The Coolest Stars Come Out of the Dark

Astronomers have uncovered what appear to be 14 of the coldest stars known in our universe. These failed stars, called brown dwarfs, are so cold and faint that they'd be impossible to see with current visible-light telescopes. Spitzer's infrared vision was able to pick out their feeble glow, much as a firefighter uses infrared goggles to find hot spots buried underneath a dark forest floor.

The brown dwarfs join only a handful of similar objects previously discovered. The new objects are between the temperatures of about 450 Kelvin to 600 Kelvin (350 to 620 degrees Fahrenheit). As far as stars go, this is bitter cold -- as cold, in some cases, as planets around other stars.

These cool orbs have remained elusive for years, but will soon start coming out of the dark in droves. NASA's Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer (WISE) mission, which is up scanning the entire sky now in infrared wavelengths, is expected to find hundreds of objects of a similarly chilly disposition, if not even colder. WISE is searching a volume of space 40 times larger than that sampled in the recent Spitzer study, which concentrated on a region in the constellation Boötes. The Spitzer mission is designed to look at targeted patches of sky in detail, while WISE is combing the whole sky.

Pacific Ocean sea surface

"The central equatorial Pacific Ocean could stay colder than normal into summer and beyond. That's because sea level is already about 10 centimeters (4 inches) below normal, creating a significant deficit of the heat stored in the upper ocean," said JPL oceanographer and climatologist Bill Patzert. "The next few months will reveal if the current cooling trend will eventually evolve into a long-lasting La Niña situation."

A La Niña is essentially the opposite of an El Niño. During a La Niña, trade winds in the western equatorial Pacific are stronger than normal, and the cold water that normally exists along the coast of South America extends to the central equatorial Pacific. La Niñas change global weather patterns and are associated with less moisture in the air, resulting in less rain along the coasts of North and South America. They also tend to increase the formation of tropical storms in the Atlantic.

"For the American Southwest, La Niñas usually bring a dry winter, not good news for a region that has experienced normal rain and snowpack only once in the past five winters," said Patzert.

Astronomers Discover Star-Studded Galaxy Tail

"The gas in this galaxy is being blown back into a turbulent wake," said Janice Hester of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, lead author of a recent study published in the Astrophysical Journal Letters. "The gas is like sand caught up by a stiff wind. However, the particular type of gas that is needed to make stars is heavier, like pebbles, and can't be blown out of the galaxy. The new Galaxy Evolution Explorer observations are teaching us that this heavier, star-forming gas can form in the wake, possibly in swirling eddies of gas."

Collisions between galaxies are a fairly common occurrence in the universe. Our Milky Way galaxy will crash into the Andromeda galaxy in a few billion years. Galaxies tangle together, kicking gas and dust all around. Often the battered galaxies are left with tails of material stripped off during the violence.

The astronomers were able to find this tail with the help of the Galaxy Evolution Explorer. Clusters of massive, young stars speckle the tail, and these stars glow with ultraviolet light that the space telescope can see. The young stars tell scientists that a crucial ingredient for star formation - dense clouds of gas called molecular hydrogen - formed in the wake of this galaxy's plunge. This is the first time astronomers have found solid evidence that clouds of molecular hydrogen can form under the violent conditions present in a turbulent wake.

JPL's Next Mars Rover Landing Radar Tested at Dryden

Testing for the JPL-managed Mars Science Laboratory or MSL project included suspending a full-scale engineering model of the MSL rover from a helicopter and flying pre-planned flight trajectories over Rogers Dry Lake at Edwards to simulate the rover's descent stage carrying the rover to the surface of Mars. JPL engineers needed to verify that the radar will provide accurate altitude and velocity measurements at Mars and that the suspended rover will not confuse the ability of the descent stage's radar to accurately calculate the rover's descent speed for a safe, on-target landing.

"Dryden offers a unique location to perform testing of this kind," said Carrie Rhoades, the Dryden flight operations engineer managing the MSL project at Dryden. "We have restricted airspace and a large dry lakebed that is useful in simulating several Mars-like features. Dryden is also conveniently close to JPL, so troubleshooting the system and fixing any issues has been relatively easy to accomplish," she said.

ASTSAT Satellite Readies for Shipment to Alaska

The pre-shipment review was completed in May, demonstrating the flight hardware has successfully passed all environmental and performance tests and is authorized for shipment to the launch site for final integration on the Minotaur IV launch vehicle, built and operated by Orbital Sciences Corp. of Dulles, Va.

Engineers will pack the satellite into a shipping container for delivery in early July to the launch complex in Kodiak, Alaska. FASTSAT is scheduled to launch no earlier than Sept. 1, 2010.

