Spitzer Sees Shrouded Burst of Stars

Astronomers using NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope have found a stunning burst of star formation that beams out as much infrared light as an entire galaxy. The collision of two spiral galaxies has triggered this explosion, which is cloaked by dust that renders its stars nearly invisible in other wavelengths of light.

The starburst newly revealed by Spitzer stands as the most luminous ever seen taking place away from the centers, or nuclei, of merging parent galaxies. It blazes ten times brighter than the nearby Universe's previous most famous "off-nuclear starburst" that gleams in another galactic smashup known as the Antennae Galaxy.

The new findings show that galaxy mergers can pack a real star-making wallop far from the respective galactic centers, where star-forming dust and gases typically pool.

"This discovery proves that merging galaxies can generate powerful starbursts outside of the centers of the parent galaxies," says Hanae Inami, first author of a paper detailing the results in the July issue of The Astronomical Journal. Inami is a graduate student at The Graduate University for Advanced Studies in Japan and the Spitzer Science Center at the California Institute of Technology. She adds: "The infrared light emission of the starburst dominates its host galaxy and rivals that of the most luminous galaxies we see that are relatively close to our home, the Milky Way."

"No matter how you slice it, this starburst is one of the most luminous objects in the local Universe," agrees Lee Armus, second author of the paper and a senior research astronomer also at the Spitzer Science Center.
A dazzling galactic dust-up

Inami, Armus and their colleagues spotted the buried starburst with Spitzer in the interacting galaxies known as II Zw 096. This galactic train wreck - located around 500 million light years away in the constellation Delphinus (the Dolphin) - will continue to unfold for a few hundred million years. Gravitational forces have already dissolved the once-pinwheel shape of one of II Zw 096's pair of merging galaxies.

The ultra-bright starburst region spans 700 light-years or so - just a tiny portion of II Zw 096, which streams across some 50,000 to 60,000 light-years - yet it blasts out 80 percent of the infrared light from this galactic tumult. Based on Spitzer data, researchers estimate the starburst is cranking out stars at the breakneck pace of around 100 solar masses, or masses of our Sun, per year.

The prodigious energy output of this starburst in a decentralized location as revealed in the infrared has surprised the Spitzer researchers. The new observations go to show how the notion of a cosmic object's nature can change tremendously when viewed at different wavelengths of light. In this way, the shapes and dynamics of distant, harder-to-study galactic mergers could turn out to be a good deal more complex than current observations over a narrow range of wavelengths imply.

"Most of the far-infrared emission in II Zw 096, and hence most of the power, is coming from a region that is not associated with the centers of the merging galaxies," Inami explains. "This suggests that the appearances and interactions of distant, early galaxies during epochs when mergers were much more common than today in the Universe might be more complicated than we think."
A fleeting, perhaps prophetic vista?

In galaxy mergers, individual stars rarely slam into one another because of the vast distances separating them; even in the comparatively crowded central hubs of spiral galaxies, trillions of kilometers still often yawn between the stars.

But giant, diffuse clouds of gas and dust in galaxies do crash together - passing through each other somewhat like ocean waves - and in turn spur the gravitational collapse of dense pockets of matter into new stars. These young, hot stars shine intensely in the energetic ultraviolet part of the spectrum. In the case of II Zw 096, however, a thick shroud of gas and dust still surrounds this stellar brood. The blanket of material absorbs the stars' light and re-radiates it in the lower-energy, infrared wavelengths that gleam clear through the dust to Spitzer's camera.

Astronomers were lucky to capture this transient phase in the evolution of the starburst and of the daughter galaxy that will eventually coalesce out of the collision. "Spitzer has allowed us to see the fireworks before all the gas and dust has cleared away, giving us a preview of the exciting new galaxy being built under the blanket," Inami says.

Merging galaxies such as II Zw 096 also offer a sneak peek at the fate of our Milky Way in some 4.5 billion years when it is expected to plow into its nearest large galactic neighbor, the Andromeda Galaxy. Off-nuclear starbursts such as that in II Zw 096 and the Antennae Galaxy could occur in the vicinity of our Solar System, perhaps, which is located about two-thirds of the way out from the Milky Way's glowing, bulging center.

