080319B was one of four bursts that Swift detected, a Swift record for one day. "Coincidentally, the passing of Arthur C. Clarke seems to have set the universe ablaze with gamma ray bursts," said Swift science team member Judith Racusin of Penn State University in University Park, Pa.

Swift is managed by Goddard. It was built and is being operated in collaboration with Penn State, the Los Alamos National Laboratory, and General Dynamics in the U.S.; the University of Leicester and Mullard Space Sciences Laboratory in the United Kingdom; Brera Observatory and the Italian Space Agency in Italy; plus partners in Germany and Japan.
For related images to this story, visit:
http://www.nasa.gov/swift

NASA Spacecraft Photographs Avalanches on Mars
03.03.08

Pasadena, Calif. - A NASA spacecraft in orbit around Mars has taken the first ever image of active avalanches near the Red Planet's north pole. The image shows tan clouds billowing away from the foot of a towering slope, where ice and dust have just cascaded down.

The High Resolution Imaging Experiment (HiRISE) on NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter took the photograph Feb. 19. It is one of approximately 2,400 HiRISE images being released today.

Ingrid Daubar Spitale of the University of Arizona, Tucson, who works on targeting the camera and has studied hundreds of HiRISE images, was the first person to notice the avalanches. "It really surprised me," she said. "It's great to see something so dynamic on Mars. A lot of what we see there hasn't changed for millions of years."

The camera is looking repeatedly at selected places on Mars to track seasonal changes. However, the main target of the Feb. 19 image was not the steep slope.

"We were checking for springtime changes in the carbon-dioxide frost covering a dune field, and finding the avalanches was completely serendipitous," said Candice Hansen, deputy principal investigator for HiRISE, at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif.

The full image reveals features as small as a desk in a strip of terrain 6 kilometers (3.7 miles) wide and more than 10 times that long, at 84 degrees north latitude. Reddish layers known to be rich in water ice make up the face of a steep slope more than 700 meters (2,300 feet) tall, running the length of the image.

We don't know what set off these landslides," said Patrick Russell of the University of Berne, Switzerland, a HiRISE team collaborator. "We plan to take more images of the site through the changing Martian seasons to see if this kind of avalanche happens all year or is restricted to early spring."

More ice than dust probably makes up the material that fell from the upper portion of the scarp. Imaging of the site during coming months will track any changes in the new deposit at the base of the slope. That will help researchers estimate what proportion is ice.

"If blocks of ice broke loose and fell, we expect the water in them will be changing from solid to gas," Russell said. "We'll be watching to see if blocks and other debris shrink in size. What we learn could give us a better understanding of one part of the water cycle on Mars."

Another notable HiRISE image released today shows a blue crescent Earth and its moon, as seen by the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter. The west coast of South America is visible in the photo. Still other images allow viewers to explore a wide variety of Martian terrains, such as dramatic canyons and rhythmic patterns of sand dunes.

The camera is one of six science instruments on the orbiter. The spacecraft reached Mars in March 2006 and has returned more data than all other current and past missions to Mars combined.

"Our Mars program is the envy of the world," said Alan Stern, associate administrator of NASA's Science Mission Directorate, Washington. "We plan to launch a total of five more missions in the next decade, beginning with the Mars Science Lab rover next year and a Mars Aeronomy Scout mission in 2013."

NASA's Newest Concept Vehicle Takes Off-Roading Out of This World 2-29-2008
 
 
HOUSTON - In a car commercial, it would sound odd: active suspension, six-wheel drive with independent steering for each wheel, no doors, no windows, no seats and the only color available is gold.

But, NASA's latest concept vehicle is meant to go way off-road, as in 240,000 miles from the nearest pavement, and drive on the moon. NASA is working to send astronauts to the moon by 2020 to set up a lunar outpost, where they will do scientific research and prepare for journeys to more distant destinations.
Built at NASA's Johnson Space Center, Houston, the new design is one concept for a future lunar truck. The vehicle provides an idea of what the transportation possibilities may be when astronauts start exploring the moon. Other than a few basic requirements, the primary instruction given to the designers was to throw away assumptions made on NASA's previous rovers and come up with new ideas.

To be honest with you, it was scary when we started," said Lucien Junkin, a Johnson robotics engineer and the design lead for the prototype rover. "They tasked us last October to build the next generation rover and challenge the conventional wisdom. The idea is that, in the future, NASA can put this side-by-side with alternate designs and start to pick their features."
One of the first standards to go was the traditional expectation that a vehicle should have four wheels. Mars rovers Spirit and Opportunity, still cruising around the Red Planet, have already proved the value of a couple of extra wheels. When one of the six wheels became inoperable, the rovers had no problem rolling on using the remaining five.

With the number of wheels decided, the next question was how those wheels should turn. On a car, the front wheels turn a few inches in either direction, and both wheels point in the same direction. On this rover, all six wheels can pivot individually in any direction, regardless of where any other wheel points. To parallel park, a driver could pull up next to the parking place, turn all the wheels to the right and slide right in.

Of course, astronauts will not have trouble finding a parking space on the moon. But the feature, called crab steering, has advantages for a vehicle designed to drive into the craters of the moon. If a slope is too steep to drive down safely, the vehicle could drive sideways instead - no backing up or three-point turns required. The all-wheels, all-ways steering also could come in handy when unloading and docking payloads or plugging into a habitat for recharging.

Introducing crab steering drove the concept in several other ways. If the rover's wheels turn to drive in a different direction, the driver needs to be able to do the same. The driver stands at the steering mechanism because sitting in a spacesuit is not comfortable or practical. The astronaut's perch - steering mechanism, driver and all - can pivot 360 degrees.

"The Apollo astronauts couldn't back up at all because they couldn't see where they were going in reverse," said Rob Ambrose, assistant chief of the Automation, Robotics and Simulation Division at Johnson. "If you have a payload on the back or are plugging into something, it could be really important to keep your eyes directly on it."