Mission operations for FASTSAT and all six experiments will be managed from the newly configured small satellite control room at the Huntsville Operations and Science Control Center at the Marshall Space Flight Center.

"An outstanding team of engineers and scientists worked diligently to get us to this milestone," said FASTSAT Project Manager Mark Boudreaux at NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville. "We are ready to perform the remaining activities, ship the spacecraft to Alaska and integrate FASTSAT on the launch vehicle."

FASTSAT will be flying on the STP-S26 mission -- a joint activity between NASA and the U.S. Department of Defense Space Test Program, or DoD STP. FASTSAT and all of its six experiments flying on the STP–S26 multi-spacecraft/payload mission have been approved by the Department of Defense Space and Experiments Review Board.

"The outstanding work and accomplishments from the FASTSAT Team illustrate joint activities at their finest," said U.S. Air Force Col Stephen D. Hargis, DoD STP director at Kirtland Air Force Base, N.M. "This is a clear example of what is possible when NASA and the Air Force put their minds together for a common goal…mission success and maximizing access to space."

One of the six experiments on the FASTSAT bus, NanoSail-D, is designed to demonstrate deployment of a compact solar sail boom system that could lead to further development of this alternate propulsion technology and FASTSAT's ability to eject a nanosatellite from a microsatellite -- while avoiding re-contact with the FASTSAT satellite bus. NanoSail-D, managed by the Marshall Center, will be the first NASA solar sail deployed in low-Earth orbit. It was designed and built by NASA engineers at Marshall in collaboration with the Nanosatellite Missions Office at NASA's Ames Research Center in Moffett Field, Calif. This experiment is a combined effort between the U.S. Army Space and Missile Defense Command and the Von Braun Center for Science & Innovation, both located in Huntsville, and NASA.

Hubble Images Suggest Rogue Asteroid Smacked Jupiter

Without warning, a mystery object struck Jupiter on July 19, 2009, leaving a dark bruise the size of the Pacific Ocean. The spot first caught the eye of an amateur astronomer in Australia, and soon, observatories around the world, including NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope, were zeroing in on the unexpected blemish.

Astronomers had witnessed this kind of cosmic event before. Similar scars had been left behind during the course of a week in July 1994, when more than 20 pieces of Comet P/Shoemaker-Levy 9 (SL9) plunged into Jupiter’s atmosphere. The 2009 impact occurred during the same week, 15 years later.

Astronomers who compared Hubble images of both collisions say the culprit may have been an asteroid about 1,600 feet (500 meters) wide. The images, therefore, may show for the first time the immediate aftermath of an asteroid, rather than a comet, striking another planet.

The Jupiter bombardments reveal that the solar system is a rambunctious place, where unpredictable events may occur more frequently than first thought. Jupiter impacts were expected to occur every few hundred to few thousand years. Although there are surveys to catalogue asteroids, many small bodies may still go unnoticed and show up anytime to wreak havoc.

“This solitary event caught us by surprise, and we can only see the aftermath of the impact, but fortunately we do have the 1994 Hubble observations that captured the full range of impact phenomena, including the nature of the objects from pre-impact observations” says astronomer Heidi Hammel of the Space Science Institute in Boulder, Colo., leader of the Jupiter impact study.

In 2009 Hammel’s team snapped images of the debris field with Hubble’s recently installed Wide Field Camera 3 and newly repaired Advanced Camera for Surveys.

The analysis revealed key differences between the two collisions (in 1994 and 2009), providing clues to the 2009 event. Astronomers saw a distinct halo around the 1994 impact sites in Hubble ultraviolet (UV) images, evidence of fine dust arising from a comet-fragment strike. The UV images also showed a strong contrast between impact-generated debris and Jupiter’s clouds.

Spacecraft Burns for Home, Then Comet

spacecraft has successfully performed a trajectory correction maneuver to refine its orbit prior to an upcoming Earth flyby June 27. The maneuver, along with the Earth flyby, will place the spacecraft on a trajectory to fly past comet Hartley 2 on Nov. 4.

The maneuver began at 2 p.m. EST (11 a.m. PST) today, when the spacecraft fired its engines for 11.3 seconds. While the burn changed the spacecraft's velocity by only 0.1 meters per second (less than a quarter mile per hour), that was all the mission's navigators requested to set the stage for an Earth gravity assist on June 27.

"While it was a small burn, it was a big step in getting us to Hartley 2," said Tim Larson, project manager of NASA's Epoxi mission. "Humanity's fifth close-up view of a comet is less than five months away."

