Houston, U.S.A. — America’s space program has come a long way from the early days when astronauts ate food packed in toothpaste tubes. Today, nutrition is known to be a key ingredient in astronaut health in space, just as it is for humans on Earth.

NASA scientists and educators have teamed up to publish a book, aimed at intermediate school students, that explains the role of nutrition in the space program. The free e-book describes how space nutrition research is conducted and highlights this important avenue of ongoing research at NASA. Educator Guides that suggest ways to incorporate the material into the classroom, along with mapping to National Science Education Standards, accompany the text.

“Spaceflight provides the backdrop to gain kids’ interest,” said Scott M. Smith, NASA nutritionist. “These books provide an opportunity to expand and educate beyond space to everything from science, math, nutrition, health, history, reading and more. The fact that this material was developed by scientists actually conducting research on Earth and with astronauts in space provides insight into what it takes to conduct research at NASA, or anywhere – from an initial concept to the final publication in a scientific journal.”

“It’s a new mission for education, shaping the future of our next generation of space explorers,” said Lisa Neasbitt, educator and coauthor. “Educators who use Space Nutrition will be treated to an educator guide based on recent cognitive neuroscience.  These strategies, such as using another’s point of view, promote rigor through higher order thinking and depth of knowledge. Space Nutrition encourages project-based learning such as radio shows, scientific inquiry, plays, skits, songs and dances that incorporate student strengths and facilitate confidence and competence in students.”

The book is available in two forms: a PDF document version and an interactive iBook version for use on iPads. Both can be accessed for free here.

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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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California, U.S.A. — The mission team for NASA’s long-lived Mars Exploration Rovers Spirit and Opportunity will be awarded the Haley Space Flight Award. The team will receive the award Sept. 12 during the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics (AIAA) Space 2012 Conference and Exposition in Pasadena, California.

The award is presented for outstanding contributions by an astronaut or flight test personnel to the advancement of the art, science or technology of astronautics. Past recipients include Alan Shepherd, John Glenn, Thomas Stafford, Robert Crippen, Kathryn Sullivan and the crew of space shuttle mission STS-125, which flew in 2009 on the last shuttle mission to NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope.

The award citation praises this project’s “new techniques in extraterrestrial robotic system operations to explore another world and extend mission lifetime.” Mars Exploration Rover Project Manager John Callas of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Pasadena, will accept the award for the team.

“On behalf of the many hundreds of scientists and engineers who designed, built and operate these rovers, it is a great honor to accept this most prestigious award,” Callas said. “It is especially gratifying that this comes right as Opportunity is conducting one of the most significant campaigns in the eight-and-a-half years since landing. We still are going strong, with perhaps the most exciting exploration still ahead.”

In its eighth year operating on Mars, Opportunity is surveying a crater-rim outcrop of layered rock in search of clay minerals that could provide new information about a formerly wet environment. Spirit worked for more than six years — until 2010 — 24 times longer than its original three-month prime mission.

In just the past two months, Opportunity has driven about a third of a mile (more than 525 meters), extending its total overland travel distance to 21.76 miles (35 kilometers). Recent drives along the inner edge of the Cape York segment of the western rim of Endeavour Crater have brought the rover close to a layered outcrop in an area where clay minerals have been detected from orbit. These minerals could offer evidence of ancient, wet conditions with less acidity than the ancient, wet environments recorded at sites Opportunity visited during its first seven years on Mars.

Opportunity’s position overlooking 14-mile-wide (22-kilometer-wide) Endeavour Crater is about 5,200 miles (8,400 kilometers) from where Curiosity, NASA’s next-generation Mars rover, landed inside Gale Crater a month ago.

JPL manages the Mars Exploration Rover Project for NASA’s Science Mission Directorate in Washington.

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Washington, U.S.A. — The following is a statement from NASA Administrator Charles Bolden regarding the death of former test pilot and NASA astronaut Neil Armstrong, who died on August 25 at age 82.

“On behalf of the entire NASA family, I would like to express my deepest condolences to Carol and the rest of Armstrong family on the passing of Neil Armstrong. As long as there are history books, Neil Armstrong will be included in them, remembered for taking humankind’s first small step on a world beyond our own.

“Besides being one of America’s greatest explorers, Neil carried himself with a grace and humility that was an example to us all. When President Kennedy challenged the nation to send a human to the moon, Neil Armstrong accepted without reservation.

“As we enter this next era of space exploration, we do so standing on the shoulders of Neil Armstrong. We mourn the passing of a friend, fellow astronaut and true American hero.”

The following is a statement from Johnson Space Center director and former astronaut Mike Coats:

“The passing of Neil Armstrong has shocked all of us at the Johnson Space Center. The whole world knew Neil as the first man to step foot on the Moon, but to us he was a co-worker, a friend, and an outstanding spokesman for the Human Space Program. His quiet confidence and ability to perform under pressure set an example for all subsequent astronauts. Our role model will be missed.”

The following is a statement from Bob Behnken, chief, NASA Astronaut Office:

“Neil Armstrong was a very personal inspiration to all of us within the astronaut office. His historic step onto the Moon’s surface was the foundation for many of our personal dreams to become astronauts. The only thing that outshone his accomplishments was his humility about those accomplishments. We will miss him as a friend, mentor, explorer and ambassador for the American spirit of ingenuity.”

Additional information about Armstrong is available on the Web at:
http://www.nasa.gov 
http://www.neilarmstronginfo.com

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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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Cape Canaveral, U.S.A. — Media are invited to an interview availability and facilities tour with NASA Administrator Charlie Bolden at noon EDT, Thursday, Aug. 23, at various locations in and around the agency’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida. During the media tour, Bolden will detail recent progress related to NASA’s commercial spaceflight initiatives.

Media must be at Kennedy’s press site by 11:15 a.m. for transportation to the first location. Media will return to the press site by 3:30 p.m. For media wanting to cover a separate XCOR event at Kennedy’s Visitor Complex, transportation to the Bolden event will be provided and depart the Visitor Complex at1 1:30 a.m.

Bolden and media will tour two locations on Cape Canaveral Air Force Station: SpaceX’s facility at Space Launch Complex 40 and United Launch Alliance’s Space Launch Complex 41, where the Atlas V rocket carrying NASA’s Radiation Belt Storm Probes (RBSP) spacecraft is on the launch pad. RBSP is scheduled to launch Friday morning.

Bolden and media then will go to Kennedy’s Operations and Checkout Building to see the latest progress on NASA’s Orion Multi-Purpose Crew Vehicle, which is being prepared for launch on the Exploration Flight Test-1 in early 2014.

The tour ends at Kennedy, where The Boeing Co. is preparing its CST-100 spacecraft, which is part of NASA’s Commercial Crew Program work. NASA is working with U.S. companies to eventually provide crew transportation to and from low Earth orbit and the space station.

NASA RBSP media badges will be honored for this event. No new credentials for international media will be issued. U.S. journalists without media credentials must apply online by noon, Aug. 22, at: https://media.ksc.nasa.gov

For more information about NASA’s Orion, Space Launch System, Commercial Crew, Ground Systems Development and Operations and International Space Station programs, visit:
http://www.nasa.gov/exploration

Image Courtesy of   eddtoro / Shutterstock.com

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Washington, U.S.A. — NASA has selected a team led by Ball Aerospace & Technologies Corporation of Boulder, Colo., for a technology demonstration of a high performance “green” propellant alternative to the highly toxic fuel hydrazine. With this award, NASA opens a new era of innovative and non-toxic green fuels that are less harmful to our environment, have fewer operational hazards, and decrease the complexity and cost of launch processing.

Today’s use of hydrazine fuel for rockets, satellites and spacecraft is pervasive. Hydrazine is an efficient propellant and can be stored for long periods of time, but it also is highly corrosive and toxic. NASA is seeking new, non-toxic high performance green propellants that could be safely and widely used by rocketeers, ranging from government to industry and academia. Green propellants include liquid, solid, mono-propellant, which use one fuel source, or bi-propellants, which use two, and hybrids that offer safer handling conditions and lower environmental impact than current fuels.

“High performance green propellant has the potential to revolutionize how we travel to, from and in space,” said Michael Gazarik, director of NASA’s Space Technology Program at NASA Headquarters inWashington. “An effective green rocket fuel would dramatically reduce the cost and time for preparing and launching space missions while decreasing pollution and harm to our environment.”

Following a solicitation and peer-review selection process, NASA chose the Green Propellant Infusion Mission proposal and a team led by Ball and co-investigators from the Aerojet Corporation in Redmond, Washington, the U.S. Air Force Research Laboratory at the Wright Patterson Air Force Base in Ohio, the U.S. Air Force Space and Missile Systems Center at the Kirkland Air Force Base in New Mexico, NASA’s Glenn Research Center in Cleveland and NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida for the new mission.

NASA’s Green Propellant Infusion Mission is expected to be developed and flown in approximately three years. The Space Technology Program will provide $45 million for the mission, with some additional cost-sharing by mission co-investigators.

This demonstration will bridge the gap between technology development and use of green propellant. The team will develop and fly a high performance green propellant, demonstrating and characterizing in space the functionality of the integrated propulsion system. Such a demonstration will provide the aerospace community with a new system-level capability for future missions.

Maturing a space technology, such as a revolutionary green propellant, to mission readiness through relevant environment testing and demonstration is a significant challenge from a cost, schedule and risk perspective. NASA’s Technology Demonstration Missions Program performs this function, bridging the gap between laboratory confirmation of a technology and its initial use on an operational mission.