The vehicle also can be the ultimate low-rider. It can lower its belly to the ground, making it easier for astronauts in spacesuits to climb on and off. Individual wheels or sections can be raised and lowered to keep the vehicle level when driving on uneven ground.
Some, all or none of these features may be selected for the design of a rover that eventually goes to the moon. NASA's lunar architects currently envision pressurized rovers that would travel in pairs, with two astronauts in each rover. The new prototype vehicle is meant to provide ideas as those future designs are developed.

"This rover concept changed the whole paradigm," said Diane Hope, program element manager for NASA's Exploration Technology Development Program at NASA's Langley Research Center in Hampton, Va., which sponsored the vehicle's development. "It's not something I would have expected. It provides an alternative approach."

NASA

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. - The space shuttle Atlantis crew is expected to complete a 13-day mission to the International Space Station with a landing at NASA's Kennedy Space Center on Wednesday, Feb. 20.

The STS-122 mission began Feb. 7 and delivered the European Space Agency's Columbus laboratory to the station. Columbus expands the station's research facilities and provides scientists around the world with the ability to conduct a variety of life, physical and materials science experiments. The mission also included three spacewalks, the delivery of a new crew member to the station and the return of another astronaut after his nearly four month stay aboard the complex.

NASA managers will evaluate weather conditions at Kennedy before permitting Atlantis to return to Earth. Wednesday landing opportunities at Kennedy are at 9:07 a.m. and 10:42 a.m. EST. There are additional opportunities at 12:12 p.m. and 1:47 p.m. at Edwards Air Force Base, Calif., a backup landing site. The shuttle's other backup site for landing, White Sands Space Harbor, N.M., will not be activated Wednesday.

Two hours after landing, NASA officials will hold a briefing to discuss the mission. The participants will be:
- NASA Administrator Michael Griffin
- NASA Associate Administrator for Space Operations Bill Gerstenmaier
- NASA Space Shuttle Launch Director Mike Leinbach
After touchdown, the astronauts will undergo physical examinations and meet with their families. Some crew members are expected to hold a news conference no earlier 4.5 hours after returning to Earth.

NASA Assigns Crews for STS-127 and Expedition 19 Missions
 
 

WASHINGTON - NASA has assigned crews for the STS-127 space shuttle mission and the Expedition 19 International Space Station mission. The STS-127 mission will deliver the final components of the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency's Kibo laboratory to the station. Expedition 19 will double the size of the resident crew on the complex, expanding it to six people.

Mark L. Polansky will command the shuttle Endeavour for STS-127, targeted to launch in 2009. Marine Corps Lt. Col. Douglas G. Hurley will serve as the pilot. Mission specialists are Navy Lt. Cmdr. Christopher J. Cassidy, Thomas H. Marshburn, David A. Wolf and Julie Payette, a Canadian Space Agency astronaut.
The mission will deliver Army Col. Timothy L. Kopra to the station to join Expedition 18 as a flight engineer and science officer and return Japanese astronaut Koichi Wakata to Earth. Hurley, Cassidy, Marshburn and Kopra will be making their first trips to space.
STS-127 will launch and install the Kibo Japanese Experiment Module Exposed Facility and Experiment Logistics Module Exposed Section. The facility will provide a type of "front porch" for experiments in the exposed environment, and a robotic arm that will be attached to the Kibo Pressurized Module and used to position experiments outside the station. The mission will include five spacewalks.

Polansky first flew as pilot of STS-98 in 2001 and then commanded STS-116 in 2006. He considers Edison, N.J., his hometown. Polansky has bachelor's and master's degrees from Purdue University.
Hurley considers Apalachin, N.Y., his hometown. He has a bachelor's from Tulane University, New Orleans.
Cassidy considers York, Maine, his hometown and has a bachelor's from the U.S. Naval Academy and a master's from Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT).

Born in Statesville, N.C., Marshburn has a bachelor's from Davidson College, Davidson, N.C., master's degrees from the University of Virginia and the University of Texas Medical Branch, and a doctorate of medicine from Wake Forest University.
A native of Indianapolis, Wolf will be making his fourth spaceflight. He first flew on STS-58 in 1993. He next flew a 128-day mission to the Russian space station Mir, launching aboard STS-86 in September 1997 and landing on STS-89 in January 1998. His third flight was on STS-112 in 2002. Wolf has a bachelor's from Purdue University and a doctorate of medicine from Indiana University.

Payette, born in Montreal, flew as a mission specialist on STS-96 in 1999. She has an International Baccalaureate from the United World College of the Atlantic in the United Kingdom, a bachelor's from McGill University and a master's from the University of Toronto.

Kopra is a native of Austin, Texas, and holds a bachelor's from the U.S. Military Academy and a master's from Georgia Institute of Technology.
Expedition 19 will be commanded by cosmonaut and Russian Air Force Col. Gennady Padalka. In March 2009, he will command the Soyuz spacecraft that will launch him and astronaut Michael R. Barratt to the station. Astronaut Nicole P. Stott will join them, arriving on the STS-128 shuttle mission to replace Kopra. She will serve as a flight engineer and science officer and return to Earth on the next Soyuz spacecraft. Barratt and Stott will be making their first trips to space.

NASA Data Link Pollution to Rainy Summer Days in the Southeast
 
 

WASHINGTON - Rainfall data from a NASA satellite show that summertime storms in the southeastern United States shed more rainfall midweek than on weekends. Scientists say air pollution from humans is likely driving that trend.

The link between rainfall and the day of the week is evident in data from NASA's Tropical Rainfall Measuring Mission satellite, known as TRMM. Midweek storms tend to be stronger, drop more rain and span a larger area across the Southeast compared to calmer and drier weekends. The findings are from a study led by Thomas Bell, an atmospheric scientist at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Md. Bell said the trend could be attributed to atmospheric pollution from humans, which also peaks midweek.

"It's eerie to think that we're affecting the weather," said Bell, lead author of the study published online this week in the American Geophysical Union's Journal of Geophysical Research. "It appears that we're making storms more violent."

