ESA To Collaborate with NASA on Solar Science Mission

On October 4, 2011, the European Space Agency announced it's two next science missions, including Solar Orbiter, a spacecraft geared to study the powerful influence of the sun. Solar Orbiter will be an ESA-led mission, with strong NASA contributions managed from Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md.

Solar Orbiter will venture closer to the Sun than any previous mission. The spacecraft will also carry advanced instrumentation that will help untangle how activity on the sun sends out radiation, particles and magnetic fields that can affect Earth's magnetic environment, causing aurora, or potentially damaging satellites, interfering with GPS communications or even Earth's electrical power grids.

"Solar Orbiter will use multiple gravity assists from Venus to tilt its orbit until it can see the poles of the Sun, and that's never been done before," said Chris St. Cyr, NASA's project scientist for Solar Orbiter at Goddard. "A full view of the solar poles will help us understand how the sun's magnetic poles reverse direction every 11 years, causing giant eruptions and flares, called space weather, that can affect the rest of the solar system."

Being so close to the sun also means that the Solar Orbiter will stay over a given area of the solar surface for a longer time, allowing the instruments to track the evolution of sunspots, active regions, coronal holes and other solar activity far longer than has been done before.

Solar Orbiter is also designed to make major breakthroughs in our understanding of how the sun generates and propels the flow of particles in which the planets are bathed, known as the solar wind. Solar activity and solar eruptions create strong perturbations in this wind, triggering spectacular auroral displays on Earth and other planets. Solar Orbiter will be close enough to the sun to both observe the details of how the solar wind is accelerated off the sun and to sample the wind shortly after it leaves the surface.

Diamond earring studs

Read more

SpaceShipTwo a rocket plane designed to take tourists on suborbital flights

SpaceShipTwo, a privately built rocket plane designed to take tourists on suborbital flights, continues to chalk up more flight time as it glides through the skies over the Mojave Air and Space Port in California.

Another successful glide of the first SpaceShip Two craft, christened VSS Enterprise, took place June 23, marking the 14th glide flight test of the vessel — an 8-minute, 55-second free fall after midair release from its mothership. The test came a week after VSS Enterprise proved it could be flown on back-to-back days.

The two-pilot SpaceShipTwo is designed to rocket six paying passengers on a suborbital trajectory to space without making a full orbit around the Earth. The ride to the edge of space will come at a per-seat price of $200,000.

Crew Checks Thermal Protection System and Spacesuits

The crew of space shuttle Discovery awoke at 6:54 a.m. EST to the song “Through Heaven's Eyes” by Brian Stokes Mitchell from the Prince of Egypt soundtrack, played for Mike Barratt at the request of his family.

Discovery will spend two days heading toward its rendezvous with the International Space Station. Today, the crew will perform the standard scan of the shuttle’s thermal protection system using the orbiter boom sensor system attached to the end of Discovery’s robotic arm. While the inspection is underway, Bowen, Drew and Stott will work on preparing the spacesuits onboard the shuttle that will be transferred to the station after docking and will be used during the mission’s two spacewalks.

Cassini Celebrates 10 Years Since Jupiter Encounter

Ten years ago, on Dec. 30, 2000, NASA's Cassini spacecraft made its closest approach to Jupiter on its way to orbiting Saturn. The main purpose was to use the gravity of the largest planet in our solar system to slingshot Cassini towards Saturn, its ultimate destination. But the encounter with Jupiter, Saturn's gas-giant big brother, also gave the Cassini project a perfect lab for testing its instruments and evaluating its operations plans for its tour of the ringed planet, which began in 2004.

"The Jupiter flyby allowed the Cassini spacecraft to stretch its wings, rehearsing for its prime time show, orbiting Saturn," said Linda Spilker, Cassini project scientist based at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif. "Ten years later, findings from the Jupiter flyby still continue to shape our understanding of similar processes in the Saturn system."

Cassini spent about six months - from October 2000 to March 2001 - exploring the Jupiter system. The closest approach brought Cassini to within about 9.7 million kilometers (6 million miles) of Jupiter's cloud tops at 2:05 a.m. Pacific Time, or 10:05 a.m. UTC, on Dec. 30, 2000.

Cassini captured some 26,000 images of Jupiter and its moons over six months of continual viewing, creating the most detailed global portrait of Jupiter yet.