The Technology Demonstration Missions Program is part of the Space Technology Program, which is innovating, developing, testing and flying hardware for use in NASA’s future science and exploration missions.

For more information about NASA’s Space Technology Program and Technology Demonstration Missions, visit: http://www.nasa.gov/oct.

Image Courtesy of  J.C.O.

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Washington, U.S.A.  – NASA has announced the selection of 10 research efforts from the agency’s inaugural Space Technology Research Opportunities for Early Career Faculty solicitation. NASA will provide grants of as much as $200,000 per year for as long as three years in support of these faculties and their research in specific, high-priority technology areas.

The selected faculty will conduct research in areas closely aligned with NASA’s Space Technology Roadmaps and priorities identified by the National Research Council. These priorities include extending and sustaining human activities beyond low Earth orbit, exploring the evolution of the solar system and potential for life elsewhere, and expanding our understanding of Earth and the universe.

“It’s an honor to announce this outstanding group of early career faculty researchers, representing some of the most talented new faculty from the best institutions of higher learning in America,” said Michael Gazarik, director of NASA’s Space Technology Program at NASA Headquarters in Washington. “NASA will benefit from the work these researchers conduct in unique, disruptive or transformational space technologies or concepts, while strengthening America’s continued global leadership in the new technology economy.”

The selected Early Career Faculty researchers are:

• Chih-Hao Chang, North Carolina State University, Raleigh
• Nicolaus Correll, University of Colorado at Boulder
• Julia Greer, California Institute of Technology, Pasadena
• Mary Lind, Arizona State University, Tempe
• Michele Manuel, University of Florida, Gainesville
• Jeremy Munday, University of Maryland, College Park
• Marco Pavone, Stanford University, Stanford, Calif.
• Mina Raies-Zadeh, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor
• Debbie Senesky, Stanford University
• Wei-Chuan Shih, University of Houston

Newly-selected early career efforts will develop technologies to automate the production of food in space and investigate and test advanced wastewater recovery technologies. These efforts also will look to develop robust timekeeping technologies that enable more precise landing and autonomous rendezvous in space, and formulate new ultra-lightweight materials with properties that can be tailored.

NASA’s Early Career Faculty efforts are an element of the agency’s Space Technology Research Grants Program. It is designed to accelerate the development of technologies originating from academia that support the future science and exploration needs of NASA, other government agencies and the commercial space sector.

Image Courtesy of  Christopher Halloran / Shutterstock.com

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Pasadena, U.S.A. — NASA’s most advanced Mars rover Curiosity has landed on the Red Planet. The one-ton rover, hanging by ropes from a rocket backpack, touched down onto Mars Sunday to end a 36-week flight and begin a two-year investigation.

The Mars Science Laboratory (MSL) spacecraft that carried Curiosity succeeded in every step of the most complex landing ever attempted on Mars, including the final severing of the bridle cords and flyaway maneuver of the rocket backpack.

“The wheels of Curiosity have begun to blaze the trail for human footprints on Mars.  Curiosity, the most sophisticated rover ever built, is now on the surface of the Red Planet, where it will seek to answer age-old questions about whether life ever existed on Mars — or if the planet can sustain life in the future,” said NASA Administrator Charles Bolden. “This is an amazing achievement, made possible by a team of scientists and engineers from around the world and led by the extraordinary men and women of NASA and our Jet Propulsion Laboratory. President Obama has laid out a bold vision for sending humans to Mars in the mid-2030′s, and today’s landing marks a significant step toward achieving this goal.”

Curiosity landed at 10:32 p.m. Aug. 5, PDT, (1:32 a.m. EDT Aug. 6) near the foot of a mountain three miles tall and 96 miles in diameter inside Gale Crater. During a nearly two-year prime mission, the rover will investigate whether the region ever offered conditions favorable for microbial life.

“The Seven Minutes of Terror has turned into the Seven Minutes of Triumph,” said NASA Associate Administrator for Science John Grunsfeld. “My immense joy in the success of this mission is matched only by overwhelming pride I feel for the women and men of the mission’s team.”

Curiosity returned its first view of Mars, a wide-angle scene of rocky ground near the front of the rover. More images are anticipated in the next several days as the mission blends observations of the landing site with activities to configure the rover for work and check the performance of its instruments and mechanisms.

“Our Curiosity is talking to us from the surface of Mars,” said MSL Project Manager Peter Theisinger of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Pasadena, Calif. “The landing takes us past the most hazardous moments for this project, and begins a new and exciting mission to pursue its scientific objectives.”

Confirmation of Curiosity’s successful landing came in communications relayed by NASA’s Mars Odyssey orbiter and received by the Canberra, Australia, antenna station of NASA’s Deep Space Network.

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

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.

The mission is managed by JPL for NASA’s Science Mission Directorate in Washington. The rover was designed, developed and assembled at JPL.

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Washington, U.S.A. — NASA’s newest Mars mission, landing on a few days, will draw on support from missions sent to Mars years ago and will contribute to missions envisioned for future decades.

“Curiosity is a bold step forward in learning about our neighboring planet, but this mission does not stand alone. It is part of a sustained, coordinated program of Mars exploration,” said Doug McCuistion, director of the Mars Exploration Program at NASA Headquarters in Washington. “This mission transitions the program’s science emphasis from the planet’s water history to its potential for past or present life.”

As the Mars Science Laboratory spacecraft places the Curiosity rover on the surface of Mars next week, NASA will be using the Mars Odyssey orbiter, in service since 2001, as a relay for rapidly confirming the landing to Curiosity’s flight team and the rest of the world. Earth will be below the Mars horizon from Curiosity’s perspective, so the new rover will not be in direct radio contact with Earth. Two newer orbiters also will be recording Curiosity’s transmissions, but that data will not be available on Earth until hours later.

When Curiosity lands beside a mountain inside a crater at about 1:31 a.m. EDT, Aug. 6 (10:31 p.m. PDT Aug. 5), the 1-ton rover’s two-year prime mission on the surface of Mars will begin. However, one of the rover’s 10 science instruments, the Radiation Assessment Detector (RAD), already has logged 221 days collecting data since the spacecraft was launched on its trip to Mars on November 26, 2011.

“Our observations already are being used in planning for human missions,” said Don Hassler of Southwest Research Institute in Boulder, Colo., principal investigator for Curiosity’s RAD.

The instrument recorded radiation spikes from five solar flare events spewing energetic particles from the sun into interplanetary space. Radiation from galactic cosmic rays, originating from supernova explosions and other extremely distant events, accounted for more of the total radiation experienced on the trip than the amount from solar particle events. Inside the spacecraft, despite shielding roughly equivalent to what surrounds astronauts on the International Space Station, RAD recorded radiation amounting to a significant contribution to a NASA astronaut’s career-limit radiation dose.

Curiosity’s main assignment is to investigate whether its study area ever has offered environmental conditions favorable for microbial life. To do that, it packs a science payload weighing 15 times as much as the science instruments on previous Mars rovers. The landing target, an area about 12 miles by 4 miles (20 kilometers by 7 kilometers), sits in a safely flat area between less-safe slopes of the rim of Gale Crater and the crater’s central peak, informally called Mount Sharp. The target was plotted to be within driving distance of layers on Mount Sharp, where minerals that formed in water have been seen from orbit.

“Some deposits right inside the landing area look as though they were deposited by water, too,” said John Grotzinger of the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) in Pasadena, project scientist for Curiosity. “We have a great landing site that was a strong science contender for earlier missions, but was not permitted for engineering constraints because no earlier landing could be targeted precisely enough to hit a safe area inside Gale Crater. The science team feels very optimistic about exploration of Mount Sharp and the surrounding region that includes the landing ellipse.”

Mission engineers designed a sky crane maneuver, lowering Curiosity on nylon cords from a rocket backpack because the rover is too heavy to use the airbag system developed for earlier rovers. “We know it looks crazy,” said Adam Steltzner of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Pasadena, leader of the team that developed the system. “It really is the result of careful choices.” By designing the aeroshell enclosing Curiosity to create lift and be steerable, engineers were able to build a system that lands much more precisely instead of dropping like a rock.

Image Courtesy of   kropic1 / Shutterstock.com

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Washington, U.S.A. — NASA’s Space Technology Program is turning science fiction into science fact. The program has selected 28 proposals for study under the NASA Innovative Advanced Concepts (NIAC) Program.

Eighteen of these advanced concept proposals were categorized as Phase I and 10 as Phase II. They were selected based on their potential to transform future aerospace missions, enable new capabilities, or significantly alter and improve current approaches to launching, building and operating aerospace systems.

The selected proposals include a broad range of imaginative concepts, including a submarine glider to explore the ice-covered ocean of Europa, an air purification system with no moving parts, and a system that could use in situ lunar regolith to autonomously build concrete structures on the moon.

“These selections represent the best and most creative new ideas for future technologies that have the potential to radically improve how NASA missions explore new frontiers,” said Michael Gazarik, director of NASA’s Space Technology Program at the agency’s headquarters in Washington.

“Through the NASA Innovative Advanced Concepts program, NASA is taking the long-term view of technological investment and the advancement that is essential for accomplishing our missions. We are inventing the ways in which next-generation aircraft and spacecraft will change the world and inspiring Americans to take bold steps.”

