Managers reevaluating Ares I-Y flight test

Constellation program managers agreed to reevaluate the proposed Ares I-Y flight test during an Oct. 30 Control Board and plan to take the decision up the ladder to management at NASA Headquarters soon. The decision could result in the removal of the Ares I-Y flight from the manifest in order to better align test flights with evolving program objectives.

As part of the program's ongoing review of its ground and flight test strategy, managers evaluated the flight test plan and decided that the Ares I-Y flight fell too late in the vehicle development phase to provide useful information and lacks key elements to make it a true validation of the flight vehicle's systems.

Originally, the I-Y test was defined as an incremental “placeholder” and planned for 2012. It was to be a suborbital flight to test a five-segment booster, a flight production upper stage -- without a J-2X engine -- a functional command module and launch abort system and a simulated encapsulated service module.

By fall 2008, program managers were already looking at changing direction for the Ares I-Y test to improve the overall program's chances of flying a full test vehicle by 2014. Now, with the Constellation Program nearing its preliminary design review and with maturing vehicles and systems, managers agree the I-Y test objectives can be achieved through other tests already in the manifest.

For example, the ascent abort test for Orion's Launch Abort System can be incorporated into abort tests planned at White Sands Missile Range in 2012 and 2013 and on the first Orion flight in 2014. The ascent test will document the performance of the LAS in the event control of the launch vehicle is lost after first stage separation.

Removing the Ares I-Y flight test eliminates a unique vehicle configuration that must be designed and managed separately from the objective designs of Ares and Orion. It allows the team to focus on achieving a first launch of a thoroughly verified system and represents a tightening of the program as a function of its maturation that will ultimately save money needed for other tests.

“It simply does not fit where we are headed,” said Jeff Hanley, Constellation Program manager and chairman of the Control Board. “The test vehicle was intended to meet evolving needs but the current configuration is too different from what the program requires to certify the Ares/Orion vehicle systems.”

The current Constellation manifest shows the Ares I-Y flight test scheduled in March 2014, just a year out from the proposed first crewed flight Orion 2, planned in 2015.

Managers are also considering other options including a flight test that would fly in 2012 or 2013 that would have revised flight test objectives to better support vehicle development.

Atlantis' STS-129 Astronauts at Kennedy Space Center

Latest Space Shuttle News :

The six astronauts for space shuttle Atlantis’ STS-129 mission are at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida tonight. They arrived at Kennedy’s Shuttle Landing Facility in staggered waves between about 5 p.m. and 6:45 p.m. EST. The crew will finish the full launch dress rehearsal known as the Terminal Countdown Demonstration Test, or TCDT.

Tonight, STS-129 Commander Charlie Hobaugh and Pilot Barry Wilmore will practice shuttle landings in modified Gulfstream II jets called Shuttle Training Aircraft.

Tuesday, the launch team with all six crew members inside Atlantis on Launch Pad 39A will go through a countdown simulation. Additional training associated with TCDT was done last month, but the simulated countdown was postponed until this week because of a scheduling conflict with the launch of NASA’s Ares I-X test rocket.

After the launch simulation and emergency pad escape training, the astronauts will inspect the cargo that they’ll take to the International Space Station before returning to Johnson Space Center in Houston Tuesday afternoon.

Atlantis is scheduled to launch on its 11-day supply mission to the space station on Nov. 16 at 2:28 p.m.

Space Shuttle News : STS-129: Stocking the Station

News from nasa space shuttle : The spare parts delivered to the International Space Station by Atlantis during the STS-129 mission will mean spare years on the station’s life once the space shuttle fleet is retired.

“You’ll see this theme in some of the flights that are going to come after ours as well,” said Brian Smith, the lead space station flight director for the mission. “This flight is all about spares – basically, we’re getting them up there while we still can.”

With only one U.S. module left to deliver, the Space Shuttle Program is turning its attention to helping the space station build up a store of replacement parts. There are only half a dozen flights left in the shuttle’s manifest before they stop flying, and as the only vehicle large enough to carry many of the big pieces of equipment into space, several of the flights are devoted to the task. This is the first, however, and as the first this mission is dedicated to taking up the spares of the highest priority.

“We’re taking the big ones,” Smith said. “And not only are they the big ones – they’re the ones deemed most critical. That’s why they’re going up first.”

The spares are going up on two platforms – called external logistics carriers, or ELCs – to be attached on either side of the station’s truss, in hopes that wherever a failure happens, the necessary spare won’t be too far away. The ELCs carried up on STS-129 will be chocked full with two pump modules, two control moment gyroscopes, two nitrogen tank assemblies, an ammonia tank assembly, a high-pressure gas tank, a latching end effector for the station’s robotic arm and a trailing umbilical system reel assembly for the railroad cart that allows the arm to move along the station’s truss system. There’s also a power control unit, a plasma container unit, a cargo transportation container and a battery charge/discharge unit. In all, that’s 27,250 pounds worth of spares to keep the station going long after the shuttles retire.

Some of those spares would be used to replace failed components of the systems that provide the station power or keep it from overheating or tumbling through space. Others, in the case of the latching end effector and reel assembly, are essential parts of the robotics system that allow the astronauts to replace the other parts when they wear out.

Astronauts to Fly Amelia Earhart Watch, Scarf

Along with the obvious thrill of launching into space, astronaut Shannon Walker's flight to the space station next year will hold a sentimental and historical significance. Flying alongside Walker will be the watch of Amelia Earhart, the legendary aviator who was the first woman to fly as a passenger across the Atlantic Ocean . Earhart later became the first woman to pilot a plane across that same ocean in a solo flight.

Earhart was one of the first female pilots best known for her two trans Atlantic flights. She was also a charter member and the first president of The Ninety-Nines, an international organization of licensed women pilots from 35 countries that has more than 5,500 members worldwide. While there are other female pilot organizations in various states and countries, nearly all women of achievement in aviation are past or current members of The Ninety-Nines. Walker is among those women.

Earhart wore the watch during her two trans Atlantic flights, “one as a passenger and one as a solo flight,” said Joan Kerwin, director of The Ninety-Nines and member for 39 years. When asked how she feels about the watch flying into space, Kerwin described it as “kind of scary in a way and Amelia is such an icon with women in aviation and now with women in space. We are thrilled that Shannon is a Ninety-Nine and will be taking Amelia into space with her.”

Kerwin presented the watch to Walker at Ellington Field in Houston on Oct. 22. H. Gordon Selfridge, Jr. gave Earhart a watch in one of his shops in America . In return, she gave him the watch she wore on her two trans Atlantic flights.

“Shortly after Amelia disappeared the watch was given (by H. Gordon Selfridge, Jr.) to Fay Gillis Wells, a charter member of The Ninety-Nines, and she kept it in her Washington, D.C., apartment until she founded the Forest of Friendship to honor other individuals in aviation. She needed funds for the Forest of Friendship in Amelia's hometown of Atchison , Kan. , so the watch was auctioned off,” said Kerwin, who bought the watch at the auction.