"This kind of dramatic thing happening in II Zw 096 could happen to the Milky Way and Andromeda when they meet in the far future," says Inami.

NASA Mars Rover Images Honor Apollo 12

NASA's Mars Exploration Rover Opportunity has visited and photographed two craters informally named for the spacecraft that carried men to the moon 41 years ago this week.

Opportunity drove past "Yankee Clipper" crater on Nov. 4 and reached "Intrepid crater" on Nov. 9. For NASA's Apollo 12, the second mission to put humans onto the moon, the command and service module was called Yankee Clipper, piloted by Dick Gordon, and the lunar module was named Intrepid, piloted by Alan Bean and commanded by the late Pete Conrad. The Intrepid landed on the moon with Bean and Conrad on Nov. 19, 1969, while Yankee Clipper orbited overhead. Their landing came a mere four months after Apollo 11's first lunar landing.

This week, Bean wrote to the Mars Exploration Rover team: "I just talked with Dick Gordon about the wonderful honor you have bestowed upon our Apollo 12 spacecraft. Forty-one years ago today, we were approaching the moon in Yankee Clipper with Intrepid in tow. We were excited to have the opportunity to perform some important exploration of a place in the universe other than planet Earth where humans had not gone before. We were anxious to give it our best effort. You and your team have that same opportunity. Give it your best effort."

Rover science team member James Rice, of NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Md., suggested using the Apollo 12 names. He was applying the rover team's convention of using names of historic ships of exploration for the informal names of craters that Opportunity sees in the Meridian Planum region of Mars.

"The Apollo missions were so inspiring when I was young, I remember all the dates. When we were approaching these craters, I realized we were getting close to the Nov. 19 anniversary for Apollo 12," Rice said. He sent Bean and Gordon photographs that Opportunity took of the two craters.

The images are available online at http://photojournal.jpl.nasa.gov/catalog/PIA13593 and http://photojournal.jpl.nasa.gov/catalog/PIA13596. Intrepid crater is about 20 meters (66 feet) in diameter. Yankee Clipper crater is about half that width.

After a two-day stop to photograph the rocks exposed at Intrepid, Opportunity continued on a long-term trek toward Endeavour crater, a highly eroded crater about 1,000 times wider than Intrepid. Endeavour's name comes from the ship of James Cook's first Pacific voyage.

During a drive of 116.9 meters (383.5 feet) on Nov. 14, Opportunity's "odometer" passed 25 kilometers (15.53 miles). That is more than 40 times the driving-distance goal set for Opportunity to accomplish during its original three-month prime mission in 2004.

Mars Exploration Project Manager John Callas, of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif., said, "Importantly, it's not how far the rovers have gone but how much exploration and science discovery they have accomplished on behalf of all humankind."

At the beginning of Opportunity's mission, the rover landed inside "Eagle crater," about the same size as Intrepid crater. The team's name for that landing-site crater paid tribute to the lunar module of Apollo 11, the first human landing on the moon. Opportunity spent two months inside Eagle crater, where it found multiple lines of evidence for a wet environment in the area's ancient past.

The rover team is checking regularly for Opportunity's twin, Spirit, in case the increasing daily solar energy available at Spirit's location enables the rover to reawaken and resume communication. No signal from Spirit has been received since March 22. Spring began last week in the southern hemisphere of Mars.

JPL, a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, manages the Mars Exploration Rovers for the NASA Science Mission Directorate, Washington. For more information about the rovers, visit: http://www.nasa.gov/rovers.

Camera on Curiosity's Arm will Magnify Clues in Rocks

NASA's next Mars rover, Curiosity, will wield an arm-mounted magnifying camera similar to one on the Mars Rover Opportunity, which promptly demonstrated its importance for reading environmental history from rocks at its landing site in 2004.