Epoxi is an extended mission of the Deep Impact spacecraft. Its name is derived from its two tasked science investigations -- the Deep Impact Extended Investigation (DIXI) and the Extrasolar Planet Observation and Characterization (EPOCh).

The University of Maryland is the Principal Investigator institution. JPL manages Epoxi for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, Washington. The spacecraft was built for NASA by Ball Aerospace & Technologies Corp., Boulder, Colo.

Small Near-Earth Object Probably a Rocket Part

Scientists at NASA's Near-Earth Object Program Office at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif., have determined that a small object that safely passed Earth on May 21 is more than likely an upper-stage of a rocket that carried a spacecraft on an interplanetary trajectory.

"The orbit of this object is very similar to that of the Earth, and one would not expect an object to remain in this type of orbit for very long," said Paul Chodas, a scientist at NASA's Near-Earth Object Program Office at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif.

Observations by astronomer S.J. Bus, using the NASA-sponsored Infrared Telescope Facility in Mauna Kea, Hawaii, indicate that 2010 KQ's spectral characteristics do not match any of the known asteroid types, and the object's absolute magnitude (28.9) suggests it is only a few meters in size.

2010 KQ was discovered by astronomer Richard Kowalski at the NASA-sponsored Catalina Sky Survey in the mountains just north of Tucson, Ariz., on May 16. Five days later, it made its closest approach to Earth at a distance just beyond the moon's orbit. The object is departing Earth's neighborhood but will be returning in 2036.

"At present, there is a 6 percent probability that 2010 KQ will enter our atmosphere over a 30-year period starting in 2036," said Chodas. "More than likely, additional observations of the object will refine its orbit and impact possibilities. Even in the unlikely event that this object is headed for impact with Earth, whether it is an asteroid or rocket body, it is so small that it would disintegrate in the atmosphere and not cause harm on the ground."

NASA detects, tracks and characterizes asteroids and comets passing close to Earth using both ground- and space-based telescopes. The Near-Earth Object Observations Program, commonly called "Spaceguard," discovers these objects, characterizes a subset of them, and plots their orbits to determine if any could be potentially hazardous to our planet.

Hubble Finds a Star Eating a Planet

The hottest known planet in the Milky Way galaxy may also be its shortest-lived world. The doomed planet is being eaten by its parent star, according to observations made by a new instrument on NASA's Hubble Space Telescope, the Cosmic Origins Spectrograph (COS). The planet may only have another 10 million years left before it is completely devoured.

The planet, called WASP-12b, is so close to its sunlike star that it is superheated to nearly 2,800 degrees Fahrenheit and stretched into a football shape by enormous tidal forces. The atmosphere has ballooned to nearly three times Jupiter's radius and is spilling material onto the star. The planet is 40 percent more massive than Jupiter.

This effect of matter exchange between two stellar objects is commonly seen in close binary star systems, but this is the first time it has been seen so clearly for a planet.

"We see a huge cloud of material around the planet, which is escaping and will be captured by the star. We have identified chemical elements never before seen on planets outside our own solar system," says team leader Carole Haswell of The Open University in Great Britain.

Crews Opening Rassvet Hatches, Preparing for Spacewalk

The hatches between the International Space Station and its new Russian Rassvet module were opened for the first time at 5:52 a.m. CDT Thursday.

Also known as Mini-Research Module 1, Rassvet is almost 20 feet long, 7.7 feet wide and weighs 11,188 pounds. Carrying almost 6,500 pounds of internal and external cargo to the station, Rassvet has eight science work stations and will be used both as a docking and stowage compartment.

Mission Specialists Mike Good and Reisman prepared for their Friday spacewalk, configuring tools and preparing suits and the airlock. The major task of the spacewalk is to replace the final two of the six batteries being changed out on the Port 6 truss. Four were replaced Wednesday. Spacewalkers also will install an ammonia jumper and take a power and data grapple fixture from Atlantis’ cargo bay into the station. It will be installed later on the Zarya module, to provide a base for the station arm to work in that area.

The crew got about four hours of afternoon free time, until the spacewalk procedure review near the end of their workday. The spacewalkers will spend the night in the Quest airlock with its pressure reduced to 10.2 to psi.

Final Attempts to Hear from Mars Phoenix Scheduled

PASADENA, Calif. -- From May 17 to 21, NASA's Mars Odyssey orbiter will conduct a fourth and final campaign to check on whether the Phoenix Mars Lander has come back to life.

During that period, Odyssey will listen for a signal from Phoenix during 61 flights over the lander's site on far-northern Mars. The orbiter detected no transmission from the lander in earlier campaigns totaling 150 overflights in January, February and April.