“She is a fascinating lady,” Walker said in regard to Earhart. A licensed pilot since 1995, Walker learned to fly in a Cessna 150. Her grandmother served as an air traffic controller at William P. Hobby airport in Houston and had a private pilot's license. Walker 's mother was also a pilot.

Nasa Space News : Ares I-X at the Launch Pad

News From Nasa Space Station : NASA's Ares I-X rocket is seen on Launch Pad 39B at the Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral , Fla. , Monday, Oct. 26, 2009 . The flight test of Ares I-X, scheduled for today, Oct. 27, 2009 , will provide NASA with an early opportunity to test and prove flight characteristics, hardware, facilities and ground operations associated with the Ares

Astronomers Find Organic Molecules Around Gas Planet

Peering far beyond our solar system, NASA researchers have detected the basic chemistry for life in a second hot gas planet, advancing astronomers toward the goal of being able to characterize planets where life could exist. The planet is not habitable but it has the same chemistry that, if found around a rocky planet in the future, could indicate the presence of life.

"It's the second planet outside our solar system in which water, methane and carbon dioxide have been found, which are potentially important for biological processes in habitable planets," said researcher Mark Swain of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif. "Detecting organic compounds in two exoplanets now raises the possibility that it will become commonplace to find planets with molecules that may be tied to life."

Swain and his co-investigators used data from two of NASA's orbiting Great Observatories, the Hubble Space Telescope and Spitzer Space Telescope, to study HD 209458b, a hot, gaseous giant planet bigger than Jupiter that orbits a sun-like star about 150 light years away in the constellation Pegasus. The new finding follows their breakthrough discovery in December 2008 of carbon dioxide around another hot, Jupiter-size planet, HD 189733b. Earlier Hubble and Spitzer observations of that planet had also revealed water vapor and methane.

The detections were made through spectroscopy, which splits light into its components to reveal the distinctive spectral signatures of different chemicals. Data from Hubble's near-infrared camera and multi-object spectrometer revealed the presence of the molecules, and data from Spitzer's photometer and infrared spectrometer measured their amounts.

"This demonstrates that we can detect the molecules that matter for life processes," said Swain. Astronomers can now begin comparing the two planetary atmospheres for differences and similarities. For example, the relative amounts of water and carbon dioxide in the two planets is similar, but HD 209458b shows a greater abundance of methane than HD 189733b. "The high methane abundance is telling us something," said Swain. "It could mean there was something special about the formation of this planet."

Other large, hot Jupiter-type planets can be characterized and compared using existing instruments, Swain said. This work will lay the groundwork for the type of analysis astronomers eventually will need to perform in shortlisting any promising rocky Earth-like planets where the signatures of organic chemicals might indicate the presence of life.

Rocky worlds are expected to be found by NASA's Kepler mission, who launched earlier this year, but astronomers believe we are a decade or so away from being able to detect any chemical signs of life on such a body.

Nasa Space News : Shuttle Preps Continue

At NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida , technicians at Launch Pad 39A are progressing with hypergolic loading of various systems in space shuttle Atlantis. They finished filling storage tanks in the orbital maneuvering system, which are the steering jets on the shuttle and the reaction control system. Today, loading of the auxiliary power units will take place.

During the weekend, pad techs will perform hypergolic load cleaning before starting final checks of Atlantis' aft, or back, section planned for next week.

Today, the six STS-129 crew members will review spacewalking procedures and timelines at NASA's Johnson Space Center in Houston.

The agency's Flight Readiness Review, or FRR, for the STS-129 mission is set for Oct. 29 at Kennedy. Afterward, NASA will announce an official launch date and broadcast a post-meeting briefing on NASA TV.

Space Station News : Astronauts to Fly Amelia Earhart Watch, Scarf

Along with the obvious thrill of launching into space, astronaut Shannon Walker's flight to the space station next year will hold a sentimental and historical significance. Flying alongside Walker will be the watch of Amelia Earhart, the legendary aviator who was the first woman to fly as a passenger across the Atlantic Ocean . Earhart later became the first woman to pilot a plane across that same ocean in a solo flight.

Earhart was one of the first female pilots best known for her two trans Atlantic flights. She was also a charter member and the first president of The Ninety-Nines, an international organization of licensed women pilots from 35 countries that has more than 5,500 members worldwide. While there are other female pilot organizations in various states and countries, nearly all women of achievement in aviation are past or current members of The Ninety-Nines. Walker is among those women.

Earhart wore the watch during her two trans Atlantic flights, “one as a passenger and one as a solo flight,” said Joan Kerwin, director of The Ninety-Nines and member for 39 years.

When asked how she feels about the watch flying into space, Kerwin described it as “kind of scary in a way and Amelia is such an icon with women in aviation and now with women in space. We are thrilled that Shannon is a Ninety-Nine and will be taking Amelia into space with her.”

Kerwin presented the watch to Walker at Ellington Field in Houston on Oct. 22. H. Gordon Selfridge, Jr. gave Earhart a watch in one of his shops in America . In return, she gave him the watch she wore on her two trans Atlantic flights.

“Shortly after Amelia disappeared the watch was given (by H. Gordon Selfridge, Jr.) to Fay Gillis Wells, a charter member of The Ninety-Nines, and she kept it in her Washington, D.C., apartment until she founded the Forest of Friendship to honor other individuals in aviation. She needed funds for the Forest of Friendship in Amelia's hometown of Atchison , Kan. , so the watch was auctioned off,” said Kerwin, who bought the watch at the auction.

NASA App now Available from App Store

A NASA App for the iPhone and iPod touch is available free of charge at the App Store from Apple. The NASA application will deliver a wealth of information, videos, images and news updates about NASA missions to people's fingertips.

"Making NASA more accessible to the public is a high priority for the agency," said Gale Allen, director of Strategic Integration and Management for NASA's Exploration Systems Mission Directorate in Washington . "Tools like this allow us to provide users easy access to NASA information and progress at a fast pace."

The NASA App collects, customizes and delivers an extensive selection of dynamically updated information, images and videos from various online NASA sources. Users can access NASA countdown clocks, the NASA Image of the Day, Astronomy Image of the Day, online videos, NASA's many Twitter feeds and other information in a convenient mobile package. It delivers NASA content in a clear and intuitive way by making full use of the iPhone and iPod touch features, including the Multi-Touch user interface. The New Media Team at NASA's Ames Research Center at Moffett Field , Calif. , developed the application.

The NASA App also allows users to track the current positions of the International Space Station and other spacecraft currently orbiting Earth in three views: a map with borders and labels, visible satellite imagery, or satellite overlaid with country borders and labels.

"We're excited to deliver a wide range of up-to-the-minute NASA content to iPhone and iPod touch users," said Gary Martin, director of the New Ventures and Communications Directorate at Ames . "The NASA App provides an easy and interesting way for the public to experience space exploration."