Rainfall measurements collected from ground-based gauges can vary from one gauge site to the next because of fickle weather patterns. So, to identify any kind of significant weekly rainfall trend, Bell and colleagues looked at the big picture from Earth's orbit. The team collected data from instruments on the TRMM satellite, which they used to estimate daily summertime rainfall averages from 1998 to 2005 across the entire Southeast.

The team found that, on average, it rained more between Tuesday and Thursday than from Saturday through Monday. Newly analyzed satellite data show that summer 2007 echoed the midweek trend with peak rainfall occurring late on Thursdays. However, midweek increases in rainfall were more significant in the afternoon, when the conditions for summertime storms are in place. Based on satellite data, afternoon rainfall peaked on Tuesdays, with 1.8 times more rainfall than on Saturdays, which experienced the least amount of afternoon rain.

The team used ground-based data from gauges, along with vertical wind speed and cloud height measurements, to help confirm the weekly trend in rainfall observed from space.

To find out if pollution from humans indeed could be responsible for the midweek boost in rainfall, the team analyzed particulate matter, the concentrations of airborne particles associated with pollution, across the U.S. from 1998 to 2005. The data, obtained from the Environmental Protection Agency, showed that pollution tended to peak midweek, mirroring the trend observed in the rainfall data.

"If two things happen at the same time, it doesn't mean one caused the other," Bell said. "But it's well known that particulate matter has the potential to affect how clouds behave, and this kind of evidence makes the argument stronger for a link between pollution and heavier rainfall."

Scientists long have questioned the effect of workweek pollution, such as emissions from traffic, businesses and factories, on weekly weather patterns. Researchers know clouds are "seeded" by particulate matter. Water and ice in clouds grab hold around the particles, forming additional water droplets. Some researchers think increased pollution thwarts rainfall by dispersing the same amount of water over more seeds, preventing them from growing large enough to fall as rain. Still, other studies suggest some factors can override this dispersion effect.

Jan. 30

NASA managers formally set the launch of space shuttle Atlantis for Feb. 7 at 2:45 p.m. EST, pending analysis of a flexible hose in the shuttle's radiator cooling system.
The bent hose was discovered Tuesday on Atlantis during inspections of the payload bay doors. Engineers want to determine whether the braided metal hose, which carries Freon to cool the shuttle's systems while in space, will work as planned. The hose in question runs from the shuttle body to the radiator panels on the cargo bay doors.

The problem was first uncovered during inspections of space shuttle Discovery.

"We're heading for the seventh of February for launch and we'll continue to look at the radiator hose issue," said Bill Gerstenmaier, NASA's associate administrator for Space Operations.

Officials will meet again Saturday to evaluate testing and other data related to the hose.

"Right now, that hose is perfectly functional," Space Shuttle Program Manager Wayne Hale said. "Since the hose is not leaking now and the sister hose on Discovery didn't leak on a number of flights, I'm feeling very positive we'll come to a good conclusion. But we have to do our work here, the engineers have to do their work and we want to make sure we know what we're doing before we go fly this vehicle."

NASA's Quest to Find Water on the Moon Moves Closer to Launch
 
 

MOFFETT FIELD, Calif. - Cameras and sensors that will look for the presence of water on the moon have completed validation tests and been shipped to the manufacturer of NASA's Lunar Crater Observation and Sensing Satellite.
The science instruments for the satellite, which is known as LCROSS, departed NASA's Ames Research Center in Moffett Field Calif., for the Northrop Grumman Corporation's facility in Redondo Beach, Calif. to be integrated with the spacecraft. A video file is available on NASA Television. LCROSS is scheduled to launch with the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter aboard an Atlas V rocket from Cape Canaveral, Fla., by the end of 2008.

"The goal of the mission is to confirm the presence or absence of water ice in a permanently shadowed crater at the moon's south pole," said Anthony Colaprete, LCROSS principal investigator at Ames. "The identification of water is very important to the future of human activities on the moon."
In 2009, LCROSS will separate into two parts and create a pair of impacts on the permanently dark floor of one of the moon's polar craters. The spent Centaur upper stage of the Atlas V rocket will hit the moon, causing an explosion of material from the crater’s surface. The instruments aboard the satellite will analyze the plume for the presence of water ice or water vapor, hydrocarbons and hydrated materials. The satellite then will fly through the plume on a collision course with the lunar surface. Both impacts will be visible to Earth and lunar-orbiting instruments.

Northrop Grumman is designing and building the spacecraft. After installing the instruments on the satellite, Northrop Grumman will test the entire spacecraft system to ensure it is flight worthy.
During development of the LCROSS payload, Ames engineers and scientists built new spaceflight hardware and used new testing procedures to take advantage of lower cost, commercially available instruments. The team subjected the commercial instruments and NASA-developed components to conditions simulating the harsh environment of spaceflight. Working closely with the commercial instrument manufacturers, all safety and operational concerns were addressed quickly and efficiently.

"This payload delivery represents a new way of doing business for the center and the agency in general," said Daniel Andrews, LCROSS project manager at Ames. "LCROSS primarily is using commercial-off-the-shelf instruments on this mission to meet the mission's accelerated development schedule and cost restraints."

NASA to Unveil Braille Book With Cosmic Images
 

BALTIMORE - NASA will debut a new book for blind readers at a media event and reception Jan. 15. The agency will unveil "Touch the Invisible Sky," which gives blind readers the ability to experience cosmic images from the agency's space-based observatories and other telescopes on the ground. The event begins at 10 a.m. EST at the National Federation of the Blind, 1800 Johnson Street, Baltimore. Media will have the opportunity to ask the authors questions and view science experiments related to NASA's Great Observatories.

"Touch the Invisible Sky" is accessible to both blind and sighted readers. The book presents celestial objects as they appear through visible-light telescopes and in different spectral regions that are invisible to the naked eye. It uses a combination of Braille and traditional text. A variety of tactile textures and symbols were chosen to represent different physical features and characteristics of the images.