NIAC Phase I awards of approximately $100,000 for one year enable proposers to explore basic feasibility and properties of a potential breakthrough concept. NIAC Phase II awards of as much as $500,000 for two years help further develop the most successful Phase I concepts and analyze their potential to enable new or radically improved future NASA missions and potential applications with benefits for industry and society.

“We’re excited to be launching Phase II, allowing the 2012 NIAC portfolio to feature an exciting combination of new ideas and continued development of last year’s Phase I concepts,” said Jay Falker, NIAC program executive at NASA Headquarters.

NASA solicited visionary, long-term concepts for technological maturation based on their potential value to NASA’s future space missions and operational needs. These projects were chosen through a peer-review process that evaluated their innovation and how technically viable they are. All are very early in development — 10 years or longer from use on a mission.

NASA’s early investment and partnership with creative scientists, engineers, and citizen inventors from across the nation will provide technological dividends and help maintain America’s leadership in the global technology economy.

The portfolio of diverse and innovative ideas selected for NIAC awards represent multiple technology areas, including power, propulsion, structures, and avionics, as identified in NASA’s Space Technology Roadmaps. The roadmaps provide technology paths needed to meet NASA’s strategic goals.

NIAC is part of NASA’s Space Technology Program, which is innovating, developing, testing, and flying hardware for use in NASA’s future missions. These competitively-awarded projects are creating new technological solutions for NASA and our nation’s future.

Image Courtesy of  nasa hq photo

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Greenbelt U.S.A. — Researchers analyzing meteorite fragments that fell on a frozen lake in Canada have developed an explanation for the origin of life’s handedness – why living things only use molecules with specific orientations. The work also gave the strongest evidence to date that liquid water inside an asteroid leads to a strong preference of left-handed over right-handed forms of some common protein amino acids in meteorites. The result makes the search for extraterrestrial life more challenging.

“Our analysis of the amino acids in meteorite fragments from Tagish Lake gave us one possible explanation for why all known life uses only left-handed versions of amino acids to build proteins,” said Dr.Daniel Glavin of NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md. Glavin is lead author of a paper on this research to be published in the journal Meteoritics and Planetary Science.

In January, 2000, a large meteoroid exploded in the atmosphere over northern British Columbia, Canada, and rained fragments across the frozen surface of Tagish Lake. Because many people witnessed the fireball, pieces were collected within days and kept preserved in their frozen state. This ensured that there was very little contamination from terrestrial life.

“The Tagish Lake meteorite continues to reveal more secrets about the early Solar System the more we investigate it,” said Dr. Christopher Herd of theUniversity of Alberta, Edmonton, Canada, a co-author on the paper who provided samples of the Tagish Lake meteorite for the team to analyze. “This latest study gives us a glimpse into the role that water percolating through asteroids must have played in making the left-handed amino acids that are so characteristic of all life on Earth.”

Proteins are the workhorse molecules of life, used in everything from structures like hair to enzymes, the catalysts that speed up or regulate chemical reactions. Just as the 26 letters of the alphabet are arranged in limitless combinations to make words, life uses 20 different amino acids in a huge variety of arrangements to build millions of different proteins.

Amino acid molecules can be built in two ways that are mirror images of each other, like your hands. Although life based on right-handed amino acids would presumably work fine, they can’t be mixed. “Synthetic proteins created using a mix of left- and right-handed amino acids just don’t work,” says Dr. Jason Dworkin of NASA Goddard, co-author of the study and head of the Goddard Astrobiology Analytical Laboratory, where the analysis was performed.

Since life can’t function with a mix of left- and right-handed amino acids, researchers want to know how life – at least, life on Earth — got set up with the left-handed ones. “The handedness observed in biological molecules – left-handed amino acids and right-handed sugars – is a property important for molecular recognition processes and is thought to be a prerequisite for life,” said Dworkin.

All ordinary methods of synthetically creating amino acids result in equal mixtures of left- and right-handed amino acids. Therefore, how the nearly exclusive production of one hand of such molecules arose from what were presumably equal mixtures of left and right molecules in a prebiotic world has been an area of intensive research.

The team ground up samples of the Tagish Lake meteorites, mixed them into a hot-water solution, then separated and identified the molecules in them using a liquid chromatograph mass spectrometer. “We discovered that the samples had about four times as many left-handed versions of aspartic acid as the opposite hand,” says Glavin. Aspartic acid is an amino acid used in every enzyme in the human body. It is also used to make the sugar substitute Aspartame. “Interestingly, the same meteorite sample showed only a slight left-hand excess (no more than eight percent) for alanine, another amino acid used by life.”

“At first, this made no sense, because if these amino acids came from contamination by terrestrial life, both amino acids should have large left-handed excesses, because both are common in biology,” says Glavin. “However, a large left-hand excess in one and not the other tells us that they were not created by life but instead were made inside the Tagish Lake asteroid.” The team confirmed that the amino acids were probably created in space using isotope analysis.

Isotopes are versions of an element with different masses; for example, carbon 13 is a heavier, and less common, variety of carbon. Since the chemistry of life prefers lighter isotopes, amino acids enriched in the heavier carbon 13 were likely created in space.

“We found that the aspartic acid and alanine in our Tagish Lake samples were highly enriched in carbon 13, indicating they were probably created by non-biological processes in the parent asteroid,” said Dr.Jamie Elsila of NASA Goddard, a co-author on the paper who performed the isotopic analysis. This is the first time that carbon isotope measurements have been reported for these amino acids in Tagish Lake. The carbon 13 enrichment, combined with the large left-hand excess in aspartic acid but not in alanine, provides very strong evidence that some left-handed proteinogenic amino acids — ones used by life to make proteins — can be produced in excess in asteroids, according to the team.

Some have argued that left-handed amino acid excesses in meteorites were formed by exposure to polarized radiation in the solar nebula – the cloud of gas and dust from which asteroids, and eventually the Solar System, were formed. However, in this case, the left-hand aspartic acid excesses are so large that they cannot be explained by polarized radiation alone. The team believes that another process is required.

Additionally, the large left-hand excess in aspartic acid but not in alanine gave the team a critical clue as to how these amino acids could have been made inside the asteroid, and therefore how a large left-hand excess could arise before life originated on Earth.

“One thing that jumped out at me was that alanine and aspartic acid can crystallize differently when you have mixtures of both left-handed and right-handed molecules,” said Dr. Aaron Burton, a NASA Postdoctoral Program Fellow at NASA Goddard and a co-author on the study. “This led us to find several studies where researchers have exploited the crystallization behavior of molecules like aspartic acid to get left-handed or right-handed excesses.

Because alanine forms different kinds of crystals, these same processes would produce equal amounts of left- and right-handed alanine. We need to do some more experiments, but this explanation has the potential to explain what we see in the Tagish Lake meteorite and other meteorites.”

The team believes a small initial left-hand excess could get amplified by crystallization and dissolution from a saturated solution with liquid water. Some amino acids, like aspartic acid, have a shape that lets them fit together in a pure crystal – one comprised of just left-handed or right-handed molecules. For these amino acids, a small initial left- or right-hand excess could become greatly amplified at the expense of the opposite-handed crystals, similar to the way a large snowball gathers more snow and gets bigger more rapidly when rolled downhill than a small one.

Other amino acids, like alanine, have a shape that prefers to join together with their mirror image to make a crystal, so these crystals are comprised of equal numbers of left- and right-handed molecules. As these “hybrid” crystals grow, any small initial excess would tend to be washed out for these amino acids. A requirement for both of these processes is a way to convert left-handed to right-handed molecules, and vice-versa, while they are dissolved in the solution.

This process only amplifies a small excess that already exists. Perhaps a tiny initial left-hand excess was created by conditions in the solar nebula. For example, polarized ultraviolet light or other types of radiation from nearby stars might favor the creation of left-handed amino acids or the destruction of right-handed ones, according to the team. This initial left-hand excess could then get amplified in asteroids by processes like crystallization.

Impacts from asteroids and meteorites could deliver this material to Earth, and left-handed amino acids might have been incorporated into emerging life due to their greater abundance, according to the team. Also, similar enrichments of left-handed amino acids by crystallization could have occurred on Earth in ancient sediments that had water flowing through them, such as the bottoms of rivers, lakes, or seas, according to the team.

The result complicates the search for extraterrestrial life – like microbial life hypothesized to dwell beneath the surface of Mars, for example. “Since it appears a non-biological process can create a left-hand excess in some kinds of amino acids, we can’t use such an excess alone as proof of biological activity,” says Glavin.

The research was funded by the NASA Astrobiology Institute, the Goddard Center for Astrobiology, the NASA Cosmochemistry Program, and the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council ofCanada.

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Washington, U.S.A. – NASA and the Interior Department Monday, July 23 marked the 40th anniversary of the Landsat program, the world’s longest-running Earth-observing satellite program. The first Landsat satellite was launched July 23, 1972, from Vandenberg Air Force Base in California.

The 40-year Landsat record provides global coverage that shows large-scale human activities such as building cities and farming. The program is a sustained effort by the United States to provide direct societal benefits across a wide range of human endeavors, including human and environmental health, energy and water management, urban planning, disaster recovery and agriculture.

Landsat images from space are not merely pictures. They contain many layers of data collected at different points along the visible and invisible light spectrum. A single Landsat scene taken from 400 miles above Earth can accurately detail the condition of hundreds of thousands of acres of grassland, agricultural crops or forests.