Within a few weeks after the landing, that camera at the end of Opportunity's arm revealed details of small spheres embedded in the rocks, hollows where crystals had dissolved, and fine layering shaped like smiles. These details all provided information about the site's wet past.

The camera installed on the end of Curiosity's arm this month is the Mars Hand Lens Imager, or MAHLI. Its work will include the same type of close-up inspections accomplished by the comparable camera on Opportunity, but MAHLI has significantly greater capabilities: full-color photography, adjustable focus, lights, and even video. Also, it sits on a longer arm, one that can hold MAHLI up higher than the cameras on the rover's mast. MAHLI will use those capabilities as one of 10 science instruments to study the area of Mars where NASA's Mars Science Laboratory mission lands Curiosity in August 2012.

The Mars Hand Lens Imager takes its name from the magnifying tool that every field geologist carries. Ken Edgett of Malin Space Science Systems, San Diego, is the principal investigator for the instrument. He said, "When you’re out in the field and you want to get a quick idea what minerals are in a rock, you pick up the rock in one hand and hold your hand lens in the other hand. You look through the lens at the colors, the crystals, the cleavage planes: features that help you diagnose what minerals you see.

"If it's a sedimentary rock, such as the sandstone you see at Arches National Park in Utah, or shale -- which is basically petrified mud -- like in the Painted Desert in Arizona, you use the hand lens not just to see what minerals are in it but also the sizes and shapes of the grains in the rock. You also look at the fine-scale layering in the rock to get an idea of the sequence of events. Sedimentary rocks record past events and environments."

While other instruments on Curiosity will provide more information about what minerals are in rocks, the Mars Hand Lens Imager will play an important role in reading the environmental history recorded in sedimentary rocks. The mission's science team will use the instruments to assess whether the selected landing area has had environmental conditions favorable for life and for preserving evidence about whether life existed.

The team currently assembling and testing Curiosity and other parts of the Mars Science Laboratory spacecraft at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif., is continuing tests of MAHLI this month, now that the camera is mounted beside other tools on the robotic arm. The spacecraft will launch from Florida between Nov. 25 and Dec. 18, 2011.

Edgett led the preparation in early 2004 of a proposal to include MAHLI in the Mars Science Laboratory's payload. During those same months, the camera on Opportunity's arm -- that mission's Microscopic Imager -- was demonstrating the potential value of a successor, and generating ideas for improvements. Opportunity's Microscopic Imager has a fixed focus. To get targets in focus, it always needs to be placed the same distance from the target, recording a view of an area 3 centimeters (1.2 inches) across. To view a larger area, the camera takes multiple images, sometimes more than a dozen, each requiring a repositioning of Opportunity's arm.

"When I was writing the proposal, the Microscopic Imager took about 40 images for a mosaic of one rock," Edgett said. "That's where the idea came from to make the focus adjustable. With adjustable focus, the science team has more flexibility for trade-offs among the rover's resources, such as power, time, data storage and data downlink. For example, the camera could take one or two images from farther away to cover a larger area, then go in and sample selected parts in higher resolution from closer up."

MAHLI can focus on targets as close as about 21 millimeters (0.8 inch) and as distant as the horizon or farther. JPL's Ashwin Vasavada, deputy project scientist for the Mars Science Laboratory, said, "MAHLI is really a fully functional camera that happens to be on the end of the arm. The close-up capability is its specialty, but it will also be able to take images or videos from many viewpoints inaccessible to the cameras on the mast, such as up high, down low, under the rover and on the rover deck. Think of it like a hand-held camera with a macro lens, one that you could use for taking pictures of the Grand Canyon, of yourself, or of a bumblebee on a flower."

Edgett is looking forward to what the camera will reveal in rock textures. "Just like larger rocks in a river, grains of sand carried in a stream get rounded from bouncing around and colliding with each other," he said. "If you look at a sandstone with a hand lens and see rounded grains, that tells you they came from a distance. If they are more angular, they didn't come as far before they were deposited in the sediment that became the rock. Where an impact excavated a crater, particles of the material ejected from the crater would be very angular.