Scans of Discovery's External Tank Progressing Well

Technicians in the Vehicle Assembly Building at NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida are making good progress with X-ray type image scans of space shuttle Discovery's external fuel tank.

By Tuesday evening, they'll be more than half way done with the computed radiography scans of all 108 support beams, called stringers, on the outside of the external tank’s intertank section.

Engineers at various other NASA locations already are analyzing the new image scans, which began Sunday. The new data, along with previous testing and analysis, will help engineers and managers determine what caused small cracks on the tops of two stringers during Discovery’s launch countdown on Nov. 5.‬

‪‬Technicians expect to complete their scans by Thursday (Dec. 30) when Space Shuttle Program managers are set to decide whether testing and analysis indicate modifications are needed on some of the stringers.

Christmas at the Moon

Christmas Eve, 1968. As one of the most turbulent, tragic years in American history drew to a close, millions around the world were watching and listening as the Apollo 8 astronauts -- Frank Borman, Jim Lovell and Bill Anders -- became the first humans to orbit another world.

As their command module floated above the lunar surface, the astronauts beamed back images of the moon and Earth and took turns reading from the book of Genesis, closing with a wish for everyone "on the good Earth."

Christmas Eve, 1968. As one of the most turbulent, tragic years in American history drew to a close, millions around the world were watching and listening as the Apollo 8 astronauts -- Frank Borman, Jim Lovell and Bill Anders -- became the first humans to orbit another world.

As their command module floated above the lunar surface, the astronauts beamed back images of the moon and Earth and took turns reading from the book of Genesis, closing with a wish for everyone "on the good Earth."

Inspections Complete on Repaired Tank Stringers

Teams have completed final inspections on the stringer repair work on space shuttle Discovery's external fuel tank at NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida. The environmental enclosure, built to support foaming operations, was removed. Flight Crew Systems middeck stow operations are under way.

The Space Shuttle Program will review the analysis and repairs that are required to safely launch shuttle Discovery on its STS-133 mission at a special Program Requirements Control Board session Wednesday. Pending a successful review of the flight rationale at that meeting, a Launch Status Briefing would be held with senior NASA management on Monday, Nov. 29 at Kennedy.

Kennedy's “Call-to-Stations” to begin the launch countdown will be no earlier than Nov. 30, supporting a first launch attempt no earlier than Dec. 3 at about 2:52 a.m. EST.

Sun's Northern Hemisphere Bristling with Solar Flares

This movie show the activity on the Sun over the latest 48-hours in the 171 Angstrom emission line (showing the ~700,000K plasma) from the Atmospheric and Imaging Assembly (AIA) onboard the Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO). With a large active region currently in the northern hemisphere of the Sun, there has been a flurry of small solar flares over the past day. This larger active region may actually be comprised of four different active regions that are very close to each other forming one large, interconnected active region with multiple magnetic poles. This magnetically complex region has lead to 12 B-class and 1 C-class solar flare over the last 24 hours.

NASA astronaut launch video

NASA astronaut Scott Kelly and Russian cosmonauts Oleg Skripochka and Alexander Kaleri launched in their Soyuz TMA-01M spacecraft from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan Thursday at 7:10 p.m. EDT (Friday, Kazakhstan time) beginning a two-day journey to the International Space Station.

Less than 10 minutes after launch, their spacecraft reached orbit and its antennas and solar arrays were deployed.

The trio will dock to the Poisk module Saturday at 8:02 p.m. completing the Expedition 25 crew. Kelly, Skripochka and Kaleri will begin a five-month tour of duty aboard the orbiting laboratory.

Welcoming them aboard will be current station residents, Expedition 25 Commander Doug Wheelock and Flight Engineers Fyodor Yurchikhin and Shannon Walker. Wheelock, Yurchikhin and Walker arrived June 17 aboard their Soyuz TMA-19 spacecraft.

MAVEN Mission to Investigate How Sun Steals Martian Atmosphere

The Red Planet bleeds. Not blood, but its atmosphere, slowly trickling away to space. The culprit is our sun, which is using its own breath, the solar wind, and its radiation to rob Mars of its air. The crime may have condemned the planet's surface, once apparently promising for life, to a cold and sterile existence.

Features on Mars resembling dry riverbeds, and the discovery of minerals that form in the presence of water, indicate that Mars once had a thicker atmosphere and was warm enough for liquid water to flow on the surface. However, somehow that thick atmosphere got lost in space. It appears Mars has been cold and dry for billions of years, with an atmosphere so thin, any liquid water on the surface quickly boils away while the sun's ultraviolet radiation scours the ground.