To participate in the event, media must R.S.V.P. by 2 p.m. Monday, Jan. 14, to Grey Hautaluoma at NASA Headquarters, 202-358-0668, or Chris Danielson at the National Federation of the Blind, 410-659-9314, ext. 2330.

Atlantis to Help Mark NASCAR Milestone
12.07.07

 NASA is taking three green starter's flags from the Daytona 500 into space to mark the 50th anniversary of NASA and NASCAR's premiere race. Credit: NASA › View Hi-res Image
A trio of flags from the Daytona 500 will set speed marks of their own as they race to 17,500 mph aboard space shuttle Atlantis.

The green starter's flags are tucked inside the shuttle during the STS-122 mission to the International Space Station. One of the flags will be waved to begin the 2008 installment of what NASCAR calls the "Great American Race," while another will be presented to the winning driver. NASA will keep the third.

While NASA celebrates its 50th anniversary, the Daytona International Speedway is celebrating the 50th running of the Daytona 500 in 2008. Drivers and their crews have been known to pause at the race track to watch a shuttle streak into space on a plume of fire and smoke. The track is less than 100 miles from the shuttle launch pads at NASA's Kennedy Space Center on Florida's east coast.
Over the years, technology developed for the space program has found many uses on Earth, even helping NASCAR drivers stay safe and increase their performance. NASCAR drivers wear cooling suits very similar to what astronauts wear during spacewalks. Foam NASA developed for aircraft seats protects racecar drivers’ necks in a crash. And the same material that protects the space shuttle from extreme temperatures when it re-enters the atmosphere protects NASCAR drivers from the heat of their high-performance engines.
NASA and astronauts often pack mementoes aboard space shuttle flights to commemorate historical events, mark milestones and celebrate achievements. The effort also brings awareness of the space agency to a wider audience and gives people a chance to see a tangible sign of exploration.
Atlantis will also carry a dried red rose that will be woven into a NASA-themed float during the Tournament of Roses parade. The float also will celebrate NASA's first 50 years in existence.

Astronomers Monitor Asteroid to Pass Near Mars
 
 WASHINGTON - Astronomers funded by NASA are monitoring the trajectory of an asteroid estimated to be 164-feet wide that is expected to cross Mars' orbital path early next year. Observations provided by the astronomers and analyzed by NASA's Near-Earth Object Office at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif., indicate the object may pass within 30,000 miles of Mars at about 6 a.m. EST on Jan. 30, 2008.

"Right now asteroid 2007 WD5 is about half-way between the Earth and Mars and closing the distance at a speed of about 27,900 miles per hour," said Don Yeomans, manager of the Near Earth Object Office at JPL. "Over the next five weeks, we hope to gather more information from observatories so we can further refine the asteroid's trajectory."

NASA detects and tracks asteroids and comets passing close to Earth. The Near Earth Object Observation Program, commonly called "Spaceguard," plots the orbits of these objects to determine if any could be potentially hazardous to our planet.

Asteroid 2007 WD5 was first discovered on Nov. 20, 2007, by the NASA-funded Catalina Sky Survey and put on a "watch list" because its orbit passes near the Earth. Further observations from both the NASA-funded Spacewatch at Kitt Peak, Ariz., and the Magdalena Ridge Observatory in New Mexico gave scientists enough data to determine that the asteroid was not a danger to Earth, but could potentially impact Mars. This makes it a member of an interesting class of small objects that are both Near Earth Objects and “Mars crossers."

Because of current uncertainties about the asteroid's exact orbit, there is a 1-in-75 chance of 2007 WD5 impacting Mars. If this unlikely event were to occur, it would be somewhere within a broad swath across the planet north of where the Opportunity rover is.

, "We estimate such impacts occur on Mars every thousand years or so," said Steve Chesley, a scientist at JPL. "If 2007 WD5 were to thump Mars on Jan. 30, we calculate it would hit at about 30,000 miles per hour and might create a crater more than half-a-mile wide." The Mars Rover Opportunity is currently exploring a crater approximately this size.

NASA Reschedules Space Shuttle LaunchNASA Targets Space Shuttle Atlantis Launch on Jan. 10,2008
 
 HOUSTON - NASA's Space Shuttle Program managers have targeted Jan. 10 for the launch of shuttle Atlantis' STS-122 mission to the International Space Station.

"Moving the next launch attempt of Atlantis to Jan. 10 will allow as many people as possible to have time with family and friends at the time of year when it means the most. A lot has been asked of them this year and a lot will be asked of them in 2008."

The liftoff date from NASA's Kennedy Space Center, Florida, depends on the resolution of a problem in a fuel sensor system. The shuttle's planned launches on Dec. 6 and Dec. 9 were postponed because of false readings from the part of the system that monitors the liquid hydrogen section of the tank.

Atlantis' main objective during its STS-122 mission to the International Space Station is to install and activate the European Space Agency's Columbus laboratory, which will provide scientists around the world the ability to conduct a variety of life, physical and materials science experiments.

The main objective of Atlantis' 11-day mission is to install and activate the European Space Agency's Columbus laboratory, which will provide scientists around the world the ability to conduct a variety of life, physical and materials science experiments.

During Atlantis' 11-day mission to the International Space Station, the shuttle and station crews will work with ground teams to install and activate the European Space Agency's Columbus laboratory. The new lab will expand the station's scientific research capabilities.

Photo Courtesy of NASA

Embryonic Star Captured With Jets Flaring
11.29.07

A developing star wrapped in a black cocoon of dust is seen sprouting giant jets in a new image from NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope.

The stellar portrait, captured in infrared light, offers the first glimpse at a very early stage in the life of an embryonic sun-like star -- a time when the star's natal envelope is beginning to flatten and collapse, and streams of gas are escaping. The observations will ultimately help astronomers better understand how stars and their planets form.