"When you're talking about ancient rocks as clues for assessing habitability," he continued, "you're talking about the environments the sediments were deposited in -- whether a lake, a desert, an ice field. Also, what cemented the particles together to become rocks, and what changes have affected the rock after the sediments were deposited? All these things are relevant to whether an environment was favorable for life and also whether it was favorable for preserving the record of that life. Earth is a planet teeming with life, but most rocks have not preserved ancient organisms; Mars will be even more challenging than Earth in this sense."

Edgett says he is eager to see an additional image from this camera besides the details of rock textures. With the arm extended upwards, the camera can look down at the rover for a dramatic self-portrait on Mars. But as for the most important image the Mars Hand Lens Imager will take: "That will be something that surprises us, something we're not expecting."

Mars Science Laboratory is managed by NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif. JPL also manages the Mars Exploration Rovers Spirit and Opportunity. JPL is a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena.
More information about NASA's Mars Science Laboratory is at: http://www.nasa.gov/msl .

Shedding 'Bent' Light on Dark Matter

Astronomers using NASA's Hubble Space Telescope took advantage of a giant cosmic magnifying glass to create one of the sharpest and most detailed maps of dark matter in the universe. Dark matter is an invisible and unknown substance that makes up the bulk of the universe's mass. Astronomer Dan Coe led the research while working at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif.; he is currently with the Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore, Md.

The astronomers used Hubble to chart the invisible matter in the massive galaxy cluster Abell 1689, located 2.2 billion light-years away. The cluster's gravity, the majority of which comes from dark matter, acts like a cosmic magnifying glass, bending and amplifying the light from distant galaxies behind it. This effect, called gravitational lensing, produces multiple, warped, and greatly magnified images of those galaxies, like the view in a funhouse mirror. By studying the distorted images, astronomers estimated the amount of dark matter within the cluster.

The new dark matter observations may yield new insights into the role of dark energy in the universe's early formative years. A mysterious property of space, dark energy fights against the gravitational pull of dark matter. The new results suggest that galaxy clusters may have formed earlier than expected, before the push of dark energy inhibited their growth. Dark energy pushes galaxies apart from one another by stretching the space between them, suppressing the formation of giant structures called galaxy clusters. One way astronomers can probe this primeval tug-of-war is by mapping the distribution of dark matter in clusters.

Read the full story at http://hubblesite.org/newscenter/archive/releases/2010/37/full/ .

The California Institute of Technology in Pasadena manages JPL for NASA.

Nasa Space News : Milt Thompson’s Wild Ride

Ominous black smoke rose over California's high desert on a crisp, cold December morning in 1962, and there was no sign of a parachute. Della Mae Bowling, the pilot's office secretary at NASA's Flight Research Center on Edwards Air Force Base, was crying as fire trucks raced across the vast expanse of Rogers Dry Lake toward the crash scene. But Bowling and others were to learn that what might have been a terrible tragedy turned out instead to be a triumph of piloting skill.

Several years earlier, NASA had acquired a production Lockheed F-104A for use as a research aircraft. On April 13, 1959, Neil Armstrong ferried the supersonic jet from Lockheed's Palmdale, Calif., facility to NASA's Flight Research Center, where it was equipped with special instrumentation and re-designated as a JF-104A. It initially served as a launch platform for parachute test vehicles and experimental sounding rockets. Later, it was used for mission support, pilot proficiency and as a chase plane for other research aircraft. In all, seven NASA pilots flew the airplane 249 times.

On Dec. 20, 1962, NASA research pilot Milton O. Thompson was scheduled to evaluate weather conditions over Mud Lake, Nev., in preparation for the launch of an X-15 rocket plane over that area a few hours later. Weather flights were critical because go/no-go decisions were based on real-time observations made along the planned flight path. NASA research pilot Milt Thompson poses in front of an F-104 similar to the one from which he ejected on Dec. 20, 1962. (NASA photo) Thompson strapped himself into the JF-104A cockpit, taxied to the runway, took off to the northeast and climbed to cruising altitude. Visibility was clear all along his route. Upon returning to Edwards, Thompson configured the airplane so he could practice simulated X-15 landings on the clay surface of Rogers Dry Lake.