Hurricane Karl

The Global Hawk left southern California at 6 a.m. PDT for a 24-hour roundtrip flight to observe the storm. The DC-8, temporarily based in Ft Lauderdale, Fla., took off at approximately 1 p.m. EDT for about seven hours of research time. The WB-57, based in Houston, Texas, began its six-hour mission at about 12:30 CDT. The aircraft rendezvoused at the storm, which is currently in the Bay of Campeche in the Gulf of Mexico.

The Global Hawk’s altitude is about 60,000 feet over Karl, while the WB-57 is flying between 56,000 and 58.000 feet. The DC-8 joins the other two at an altitude of between 33,000 and 37,000 feet.

Today’s coordinated flights are the first time during the GRIP campaign that NASA’s three aircraft have been in the same storm at the same time. In addition, aircraft from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, the National Science Foundation and the Air Force are monitoring Hurricane Karl.

Chandra Finds Evidence for Stellar Cannibalism

The composite image on the left shows X-ray and optical data for BP Piscium (BP Psc), a more evolved version of our Sun about 1,000 light years from Earth. Chandra X-ray Observatory data are colored in purple, and optical data from the 3-meter Shane telescope at Lick Observatory are shown in orange, green and blue. BP Psc is surrounded by a dusty and gaseous disk and has a pair of jets several light years long blasting out of the system. A close-up view is shown by the artist's impression on the right. For clarity a narrow jet is shown, but the actual jet is probably much wider, extending across the inner regions of the disk. Because of the dusty disk, the star’s surface is obscured in optical and near infrared light. Therefore, the Chandra observation is the first detection of this star in any wavelength.

The disk and the jets, seen distinctly in the optical data, provide evidence for a recent and catastrophic interaction in which BP Psc consumed a nearby star or giant planet. This happened when BP Psc ran out of nuclear fuel and expanded into its "red giant" phase.

Colorado's Reservoir Road Fire from Space

Colorado's "Reservoir Road Fire" from Space

NASA's Aqua satellite flies around the Earth twice a day and captures visible and infrared imagery. On Sept. 12 at 19:20 UTC (3:20 p.m. EDT), the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) instrument on Aqua captured a visible image of the "Reservoir Road Fire" that is currently raging in the Arapaho & Roosevelt National Forests / Pawnee National Grassland.

According to the National Forest Incident report on September 13, the Reservoir Road Fire near Loveland, Colorado, has burned 600 acres, and firefighting continues. Loveland is the second most populous city in Larimer County, Colo. Loveland is located 46 miles north of Denver.

Two Asteroids to Pass by Earth

Two asteroids, several meters in diameter and in unrelated orbits, will pass within the moon's distance of Earth on Wednesday, Sept. 8.

Both asteroids should be observable near closest approach to Earth with moderate-sized amateur telescopes. Neither of these objects has a chance of hitting Earth. A 10-meter-sized near-Earth asteroid from the undiscovered population of about 50 million would be expected to pass almost daily within a lunar distance, and one might strike Earth's atmosphere about every 10 years on average.

The Catalina Sky Survey near Tucson, Ariz., discovered both objects on the morning of Sunday, Sept. 5, during a routine monitoring of the skies. The Minor Planet Center in Cambridge, Mass., first received the observations Sunday morning, determined preliminary orbits and concluded that both objects would pass within the distance of the moon about three days after their discovery.

Near-Earth asteroid 2010 RX30 is estimated to be 32 to 65 feet (10 to 20 meters) in size and will pass within 0.6 lunar distances of Earth (about 154,000 miles, or 248,000 kilometers) at 2:51 a.m. PDT (5:51 a.m. EDT) Wednesday. The second object, 2010 RF12, estimated to be 20 to 46 feet (6 to 14 meters) in size, will pass within 0.2 lunar distances (about 49,088 miles or 79,000 kilometers) a few hours later at 2:12 p.m. PDT (5:12 pm EDT).

Crew Readies for Resupply Ship and Upcoming Departure

The Expedition 24 crew members are preparing for the arrival of the ISS Progress 39 cargo craft to replenish the orbiting laboratory with food, fuel, supplies and other cargo. The Progress 39 will dock to the aft end of the Zvezda service module Friday, Sept. 10. It is replacing the trash-filled Progress 38 which undocked Aug. 31 and is poised to re-enter Earth’s atmosphere Monday for a fiery destruction over the Pacific Ocean.