Space News : Spirit's Robotic Stretch

News From Nasa Space : NASA's Mars Exploration Rover Spirit recorded this forward view of its arm and surroundings during the rover's 2,052nd Martian day, or sol, on Oct. 11, 2009 .

Bright soil in the left half of the image is loose, fluffy material churned by the rover's left-front wheel as Spirit, driving backwards, approached its current position in April 2009 and the wheel broke through a darker, crusty surface.

Spirit used its front hazard-avoidance camera to take this image. The turret of tools at the end of the rover's robotic arm is positioned with the Moessbauer spectrometer up and the rock abrasion tool extending toward the right. Spirit's right-front wheel, visible in this image, has not worked since 2006. It is the least-embedded of the rover's six wheels at the current location, called " Troy ."

Spirit and its twin, Opportunity , have been working on Mars for more than 58 months in what were originally planned as 3-month missions on Mars.

Liberty Star Doing Well Despite Challenging Weather

Liberty Star is on course and proceeding with the mission to tow Pegasus and ET-134 to the Kennedy Space Center. Pegasus reports all activities onboard have gone well today despite the challenging weather, which strengthened mid-day.

Today's rougher weather continues with easterly winds gusting to 30 knots, or about 34 miles per hour and seas swelling up to 10-12 feet, higher than forecast. When towing the barge, the generally more challenging weather slows forward progress by a few knots, perhaps one-and-a-half to two, but it starts to add up over time.

Tomorrow's weather forecast is for more of the same.

Today the Liberty Star noted passage of the halfway point of the voyage just north of the Dry Tortugas; leaving 448 miles to cover before arriving back to Kennedy Space Center.

Tonight we expect to pass the Dry Tortugas at approximately 9:30 p.m. Eastern Time, and make our easterly turn to port toward the Florida Straits.

Ship and crew are performing well; mission continues.

2012 Mission to Mars

Engineers Excited by EuTEF's Return on Discovery

When Fabio Tominetti and Marco Grilli last saw the EuTEF research platform in early 2008, it was carefully packed inside the payload bay of space shuttle Atlantis. It had been built and handled with the utmost care, and its white and thermal insulation and golden reflective sheets and experiments were pristine.

EuTEF didn’t look much different as it hung upside down in a work stand a few days after coming back to Earth aboard Discovery following about a year and a half attached to the orbiting International Space Station.

"It’s almost brand new," said Tominetti, the EuTEF program manager for the Milan-based Carlo Gavazzi Space. "It could probably fly again tomorrow. I expected to see something to tell you that it had been exposed to 18 months in space."

EuTEF is short for European Technology Exposure Facility, a remote-controlled base complete with power and communications networks built to host nine experiments from Europe’s scientific community, including prestigious universities and foundations. The research largely focused on the effects of space on materials, including window materials that could be used on future spacecraft.

Tominetti and Grilli, a systems engineer with Carlo Gavazzi, recently traveled to NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida to pack the research platform and its experiments for their return to Europe.

The EuTEF went into space with the European Space Agency’s Columbus laboratory module as part of the STS-122 mission in February 2008. After Columbus was connected to the space station, spacewalking astronauts attached EuTEF to one of its platforms on the outside.

From there, the experiments would be exposed to the harshness of a constant vacuum, a round-the-clock dose of radiation, and heat and cold extremes that vary 200 degrees during each 90-minute orbit of the planet.

Atlantis and Launch Pad Ready

At NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida, technicians are going through final preps for space shuttle Atlantis' move, or rollout, from the Vehicle Assembly Building to Launch Pad 39A on Wednesday. First motion now is targeted for 6 a.m. EDT . No major issues are being worked, but teams needed additional time to prepare for the move.

The 3.4-mile trek to the pad with Atlantis perched on top of the crawler-transporter is expected to take about six hours.

The launch pad team says it's ready for Atlantis' arrival tomorrow with four liquid hydrogen tanker trucks scheduled to help load the pad's Liquid Hydrogen-2 storage tank today.

After the three-day holiday weekend, the STS-129 astronauts will resume their training at NASA's Johnson Space Center in Houston . Today, Commander Charles O. Hobaugh and Pilot Barry E. Wilmore take to the skies in their T-38 training jets, while ‪Mission Specialists Mike Foreman and Robert L. Satcher Jr. practice techniques for the mission's first of three spacewalks in Johnson's neutral buoyancy lab swimming pool.

Atlantis is targeted to launch to the International Space Station at 4:04 p.m. EST Nov. 12 on an 11-day mission.

Final Rollout Preps in Store for Atlantis

Technicians are conducting tests and working on final preparations for space shuttle Atlantis' move, or rollout, to Launch Pad 39A at NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida . First motion out of the Vehicle Assembly Building is scheduled for 12:01 a.m. EDT Wednesday.

At NASA's Johnson Space Center in Houston , the six STS-129 mission astronauts have the Columbus Day holiday off and will resume training on Tuesday morning.

The crew is scheduled to fly to Kennedy on Oct. 19 to participate in the three-day Terminal Countdown Demonstration Test, or TCDT. Typically held prior to launch, TCDT gives the crew an opportunity to check the fit of their spacesuits, practice emergency evacuation procedures at the launch pad, review firefighting methods, and participate in briefings on security and range safety.

Atlantis is targeted to launch to the International Space Station at 4:04 p.m. EST Nov. 12 on an 11-day mission.

Preparations for STS-129 Mission in Full Swing

The STS-129 mission will be commanded by Charles O. Hobaugh and piloted by Barry E. Wilmore. Mission Specialists are Robert L. Satcher Jr., Mike Foreman, Randy Bresnik and Leland Melvin. Wilmore, Satcher and Bresnik will be making their first trips to space.

Atlantis and its crew will deliver two control moment gyroscopes, equipment and EXPRESS Logistics Carrier 1 and 2 to the International Space Station. The mission will feature three spacewalks.

Atlantis also will return station crew member Nicole Stott to Earth and is slated to be the final space shuttle crew rotation flight. Launch of Atlantis on the STS-129 mission is targeted for 4:04 p.m. EST Nov. 12.

Herschel's Multi-Hued View of the Sky

A new image from the Herschel Observatory shows off the observatory's talents for seeing multiple wavelengths of light. The infrared observatory, a European Space Agency mission with important participation from NASA, can use two science instruments simultaneously to see five different "colors" of infrared, which is light that we can't see with our eyes.

The new composite picture features a dark and cool region of our Milky Way galaxy, where material is just beginning to be stirred together into new batches of stars. Much of this region would appear dark in visible-light views, but Herschel can see the very dim infrared glow of cold dust that is only slightly warmer than the coldest temperature theoretically attainable. Herschel's view reveals that this star-forming region is even richer in cold and turbulent material than previously believed.