“Landsat has given us a critical perspective on our planet over the long term and will continue to help us understand the big picture of Earth and its changes from space,” said NASA Administrator Charles Bolden. “With this view we are better prepared to take action on the ground and be better stewards of our home.”

In cooperation with the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS), a science agency of the Interior Department, NASA launched six of the seven Landsat satellites. The resulting archive of Earth observations forms a comprehensive record of human and natural land changes.

“Over four decades, data from the Landsat series of satellites have become a vital reference worldwide for advancing our understanding of the science of the land,” said Interior Department Secretary Ken Salazar. “The 40-year Landsat archive forms an indelible and objective register of America’s natural heritage and thus it has become part of this department’s legacy to the American people.”

Remote-sensing satellites such as the Landsat series help scientists to observe the world beyond the power of human sight, to monitor changes and to detect critical trends in the conditions of natural resources.

“With its entirely objective, long term records for the entire surface of the globe, the Landsat archive serves as the world’s free press, allowing any person, anywhere, to access vital information without charge,” said Interior’s Anne Castle, assistant secretary for water and science. “Landsat has been a game changer for agricultural monitoring, climate change research and water management.”

NASA is preparing to launch the next Landsat satellite, the Landsat Data Continuity Mission (LDCM), in February 2013 from Vandeberg. LDCM will be the most technologically advanced satellite in the Landsat series. LDCM sensors take advantage of evolutionary advances in detector and sensor technologies to improve performance and increase reliability. LDCM will join Landsat 5 and Landsat 7 satellites in Earth orbit to continue the Landsat data record.

“The first 40 years of the Landsat program have delivered the most consistent and reliable record of Earth’s changing landscape,” said Michael Freilich, director of NASA’s Earth Science Division in the Science Mission Directorate in Washington. “We look forward to continuing this tradition of excellence with the even greater capacity and enhanced technologies of LDCM.”

NASA and USGS will highlight the accomplishments of the Landsat program in a televised news briefing 11 a.m. EDT, Monday at the Newseum, 555 Pennsylvania Ave. NW, in Washington. During the briefing, the agencies will announce the 10 most significant images from the Landsat record; the U.S. regions selected for the “My American Landscape” contest showing local environmental changes; and the top five Landsat “Earth As Art” images selected in an online poll. The public is encouraged to participate in the briefing’s question-and-answer sessions by using the Twitter hashtag #asknasa.

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Houston, U.S.A. – NASA completed another successful test of the Orion crew vehicle’s parachutes high above the Arizona desert in preparation for the spacecraft’s orbital flight test in 2014. Orion will carry astronauts deeper into space than ever before, provide emergency abort capability, sustain the crew during space travel and ensure a safe re-entry and landing.

A C-17 plane dropped a test version of Orion from an altitude of 25,000 feet above the U.S. Army Yuma Proving Ground in southwestern Arizona. This test was the second to use an Orion craft that mimics the full size and shape of the spacecraft.

Orion’s drogue chutes were deployed between 15,000 feet and 20,000 feet, followed by the pilot parachutes, which deployed the main landing parachutes. Orion descended about 25 feet per second, well below its maximum designed touchdown speed, when it landed on the desert floor.

“Across the country, NASA and industry are moving forward on the most advanced spacecraft ever designed, conducting drop and splashdown tests, preparing ground systems, designing software and computers and paving the way for the future of exploration,” said William Gerstenmaier, associate administrator for the Human Exploration and Operations Mission Directorate at NASA Headquarters inWashington. “Today’s parachute test in Yuma is an important reminder of the progress being made on Orion and its ultimate mission — enabling NASA to meet the goal of sending humans to an asteroid and Mars.”

Orion parachutes have so-called reefing lines, which when cut by a pyrotechnic device, allow the parachute to open gradually, managing the initial amount of drag and force on the parachute. The main objective of the latest drop test was to determine how the entire system would respond if one of the reefing lines was cut prematurely, causing the three main parachutes to inflate too quickly.

Since 2007, the Orion program has conducted a vigorous parachute air and ground test program and provided the chutes for NASA’s successful pad abort test in 2010. All of the tests build an understanding of the chutes’ technical performance for eventual human-rated certification.

In 2014, an uncrewed Orion spacecraft will launch from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida on Exploration Flight Test-1. The spacecraft will travel 3,600 miles above Earth’s surface. This is 15 times farther than the International Space Station’s orbit and farther than any spacecraft designed to carry humans has gone in more than 40 years. The main flight objective is to understand Orion’s heat shield performance at speeds generated during a return from deep space.

In 2017, Orion will be launched by NASA’s Space Launch System (SLS), a heavy-lift rocket that will provide an entirely new capability for human exploration beyond low Earth orbit. Designed to be flexible for launching spacecraft for crew and cargo missions, SLS will enable new missions of exploration and expand human presence across the solar system.

Image Courtesy of  nasa hq photo

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Washington, U.S.A. — Astronomers using NASA’s Spitzer Space Telescope have detected what they believe is a planet two-thirds the size of Earth. The exoplanet candidate, called UCF-1.01, is located a mere 33 light-years away, making it possibly the nearest world to our solar system that is smaller than our home planet.

Exoplanets circle stars beyond our sun. Only a handful smaller than Earth have been found so far. Spitzer has performed transit studies on known exoplanets, but UCF-1.01 is the first ever identified with the telescope, pointing to a possible role for Spitzer in helping discover potentially habitable, terrestrial-sized worlds.

“We have found strong evidence for a very small, very hot and very near planet with the help of the Spitzer Space Telescope,” said Kevin Stevenson from the University of Central Florida in Orlando. Stevenson is lead author of the paper, which has been accepted for publication in The Astrophysical Journal. “Identifying nearby small planets such as UCF-1.01 may one day lead to their characterization using future instruments.”

The hot new planet candidate was found unexpectedly in Spitzer observations. Stevenson and his colleagues were studying the Neptune-sized exoplanet GJ 436b, already known to exist around the red-dwarf star GJ 436. In the Spitzer data, the astronomers noticed slight dips in the amount of infrared light streaming from the star, separate from the dips caused by GJ 436b. A review of Spitzer archival data showed the dips were periodic, suggesting a second planet might be blocking out a small fraction of the star’s light.

This technique, used by a number of observatories including NASA’s Kepler space telescope, relies on transits to detect exoplanets. The duration of a transit and the small decrease in the amount of light registered reveals basic properties of an exoplanet, such as its size and distance from its star.

In UCF-1.01′s case, its diameter would be approximately 5,200 miles (8,400 kilometers), or two-thirds that of Earth. UCF-1.01 would revolve quite tightly around GJ 436, at about seven times the distance of the Earth from the moon, with its “year” lasting only 1.4 Earth days. Given this proximity to its star, far closer than the planet Mercury is to our sun, the exoplanet’s surface temperature would be more than 1,000 degrees Fahrenheit (almost 600 degrees Celsius).

If the roasted, diminutive planet candidate ever had an atmosphere, it almost surely has evaporated. UCF-1.01 might therefore resemble a cratered, mostly geologically dead world like Mercury. Paper co-author Joseph Harrington, also of the University of Central Florida and principal investigator of the research, suggested another possibility; that the extreme heat of orbiting so close to GJ 436 has melted the exoplanet’s surface.

“The planet could even be covered in magma,” Harrington said.

In addition to UCF-1.01, Stevenson and his colleagues noticed hints of a third planet, dubbed UCF-1.02, orbiting GJ 436. Spitzer has observed evidence of the two new planets several times each. However, even the most sensitive instruments are unable to measure exoplanet masses as small as UCF-1.01 and UCF-1.02, which are perhaps only one-third the mass of the Earth. Because knowing the mass is required for confirming a discovery, the paper authors are cautiously calling both bodies exoplanet candidates for now.

Of the approximately 1,800 stars identified by Kepler as candidates for having planetary systems, just three are verified to contain sub-Earth-sized exoplanets. Of these, only one exoplanet is thought to be smaller than the Spitzer candidates, with a radius similar to Mars, or 57 percent that of Earth.

“I hope future observations will confirm these exciting results, which show Spitzer may be able to discover exoplanets as small as Mars,” said Michael Werner, Spitzer Project Scientist at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Pasadena, Calif. “Even after almost nine years in space, Spitzer’s observations continue to take us in new and important scientific directions.”

JPL manages Spitzer for NASA’s Science Mission Directorate in Washington. Science operations are conducted at the Spitzer Science Center at Caltech in Pasadena. Caltech manages JPL for NASA

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Houston, U.S.A. – Three members of the Expedition 31 crew undocked from the International Space Station and returned safely to Earth Sunday, July 1, wrapping up a mission that lasted six-and-a-half months.

Russian Commander Oleg Kononenko, NASA Flight Engineer Don Pettit and European Space Agency Flight Engineer Andre Kuipers landed their Soyuz TMA-03M spacecraft in Kazakhstan at 3:14 a.m. CDT (2:14 p.m. local time) after undocking from the space station’s Rassvet module at 11:47 p.m. June 30. The trio, which arrived at the station Dec. 23, 2011, spent a total of 193 days in space, 191 of which were aboard the station.

During their expedition, the crew supported more than 200 scientific investigations involving more than 400 researchers around the world. The studies ranged from integrated investigations of the human cardiovascular and immune systems to fluid, flame and robotic research.