"This is the first time we've clearly seen a flattened envelope around a forming star," said Leslie Looney of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, lead author of a study about the star, called L1157, appearing Dec. 1 in Astrophysical Journal Letters. "Some theories had predicted that envelopes flatten as they collapse onto their stars and surrounding planet-forming disks, but we hadn't seen any strong evidence of this until now."

NASA-CONCEIVED MAP OF ANTARCTICA LAYS GROUND FOR NEW DISCOVERIES

A team of researchers from NASA, the U.S. Geological Survey, the National Science Foundation and the British Antarctic Survey unveiled a newly completed map of Antarctica today that is expected to revolutionize research of the continent's frozen landscape.

The Landsat Image Mosaic of Antarctica is a result of NASA's state-of-the-art satellite technologies and an example of the prominent role NASA continues to play as a world leader in the development and flight of Earth-observing satellites.

The map is a realistic, nearly cloudless satellite view of the continent at a resolution 10 times greater than ever before with images captured by the NASA-built Landsat 7 satellite. With the unprecedented ability to see features half the size of a basketball court, the mosaic offers the most geographically accurate, true-color, high-resolution views of Antarctica possible.

"This mosaic of images opens up a window to the Antarctic that we just haven't had before," said Robert Bindschadler, chief scientist of the Hydrospheric and Biospheric Sciences Laboratory at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md. "It will open new windows of opportunity for scientific research as well as enable the public to become much more familiar with Antarctica and how scientists use imagery in their research. This innovation is like watching high-definition TV in living color versus watching the picture on a grainy black-and-white television. These scenes don't just give us a snapshot, they provide a time-lapse historical record of how Antarctica has changed and will enable us to continue to watch changes unfold."

Researchers can use the detailed map to better plan scientific expeditions. The mosaic's higher resolution gives researchers a clearer view over most of the continent to help interpret changes in land elevation in hard-to-access areas. Scientists also think the true-color mosaic will help geologists better map various rock formations and types.

To construct the new Antarctic map, researchers pieced together more than a thousand images from three years of Landsat satellite observations. The resulting mosaic gives researchers and the public a new way to explore Antarctica through a free, public-access Web portal. Eight different versions of the full mosaic are available to download.

NASA Sees Arctic Ocean Circulation Do an About-Face
11.13.07

PASADENA, Calif. – A team of NASA and university scientists has detected an ongoing reversal in Arctic Ocean circulation triggered by atmospheric circulation changes that vary on decade-long time scales. The results suggest not all the large changes seen in Arctic climate in recent years are a result of long-term trends associated with global warming.

The team, led by James Morison of the University of Washington's Polar Science Center Applied Physics Laboratory, Seattle, used data from an Earth-observing satellite and from deep-sea pressure gauges to monitor Arctic Ocean circulation from 2002 to 2006. They measured changes in the weight of columns of Arctic Ocean water, from the surface to the ocean bottom. That weight is influenced by factors such as the height of the ocean's surface, and its salinity. A saltier ocean is heavier and circulates differently than one with less salt.

The very precise deep-sea gauges were developed with help from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration; the satellite is NASA's Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment (Grace). The team of scientists found a 10-millibar decrease in water pressure at the bottom of the ocean at the North Pole between 2002 and 2006, equal to removing the weight of 10 centimeters (four inches) of water from the ocean. The distribution and size of the decrease suggest that Arctic Ocean circulation changed from the counterclockwise pattern it exhibited in the 1990s to the clockwise pattern that was dominant prior to 1990.
Reporting in Geophysical Research Letters, the authors attribute the reversal to a weakened Arctic Oscillation, a major atmospheric circulation pattern in the northern hemisphere. The weakening reduced the salinity of the upper ocean near the North Pole, decreasing its weight and changing its circulation.

"Our study confirms many changes seen in upper Arctic Ocean circulation in the 1990s were mostly decadal in nature, rather than trends caused by global warming," said Morison.

"While some 1990s climate trends, such as declines in Arctic sea ice extent, have continued, these results suggest at least for the 'wet' part of the Arctic -- the Arctic Ocean -- circulation reverted to conditions like those prevalent before the 1990s," he added.

The Arctic Oscillation was fairly stable until about 1970, but then varied on more or less decadal time scales, with signs of an underlying upward trend, until the late 1990s, when it again stabilized. During its strong counterclockwise phase in the 1990s, the Arctic environment changed markedly, with the upper Arctic Ocean undergoing major changes that persisted into this century. Many scientists viewed the changes as evidence of an ongoing climate shift, raising concerns about the effects of global warming on the Arctic.

Morison said data gathered by Grace and the bottom pressure gauges since publication of the paper earlier this year highlight how short-lived the ocean circulation changes can be. The newer data indicate the bottom pressure has increased back toward its 2002 level.

"The winter of 2006-2007 was another high Arctic Oscillation year and summer sea ice extent reached a new minimum," he said. "It is too early to say, but it looks as though the Arctic Ocean is ready to start swinging back to the counterclockwise circulation pattern of the 1990s again."

Morison cautioned that while the recent decadal-scale changes in the circulation of the Arctic Ocean may not appear to be directly tied to global warming, most climate models predict the Arctic Oscillation will become even more strongly counterclockwise in the future. "The events of the 1990s may well be a preview of how the Arctic will respond over longer periods of time in a warming world," he said.

Crew Moves Harmony to Front of Space Station

The new Harmony node is now in position to receive the European and Japanese modules to be added to the International Space Station.
Station crew members moved Harmony from its temporary location on the left side of the Unity node to its new home on the front of the U.S. laboratory Destiny Wednesday morning. Disengagement of the first set of bolts holding Harmony to Unity began at 3:58 a.m. EST.

Flight Engineer Dan Tani operated the station's robotic arm. Commander Peggy Whitson operated the common berthing mechanisms, first to free Harmony after Tani had grappled it with the arm, and later to drive bolts firmly securing it to the front of Destiny.