During his first approach he cut throttle, extended speed brakes and began a steep, descending turn toward a runway marked on the lakebed's surface. Decelerating, he lowered the flaps and held 300 knots indicated airspeed as he dove toward the airstrip. The jet lost altitude at a rate of 18,000 feet per minute until he leveled off at 800 feet, lit the afterburner and climbed away.

During his second approach, Thompson noticed the airplane was rolling to the left. He applied full right aileron and rudder but failed to stop the motion. Seeing his airspeed dropping rapidly, he advanced the throttle to full and relit the afterburner. As his speed increased to 300 knots the roll ceased, leaving the airplane in a 90-degree left bank. Thompson increased his speed to 350 knots to gain more control effectiveness and began to troubleshoot the problem.

Nasa space News : Supernova Explosions Stay in Shape

At a very early age, children learn how to classify objects according to their shape. Now, new research suggests studying the shape of the aftermath of supernovas may allow astronomers to do the same.

A new study of images from NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory on supernova remnants -- the debris from exploded stars - shows that the symmetry of the remnants, or lack thereof, reveals how the star exploded. This is an important discovery because it shows that the remnants retain information about how the star exploded even though hundreds or thousands of years have passed.

"It's almost like the supernova remnants have a 'memory' of the original explosion," said Laura Lopez of the University of California at Santa Cruz, who led the study. "This is the first time anyone has systematically compared the shape of these remnants in X-rays in this way."

Astronomers sort supernovas into several categories, or "types," based on properties observed days after the explosion and which reflect very different physical mechanisms that cause stars to explode. But, since observed remnants of supernovas are leftover from explosions that occurred long ago, other methods are needed to accurately classify the original supernovas.

Lopez and colleagues focused on the relatively young supernova remnants that exhibited strong X-ray emission from silicon ejected by the explosion so as to rule out the effects of interstellar matter surrounding the explosion. Their analysis showed that the X-ray images of the ejecta can be used to identify the way the star exploded. The team studied 17 supernova remnants both in the Milky Way galaxy and a neighboring galaxy, the Large Magellanic Cloud.

For each of these remnants there is independent information about the type of supernova involved, based not on the shape of the remnant but, for example, on the elements observed in it. The researchers found that one type of supernova explosion -- the so-called Type Ia -- left behind relatively symmetric, circular remnants. This type of supernova is thought to be caused by a thermonuclear explosion of a white dwarf, and is often used by astronomers as "standard candles" for measuring cosmic distances.

On the other hand, the remnants tied to the "core-collapse" supernova explosions were distinctly more asymmetric. This type of supernova occurs when a very massive, young star collapses onto itself and then explodes.

First Earth vs. Space Chess Match Ends – Earth Wins

The first Earth vs. Space chess match, begun during astronaut Greg Chamitoff’s Expedition 17 stay aboard the International Space Station, is over – and the Earth won.

NASA and the U.S. Chess Federation (USCF) teamed up to host the match, which started in September 2008. Chamitoff conceded the match in a Dec. 16, 2009, letter to the third grade U.S. Chess Championship Team and its chess club teammates from Stevenson Elementary School in Bellevue, Wash. The USCF facilitated the match, coordinating worldwide voting on the Earth’s moves, which were proposed by the K-3 champions.

Chamitoff, who continued the match via e-mail after his 183-day space mission and return to Earth on Nov. 30, 2008, is scheduled to fly again on the upcoming STS-134 mission of Space Shuttle Endeavour. He sent the following letter to the students:

Dear Stevenson Elementary Chess Team,

What a game! Huge congratulations on your victory! I'm truly proud of you, and inspired by your dedication, focus, brilliance, and patience too! Also, a huge congratulations to all of you who followed the game and participated as part of the “Earth Team,” by voting for the moves on-line.