In 2008, Phoenix completed its three-month mission studying Martian ice, soil and atmosphere. The lander worked for five months before reduced sunlight caused energy to become insufficient to keep the lander functioning. The solar-powered robot was not designed to survive through the dark and cold conditions of a Martian arctic winter. However, in case it did, NASA has used Odyssey to listen for the signals that Phoenix would transmit if abundant spring sunshine revived the lander.

Northern Mars will experience its maximum-sunshine day, the summer solstice, on May 12 (Eastern Time; May 13, Universal Time), so the sun will be higher in the sky above Phoenix during the fourth listening campaign than during any of the prior ones. Still, expectations of hearing from the lander remain low.

"To be thorough, we decided to conduct this final session around the time of the summer solstice, during the best thermal and power conditions for Phoenix," said Chad Edwards, chief telecommunications engineer for the Mars Exploration Program at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif.

The Phoenix mission is led by Principal Investigator Peter H. Smith of the University of Arizona, Tucson, with project management at JPL and development partnership with Lockheed Martin Space Systems. JPL, a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, also manages the Odyssey project in an operational partnership with Lockheed Martin.

NASA to Fund Innovative Museum Exhibits and Planetarium Shows

PASADENA, Calif. -- Innovative planetarium shows and traveling museum exhibits are among nine projects NASA has selected to receive agency funding this year. NASA's Competitive Program for Science Museums and Planetariums will provide $7 million in grants to enhance educational outreach related to space exploration, aeronautics, space science, Earth science and microgravity.

This year's grants to nine informal education providers range from approximately $177,000 to $1.25 million and have a maximum five-year performance period. The projects are located in Arizona, Connecticut, Indiana, Louisiana, Maryland, Minnesota, Ohio, Utah and Washington. The selected projects will work with NASA's Shared Services Center in Mississippi to complete the business review necessary before a NASA award is issued.

"Science centers and planetariums contribute significantly to engaging people of all ages in science, technology, engineering and math," said James Stofan, acting associate administrator for NASA's Office of Education. "NASA wants to give the informal education community access to a variety of agency staff and resources while offering professional development opportunities for informal science educators and encouraging the formation of collaborative partnerships."

The selected organizations will partner with NASA's Museum Alliance, an Internet-based, national network of more than 400 science and nature centers, planetariums, museums, aquariums, zoos and related organizations. The projects will engage the public and educators by providing NASA-inspired space, science, technology, engineering and mathematics learning opportunities.

Flight Readiness Review Under Way at Kennedy

Officials are gathered today at NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida for the agency-level Flight Readiness Review, or FRR, where they'll verify space shuttle Atlantis is ready to fly its STS-132 mission. Afterward, the official launch date will be set. Liftoff currently is targeted for May 14 at 2:20 p.m. EDT. A news conference will follow the conclusion of the review.

Meanwhile, at Kennedy's Launch Pad 39A, technicians continue orbiter aft closeouts and preparations for the upcoming launch countdown, which will begin about three days prior to liftoff.

Inside the fixed-base simulator at NASA's Johnson Space Center in Houston, Atlantis' astronauts will practice deorbit preparations while fully suited.

Cassini and Amateurs Chase Storm on Saturn

With the help of amateur astronomers, the composite infrared spectrometer instrument aboard NASA's Cassini spacecraft has taken its first look at a massive blizzard in Saturn's atmosphere. The instrument collected the most detailed data to date of temperatures and gas distribution in that planet's storms.

The data showed a large, turbulent storm, dredging up loads of material from the deep atmosphere and covering an area at least five times larger than the biggest blizzard in this year's Washington, D.C.-area storm front nicknamed "Snowmageddon."

"We were so excited to get a heads-up from the amateurs," said Gordon Bjoraker, a composite infrared spectrometer team member based at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md. Normally, he said, "Data from the storm cell would have been averaged out."

Cassini's radio and plasma wave instrument and imaging cameras have been tracking thunder and lightning storms on Saturn for years in a band around Saturn's mid-latitudes nicknamed "storm alley." But storms can come and go on a time scale of weeks, while Cassini's imaging and spectrometer observations have to be locked in place months in advance.

GOES-15 Opens Its Infrared "Eyes" for First Image

The first GOES-15 full-disk infrared image was from the Imager. The GOES Imager is a multi-channel instrument designed to sense radiant and solar-reflected energy from the Earth.The first full-disk infrared image of the Earth was taken on April 26 at 17:30 UTC (1:30 p.m. EDT).