Driving of the final bolts to attach Harmony to its new home was completed at 5:45 a.m.
After its Wednesday move, Harmony is in position to welcome visiting space shuttles. It also will offer docking ports to the European Space Agency's Columbus laboratory, scheduled to arrive next month, and Japan's Kibo experiment module, to become a part of the International Space Station next year.

NASA

"This is truly a triumphant moment for NASA," Scott Parazynski said. "I think we obtained the summit and then some."
"When I look back at our mission, it seems like we kind of hit a triple home run," Commander Pam Melroy said a few hours after landing Discovery at NASA's Kennedy Space Center on Nov. 7.

The seven astronauts connected a segment called Harmony that will serve as an attachment point for European and Japanese laboratory modules in the next several months. They also moved a tower of electricity producing solar arrays to the far end of the station's central truss.

The group noticed a tear in one of the blankets as the arrays unfurled, and it took a concerted effort in space and at NASA centers to plan a spacewalk to repair the damage.
"It was an amazing thing to watch a large organization like NASA pivot so easily" to tackle the problem, Melroy said.

Parazynski made the repairs during a spacewalk that called for him to be perched on the end of the long boom normally used to inspect shuttle tiles.

"I had more butterflies than I normally do before an EVA," Parazynski said. "It was just different than the prior spacewalks that I had done."
With the repairs completed, the crew was cleared to return to Earth a day later than scheduled, but confident they left the station and its three crew members in good shape for future additions.

"It really was a beautiful moment for NASA," Melroy said. "What you saw is who we are at NASA."

Discovery also delivered a new station crew member, Flight Engineer Daniel Tani.

###

Friday’s spacewalk, already pushed back from Thursday, has been pushed back again one more day to Saturday. The shuttle and station crews will continue spacewalk preparations, transfer activities and enjoy some off-duty time today.

The spacewalk preparations include studying procedures, building tools and resizing a spacesuit glove. Mission Specialists Scott Parazynski and Doug Wheelock will conduct the excursion.

Parazynski will ride the Orbiter Boom Sensor System, the shuttle’s robotic arm extension, attached to the station’s robotic arm to access a damaged solar array. Wheelock will provide guidance to the arm operators while they are maneuvering Parazynski.

The International Space Station Program changed the priority of the fourth spacewalk from inspection of a rotary joint to repair of a solar array.

A fifth spacewalk planned to occur during the STS-120 mission has been pushed back until after Discovery leaves.

Third Spacewalk Tuesday Morning 10-30-2007

As crew members aboard the International Space Station and Space Shuttle Discovery prepared for the third spacewalk, they learned that the shuttle will spend an extra day in space with landing now scheduled for Nov. 7. The additional docked day has been inserted between the fourth and fifth spacewalks and provides for some crew off duty time along with ample equipment preparation and turnaround for the fifth spacewalk scheduled for Saturday.

After analyzing photos of debris found inside the station’s starboard Solar Alpha Rotary Joint, mission managers decided to devote the mission’s fourth spacewalk Thursday to further inspection of the joint.

As a precursor to the additional rotary joint inspection spacewalk, Tuesday’s spacewalk by Mission Specialists Scott Parazynski and Doug Wheelock will include a short task to inspect the port rotary joint to provide comparison data to station managers who will spend the night developing procedures for the fourth spacewalk. All other tasks for the third spacewalk remain as trained with the focus being on installation of the P6 truss and solar array pair to its permanent location outboard of the port truss.

The crews completed final preparations for the P6 truss installation and continued outfitting and activation of avionics and systems racks inside the Harmony Node. Despite the shutdown of the Carbon Dioxide Removal Assembly in the U.S. Destiny laboratory, work continues as normal with no interruption to operations with other means of carbon dioxide scrubbing equipment on board.

The crew day ended with Parazynski and Wheelock beginning their routine overnight “campout” in the Quest airlock. They plan to begin the spacewalk at about 5:28 a.m. EDT Tuesday.

STS-120 Crew Arrives at International Space Station at 8:40a.m.Thursday

 Expedition 16 Arrives at Station 10-15-2007

Expedition 16 Commander Peggy Whitson, Flight Engineer Yuri Malenchenko and spaceflight participant Sheikh Muszaphar Shukor have arrived at the International Space Station. Their Soyuz TMA-11 spacecraft docked to the Earth-facing port of the station’s Zarya module at 10:50 a.m. EDT Friday. The station’s new residents and their Malaysian guest launched at 9:22 a.m. EDT Wednesday from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan.

Space Shuttle Discovery and the STS-120 crew arrived at the International Space Station at 8:40 a.m.Thursday, delivering a new module and crew member to the orbital outpost. After the hatches between the station and shuttle opened at 10:39 a.m., the two crews exchanged greetings and went to work preparing for almost nine days of joint operations.

STS-120 and Expedition 16 crew members transferred to the station spacesuits and tools that will be used during STS-120’s spacewalks. The first of five excursions planned for the mission will begin at 6:28 a.m. Friday.

Mission Specialists Scott Parazynski and Doug Wheelock will perform the first spacewalk. To prepare for the spacewalk, the duo is conducting an overnight “campout” in the station’s airlock where the pressure has been lowered to the pressure normally found on Earth 10,000 feet above sea level. The airlock “campout” at a lower pressure protects against decompression sickness as Parazynski and Wheelock go to the even lower pressure of spacesuits Friday.

Other post-docking activities on Thursday included a crew-member exchange. STS-120 Mission Specialist Dan Tani replaced Expedition 16 Flight Engineer Clay Anderson, who will return to Earth with STS-120. The crew transfer became official when Tani’s custom-made seatliner was installed into the Russian Soyuz spacecraft docked to the station.

Based on imagery analysis, shuttle engineers Friday will recommend no focused inspection of the shuttle's heat shield to the Mission Management Team. Imagery taken during the shuttle's backflip approach to station is still under review. The focused inspection is routinely scheduled on the fifth day of the mission for any additional necessary inspection of the thermal protection system.
The STS-120 crew members are scheduled to begin flight day 4 when they wake up at 1:38 a.m. Friday.

