Washington, U.S.A. —  NASA was named the best place to work in the federal government among large agencies in a survey released today by the Partnership for Public Service, a nonprofit, non-partisan organization. This ranking, which reflects NASA’s highest results since this index was developed, makes clear that the agency’s work force is focused on carrying out the nation’s new and ambitious space program.

“The best workforce in the nation has made NASA the best place to work in federal government,” said NASA Deputy Administrator Lori Garver, who is accepting the award at a ceremony this morning in Washington, D.C. ”Our employees are carrying out the nation’s new strategic missions in space with heart-stopping landings on Mars, cutting-edge science and ground-breaking partnerships with American companies to resupplying the space station. They are truly leading in the innovation economy.”

The rankings are based on responses from nearly 700,000 federal workers. The Best Places to Work rankings are based on data from the Office of Personnel Management’s annual Federal Employee Viewpoint Survey conducted from April through June 2012 and additional survey data from nine agencies plus the Intelligence Community. This is the seventh edition of the Best Places to Work rankings since the first in 2003.

NASA’s Stennis Space Center was ranked second in the sub-agency component category.

During the past year, NASA’s employees continued to implement America’s ambitious space exploration program, landing the most sophisticated rover on the surface of Mars, carrying out the first-ever commercial mission to the International Space Station and advancing the systems needed to send humans deeper into space.

Just last week, NASA announced the next Mars rover mission and recently announced the first year-long crew stay on the International Space Station. As the agency continues developing the capabilities to explore the solar system and beyond, as well as understand our home planet and make life better here, workers with a wide range of skills and interests will be critical.

For more about NASA, visit: http://www.nasa.gov.

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Pasadena, U.S.A. — NASA’s Mars rover Curiosity has begun driving from its landing site, which scientists announced today they have named for the late author Ray Bradbury. Making its first movement on the Martian surface, Curiosity’s drive combined forward, turn and reverse segments. This placed the rover roughly 20 feet (6 meters) from the spot where it landed August 6th.

NASA has approved the Curiosity science team’s choice to name the landing ground for the influential author who was born 92 years ago today and died this year. The location where Curiosity touched down is now called Bradbury Landing. “This was not a difficult choice for the science team,” said Michael Meyer, NASA program scientist for Curiosity. “Many of us and millions of other readers were inspired in our lives by stories Ray Bradbury wrote to dream of the possibility of life on Mars.”

The drive confirmed the health of Curiosity’s mobility system and produced the rover’s first wheel tracks on Mars, documented in images taken after the drive. During a news conference at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Pasadena, Calif., the mission’s lead rover driver, Matt Heverly, showed an animation derived from visualization software used for planning the first drive. “We have a fully functioning mobility system with lots of amazing exploration ahead,” Heverly said.

Curiosity will spend several more days of working beside Bradbury Landing, performing instrument checks and studying the surroundings, before embarking toward its first driving destination approximately 1,300 feet (400 meters) to the east-southeast.”

Curiosity is a much more complex vehicle than earlier Mars rovers. The testing and characterization activities during the initial weeks of the mission lay important groundwork for operating our precious national resource with appropriate care,” said Curiosity Project Manager Pete Theisinger of JPL. “Sixteen days in, we are making excellent progress.”

The science team has begun pointing instruments on the rover’s mast for investigating specific targets of interest near and far. The Chemistry and Camera (ChemCam) instrument used a laser and spectrometers this week to examine the composition of rocks exposed when the spacecraft’s landing engines blew away several inches of overlying material.

The instrument’s principal investigator, Roger Weins of Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico, reported that measurements made on the rocks in this scoured-out feature called Goulburn suggest a basaltic composition. “These may be pieces of basalt within a sedimentary deposit,” Weins said.

Curiosity began a two-year prime mission on Mars when the Mars Science Laboratory spacecraft delivered the car-size rover to its landing target inside Gale Crater on August 5 PDT (August 6 EDT). The mission will use 10 science instruments on the rover to assess whether the area has ever offered environmental conditions favorable for microbial life.

In a career spanning more than 70 years, Ray Bradbury inspired generations of readers to dream, think and create. A prolific author of hundreds of short stories and nearly to 50 books, as well as numerous poems, essays, operas, plays, teleplays, and screenplays, Bradbury was one of the most celebrated writers of our time.

His groundbreaking works include “Fahrenheit 451,” “The Martian Chronicles,” “The Illustrated Man,” “Dandelion Wine,” and “Something Wicked This Way Comes.” He wrote the screenplay for John Huston’s classic film adaptation of “Moby Dick,” and was nominated for an Academy Award. He adapted 65 of his stories for television’s “The Ray Bradbury Theater,” and won an Emmy for his teleplay of “The Halloween Tree.”

JPL manages the Mars Science Laboratory Curiosity for NASA’s Science Mission Directorate in Washington. The rover was designed, developed and assembled at JPL.