New Eye on the Sun Delivers Stunning First

NASA's recently launched Solar Dynamics Observatory, or SDO, is returning early images that confirm an unprecedented new capability for scientists to better understand our sun’s dynamic processes. These solar activities affect everything on Earth.

Some of the images from the spacecraft show never-before-seen detail of material streaming outward and away from sunspots. Others show extreme close-ups of activity on the sun’s surface. The spacecraft also has made the first high-resolution measurements of solar flares in a broad range of extreme ultraviolet wavelengths.

"These initial images show a dynamic sun that I had never seen in more than 40 years of solar research,” said Richard Fisher, director of the Heliophysics Division at NASA Headquarters in Washington. "SDO will change our understanding of the sun and its processes, which affect our lives and society. This mission will have a huge impact on science, similar to the impact of the Hubble Space Telescope on modern astrophysics.”

Leonardo Latched in Discovery Cargo Bay

The Leonardo Multi-Purpose Logistics Module was fully latched into space shuttle Discovery's payload bay at 3:15 a.m. EDT Friday. The removal of Leonardo from the International Space Station's Harmony node was delayed several hours the day before, setting the shuttle and station crews sleep shift back an hour later than planned.

Leonardo brought about six tons of material to the station and will return to Earth in Discovery’s cargo bay with about 2.5 tons from the station. Discovery is scheduled to undock from the station a little before 9 a.m. on Saturday.

This is the final roundtrip to the station for the 21-foot-long, 15-foot-diameter Leonardo. Once back on Earth, the module will be reconfigured with increased shielding on the outside for the STS-133 mission in September when it will be left on the station as a permanent module.

Crews Prepare for Final STS-131 Spacewalk, Continue to Unload Leonardo

The Expedition 23 and STS-131 crews got back to work moving equipment and supplies to and from the International Space Station and preparing for Tuesday’s spacewalk, the third and last planned for the shuttle mission.

STS-131 Mission Specialists Rick Mastracchio and Clayton Anderson configured their tools in the Quest airlock. After a review of spacewalk procedures with other crew members, they are again spending the night in the airlock, its pressure reduced to 10.2 psi. That campout is aimed at reducing the nitrogen in their blood to avoid decompression sickness.

The spacewalk, replanned after difficulties bolting down an ammonia coolant tank on Sunday caused some rescheduling, is to begin at 3:11 a.m. EDT Tuesday and last 6½ hours. Activities include finishing the complicated change out of the large ammonia tank assembly, retrieving micrometeoroid shields from outside the airlock and retrieving a light-weight adapter plate assembly.

Mastracchio and Anderson completed the mission’s second spacewalk at 8:56 a.m. Sunday.

The shuttle and station crews continue to unload the Leonardo Multi-Purpose Logistics Module and transfer 17,000 pounds of science racks and other supplies into the station.

Global Hawk Completes First Science Flight Over the Pacific 04.08.10

NASA pilots and flight engineers, together with colleagues from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), have successfully completed the first science flight of the Global Hawk unpiloted aircraft system over the Pacific Ocean. The flight was the first of five scheduled for this month's Global Hawk Pacific (GloPac) mission to study atmospheric science over the Pacific and Arctic oceans.

The Global Hawk is a robotic plane that can fly autonomously to altitudes above 60,000 feet (18.3 kilometers) -- roughly twice as high as a commercial airliner -- and as far as 11,000 nautical miles (20,000 kilometers) -- half the circumference of Earth. Operators pre-program a flight path, and then the plane flies itself for as long as 30 hours, staying in contact through satellite and line-of-site communications to the ground control station at NASA's Dryden Flight Research Center in California's Mojave Desert.

"The Global Hawk is a revolutionary aircraft for science because of its enormous range and endurance," said Paul Newman, co-mission scientist for GloPac and an atmospheric scientist from NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Md. "No other science platform provides this much range and time to sample rapidly evolving atmospheric phenomena. This mission is our first opportunity to demonstrate the unique capabilities of this plane, while gathering atmospheric data in a region that is poorly sampled."

Soyuz TMA-18 is Rolled Out to the Launch Pad

The Soyuz TMA-18 spacecraft is rolled out by train to the launch pad at the Baikonur Cosmodrome, Kazakhstan, March 31, 2010. The launch of the Soyuz spacecraft with Russian cosmonauts Alexander Skvortsov, Soyuz commander and Expedition 23 flight engineer, and Mikhail Kornienko, flight engineer; along with NASA astronaut Tracy Caldwell Dyson, flight engineer, is scheduled for 10:04 a.m., April 2, 2010 (Kazakhstan time)