With them is spaceflight participant Sheikh Muszaphar Shukor. He is a Malaysian flying under contract with the Russian Federal Space Agency.

He will return to Earth with Expedition 15 crew members, Commander Fyodor Yurchikhin and Flight Engineer Oleg Kotov, Oct. 21. Expedition 15 launched to the station last April 7.Expedition 16 crew members were welcomed by the Expedition 15 crew, including astronaut Clay Anderson, the third Expedition 15 crew member. He launched to the station aboard the STS-117 mission of Atlantis June 8. He joined Expedition 15 in progress and will provide Expedition 16 with an experienced flight engineer for the first few days of its increment.

Whitson, 47, is on her second mission to the station. She served as a flight engineer on the Expedition 5 crew, launching June 5, 2002, and returning to Earth Dec. 7, after almost 185 days in space. She holds a Ph.D. in biochemistry from Rice University in Houston. She began working for NASA as a research biochemist in 1989 and was selected as an astronaut in 1996.

Malenchenko, 45, a Russian Air Force colonel, is making his third long-duration spaceflight. He spent 126 days aboard the Russian space station Mir beginning July 1, 1994, and commanded the two-person station crew on Expedition 7, spending 185 days in space beginning April 26, 2003. He also was a member of the STS-106 crew of Atlantis on an almost-12-day mission to the station beginning Sept. 8, 2000. He is a graduate of the Kharkov Military Aviation School and the Zhukovsky Air Force Engineering Academy.

Anderson, 48, holds a master's degree in aerospace engineering from Iowa State University. He was selected as an astronaut in 1998. This is his first spaceflight.

Astronaut Daniel Tani is scheduled to launch aboard the STS-120 flight of Discovery to replace Anderson as a flight engineer during Expedition 16. Tani, 46, holds a master's degree in mechanical engineering from Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He was selected as an astronaut in 1996 and flew on Endeavour's STS-108 mission in December 2001. He will be making his second spaceflight.

The Expedition 16 crew, Commander Peggy Whitson and Flight Engineers Yuri Malenchenko and Clay Anderson, joined with Expedition 15 Commander Fyodor Yurchikhin and Flight Engineer Oleg Kotov for several hours of dedicated handover activity on Monday.

Whitson and Anderson reviewed the Crew Medical Restraint System and the exercise equipment aboard the station.
Malenchenko began his first shuttle photography training session. The station crew will use digital cameras to take high-resolution images of space shuttle Discovery's thermal protection system when it approaches the station for docking later this month.

Whitson, Malenchenko and spaceflight participant Sheikh Muszaphar Shukor docked with the station aboard their Soyuz TMA-11 spacecraft at 10:50 a.m. Friday.
Expedition 15 welcomed the new crew aboard the station when the hatches were opened at 12:22 p.m. Friday. Afterwards, Anderson, who joined Expedition 15 in June, became an Expedition 16 crew member when his seatliner was moved from the Soyuz TMA-10 spacecraft to Soyuz TMA-11.

Two Expedition 17 crew members are expected to arrive next spring to replace Whitson and Malenchenko.

39B

As NASA revamps Launch Complex 39B to host the new Orion spacecraft and Ares I rocket of the Constellation Program, engineers are preparing to install a new kind of departure system to evacuate astronauts.

The agency calls it the Orion Emergency Egress System, but it is fundamentally a group of multi-passenger cars on a set of rails reminiscent of a roller coaster. Its purpose is to move astronauts and ground crew quickly from the vehicle entry on the launch pad to a protective concrete bunker in case of an emergency.Similar systems have been built into launch pads since the Saturn rockets and for the space shuttle. Both earlier systems were cables running from the spacecraft’s crew ingress level to an area near a bunker. There has never been an emergency on the pad that required the crew use these systems.

For Orion, the rail car would stand some 380 feet above the ground. It will be at the same height as the hatch on the Orion capsule, which is where the astronaut crews enter the spacecraft before launch.

Kelli Maloney, the lead designer for the launch pad escape system, said a trade study showed the railcar best met NASA's requirements. Those requirements call for astronauts to be able to get out of the spacecraft and into the bunker within 4 minutes.
One of the benefits of the rail system, Maloney said, is that the track can take the astronauts directly to the bunker door. That would be a big help if one of the crew members or a ground crew member was incapacitated.

Scott Colloredo, NASA's senior project integrator for Constellation ground systems, said the group called on the world's roller coaster designers for help with the concept.

"It's obviously not a thrill ride, but we're taking advantage of technology that's there," he said.

NASA Examines Arctic Sea Ice Changes Leading to Record Low in 2007 10.01.07

PASADENA, Calif. - A new NASA-led study found a 23-percent loss in the extent of the Arctic's thick, year-round sea ice cover during the past two winters. This drastic reduction of perennial winter sea ice is the primary cause of this summer's fastest-ever sea ice retreat on record and subsequent smallest-ever extent of total Arctic coverage.

A team led by Son Nghiem of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif., studied trends in Arctic perennial ice cover by combining data from NASA's Quick Scatterometer (QuikScat) satellite with a computing model based on observations of sea ice drift from the International Arctic Buoy Programme. QuikScat can identify and map different classes of sea ice, including older, thicker perennial ice and younger, thinner seasonal ice.

Between winter 2005 and winter 2007, the perennial ice shrunk by an area the size of Texas and California combined. This severe loss continues a trend of rapid decreases in perennial ice extent in this decade. Study results will be published Oct. 4 in the journal Geophysical Research Letters.

The scientists observed less perennial ice cover in March 2007 than ever before, with the thick ice confined to the Arctic Ocean north of Canada. Consequently, the Arctic Ocean was dominated by thinner seasonal ice that melts faster. This ice is more easily compressed and responds more quickly to being pushed out of the Arctic by winds. Those thinner seasonal ice conditions facilitated the ice loss, leading to this year's record low amount of total Arctic sea ice.