Before leaving the station, Kononenko handed over command of Expedition 32 to the Russian Federal Space Agency’s Gennady Padalka, who remains aboard the station with NASA astronaut Joe Acaba and Russian cosmonaut Sergei Revin. NASA astronaut Sunita Williams, Russian cosmonaut Yuri Malenchenko and Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency astronaut Akihiko Hoshide will join them July 17. Williams, Malenchenko and Hoshide are scheduled to launch July 14 from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan.

On June 25, Pettit celebrated achieving one cumulative year in space, combining his time in orbit on Expedition 6, Expedition 30/31 and the STS-126 space shuttle Endeavour flight to the station in November 2008. Pettit now has 370 days in space, placing him fourth among U.S. space fliers for the longest time in space.

During Expedition 31, Pettit also used household objects aboard the station to perform a variety of unusual physics experiments for the video series “Science Off the Sphere.” Through these demonstrations, Pettit showed more than a million Internet viewers how space affects scientific principles.

To watch “Science Off the Sphere” videos, visit: http://www.physicscentral.com/sots

Image Courtesy of  Edwin Verin / Shutterstock.com

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Beverly Hills, CA – The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences and NASA will explore cutting-edge film techniques and virtual voyages using animation on Tuesday, July 10, at 7:30 PM at the Samuel Goldwyn Theater in Beverly Hills. Hosted by five-time Oscar-nominated producer Frank Marshall, “Capturing the Final Frontier” will feature film clips and conversations with such filmmakers as Oscar-winning visual effects supervisor Scott Farrar and leading NASA animators and scientists. This list of prominent names in the field of film and science include Eric De Jong, Principal Investigator of the Solar System Visualization Project; Bobbie Faye Ferguson, The Director of Multimedia at the Department of Homeland Security and former NASA Public Affairs Multimedia Manager; Tom Jacobson, Producer of “Mission to Mars;” Dave Lavery, NASA Program Executive of Solar System Exploration; Dan Maas, the Art and Technical Leader of “Roving Mars;” Lisa Malone, Director of Public Affairs at NASA’s John F. Kennedy Space Center; Toni Myers, the Director of “Hubble 3D;” Dr. Frank Summers, an Astrophysicist for the Hubble Space Telescope Science Institute; and Bert Ulrich, Liason for the Multimedia Film and TV Collaborations at NASA’s Headquarters.

Presented by the Academy’s Science and Technology Council, the event will take a journey through the space program’s breakthroughs in animation with NASA “Jet Propulsion Laboratory’s” Eric De Jong, who began his career creating Voyager animations. The evening features a look at Mars rover Curiosity graphics in anticipation of its landing on the Red Planet in August 2012.

NASA animators and image specialists regularly take these visual concepts a step further by joining forces with Hollywood filmmakers to create new wonders for the big screen.”Capturing the Final Frontier” will examine some of these collaborations, exploring the documentary films “Hubble 3D” (2010) and “Roving Mars” (2006) along with feature films “Mission to Mars” (2000) and the Oscar-nominated “Transformers: Dark of the Moon” (2011).

Tickets for “Capturing the Final Frontier” are $5 for the general public and $3 for Academy members and students with a valid ID, and may be purchased online at www.oscars.org, in person at the Academy box office, or by mail.

Image Courtesy of  Scott Beale

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June 5th, 2012 saw one of the rarest cosmic events to happen in our lifetime: the transit of Venus. During the event, Venus crosses in front of the sun from the perspective of the Earth, an occurrence that happens in pairs about every century. The last transit to occur was in 2004 but the next time Venus makes its trip will be in 2117 and 2125.

The transit began at 3:09 PM Pacific Daylight Time and lasted seven hours. Every continent was able to view the transit at some point, even some parts of Antarctica. Normally visibility is limited to one area or continent with similar events such as lunar and solar eclipses.

NASA (National Aeronautics and Space Administration) sent out several recommendations in relation to the watching of the transit. They recommended that individuals should not stare at the sun and should use telescopes or eclipse glasses to observe the transit.

Even the Hubble telescope could not look directly at the sun to view the transit of Venus because the sun would damage the lens. Instead, scientists pointed the telescope at the moon. The moon reflects the light of the sun and the shadow of Venus in transit was visible.

The transit of Venus is visible from Earth because there is a perfect alignment between Venus, Earth and the Sun. Venus’s orbit is 226 Earth days in contrast to our 365 day orbit. It would seem that the transit of Venus should be something observable from the Earth at least once a year except that the orbits of Venus and the Earth are slightly titled planes. The tilt of these orbits is what makes the transit so rare an occurrence.

Since the invention of the telescope in the early seventeenth century, there have been eight times that Venus has been visible from Earth as it crosses the Sun. The first of these occurrences in 1631 was not witnessed by anyone (although we know it happened since these events happen in pairs within eight years of each other), but in 1639 people started to notice.

Edmund Halley, best known for the namesake of Halley’s Comet, came up with a plan to use the transit of Venus to measure the size of the solar system, one of the biggest mysteries of science at the time. According to NASA, Halley said that by using the principles of parallax and viewing the transit of Venus from widely spaced locations on Earth it would be possible to triangulate the distance to Venus.

Halley’s predictions set into action what some historians and astronomers call the “Apollo Program of the Eighteenth Century.” In 1761 and 1769 many scientists around the world did their best to record and analyze the transit of Venus. Captain James Cook was sent to Tahiti to watch the transit as well as Jeremiah Dixon and Charles Mason (known for the Mason-Dixon line). Despite everyones efforts, weather and limited development in optics prevented their success. However, the solar system was eventually measured with the aid and development of cameras in the late 1800s.

Image Courtesy of  LesPalenik / Shutterstock.com

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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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Washington, U.S.A – NASA-funded research on Mars meteorites that landed on Earth shows strong evidence that very large molecules containing carbon, which is a key ingredient for the building blocks of life, can originate on the Red Planet. These macromolecules are not of biological origin, but they are indicators that complex carbon chemistry has taken place on Mars.

Researchers from the Carnegie Institution for Science in Washington who found reduced carbon molecules now have better insight into the chemical processes taking place on Mars. Reduced carbon is carbon that is bonded to hydrogen or itself. Their findings also may assist in future quests for evidence of life on the Red Planet. The findings are published in Thursday’s online edition of Science Express.

“These findings show that the storage of reduced carbon molecules on Mars occurred throughout the planet’s history and might have been similar to processes that occurred on the ancient Earth,” said Andrew Steele, lead author of the paper and researcher from Carnegie. “Understanding the genesis of these non-biological, carbon-containing macromolecules on Mars is crucial for developing future missions to detect evidence of life on our neighboring planet.”

Finding molecules containing large chains of carbon and hydrogen has been one objective of past and present Mars missions. Such molecules have been found previously in Mars meteorites, but scientists have disagreed about how the carbon in them was formed and whether it came from Mars. This new information proves Mars can produce organic carbon.

“Although this study has not yielded evidence that Mars has or once may have supported life, it does address some important questions about the sources of organic carbon on Mars,” said Mary Voytek, director of NASA’s Astrobiology Program at the agency’s Headquarters in Washington. “With the Curiosity rover scheduled to land in August, these new research results may help Mars Science Laboratory scientists fine-tune their investigations on the surface of the planet by understanding where organic carbon may be found and how it is preserved.”

Scientists have theorized that the large carbon macromolecules detected on Martian meteorites could have originated from terrestrial contamination from Earth or other meteorites, or chemical reactions or biological activity on Mars.

Steele’s team examined samples from 11 Martian meteorites from a period spanning about 4.2 billion years of Martian history. They detected large carbon compounds in 10 of them. The molecules were found inside grains of crystallized minerals.

Using an array of sophisticated research techniques, the team was able to show that at least some of the macromolecules of carbon were indigenous to the meteorites themselves and not contamination from Earth.

The team next looked at the carbon molecules in relation to other minerals in the meteorites to see what kinds of chemical processing these samples endured before arriving on Earth. The crystalline grains encasing the carbon compounds provided a window into how the carbon molecules were created. Their findings indicate that the carbon was created by volcanic activity on Mars and show that Mars has been doing organic chemistry for most of its history.

In a separate paper published by American Mineralogist, Steele and his team report their findings on the same meteorite announced in 1996 to contain possible — but subsequently discounted — relics of ancient biological life on Mars. Called ALH84001, the meteorite was found to also contain organic macromolecules of non-biological origin.

The Steele team’s research indicates that Mars does have a pool of reduced carbon. Their findings should help scientists involved in current and future Mars missions distinguish non-biologically formed carbon molecules from potential life.

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Washington, U.S.A. - Observations from NASA’s Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer (WISE) have led to the best assessment yet of our solar system’s population of potentially hazardous asteroids. The results reveal new information about their total numbers, origins and the possible dangers they may pose.

Potentially hazardous asteroids, or PHAs, are a subset of the larger group of near-Earth asteroids. The PHAs have the closest orbits to Earth’s, coming within five million miles (about eight million kilometers) and they are big enough to survive passing through Earth’s atmosphere and cause damage on a regional, or greater, scale.

The new results come from the asteroid-hunting portion of the WISE mission, called NEOWISE. The project sampled 107 PHAs to make predictions about the entire population as a whole. Findings indicate there are roughly 4,700 PHAs, plus or minus 1,500, with diameters larger than 330 feet (about 100 meters). So far, an estimated 20 to 30 percent of these objects have been found.