"Herschel's infrared vision lets us sense the feeble heat from some of the coldest objects in the cosmos," said Paul Goldsmith, the NASA project scientist for the mission at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif.

Herschel is still in what is called the performance verification phase, in which its instruments are being fine-tuned and checked out. Some routine science observations have begun.

Buzz, Astronauts Shine as Stars of Disney Parade

Buzz Lightyear didn't quite make it to infinity, but he went well beyond the realm of other action figures.

The icon of Disney's "Toy Story" films spent 15 months on the International Space Station and got a ticker-tape parade alongside real-life moonwalker Buzz Aldrin and Expedition 18 Commander and NASA astronaut Mike Finke to welcome him home to Disney World in Orlando, Fla., on Oct. 2.

"Buzz was the perfect crewmate," Finke said. "He lifted our spirits, he didn't talk much and he didn't eat much, so he left us his extra portions."

While Buzz Lightyear is a space ranger, Finke said the character's best work has been in serving as a bridge between the fun, fanciful side of spaceflight and the technical and scientific skills NASA uses to make spaceflight happen in real life.

"Buzz is internationally known, and Buzz is a space ranger, so by sharing some of Buzz's adventures with what we do at NASA, it really highlights a lot of good things for NASA and shows what we really do, what astronauts do," Finke said.

The toy’s popularity gives NASA a head start in getting children's attention in a world in which focus is short-lived, said Joyce Winterton, NASA's associate administrator for Education.

"It's something that students and children can relate to," Winterton said. "So when they see him going up in space on the shuttle or the station it becomes a touch point for them. Sometimes I think they see an astronaut as something they can achieve, but when they see a toy, they somehow think, 'Hey, I can do that, too.'"

NASA plans to attack on Moon in quest of water

NASA launched a space mission from Cape Canaveral carrying two lunar satellites and a missile that will fire a deep hole in the surface of the Moon. The satellites lifted off together on top of an Atlas V rocket. The aim is to see whether any traces of water will be revealed by the disruption caused to the planet's surface.

A satellite will fly through the 30 to 40 mile high dust plume looking for evidence of water ice left by comets that slammed into the moon billion years ago. The crash vehicle, an impactor and observational instruments will be added to NASA's Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter. The unmanned Lunar Crater Observation and Sensing Satellite mission (LCROSS) will fire a Centaur rocket into the surface at twice the speed of a bullet.

Scientists expect that the impact will result in blasting out a huge cloud of dust, gas and vaporized water ice at least six miles high. If successful, it can provide essential supplies for a moon base.

The Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter will spend a year creating a highly detailed map of the moon's surface. This is the first American spacecraft to make a lunar trip since 1999. In the past few years, at least two American spacecraft reported the presence of water around both the north and south lunar poles.

NASA Refines Asteroid Apophis' Path Toward Earth

Using updated information, NASA scientists have recalculated the path of a large asteroid. The refined path indicates a significantly reduced likelihood of a hazardous encounter with Earth in 2036.

The Apophis asteroid is approximately the size of two-and-a-half football fields. The new data were documented by near-Earth object scientists Steve Chesley and Paul Chodas at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena , Calif. They will present their updated findings at a meeting of the American Astronomical Society's Division for Planetary Sciences in Puerto Rico on Oct. 8.

"Apophis has been one of those celestial bodies that has captured the public's interest since it was discovered in 2004," said Chesley. "Updated computational techniques and newly available data indicate the probability of an Earth encounter on April 13, 2036 , for Apophis has dropped from one-in-45,000 to about four-in-a million."

A majority of the data that enabled the updated orbit of Apophis came from observations Dave Tholen and collaborators at the University of Hawaii 's Institute for Astronomy in Manoa made. Tholen pored over hundreds of previously unreleased images of the night sky made with the University of Hawaii 's 2.2-meter (88-inch) telescope, located near the summit of Mauna Kea .

Tholen made improved measurements of the asteroid's position in the images, enabling him to provide Chesley and Chodas with new data sets more precise than previous measures for Apophis. Measurements from the Steward Observatory's 2.3 meter (90-inch) Bok telescope on Kitt Peak in Arizona and the Arecibo Observatory on the island of Puerto Rico also were used in Chesley's calculations.

The information provided a more accurate glimpse of Apophis' orbit well into the latter part of this century. Among the findings is another close encounter by the asteroid with Earth in 2068 with chance of impact currently at approximately three-in-a-million. As with earlier orbital estimates where Earth impacts in 2029 and 2036 could not initially be ruled out due to the need for additional data, it is expected that the 2068 encounter will diminish in probability as more information about Apophis is acquired.

Space Radar Reveals Topography of Tsunami Site

Two color-coded perspective views of the Independent State of Samoa (left) and American Samoa (right), generated with digital elevation data from the Shuttle Radar Topography Mission, illustrate the varying topography of the islands.

A tsunami generated by a major undersea earthquake on Sept. 29, 2009, inundated the more heavily populated southern coast of Tutuila, the largest of the islands of American Samoa, with an ocean surge more than 3 meters (10 feet) deep, causing scores of casualties.

The tsunami also inundated villages on the southern coast of the Independent State of Samoa with an ocean surge perhaps more than 3 meters (10 feet) deep, and also impacted the more heavily populated northern coasts with a surge measured at nearly 1.5 meters (4 feet) at the capital city of Apia.

Digital topographic data such as those produced by SRTM can be used to aid researchers and planners in predicting which coastal regions are at the most risk from such waves, as well as from the more common storm surges caused by tropical storms and even sea level rise.

NASA's Pathfinder Aircraft Tracks Weather for Ferry Flight

Space shuttle Discovery returned to NASA's Kennedy Space Center on Sept. 21 perched on top of a modified Boeing 747 jumbo jet. But it wasn't an ordinary cross-country piggyback journey. In fact, the two-day ferry flight from California proved to be one of the greatest tests ever for the NASA C-9 "pathfinder" aircraft that scouts safe routes ahead of the shuttle. "This shuttle return is the biggest challenge I have ever faced," said C-9 aircraft pilot Charles Justiz. "Had the weather been any more finicky, we likely would have landed somewhere else." The pathfinder does just what its name implies, finds a path free of rain that could damage heat tiles and colder temperatures that might freeze propellants.

The team made three pit stops along the way: Rick Husband International Airport in Amarillo , Texas , for fuel, another re-fuel at Ft. Worth Naval Air Station in Texas , and an overnight stay at Barksdale Air Force Base in Shreveport , La.

Although the caravan faced several walls of storms on its 2,500 mile journey to Florida , weather was not much of an issue until the C-9 flew into the sunshine state's airspace. "All the holes in the storms we thought were there ... weren't," Justiz said. "Today was quite an experience ... our entire team was busy today."