Water on the Moon, Drought on Earth

Two NASA researchers will discuss the agency's latest findings about our home planet and its nearest neighbor in live interviews from the 2009 fall meeting of the American Geophysical Union in San Francisco on Monday, Dec. 14, and Tuesday, Dec. 15.

Monday, Dec. 14, 5:30-7 p.m. EST (2:30 - 4 p.m. PST)

"Back to the Moon, With Water." Michael Wargo, NASA Headquarters NASA's most recent missions to the moon have uncovered startling new information, including the confirmation of water in a permanently shadowed crater. The Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter, now circling the moon, also is mapping Earth's dusty satellite in unprecedented detail from many perspectives. NASA's Chief Lunar Scientist Michael Wargo describes what we've discovered this year and previews next directions. To book, contact Grey Hautaluoma at 202-358-0668; grey.hautaluoma-1@nasa.gov

Tuesday, Dec. 15, 5:30-7 p.m. EST (2:30 - 4 p.m. PST)

"Where Has California's Water Gone?" Matthew Rodell, NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center
"Follow the water" has been NASA's mantra in solar system exploration, but what about our home planet? NASA hydrologist Matthew Rodell discusses new findings from the GRACE satellite that show the aquifers in California's Central Valley and the Sierra Nevadas have lost significant water volume since 2003. Rodell can discuss causes and implications of this loss and its impact on California and the U.S. To book, contact Steve Cole at 202-358-0918; stephen.e.cole@nasa.gov

The AGU meeting runs from Monday, Dec. 14, through Friday, Dec. 18, at San Francisco's Moscone Convention Center. NASA scientists and researchers will present a wide range of Earth and space science findings during the meeting.

For more information about NASA presentations at the meeting, visit:

http://www.nasa.gov/topics/earth/agu/index.html

Suzaku Catches Retreat of a Black Hole's Disk

Studies of one of the galaxy's most active black-hole binaries reveal a dramatic change that will help scientists better understand how these systems expel fast-moving particle jets.

Binary systems where a normal star is paired with a black hole often produce large swings in X-ray emission and blast jets of gas at speeds exceeding one-third that of light. What fuels this activity is gas pulled from the normal star, which spirals toward the black hole and piles up in a dense accretion disk.

"When a lot of gas is flowing, the dense disk reaches nearly to the black hole," said John Tomsick at the University of California, Berkeley. "But when the flow is reduced, theory predicts that gas close to the black hole heats up, resulting in evaporation of the innermost part of the disk." Never before have astronomers shown an unambiguous signature of this transformation.

To look for this effect, Tomsick and an international group of astronomers targeted GX 339-4, a low-mass X-ray binary located about 26,000 light-years away in the constellation Ara. There, every 1.7 days, an evolved star no more massive than the sun orbits a black hole estimated at 10 solar masses. With four major outbursts in the past seven years, GX 339-4 is among the most dynamic binaries in the sky.

In September 2008, nineteen months after the system's most recent outburst, the team observed GX 339-4 using the orbiting Suzaku X-ray observatory, which is operated jointly by the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency and NASA. At the same time, the team also observed the system with NASA's Rossi X-ray Timing Explorer satellite.

Instruments on both satellites indicated that the system was faint but in an active state, when black holes are known to produce steady jets. Radio data from the Australia Telescope Compact Array confirmed that GX 339-4's jets were indeed powered up when the satellites observed.

Despite the system's faintness, Suzaku was able to measure a critical X-ray spectral line produced by the fluorescence of iron atoms. "Suzaku's sensitivity to iron emission lines and its ability to measure the shapes of those lines let us see a change in the accretion disk that only happens at low luminosities," said team member Kazutaka Yamaoka at Japan's Aoyama Gakuin University.

X-ray photons emitted from disk regions closest to the black hole naturally experience stronger gravitational effects. The X-rays lose energy and produce a characteristic signal. At its brightest, GX 339-4's X-rays can be traced to within about 20 miles of the black hole. But the Suzaku observations indicate that, at low brightness, the inner edge of the accretion disk retreats as much as 600 miles.