While previous estimates of PHAs predicted similar numbers, they were rough approximations. NEOWISE has generated a more credible estimate of the objects’ total numbers and sizes.

“The NEOWISE analysis shows us we’ve made a good start at finding those objects that truly represent an impact hazard to Earth,” said Lindley Johnson, program executive for the Near-Earth Object Observation Program at NASA Headquarters in Washington. “But we’ve many more to find, and it will take a concerted effort during the next couple of decades to find all of them that could do serious damage or be a mission destination in the future.”

The new analysis also suggests that about twice as many PHAs as previously thought are likely to reside in “lower-inclination” orbits, which are more aligned with the plane of Earth’s orbit. In addition, these lower-inclination objects appear to be somewhat brighter and smaller than the other near-Earth asteroids that spend more time far away from Earth. A possible explanation is that many of the PHAs may have originated from a collision between two asteroids in the main belt lying between Mars and Jupiter. A larger body with a low-inclination orbit may have broken up in the main belt, causing some of the fragments to drift into orbits closer to Earth and eventually become PHAs.

Asteroids with lower-inclination orbits would be more likely to encounter Earth and would be easier to reach. The results therefore suggest more near-Earth objects might be available for future robotic or human missions.

“NASA’s NEOWISE project, which wasn’t originally planned as part of WISE, has turned out to be a huge bonus,” said Amy Mainzer, NEOWISE principal investigator, at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif. ”Everything we can learn about these objects helps us understand their origins and fate. Our team was surprised to find the overabundance of low-inclination PHAs. Because they will tend to make more close approaches to Earth, these targets can provide the best opportunities for the next generation of human and robotic exploration.”

The discovery that many PHAs tend to be bright says something about their composition; they are more likely to be either stony, like granite, or metallic. This type of information is important in assessing the space rocks’ potential hazards to Earth. The composition of the bodies would affect how quickly they might burn up in our atmosphere if an encounter were to take place.

The WISE spacecraft scanned the sky twice in infrared light before entering hibernation mode in early 2011. It catalogued hundreds of millions of objects, including super-luminous galaxies, stellar nurseries and closer-to-home asteroids. The NEOWISE project snapped images of about 600 near-Earth asteroids, about 135 of which were new discoveries.

Because the telescope detected the infrared light, or heat, of asteroids, it was able to pick up both light and dark objects, resulting in a more representative look at the entire population. The infrared data allowed astronomers to make good measurements of the asteroids’ diameters and when combined with visible light observations, how much sunlight they reflect.

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Washington, US – The Herschel Space Observatory has shown galaxies with the most powerful, active black holes at their cores produce fewer stars than galaxies with less active black holes. The results are the first to demonstrate black holes suppressed galactic star formation when the universe was less than half its current age. Herschel is a European Space Agency-led mission with important NASA contributions.

“We want to know how star formation and black hole activity are linked,” said Mathew Page of University College London’s Mullard Space Science Laboratory in the United Kingdom and lead author of the Nature paper describing these findings. “The two processes increase together up to a point, but the most energetic black holes appear to turn off star formation.”

Super massive black holes, weighing as much as millions of suns, are believed to reside in the hearts of all large galaxies. When gas falls upon these monsters, the material is accelerated and heated around the black hole, releasing great torrents of energy. Earlier in the history of the universe, these giant, luminous black holes, called active galactic nuclei, were often much brighter and more energetic. Star formation was also livelier back then.

Studies of nearby galaxies suggest active black holes can squash star formation. The revved-up, central black holes likely heat up and disperse the galactic reservoirs of cold gas needed to create new stars. These studies have only provided “snapshots” in time, however, leaving the overall relationship of active galactic nuclei and star formation unclear, especially over the cosmic history of galaxy formation.

“To understand how active galactic nuclei affect star formation over the history of the universe, we investigated a time when star formation was most vigorous, between eight and 12 billion years ago,” said co-author James Bock, a senior research scientist at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Pasadena and co-coordinator of the Herschel Multi-tiered Extragalactic Survey. “At that epoch, galaxies were forming stars 10 times more rapidly than they are today on average. Many of these galaxies are incredibly luminous, more than 1,000 times brighter than our Milky Way.”

For the new study, Page and colleagues used Herschel data that probed 65 galaxies at wavelengths equivalent to the thickness of several sheets of office paper, a region of the light spectrum known as the far-infrared. These wavelengths reveal the rate of star formation, because most of the energy released by developing stars heats surrounding dust, which then re-radiates starlight out in far-infrared wavelengths.

The researchers compared their infrared readings with X-rays streaming from the active central black holes in the survey’s galaxies, measured by NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory. At lower intensities, the black holes’ brightness and star formation increased in sync. However, star formation dropped off in galaxies with the most energetic central black holes. Astronomers think inflows of gas fuel new stars and super massive black holes. Feed a black hole too much, however, and it starts spewing radiation into the galaxy that prevents raw material from coalescing into new stars.

“Now that we see the relationship between active super massive black holes and star formation, we want to know more about how this process works,” said Bill Danchi, Herschel program scientist at NASA Headquarters in Washington. “Does star formation get disrupted from the beginning with the formation of the brightest galaxies of this type, or do all active black holes eventually shut off star formation, and energetic ones do this more quickly than less active ones?”

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Washington, U.S.A. – The space-based technology that lets GPS-equipped motorists constantly update their precise location will undergo a major test of its ability to rapidly pinpoint the location and magnitude of strong earthquakes across the western United States. Results from the new Real-time Earthquake Analysis for Disaster (READI) Mitigation Network soon could be used to assist prompt disaster response and more accurate tsunami warnings.

The new research network builds on decades of technology development supported by the National Science Foundation, the Department of Defense, NASA, and the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS). The network uses real-time GPS measurements from nearly 500 stations throughout California, Oregon and Washington. When a large earthquake is detected, GPS data are used to automatically calculate its vital characteristics including location, magnitude and details about the fault rupture.

“With the READI network we are enabling continued development of real-time GPS technologies to advance national and international early warning disaster systems,” said Craig Dobson, natural hazards program manager in the Earth Science Division at NASA Headquarters in Washington. “This prototype system is a significant step towards realizing the goal of providing Pacific basin-wide natural hazards capability around the Pacific ’Ring of Fire.’”

Accurate and rapid identification of earthquakes of magnitude 6.0 and stronger is critical for disaster response and mitigation efforts, especially for tsunamis. Calculating the strength of a tsunami requires detailed knowledge of the size of the earthquake and associated ground movements. Acquiring this type of data for very large earthquakes is a challenge for traditional seismological instruments that measure ground shaking.

High-precision, second-by-second measurements of ground displacements using GPS have been shown to reduce the time needed to characterize large earthquakes and to increase the accuracy of subsequent tsunami predictions. After the capabilities of the network have been fully demonstrated, it is intended to be used by appropriate natural hazard monitoring agencies. USGS and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration are responsible for detecting and issuing warnings on earthquakes and tsunamis, respectively.

“By using GPS to measure ground deformation from large earthquakes, we can reduce the time needed to locate and characterize the damage from large seismic events to several minutes,” said Yehuda Bock, director of Scripps Institution of Oceanography’s Orbit and Permanent Array Center in La Jolla, Calif. ”We now are poised to fully test the prototype system this year.”

The READI network is a collaboration of many institutions including Scripps at the University of California in San Diego; Central Washington University in Ellensburg; the University of Nevada in Reno; California Institute of Technology/Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Pasadena; UNAVCO in Boulder, Colo.; and theUniversity of California at Berkeley.

NASA, NSF, USGS, and other federal, state, and local partners support the GPS stations in the network, including the EarthScope Plate Boundary Observatory, the Pacific Northwest Geodetic Array, the Bay Area Regional Deformation Array and the California Real-Time Network.

“The relatively small investments in GPS-based natural hazards systems have revolutionized the way we view the Earth and allowed us to develop this prototype system with great potential benefits for the infrastructure and population in earthquake-prone states in the western United States,” said Frank Webb, Earth Science Advanced Mission Concepts program manager at JPL.

The READI network is the outgrowth of nearly 25 years of U.S. government research efforts to develop the capabilities and applications of GPS technology. The GPS satellite system was created by the Department of Defense for military and ultimately civil positioning needs.

NASA leveraged this investment by supporting development of a global GPS signal receiving network to improve the accuracy and utility of GPS positioning information. Today that capability provides real-time, pinpoint positioning and timing for a wide variety of uses from agriculture to Earth exploration.

“Conventional seismic networks have consistently struggled to rapidly identify the true size of great earthquakes during the last decade,” said Timothy Melbourne, director of the Central Washington University’s Pacific Northwest Geodetic Array. “This GPS system is more likely to provide accurate and rapid estimates of the location and amount of fault slip to fire, utility, medical and other first-response teams.”

The GPS earthquake detection capability was first demonstrated by NASA-supported research on a major 2004 Sumatra quake conducted by Geoffrey Blewitt and colleagues at the University of Nevada in Reno.

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

Image Courtesy of   ChameleonsEye / Shutterstock.com

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Three school student teams in the fifth through eighth grades have been selected as the winners of NASA’s second annual Spaced Out Sports challenge. The students designed science-based games that will be played by astronauts aboard the International Space Station (ISS).

The games illustrate and apply Newton’s laws of motion by showing the differences between Earth’s gravity and the microgravity environment of the space station. The challenge is part of a broader agency education effort to engage students in science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) activities.