After taking off from Louisiana the morning of Sept. 21, the C-9 aircraft started running into a string of storms. Workers at Kennedy were unsure where Discovery would land, until minutes beforehand. MacDill Air Force Base in Tampa and Orlando International Airport were options if Kennedy's weather proved to be too dynamic.

"Once we left Barksdale, we didn't know what kind of weather we were going to get," said Don McCormack, ferry flight manager. "(NASA has) the best weather forecasters you can possibly have."

After five attempts, the C-9 aircraft finally found a hole and approached Kennedy's Shuttle Landing Facility from the north. Workers on the ground saw something much different, and directed the 747 with Discovery atop to land from the south on Runway 33. Touchdown occurred at 12:05 p.m. , about 10 minutes after the pathfinder.

Discovery now is being prepared for its next mission: STS-131 targeted to launch to the International Space Station in March 2010.

NASA Ice Campaign Takes Flight in Antarctica

Early in the 20th century, a succession of adventurers and scientists pioneered the exploration of Antarctica . A century later, they're still at it, albeit with a different set of tools. This fall, a team of modern explorers will fly over Earth's southern ice-covered regions to study changes to its sea ice, ice sheets, and glaciers as part of NASA's Operation Ice Bridge .

Starting next month, NASA will fly its DC-8, a 157-foot-long airborne laboratory that can accommodate many instruments. The fall 2009 campaign is one of few excursions to the remote continent made by the DC-8, the largest aircraft in NASA's airborne science fleet.

The plane is scheduled to leave NASA's Dryden Flight Research Center in Edwards, Calif. , on October 12 and fly to Punta Arenas , Chile , where the plane, crew and researchers will be based for through mid-November. For six weeks, the Ice Bridge team will traverse the Southern Ocean for up to 17 flights over West Antarctica , the Antarctic Peninsula , and coastal areas where sea ice is prevalent. Each round-trip flight lasts about 11 hours, two-thirds of that time devoted to getting to and from Antarctica .

Operation Ice Bridge is a six-year campaign of annual flights to each of Earth's polar regions. The first flights in March and April carried researchers over Greenland and the Arctic Ocean . This fall's Antarctic campaign, led by principal investigator Seelye Martin of the University of Washington , will begin the first sustained airborne research effort of its kind over the continent. Data collected by researchers will help scientists bridge the gap between NASA's Ice, Cloud and Land Elevation Satellite (ICESat) -- which is operating the last of its three lasers -- and ICESat-II, scheduled to launch in 2014.

NASA Exploration Exhibit to Visit Twin Falls

America 's plans for opening the space frontier, including new human exploration of Earth's moon and future voyages into the solar system, are featured in an interactive exhibit scheduled to visit Twin Falls Sept. 30 – Oct. 3, 2009 .

"We hope the multimedia experience helps people better understand how the country plans to explore the moon and travel beyond in the next decade or so," said outreach coordinator Sarah (Keyke) Reed from NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville , Ala.

Hosted by the Herrett Center for Arts and Science Museum , the Exploration Experience Exhibit will be featured at the Arts and Science Museum on the main campus of the College of Southern Idaho Sept. 30 – Oct. 3, 2009 . It will be open to the public Sept. 30 from 9 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. MDT ; Oct. 1 and 3 from 10 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. MDT ; and Oct. 2 from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. and 5 p.m. to 9 p.m. MDT .

"Interactive control panels and activity station, immersive 3D imagery and audio effects will transport visitors into a not-too-distant future on the moon," Reed added. "They'll discover what it will be like to live and work on the surfaces of other worlds – and how it will benefit life back home on Earth."

The tour will continue at Kenneth J. Carberry Intermediate School , a NASA Explorer School , in Emmett from Oct. 12-14, 2009 .

NASA staffers will be available at each tour stop to answer questions and discuss some of the thousands of technologies used on Earth as a result of years of space-based research and development by the agency and its partners.

"Exhibit visitors can learn how our quality of life improves when America's space exploration activities refine existing technologies and develop new breakthroughs in areas such as power generation, computer technology, communications, networking and robotics," said Reed. Visitors also can learn how other advanced technologies are increasing the safety and reliability of space transportation systems, while also reducing costs.

Touring the NASA Exploration Experience exhibit takes approximately 10 minutes. The exhibit is free and wheelchair-accessible. Exhibit visitors also can see what they would look like on the moon by having their photo taken in a space suit in front of a lunar landscape.

NASA's Aerospace Education Services Project, a NASA resource that delivers education programs in all 50 states and U.S. territories, will support the exhibit. The Marshall Space Flight Center manages the traveling exhibit for the agency's Exploration Systems Mission Directorate in Washington , D.C. In addition to the traveling exhibit, "Robots on the Road," a hands-on robotics experience, will be on site Sept. 30 to Oct. 3, 2009 .

What's about the size of a large refrigerator, weighs a ton and may help pave the way for new and improved metals or glasses here on Earth? It's the Materials Science Research Rack -- a new laboratory on board the International Space Station.

This facility will allow researchers to study a variety of materials -- including metals, alloys, semiconductors, ceramics, and glasses to see how the materials form, and learn how to control their properties. The results from experiments conducted in the facility could lead to the development of materials with improved properties on Earth.

Materials science research is a multidisciplinary endeavor studying the relationships between the processing conditions and properties of materials. The research rack -- measuring 6 feet high, 3.5 feet wide and 40 inches deep -- will provide a powerful, multi-user materials science laboratory in a microgravity, or near weightless, environment. Researchers can benefit from studying materials in space because they can isolate the fundamental heat and mass transfer processes involved that are frequently masked by gravity on the ground.

The research rack will provide hardware to control the thermal, environmental and vacuum conditions of experiments; monitor experiments with video; and supply power and data handling for specific experiment instrumentation.

"Materials science is an integral part of our everyday life," said Sandor Lehoczky, project scientist for the rack at NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Ala. "The goal of materials processing in space is to develop a better understanding of how processing affects materials properties without the complication of gravity causing density effects on the processes. With this knowledge, reliable predictions can be made about the conditions required on Earth to achieve improved materials."

Cruising to the Moon

How long does it take humans to travel to the moon? Currently, Constellation is planning for the trans-lunar coast to take no longer than 4 days, or 96 hours. Apollo's design requirement was for the coast time to range between 60 hours and 100 hours. The actual missions (Apollo 10-17) varied from 72 hours to 83 hours.

So why would it take longer on the future missions? It may not actually. At this point, Constellation is in the requirements definition and preliminary design phase for the lunar exploration portion of the program therefore requirements are set for the most stressing - maximum and minimum - types of conditions.

The trans-lunar cruise duration is a function of the energy or change in velocity (delta-V) applied at the trans-lunar injection, or TLI, burn. The energy requirements for the TLI burn will vary depending on where the planned landing site is located on the moon and when the mission is launched, among other factors. So, if a mission is launched on a more favorable opportunity, less energy will be required for the TLI burn and the trip would be quicker.