More information about Curiosity is online at: http://www.nasa.gov/msl

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Pasadena, California, U.S.A. — Remarkable image sets from NASA’s Curiosity rover and Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO) are continuing to develop the story of Curiosity’s landing and first days on Mars.

The images from Curiosity’s just-activated navigation cameras, or Navcams, include the rover’s first self-portrait, looking down at its deck from above. Another Navcam image set, in lower-resolution thumbnails, is the first 360-degree view of Curiosity’s new home in Gale Crater. Also downlinked were two, higher-resolution Navcams providing the most detailed depiction to date of the surface adjacent to the rover.

“These Navcam images indicate that our powered descent stage did more than give us a great ride, it gave our science team an amazing freebie,” said John Grotzinger, project scientist for the mission from the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena. “The thrust from the rockets actually dug a one-and-a-half-foot-long [0.5 meter] trench in the surface. It appears we can see Martian bedrock on the bottom. Its depth below the surface is valuable data we can use going forward.”

Another image set, courtesy of the Context Camera, or CTX, aboard NASA’s MRO has pinpointed the final resting spots of the six, 55-pound (25-kilogram) entry ballast masses. The tungsten masses impacted the Martian surface at a high speed of about 7.5 miles (12 kilometers) from Curiosity’s landing location.

Curiosity’s latest images are available at: http://1.usa.gov/MfiyD0

Wednesday, the team deployed the 3.6 foot-tall (1.1-meter) camera mast, activated and gathered surface radiation data from the rover’s Radiation Assessment Detector and concluded testing of the rover’s high-gain antenna.

Curiosity carries 10 science instruments with a total mass 15 times as large as the science payloads on NASA’s Mars rovers Spirit and Opportunity. Some of the tools, such as a laser-firing instrument for checking rocks’ elemental composition from a distance, are the first of their kind on Mars. Curiosity will use a drill and scoop, which are located at the end of its robotic arm, to gather soil and powdered samples of rock interiors, then sieve and parcel out these samples into the rover’s analytical laboratory instruments.

To handle this science toolkit, Curiosity is twice as long and five times as heavy as Spirit or Opportunity. The Gale Crater landing site places the rover within driving distance of layers of the crater’s interior mountain. Observations from orbit have identified clay and sulfate minerals in the lower layers, indicating a wet history.

MRO’s High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment (HiRISE) camera is operated by the University of Arizona in Tucson. The instrument was built by Ball Aerospace & Technologies Corp. in Boulder, Colo.The Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter and Mars Exploration Rover projects are managed by JPL for NASA’s Science Mission Directorate, Washington. The rover was designed, developed and assembled at JPL. JPL is a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena. Lockheed Martin Space Systems in Denver built the orbiter.

For more about NASA’s Curiosity mission, visit: http://www.nasa.gov/mars and follow the mission on Facebook and Twitter at: http://www.facebook.com/marscuriosity and http://www.twitter.com/marscuriosity.

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Washington, U.S.A. – NASA is seeking proposals from accredited U.S. universities focused on innovative, early-stage space technologies that will improve shielding from space radiation, spacecraft thermal management and optical systems.

Each of these technology areas requires dramatic improvements over existing capabilities for future science and human exploration missions. Early stage, or low technology readiness level (TRL) concepts, could mature into tools that solve the hard challenges facing future NASA missions. Researchers should propose unique, disruptive or transformational space technologies that address the specific topics described in this new solicitation.

“Both science and human deep space missions pose serious challenges that require new, innovative technological solutions,” said Space Technology Program Director Michael Gazarik at NASA Headquarters in Washington. “Radiation, thermal management and optical systems were all identified in the National Research Council’s report on NASA Space Technology Roadmaps as priority research areas. This call seeks new ideas in these areas.”

Space radiation poses a known danger to the health of astronauts. NASA is seeking proposals in the area of active radiation shielding (such as “shields” of electromagnetic force fields surrounding a spacecraft to block incoming radiation) or new, multifunction materials that are superior to those that exist today are sought. NASA also is interested in new technologies for active monitoring and read-out of radiation levels astronauts receive during long space trips.

Current space technology for thermal management of fuels in space is limited. NASA is seeking early-stage technologies to improve ways spacecraft fuel tanks and in-space filling stations store cryogenic (very low temperature) propellants, such as hydrogen, over long periods of time and distances. NASA also is seeking novel, low-TRL heat rejection technologies which operate reliably and efficiently over a wide range of thermal conditions.

The next generation of lightweight mirrors and telescopes requires advanced optical systems. NASA is seeking advancement of early-stage active wavefront sensing and control system technologies that enable deployable, large aperture space-based observatories; technologies which enable cost-effective development of grazing-incidence optical systems; and novel techniques to focus and detect X-ray photons and other high-energy particles.

NASA expects to make approximately 10 awards this fall, based on the merit of proposals received. The awards will be made for one year, with an additional year of research possible. The typical annual award value is expected to be approximately $250,000.

Image Courtesy of  NASA

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