To design their game, students use up to five items from a two-page list of objects aboard the ISS. The list includes such items as socks, exercise putty, bungees, cotton swabs, tape, rubber bands, zipper-top bags, chocolate-covered candies and drink bags.

Students at Pierremont Elementary MOSAICS Academy in Manchester, Mo., earned the top prize with their game “Starfield.” In this activity, astronauts will travel through a course to gather “power stars” and throw them through a “black hole target.”

Second-place honors went to students at East Brook Middle School in Paramus, N.J., for their “Outstanding Obstacles” game. It calls on astronauts to race through obstacles including “hair band shooting” and “ring toss.”

Third-place winners were students at Tyngsborough Middle School in Tyngsborough, Mass., for their “Learning Takes You around the World” game, in which astronauts will propel through rings, collecting slips of paper.

“Congratulations to the 2012 Spaced out Sports winners,” said Leland Melvin, associate administrator for education at NASA Headquarters in Washington and two-time shuttle astronaut. “By combining solid STEM skills with imagination and teamwork, these students have demonstrated that they have what it takes to be our next generation of engineers and designers.”

The Spaced Out Sports challenge is a NASA Teaching from Space activity and was first offered in 2010. Using an accompanying curriculum, teachers lead students through a study of Newton’s laws, highlighted by hands-on activities and video podcasts featuring NASA scientists and engineers explaining how the laws are used in the space program.

“The three top games were selected but everyone really is a winner in this challenge,” said Katie Wallace, director of NASA’s Stennis Space Center Office of Education near Bay St. Louis, Miss., where the challenge and accompanying curriculum were developed. “Every student involved wins by learning more about science and establishing an educational foundation that will serve them well throughout their careers and life.”

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In 2007, two super-Earths known as Gliese 667 C and Gliese 581d were discovered orbiting red dwarfs in the habitable zone, an area in which a planet is able to have surface temperature in order to liquid water. Recently, results from a study suggest these planets plus smaller, rocky ones are quite common in our galaxy and orbit red dwarfs by the tens of billions.

The study was conducted by an international team of scientists a part of the HARPS (High Accuracy Radial velocity Planet Search), ESO’s (European Southern Observatory) planet finder. HARPS’s mission is to detect planets beyond the solar system. HARPS especially aims to discover planets that are in the habitable zone.

In order to calculate the largest amount of Earth-like planets that could exist in the Milky Way, HARPS studied the most common type of star in the galaxy: red dwarfs. Red dwarfs are small, cool, and faint in luminosity in comparison to the Sun. Because they spend less energy than other types of stars, they are long-lived and, therefore, are the most common. Approximately 160 billion exist in the galaxy alone, making up a whopping 80% of the total number of stars.

Using a spectrograph from a 3.6-meter telescope from La Silla Observatory in Chile, HARPS chose a sample of 102 red dwarfs from the southern portion of the sky and studied them for six days. HARPS detected nine super-Earths (planets up to ten times the size of the Earth), two of which were inside the habitable zone. Furthermore, 40% of red dwarfs contain super-Earths that are able to sustain water on their surfaces.

Combining their data and the number of stars without planets, and an estimate of how many planets could be discovered, HARPS was then able to calculate the total number of planets orbiting red dwarfs and the different types of these planets. In the end, their results illustrated that tens of billions of smaller rocky planets exist in the Milky Way.

100 of these hypothesized planets should exist in the immediate vicinity – around 30 light-years – of the Sun (smaller planets are difficult to detect). Massive gassy planets (around the size of Jupiter and Saturn), on the other hand, were calculated to be rare when it came to orbiting red dwarfs.

Although it is exciting knowing that so many Earth-sized orbit stars in the habitable zone, astronomers are not getting their hopes up of finding life. It would be difficult for life to thrive on planets that orbit red dwarfs: because red dwarfs are cool, the habitable zone is rather close, leaving any planets close to the red dwarf to be bombarded with flares of ultraviolet rays and X-rays, making the planets not habitable after all. But that does not daunt astronomers of thinking that any of these small worlds could harbor life.

“Now that we know that there are many super-Earths around nearby red dwarfs,” Xaiver Delfosse, a member of the team tells ESO, “we need to identify more of them using both HARPS and future instruments. Some of these planets are expected to pass in front of their parent star as they orbit — this will open up the exciting possibility of studying the planet’s atmosphere and searching for signs of life.”

A detailed report of HARPS experiment and results can be found here.

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On March 17th, NASA’s spacecraft MESSENGER revealed surprising details about Mercury’s interior and topography, changing astronomers’ understanding of the small planet and how it was formed.

MESSENGER (MErcury Space Surface ENvironment, GEochemistry, and Ranging) is the first spacecraft sent to orbit and study Mercury, which orbits the Sun a mere 36 million miles away. It’s the innermost and hottest planet in our solar system. MESSENGER was launched in August 2004. Before traveling to Mercury, it made a series of flybys around the Earth (once) and Venus (twice).

MESSENGER finally arrived at Mercury on March 18, 2011 and went around three times. Using radio signals, the spacecraft studied Mercury’s gravitational field, magnetic field, topography, internal geological structure, and chemical composition. Because the results of MESSENGER’S flybys around Mercury were so valuable, its mission was extended to last for another year in November 2011.

Mercury’s topography has changed many times since Mercury was fully formed, meaning that there has been a considerable amount of geological activity. For that reason, before studying any of the planet’s internal structure and history, MESSENGER first produced an accurate map of Mercury’s gravitational field using information derived from the planet’s topography and spin state.

Thereafter, two studies were conducted simultaneously, examining Mercury’s internal structure and geography. In one study, the researchers involved with MESSENGER discovered that the planet’s core was much larger than previously thought: it takes up 85 percent of the planet’s radius. Furthermore, it is liquid instead of solid. Previously, scientists assumed that Mercury would have been cooled enough by now for the core to be solid.

Above the core lies an unusual layer that is composed of solid sulphur and iron – a layer not found in the other rocky planets in the Solar System. The outer layers of the internal structure consist of a solid silicate crust and mantle. It is thought that inside the larger liquid core lies a smaller solid core composed of sulphur and iron.

The other study of Mercury’s topography produced other surprising discoveries. When MESSENGER’s Mercury Laser Altimeter (MLA) produced a topographic model of the northern hemisphere and areas in the mid-latitude range, researchers learned that the elevation spread is smaller than similar regions on the Moon and Mars. The area that sticks out the most is lowlands that contain the northern volcanic plains.

Moreover, according to the Carnegie Institute for Science’s press release,

“… the interior plains of Caloris impact basin — 1,550 kilometers (960 miles) in diameter — have been modified so that part of the basin floor now stands higher than the rim. The elevated portion appears to be part of a quasi-linear rise that extends for approximately half the planetary circumference at mid-latitudes. These features imply that large-scale changes to Mercury’s topography occurred after the era of impact basin formation and large-scale emplacement of volcanic plains had ended.”

This new knowledge of Mercury’s internal structure and topography gives insight as to how Mercury formed thermally and how the planet’s magnetic field is generated. Details of the findings of each study from MESSENGER’s mission will appear in two separate papers, which will appear on March 23 in the journal Science.

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On February 27, the team of astronomers involved with NASA’s spacecraft Kepler published their most recent catalog of exoplanets (short for extrasolar planets, which are planets beyond our solar system) that Kepler has detected.

Data from the newest catalog is cumulative and includes information from the two catalogues created in June 2010 and February 2011. As of now, the total number of exoplanets Kepler has detected is 2,321, which orbit 1,790 stars. A full 93% are smaller than Neptune, the smallest of the gas giants in the solar system. Over 200 are Earth-sized and more than 900 are smaller than twice the size of the Earth’s diameter. There are 46 exoplanets located in the habitable zone, 10 of which are Earth-sized.

“With each new catalog release a clear progression toward smaller planets at longer orbital periods is emerging,” Natalie Batalha, Kepler deputy science team lead at San Jose State University in California, states in NASA’s press release. “This suggests that Earth-size planets in the habitable zone are forthcoming if, indeed, such planets are abundant.”

Furthermore, the percent for more than one planet orbiting a star has increased to 20 percent from last year’s 17 percent (many other planets are rogue, unattached to a parent star, twirling alone in space). More and detailed statistics can be found here.

Three methods can be utilized to find exoplanets: gravitational lensing, radial-velocity, and transiting. Kepler largely uses the latter method, using the software Transiting Planet Search (TPS) pipeline module, because it has proven to produce more results compared to the former two. Transiting works as thus: one measures a star’s periodic drop in brightness due to an object – in the most hopeful scenario, a planet – passing in front of the star.

Sifting through 150,000 stars, Kepler detected around 5,000 transit signals, through which the spacecraft had more to sort. One can easily misidentify an object to be an exoplanet when using the transiting method; one may instead find a binary star system, which contains two stars that orbit and eclipse one another. To confirm its detection of a planet, Kepler has to record the transit at least three times.

Kepler was launched in mid-2009 to find Earth-like exoplanets that are able to sustain water and life. These planets would have to be located in the habitable zone, an area in which a planet must orbit a star in order for liquid water to exist on its surface. Kepler goes about attempting to detect exoplanets by looking at their parent stars first, largely searching for G-type stars, or Sun-like stars (or at least stars a part of the Main Sequence), which astronomers believe to be ideal parent stars.