Nghiem said the rapid decline in winter perennial ice the past two years was caused by unusual winds. "Unusual atmospheric conditions set up wind patterns that compressed the sea ice, loaded it into the Transpolar Drift Stream and then sped its flow out of the Arctic," he said. When that sea ice reached lower latitudes, it rapidly melted in the warmer waters.

"The winds causing this trend in ice reduction were set up by an unusual pattern of atmospheric pressure that began at the beginning of this century," Nghiem said.

Discovery at the Lanch Pad

Sept. 30, 2:45 p.m. EDT
Space shuttle Discovery arrived at Launch Pad 39A at NASA's Kennedy Space Center, resting on the hardstand by 1:15 p.m. The shuttle began its slow 3.4-mile journey to the pad atop the crawler transporter at 6:47 a.m., leaving the Vehicle Assembly Building in the early morning darkness.

Also at the pad is the payload canister containing the Harmony module that the STS-120 crew will deliver to the International Space Station. Harmony will be installed in Discovery's payload bay as launch preparations continue at the pad.

Discovery and its seven astronaut crew are targeted to launch Oct. 23 on the STS-120 mission to the International Space Station.

'Remarkable' Drop in Arctic Sea Ice Raises Questions 09.25.07

Melting Arctic sea ice has shrunk to a 29-year low, significantly below the minimum set in 2005, according to preliminary figures from the National Snow and Ice Data Center, part of the University of Colorado at Boulder.

NASA scientists, who have been observing the declining Arctic sea ice cover since the earliest measurements in 1979, are working to understand this sudden speed-up of sea ice decline and what it means for the future of Earth's northern polar region."The decline in the amount of thick ice that survives the summer melt season this year is quite remarkable," said Josefino C. Comiso, senior scientist at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Md.

"The extent of this 'perennial' sea ice and the area it covers are both nearly 38 percent lower than average. Compared to the record low in 2005, the extent and area are 24 percent and nearly 26 percent lower this year, respectively."

"From what we know of how Arctic sea ice behaves after nearly 30 years of continuous satellite observations, this kind of drop in sea ice usually takes more than three years to happen. The rapid trend of the perennial ice previously reported in 2002 appears now to be in an accelerated mode," Comiso observed.

Because Arctic ice cover varies so much year to year, it can be dangerous to look at any one year and draw too much of a conclusion from it," said Waleed Abdalati, head of Goddard's Cryospheric Sciences Branch. "But this year, the amount of ice is so far below that of previous years that it really is cause for concern. The trend in decreasing ice cover seems to be getting stronger and stronger as time goes on."

NASA developed the original capability to observe the extent and concentration of sea ice from space using passive microwave sensors. More recently, NASA launched an advanced microwave instrument in 2002 -- the Advanced Microwave Scanning Radiometer (AMSR-E) on the Aqua satellite -- that provides a view of sea ice dynamics in greater detail than has ever been seen before. Researchers use this information to study polar bear habitats and the unique movements of sea ice from season to season. AMSR-E is a joint project of NASA and the National Space Development Agency of Japan.

Image : One of the test participants, Robert Engberg, hangs up his washcloth after a workout. Sopping wet T-shirts and used washcloths are left hanging inside overnight to evaporate more sweat out of them. Image credit: NASA/MSFC

Dedication and Perspiration Builds The Next Generation Life Support System

09.20.07 Marshall Center employees are back at it -- donating time and energy -- exercising on treadmills, bikes, and other equipment to test aspects of a life support system that could someday provide drinking water to people living on the moon or Mars.

For almost 20 years, NASA engineers at Marshall have led the design and development of the International Space Station life support system, called the Regenerative Environmental Control and Life Support System, or ECLSS. Looking ahead to extended moon missions when re-supply will be over 240,000 miles away, Marshall engineers have assembled key aspects of the station's ECLSS waste water processor technology to explore how this system might work on a future lunar habitat.

This redesigned hardware, the Exploration Water Recovery System, is a novel combination of proven air and water purification technologies and optimizes the treatment of various wastewater streams. The system reclaims urine and condensation from perspiration and through a series of treatment processes, creates water clean enough to drink.

"To support human life on the moon, we’ll need robust and efficient life support systems that can work well without a large amount of consumables," said Monsi Roman, Exploration Life Support Project Manager. "Our hope is to mature current life support technologies to be able minimize the amount of materials we need to bring up to space to support future crews."
For the next six weeks, Marshall will test this new hardware. The goal of this test is to examine the efficiency of the water processor to remove different types of contaminants from the waste water. NASA engineers want to determine how to increase the system efficiency and extend the life of expendables needed to keep clean water flowing.

More than 50 employees are participating in the Exploration Water Recovery System test. For the study, 20 employees exercise for an hour a day, generating water vapor through perspiration and respiration in the Regenerative ECLSS Module Simulator -- a mockup of a space module filled with treadmills, a bicycle, rowing machine and other exercise equipment. Individuals also "donate" urine as part of this test. Before stepping into the module for a session, participants are provided with a white T-shirt to wear, a towel for drying off and a bottle of water or a sports energy drink to consume as they exercise. They weigh-in on a computerized scale, with the bottle of water in-hand. Sopping wet T-shirts and used towels are left hanging inside overnight to evaporate more sweat out of them. Participants also brush their teeth, wipe themselves down with wet towels and the men even shave -- simulating the daily routine of a station crew member -- to get every bit of moisture into the atmosphere. Participants even microwave meals inside the module to generate water vapor and the aroma from the food.

"We know this equipment can create water cleaner than water from municipal water systems here on Earth," said Keith Parrish, ECLSS Test Facility manager. "We hope we can refine the process so future crews will need fewer supplies to generate water for longer space missions -- whether on the moon or Mars."

MISSION NEWS
Astronauts Visit NASA Goddard for Training to Service Hubble
09.19.07

Astronauts watch while engineers inside the Goddard cleanroom pull the Cosmic Origins Spectrograph instrument from its protective enclosure. The spectrograph i