The crew also will have an off-duty day Monday due to a frenetic pace of science activities. The six crew members are relaxing after three repair spacewalks restored the station’s cooling system.

Hurricane activity captured the attention of the station residents as they photographed and videotaped Earl churning in the Atlantic Ocean. The imagery and video are downlinked to ground controllers for observation and study by scientists. A Russian experiment, Uragan (Hurricane), monitors and studies the catastrophic effects of natural and man-made disasters. Other ongoing Earth observation experiments aboard the orbiting laboratory study natural phenomena and human activities and their consequences on the planet.

Successful Ice Cloud and Land Elevation Mission

orbiting sentinels is expected to return to Earth in a few days. The agency's Ice, Cloud, and land Elevation (ICESat) satellite completed a very productive scientific mission earlier this year. NASA lowered the satellite's orbit last month and then decommissioned the spacecraft in preparation for re-entry. It is estimated that the satellite will re-enter the Earth's atmosphere and largely burn up on or about August 29.

ICESat's lasting legacy will be its impact on the understanding of ice sheet and sea ice dynamics. The mission has led to scientific advances in measuring changes in the mass of the Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets, polar sea ice thickness, vegetation-canopy heights, and the heights of clouds and aerosols. Using ICESat data, scientists identified a network of lakes beneath the Antarctic ice sheet. ICESat introduced new capabilities, technology and methods such as the measurement of sea ice freeboard – or the amount of ice and snow that protrudes above the ocean surface - for estimating sea ice thickness.

Perseids Complete 2010

The 2010 Perseid meteor shower is drawing to a close after painting brilliant streaks across the August nighttime skies. This year's shower began around July 17, peaked August 12-13 and will be officially over by August 24.

"The Perseids are a great shower, one I look forward to every year. And this year didn’t disappoint!" said Dr. Bill Cooke, head of NASA's Meteoroid Environment Office, located at the Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Ala.

The Perseid meteor shower has been observed for at least 2,000 years and is associated with the comet 109P/Swift-Tuttle, which orbits the sun once every 133 years or so. Each year in August, the Earth passes through a cloud of the comet's debris. These bits of ice and dust travel around 132,000 mph, burning up about 56 miles overhead in the Earth's atmosphere to create one of the best meteor showers of the year. The shower is called the "Perseids" because the meteors appear to come from the direction of the constellation Perseus.

space shuttle orbiter

A jet engine noise reduction device called a chevron, now in use on commercial airliners, is a good example of a NASA-developed technology that climbed the TRL scale to success, said Fay Collier, manager of NASA's Environmentally Responsible Aviation Project.

Chevrons are the saw-tooth pattern that can be seen on the trailing edges of some jet engine nozzles. As hot air from the engine core mixes with cooler air blowing through the engine fan, the jagged edges serve to smooth the mixing, which reduces turbulence that creates noise.

The new Boeing 787 is among the most modern jets relying on chevrons to reduce engine noise levels, sporting chevrons on the nacelles, or fan housings. The Boeing 747-8 has chevrons on both the nacelles and inner core engine nozzles.

GRIP 'Shakedown' Flight Planned over Gulf Coast

The first flight of NASA's hurricane airborne research mission is scheduled to take off from Ft. Lauderdale, Fla., on Tuesday, Aug. 17. NASA's DC-8 research aircraft will be making a planned five-hour flight along the Gulf Coast from western Florida to Louisiana primarily as a practice run for the many scientific instruments aboard.

Mission scientists, instrument teams, flight crew and support personnel gathered in Fort Lauderdale this weekend to begin planning the six-week Genesis and Rapid Intensification Processes mission, or GRIP. NASA's DC-8, the largest of NASA's three aircraft taking part in the mission, is based at the Fort Lauderdale airport. The two other aircraft -- the WB-57 based in Houston and the autonomous Global Hawk flying out of southern California -- will join the campaign in about a week.

Launch Preps Move Ahead for Mission to International Space Station

During space shuttle Discovery's final spaceflight, the STS-133 crew members will take important spare parts to the International Space Station along with the Express Logistics Carrier-4. Discovery is being readied for flight inside Kennedy's Orbiter Processing Facility-3 while its solid rocket boosters are stacked inside the nearby Vehicle Assembly Building. STS-133 is slated to launch Nov. 1.