For much of the time Kepler began exploring, it mostly detected gas giants tens of times larger than Jupiter. As the spacecraft endured, it began, recently, to find numerous smaller rocky planets. Soon after, astronomers working with Kepler have calculated that there are more of these kinds of planets than there are gas giants.

Kepler’s latest milestone includes Kepler-20e and Kepler-20f, which were detected this January and are the first Earth-sized planets known to exist. Another milestone occurred in December 2011, when Kepler discovered super-Earth Kepler-22b, the first known exoplanet in the habitable zone.

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Researchers and flight crew with NASA’s Operation IceBridge, an airborne mission to study changes in polar ice, began another season of science activity with the start of the 2012 Arctic campaign on March 13.

From mid-March through mid-May, a modified P-3 from NASA’s Wallops Flight Facility in Wallops Island, Va., will conduct daily missions out of Thule and Kangerlussuaq, Greenland —with one flight to Fairbanks, Alaska and back—to measure sea and land ice. The campaign will also feature instrument tests, continued international collaboration and educational activities.

After NASA’s Ice, Cloud and Land Elevation Satellite’s (ICESat) stopped collecting data in 2009, Operation IceBridge began as a way to continue the multi-year record of ice elevation measurements until the launch of ICESat-2 in 2016. IceBridge gathers data during annual campaigns over the Arctic starting in March and Antarctic starting in October.

IceBridge flights will measure both previously surveyed sites, such as Greenland’s Jakobshavn Glacier, and unstudied areas of sea ice, such as the Beaufort Sea north of Alaska. “The most important sea ice flights are the transits between Thule and Fairbanks,” said IceBridge project scientist Michael Studinger.

The P-3 carries an array of instruments for measuring ice surface elevation and thickness and snow depth, and will be joined by other aircraft later in the campaign. The Airborne Topographic Mapper uses lasers to measure changes in surface elevation and uses these readings to create elevation maps.

Radar instruments from the Center for Remote Sensing of Ice Sheets at the University of Kansas in Lawrence, Kan., show snow and ice thickness and allow scientists to see through land ice to the bedrock below. A gravimeter from Sander Geophysics and Columbia University’s Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory, Palisades, N.Y., similarly lets researchers determine water depth beneath floating ice.

A Falcon jet from NASA’s Langley Research Center in Hampton, Va., carrying a high-altitude laser altimeter, the Land, Vegetation, and Ice Sensor (LVIS) will join the P-3 on April 19. The Falcon flies higher and faster than the P-3, which allows it to cover longer flight lines and enables LVIS to survey a 2-km (1.2 mile) wide swath of ice. The Falcon will play a critical role in surveying near coastal areas of Greenland, and in sea ice flights out of Thule.

IceBridge will also join in efforts to validate and calibrate sea ice measurements by CryoSat-2, the European Space Agency’s ice-monitoring satellite. ESA’s airborne calibration campaign, CryoVEx, aims to ensure that CryoSat-2′s radar readings are accurate.

“One of our prime goals in Thule will be to underfly a European CryoSat sea ice track within two hours of its passage over the sea ice north of Greenland,” said acting project manager Seelye Martin. “Last year’s collaboration with ESA proved successful and this year is expected to provide even more data,” Studinger said.

Depending on flight schedules, either the P-3 or the Falcon will also take part in testing a new laser altimeter that simulates the one on ICESat-2. An ER-2, a research version of the U-2, from NASA’s Dryden Flight Research Center, Edwards, Calif., will carry the Multiple Altimeter Beam Experimental Lidar (MABEL).

The ER-2 will fly out of Keflavik, Iceland, and climb to 60,000 feet on its way to Greenland to measure the same tracks as the P-3. “The instruments on the P-3 and Falcon are more mature,” said assistant research scientist Kelly Brunt. “This will test MABEL’s accuracy and help scientists develop better algorithms.”

Something else new to this year’s campaign is the participation of science teachers from the United States, Denmark and Greenland. In mid-April, Tim Spuck, a high school teacher from Oil City, Penn., will join two educators from Greenland and two from Denmark in Kangerlussuaq.

There they will spend several days working with IceBridge scientists and participating in survey flights. Spuck’s time in Greenland is thanks to PolarTREC, a National Science Foundation program designed to bring teachers and polar scientists together and give educators hands-on research experience. “I hope to get a better understanding of polar science and bring that knowledge back home to both students and educators,” said Spuck.

Image Courtesy of   http://www.nasa.gov
Credit: NASA/Jim Yungel

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Last Friday, NASA’s Cassini mission detected molecular oxygen ions on Dione- one of Saturn’s moons- indicating that the moon has an atmosphere. The team involved with the mission includes researchers from Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico, the European Space Agency, and the Italian Space Agency, all of which are a part of collaboration with NASA’s Cassini-Huygens mission.

“We now know that Dione, in addition to Saturn’s rings and the moon Rhea, is a source of oxygen molecules,” Robert Tokar, says to NASA. Tokar, the head author of the team’s paper, is a researcher at Los Alamos National Laboratory. “This shows that molecular oxygen is actually common in the Saturn system and reinforces that it can come from a process that doesn’t involve life.”

Cassini, launched in 1997 and arriving on Saturn in 2004, spotted the molecular oxygen ions in a flyby with one of its active sensors, the Cassini Plasma Spectrometer (CAPS) in 2010, when the researchers at Los Alamos were able to first notice them. Prior, the existence of the ions was postulated after NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope detected ozone. Only after Cassini studied Dione during its flyby, was their postulation confirmed.

Dione was discovered by Giovannia Cassini (after which the titular spacecraft was named) in 1684. As one of the 62 moons revolving around Saturn, it is the tiniest, having a diameter of around 1130km (700 miles). Dione is best known for its pockmarked surface, which is composed of a thick layer of solid water ice. Underneath the surface lies a possible layer of liquid water and a small rocky core.

The distance at which Dione orbits Saturn is the same distance as the Earth from the Sun. The tiny moon’s orbital period lasts every 2.7 days. Because Dione is well within Saturn’s magnetosphere, the ions from the magnetosphere bombard Dione’s surface, and molecular oxygen ions are then created.

These ions bounce off and are dispersed around the planet, creating an atmosphere, albeit a very thin one. According to NASA, there is “one [ion] for every 0.67 cubic inches of space (one for every 11 cubic centimeters of space) or about 2,550 per cubic foot (90,000 per cubic meter).”

“The concentration of oxygen in Dione’s atmosphere is roughly similar to what you would find in Earth’s atmosphere at an altitude of about 300 miles,” Tokar states in Los Alamos National Laboratory’s press release. “It’s not enough to sustain life, but—together with similar observations of other moons around Saturn and Jupiter—these are definitive examples of a process by which a lot of oxygen can be produced in icy celestial bodies that are bombarded by charged particles or photons from the Sun or whatever light source happens to be nearby.”

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An international team of astronomers, led by astrophysicist Francesco Tombesi, at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland has discovered what causes galaxies to acquire large bulges in their centers: outflows from supermassive black holes that lie in the bulges.

A black hole is an invisible tiny “hole” in space. It is a former star that collapses on its own gravity, which is so strong that nothing, even light, can escape — hence the name “black hole,” coined by physicist John Wheeler in 1967. Black holes feed on objects surrounding them: nebulas, planetary objects, light — anything. Whatever enters a black hole gets spewed out eventually in the form of jets of x-rays and radiation. These jets allow astronomers to view the black hole’s spectrum, which tells them what elements the black hole swallowed and spat out.

Over the years, astronomers have learned that galaxies, even our very own Milky Way, contain supermassive black holes — black holes that are really, really big — at their centers. Surrounding the supermassive black holes are large clouds of gas, where stars are born left and right. The gravity of these black holes also attract fast moving stars, creating the galaxies’ bulges, which then grow large. As to how this is has puzzled astronomers for years.

Tombesi and his colleagues have encountered a distinct kind of “outflow” from the clouds of gas after studying the spectrographs of forty-two galaxies from the All-Sky Slew Survey Catalog from NASA’s Rossi X-Ray Timing Explorer Satellite. In spectroscopy, astronomers look at absorption spectra — essentially pictures of the electromagnetic spectrum — which present light absorbed from the light sources, such as stars, nebulas, galaxies, and, in this case, black holes. With the absorption spectra, astronomers can gauge the light source’s composition of elements by looking for any black lines that vertically cross the spectrum.

While researching the spectra of x-rays from the forty-two galaxies, Tombesi and the team learned that the supermassive black holes absorbed fluorescent iron. They then found out that 40% of these galaxies had such an outflow flow, which suggests that the outflow is common in black holes at the center of galaxies. The x-rays’ wavelengths were shorter than their normal length, indicating that the galaxies were blueshifted (i.e. moving towards us). This outflow was dubbed “ultra-fast outflows,” or UFOs, by Tombesi according to NASA.

“They have the potential to play a major role in transmitting feedback effects from a black hole into the galaxy at large,” Tombesi says in NASA’s press release.

Ultimately, he and his colleauges learned that UFOs halt supermassive black holes’ growth by taking away the mass it would potentially eat. Furthermore, UFOs can slow down or even completely discontinue star formation in the galactic centers by removing gas from the galactic bulge.

Tombesi and his team hope to further study UFOs and their development with Japan’s Astro-H X-ray telescope, which is scheduled to be launched in 2014.

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