Since Constellation is planning for worst-case conditions at this point, the transfer time in the current plan minimizes the amount of propellant, and therefore the mass, required for trans-lunar injection. When Constellation flies actual missions to the moon, there will likely be the same flexibility as Apollo to shorten the duration of the flight toward the moon if it is desirable to do so.

Water Molecules Found on the Moon

NASA scientists have discovered water molecules in the polar regions of the Moon. Instruments aboard three separate spacecraft revealed water molecules in amounts that are greater than predicted, but still relatively small. Hydroxyl, a molecule consisting of one oxygen atom and one hydrogen atom, also was found in the lunar soil. The findings were published in Thursday's edition of the journal Science.

The observations were made by NASA's Moon Mineralogy Mapper, or M3 ("M-cubed"), aboard the Indian Space Research Organization's Chandrayaan-1 spacecraft. NASA's Cassini spacecraft and NASA's Epoxi spacecraft have confirmed the find.

"Water ice on the Moon has been something of a holy grail for lunar scientists for a very long time," said Jim Green, director of the Planetary Science Division at NASA Headquarters in Washington . "This surprising finding has come about through the ingenuity, perseverance and international cooperation between NASA and the India Space Research Organization."

From its perch in lunar orbit, M3's state-of-the-art spectrometer measured light reflecting off the Moon's surface at infrared wavelengths, splitting the spectral colors of the lunar surface into small enough bits to reveal a new level of detail in surface composition. When the M3 science team analyzed data from the instrument, they found the wavelengths of light being absorbed were consistent with the absorption patterns for water molecules and hydroxyl.

"When we say 'water on the Moon,' we are not talking about lakes, oceans or even puddles," explained Carle Pieters, M3's principal investigator from Brown University, Providence, R.I. "Water on the Moon means molecules of water and hydroxyl that interact with molecules of rock and dust specifically in the top millimeters of the Moon's surface.

The M3 team found water molecules and hydroxyl at diverse areas of the sunlit region of the Moon's surface, but the water signature appeared stronger at the Moon's higher latitudes. Water molecules and hydroxyl previously were suspected in data from a Cassini flyby of the Moon in 1999, but the findings were not published until now.

"The data from Cassini's VIMS instrument and M3 closely agree," said Roger Clark, a U.S. Geological Survey scientist in Denver and member of both the VIMS and M3 teams. "We see both water and hydroxyl. While the abundances are not precisely known, as much as 1,000 water molecule parts-per-million could be in the lunar soil. To put that into perspective, if you harvested one ton of the top layer of the Moon's surface, you could get as much as 32 ounces of water."

For additional confirmation, scientists turned to the Epoxi mission while it was flying past the Moon in June 2009 on its way to a November 2010 encounter with comet Hartley 2. The spacecraft not only confirmed the VIMS and M3 findings, but also expanded on them.

"With our extended spectral range and views over the north pole, we were able to explore the distribution of both water and hydroxyl as a function of temperature, latitude, composition, and time of day," said Jessica Sunshine of the University of Maryland . Sunshine is Epoxi's deputy principal investigator and a scientist on the M3 team. "Our analysis unequivocally confirms the presence of these molecules on the Moon's surface and reveals that the entire surface appears to be hydrated during at least some portion of the lunar day."

The discovery of water molecules and hydroxyl on the Moon raises new questions about the origin of "Moon water" and its effect on lunar mineralogy. Answers to these questions will be studied and debated for years to come.

Lump of Planetary Stuff

This artist's conception shows a lump of material in a swirling, planet-forming disk. Astronomers using NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope found evidence that a companion to a star -- either another star or a planet -- could be pushing planetary material together, as illustrated here.

Planets are born out of spinning disks of gas and dust. They can carve out lanes or gaps in the disks as they grow bigger and bigger. Scientists used Spitzer's infrared vision to study the disk around a star called LRLL 31, located about 1,000 light-years away in the IC 348 region of the constellation Perseus. Spitzer's new infrared observations reveal that the disk has both an inner and outer gap.

What's more, the data show that infrared light from the disk is changing over as little time as one week -- a very unusual occurrence. In particular, light of different wavelengths seesawed back and forth, with short-wavelength light going up when long-wavelength light went down, and vice versa.

According to astronomers, this change could be caused by a companion to the star (illustrated as a planet in this picture). As the companion spins around, its gravity would cause the wall of the inner disk to squeeze into a lump. This lump would also spin around the star, shadowing part of the outer disk. When the bright side of the lump is on the far side of the star, and facing Earth, more infrared light at shorter wavelengths should be observed (hotter material closer to the star emits shorter wavelengths of infrared light).

In addition, the shadow of the lump should cause longer-wavelength infrared light from the outer disk to decrease. The opposite would be true when the lump is in front of the star and its bright side is hidden (shorter-wavelength light would go down, and longer-wavelength light up). This is precisely what Spitzer observed. The size of the lump and the planet have been exaggerated to better illustrate the dynamics of the system.

In Search of Dark Asteroids

In modern warfare, though, ninjas would be sitting ducks. Their black clothes may be hard to see at night with the naked eye, but their warm bodies would be clearly visible to a soldier wearing infrared goggles.

To hunt for the "ninjas" of the cosmos — dim objects that lurk in the vast dark spaces between planets and stars — scientists are building by far the most sensitive set of wide-angle infrared goggles ever, a space telescope called the Widefield Infrared Survey Explorer (WISE).

WISE will scan the entire sky at infrared wavelengths, creating the most comprehensive catalog yet of dark and dim objects in the cosmos: vast dust clouds, brown dwarf stars, asteroids — even large, nearby asteroids that might pose a threat to Earth.

Surveys of nearby asteroids based on visible-light telescopes could be skewed toward asteroids with more-reflective surfaces. "If there's a significant population of asteroids nearby that are very dark, they will have been missed by these previous surveys," says Edward Wright, principal investigator for WISE and a physicist at the University of California in Los Angeles.

The full-sky infrared map produced by WISE will reveal even these darker asteroids, mapping the locations and sizes of roughly 200,000 asteroids and giving scientists a clearer idea of how many large and potentially dangerous asteroids are nearby. WISE will also help answer questions about the formation of stars and the evolution and structure of galaxies, including our own Milky Way.

School Kids Track LCROSS

On Oct. 9th, LCROSS will smash into the inky-dark shadows of a crater near the Moon's south pole in search of water. Eager youngsters are locked on to LCROSS's signal as intently as they've ever viewed a video game, and they're feeding NASA valuable data about the spacecraft's health and status.

see captionStudents attending 283 schools world-wide are participating in the Goldstone Apple Valley Radio Telescope Project, or GAVRT -- a joint project between NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory and the Lewis Center for Educational Research. Boys and girls control the behemoth telescope via the internet and they have been learning how to do radio astronomy just like real mission scientists.

Right: The Goldstone Apple Valley Radio Telescope (GAVRT). Brian Day of NASA Ames Research Center explains how the students "adopted" LCROSS. "Because LCROSS has a very steeply inclined orbit, we have only a 2-hour window once every 3 days when we can check out the spacecraft using the Deep Space Network. So we decided to ask GAVRT for help. These kids help us get extra listening time for our spacecraft, and they get an incredible educational experience in return."

Lewis Center founder Rick Piercy is the visionary who sparked GAVRT's creation, making this extraordinary hookup possible. "In 1994, I heard that NASA was decommissioning a fully functional radio telescope," says Piercy. "I knew that this particular telescope had been used to communicate with the Apollo spacecraft and realized that it was something special. I wanted it for the students at our school, the Academy for Academic Excellence. I figured we could load it up in a couple of pickup trucks and bring it to the school if we could get permission."

He called California Congressman Jerry Lewis, who put him in touch with then-NASA Administrator Daniel Goldin. Piercy convinced Goldin and NASA to give the telescope to the school and make the instrument available to students nationwide.

James Webb Space Telescope Begins to Take Shape at Goddard

NASA's James Webb Space Telescope is starting to come together. A major component of the telescope, the Integrated Science Instrument Module structure, recently arrived at NASA Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md. for testing in the Spacecraft Systems Development and Integration Facility. The Integrated Science Instrument Module, or ISIM, is an important component of the Webb telescope. The ISIM includes the structure, four scientific instruments or cameras, electronics, harnesses, and other components.

The ISIM structure is the "backbone" of the ISIM. It is similar to the chassis of a car. Just as a car chassis provides support for the engine and holds other components, the ISIM Structure supports and holds the four Webb telescope science instruments : the Mid-Infrared Instrument (MIRI), the Near-Infrared Camera (NIRCam), the Near-Infrared Spectrograph (NIRSpec) and the Fine Guidance Sensor (FGS). Each of these instruments were created and assembled by different program partners around the world.

When fully assembled, the ISIM will be the size of a small room with the structure acting as a skeleton supporting all of the instruments. Ray Lundquist, ISIM Systems Engineer, at NASA Goddard, commented that "The ISIM structure is truly a one-of-a-kind item. There is no second ISIM being made. Before arriving at Goddard, the main ISIM structure – a state of the art, cryogenic-compatible, optical structure was designed by a team of engineers at Goddard, and assembled by Alliant Techsystems (ATK) at its Magna, Utah facility. That's the same facility where the Webb Telescope's Backplane is also being assembled.

Giant Spider Terrorist Attacks NASA

Spacecraft Talk Continued During JPL Wildfire Threat

As the flames of the raging brush fire dubbed the Station Fire threatened the northern edge of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory on Saturday, Aug. 29, the managers of NASA's Deep Space Network prepared for the worst. The Deep Space Operations Center at JPL is the nerve center for the Deep Space Network, an international network of antennas that send and receive information to interplanetary spacecraft. Staffed 24/7, 365 days a year, the JPL hub is constantly active connecting three major antenna sites, numerous mission operation centers run by NASA and an international group of space agencies, and more than 30 spacecraft flying throughout our solar system.

"We were more like the nervous center that weekend than the nerve center," said Wayne Sible of JPL, the network's deputy program manager for Deep Space Network development, operations and services. The Deep Space Network operations managers knew that, fire or no fire, time was critical for sending software programs to and downloading diagnostic information from several spacecraft, including the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, which had an unexpected computer reboot the day the fire started on Aug. 26, and the Dawn spacecraft, on its way to the asteroid belt.

The network's antennas that send and receive information to spacecraft, located at Goldstone, in California's Mojave Desert; near Madrid, Spain; and near Canberra, Australia, were never in danger. But Sible and Jim Hodder, the network's operations manager, got word on Friday, Aug. 28, that the Station fire, which started in the San Gabriel Mountains above the Laboratory, was burning towards JPL. Emergency managers and senior JPL administrators called for JPL to be closed, except for essential personnel, on Friday evening.

A flurry of phone calls followed to the Deep Space Network team, the mission operation centers and ITT Systems Division, the contractor that provides the operators for the operations center at JPL. On a phone call with Hodder, the team decided to move network operators to a facility in Monrovia, Calif., where other support work is normally conducted for the Deep Space Network. The Monrovia building - about 15 miles from JPL offered basic access to the critical systems, though the operators would not be able to use personalized computer scripts or notes that facilitate their work.

Scientists Discover New Radiation Belt at Saturn

Scientists using the Cassini spacecraft's Magnetospheric Imaging instrument have detected a new, temporary radiation belt at Saturn, located around the orbit of its moon Dione at about 377,000 kilometers (234,000 miles) from the center of the planet.

The new belt, which has been named "the Dione belt," was detected by the instrument for only a few weeks on three separate occasions in 2005. Scientists believe that newly formed charged particles in the Dione belt were gradually absorbed by Dione itself and another nearby moon, named Tethys, which lies slightly closer to Saturn at an orbit of 295,000 kilometers (183,304 miles).

The discovery was presented at the European Planetary Science Congress in Potsdam, Germany on September 14.

Electronic Nose to Return from Space Station

Sniffing out any potential contaminants on the International Space Station where it was stationed for the last six months, the JPL-built electronic nose, or ENose, is homeward bound.

While on the space station, the ENose sampled the air with 32 sensors that can detect various odors and pinpoint which ones are dangerous to humans. The sleek, shoebox-sized ENose, the third generation of its kind, monitored the air for 10 contaminants continuously.

"Our six-month test went very well. The ENose identified formaldehyde, Freon 218, methanol and ethanol, but all of them were at harmless levels," said Amy Ryan, principal investigator of the ENose at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif. Ryan built the ENose at JPL and has managed the project from its early beginnings in 1996. "An instrument like this could one day remain on the Space Station and monitor air quality in real-time."

In the future, the ENose could be used in monitoring crew cabins for vehicles to the moon and other destinations or be stationed on a moon base. Other potential applications include detecting a smoldering fire before it erupts, sniffing for unexploded land mines and monitoring for chemical spills in a work area. There are also possible applications in medical diagnosis.

"A human nose is not always as sensitive to chemicals as the ENose and our noses cannot even detect some hazardous chemicals," said Ryan. "The ENose can smell trouble and give people advance warning before contamination levels cause harm."

The ENose was flown to the International Space Station by the Space Shuttle Endeavour STS-126 mission in December 2008. It is set to return home today on the Space Shuttle Discovery STS-128, after its 13-day flight.

Hubble Opens New Eyes on the Universe

NASA's Hubble Space Telescope is back in business, ready to uncover new worlds, peer ever deeper into space, and even map the invisible backbone of the universe.

The first snapshots from the refurbished Hubble showcase the 19-year-old telescope's new vision. Topping the list of exciting new views are colorful multi-wavelength pictures of far- flung galaxies, a densely packed star cluster, an eerie "pillar of creation," and a "butterfly" nebula.

With the release of these images, astronomers have declared Hubble a fully rejuvenated observatory. Sen. Barbara A. Mikulski, D-Md., unveiled the images at NASA Headquarters in Washington, D.C., on Sept. 9, 2009.

With its new imaging camera, Hubble can view galaxies, star clusters, and other objects across a wide swath of the electromagnetic spectrum, from ultraviolet to near-infrared light. A new spectrograph slices across billions of light-years to map the filamentary structure of the universe and trace the distribution of elements that are fundamental to life.

The telescope's new instruments also are more sensitive to light and can observe in ways that are significantly more efficient and require less observing time than previous generations of Hubble instruments.

NASA astronauts installed the new instruments during the space shuttle servicing mission in May 2009. Besides adding the instruments, the astronauts also completed a dizzying list of other chores that included performing unprecedented repairs on two other science instruments.

Now that Hubble has reopened for business, it will tackle a whole range of observations. Looking closer to Earth, such observations will include taking a census of the population of Kuiper Belt objects residing at the fringe of our solar system, witnessing the birth of planets around other stars, and probing the composition and structure of the atmospheres of other worlds.

Peering much farther away, astronomers have ambitious plans to use Hubble to make the deepest-ever portrait of the universe in near-infrared light. The resulting picture may reveal never-before-seen infant galaxies that existed when the universe was less than 500 million years old. Hubble also is now significantly more well-equipped to probe and further characterize the behavior of dark energy, a mysterious and little-understood repulsive force that is pushing the universe apart at an ever-faster rate.

Top 5 2008 Space Moments

Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter Mission

During analysis of four safe-mode events this year, engineers for NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter project have identified a vulnerability to the effects of subsequent events. They are currently developing added protection to eliminate this vulnerability while they continue analysis of the string of incidents this year in which the spacecraft has spontaneously rebooted its computer or switched to a backup computer.

The team is keeping the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter in a precautionary "safe" mode, with healthy power, temperatures and communications, while continuing analysis and precautions subsequent to the latest rebooting, on Aug. 26. Science observations will likely not resume for several weeks while this preventive care is the mission's priority. The analysis identified one possible but unlikely scenario jeopardizing the spacecraft. This scenario would require two computer resets, each worse than any so far, occurring within several minutes of each other in a certain pattern.

The Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, at Mars since 2006, has met the mission's science goals and returned more data than all other Mars missions combined. It completed its primary science phase of operations in November 2008 but remains an important contributor to science and to future landed missions. Continuing science observations are planned when the spacecraft is brought out of its current precautionary mode.

NASA Webcast Connects Students with Astronauts

WASHINGTON -- NASA Administrator Charles Bolden and space shuttle astronauts will participate in live education webcasts on Sept. 8 at 2 p.m. EDT and Sept. 10 at 1 p.m.

On Sept. 8, students will hear insights from Bolden, young agency professionals, and STS-128 mission astronauts Jose M. Hernandez and John D. Olivas about the challenges and successes of their exciting NASA careers.

On Sept. 10, Bolden will join astronauts from the STS-125 Hubble Space Telescope servicing mission to discuss the flight and newly released images from the observatory. Commander Scott Altman, Shuttle Pilot Greg (Ray J) Johnson and Program Scientist Eric Smith will participate.

Webcasts are produced free of charge by the NASA Digital Learning Network. NASA uses the network's capabilities to deliver unique content by linking students and educators with agency experts. The program provides interactive educational experiences for students and teachers from kindergarten through college across the country and around the world.

NASA Approves X-ray Space Mission

NASA recently confirmed that the Nuclear Spectroscopic Telescope Array, or NuSTAR, mission will launch in August 2011. NuSTAR will carry the first high-energy X-ray focusing telescopes into orbit, providing a much deeper, clearer view of energetic phenomena such as black holes and supernova explosions than any previous instrument has provided in this region of the electromagnetic spectrum.

NuSTAR is a NASA Small Explorer mission led by Caltech, managed by JPL, and implemented by an international team of scientists and engineers. Fiona Harrison, a professor of physics and astronomy at Caltech, is the team's principal investigator. The official confirmation follows two years of detailed design and reviews that have enabled NASA to determine that the NuSTAR team is ready to build the flight hardware.

Mission to Mercury

The European Space Agency (ESA) has announced that its latest satellite, called BepiColombo, will travel to Mercury using ion-electric thrusters developed by U.K. Company QinetiQ.

The space agency already uses a smaller version of the same system--made of T5 ion thrusters--aboard its GOCE satellite, which launched previous this year to measure earth's gravitational field. BepiColombo, which is scheduled to launch in 2014, will use four T6 ion thrusters. The company says the thrusters used in both spacecraft are ten times more efficient than traditional chemical ones. ESA awarded QinetiQ a contract worth $37.4 million to build the electric propulsion system.

Though chemical propulsion systems are most commonly used in space, they are incompetent for deep-space missions to planets like Mercury because they require large amounts of fuel. Electric propulsion systems produce less thrust, but they are very efficient, making them ideal for long-distance missions.

Ion propulsion works by electrically charging, or ionizing, a gas and accelerating the resulting ions to propel a spacecraft. The concept was first conceived over 50 years ago, and the first spacecraft to use the technology was Deep Space 1 (DS1) in 1998. Since then, aside from GOCE, there have only been a few other non-commercial spacecrafts that have used ion propulsion: NASA's Dawn mission to the outer solar system, launched in 2007; the Japanese deep space asteroid sample return mission called Hayabusa, launched in 2003; and ESA's SMART-1 spacecraft, launched in 2003 and crashed on the moon in 2006. (There are many commercial communication satellites that use ion thrusters.) NASA recently finished testing a new ion-propulsion system for earth-orbiting and interplanetary spacecraft that could be ready for launch by 2013.

While the technology still needs some fine-tuning, to make these engines even more efficient, compact and economical, many experts say that for complex planetary missions that require lots of energy, ion-electric thrusters are definitely the answer.

Launch of the Korea Space Launch Vehicle 1

Korea Space Launch Vehicle 1

The launch of South Korea 's first orbital launch satellite is planned for next week, although technical problems could delay the launch. Saturday South Korean officials said that the launch of the Korea Space Launch Vehicle 1 (KSLV-1), which is also known as Naro-1, is intended for August 11. The launch had been formerly scheduled for late July but it was delayed because of supplementary testing.

Yesterday the officials said that the launch could be further delayed to allow additional time for studying an engine firing test that took place last week. The launch vehicle, developed with technical support from Russia and using a lower stage originally developed for Russia 's Angara launcher, is calculated to launch small satellites into low Earth orbit. The KSLV-1 will launch from a new capability in the southwestern part of South Korea . The inaugural KSLV-1 launch will carry a small investigational satellite.

Image Gallery : Jupiter Horizone