Watch the Geminids Meteor Shower

You can Watch the Geminids Meteor Shower by

http://www.nasa.gov/topics/solarsystem/features/geminids_stream.html.

This is the live feed from the NASA all-sky meteor camera located at the Marshall Space Flight Center. If the sky is clear, you should be able to see a Geminid meteor every couple of minutes on or after 11 PM on Sunday night (December 13). Geminids should also be visible if the sky is clear at the same times on Monday night. Not only are you watching, but so is a computer running special software to detect meteors. Once the software identifies a meteor, it analyzes its path across the sky and saves that video segment to disk. This camera has a twin, located about 100 miles away near Chickamauga, Georgia; each morning the two systems talk to each other and use triangulation to determine the height and speed of any meteor seen by both systems, and from this data, figure out the orbit of the meteor about the Sun.

What You are Hearing:

This "static" you hear is from a ham radio tuned to the video carrier frequency of a low power TV station (55.25 MHz). When a meteor burns up in the atmosphere, it also produces a trail of ionized particles that reflect radio waves. If the meteor is located in the right spot in Huntsville's sky, the signal from the station transmitter is reflected to the radio receiver, and you will hear a "ping" above the static noise. You should be able to hear the meteors even if the sky is cloudy (radio penetrates clouds, whereas light can't).

Space shuttle news : Endeavour's STS-130 Mission

Space shuttle Endeavour will be moved from its hangar to the Vehicle Assembly Building at NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida a day earlier than planned.

First motion from Orbiter Processing Facility-2 to the VAB, is targeted for 1 p.m. EST on Dec. 11, pending good weather and approval from a review meeting scheduled for Friday morning.

Managers moved up the rollover after evaluating Endeavour's processing progress and confirming the change wouldn't adversely affect the team.

Forecasters are calling for possible bad weather on Saturday, so targeting rollover for Friday gives the team additional flexibility to make the move this week.

Once in the VAB, Endeavour will be attached to the waiting solid rocket boosters and external fuel tank for its STS-130 mission to the International Space Station, currently targeted to launch in early February.

Endeavour's STS-130 Mission

Commander George Zamka will lead the STS-130 mission to the International Space Station aboard space shuttle Endeavour. Terry Virts will serve as the pilot. Mission specialists are Nicholas Patrick, Robert Behnken, Stephen Robinson and Kathryn Hire. Virts will be making his first trip to space.

Endeavour will deliver a third connecting module, the Tranquility node, to the station in addition to the seven-windowed Cupola module, which will be used as a control room for robotics. The mission will feature three spacewalks.

Liftoff from NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida is targeted for February 4, 2010 at 5:52 a.m. EST.

Space News : NASA Assessing New Roles for Ailing QuikScat Satellite

NASA mission managers are assessing options for future operations of the venerable QuikScat satellite following the age-related failure of a mechanism that spins the scatterometer antenna. This spinning antenna had been providing near-real-time ocean- surface wind speed and direction data over 90 percent of the global ocean every day.

In recent months, the QuikScat project team has been monitoring a pattern of increasing friction in the bearings that allow the antenna to spin, leading to increased resistance and strain on the motor that turns QuikScat's rotating antenna. This degradation was fully expected, as the spin mechanism was designed to last about 5 years.

After experiencing further difficulties over the weekend, the antenna stopped spinning early today, Nov. 23. The QuikScat spacecraft and scatterometer instrument themselves remain in otherwise good health. Should engineers be unable to restart the antenna, QuikScat will be unable to continue its primary science mission, as the antenna spin is necessary to estimate wind speed and direction and form the wide data swath necessary to obtain nearly global sampling.

Over the coming days, NASA managers will review contingency plans for restarting the antenna and assess options for using the mission in its present degraded state to advance Earth system science in the event the antenna cannot be restarted. For example, degraded scatterometer measurements from QuikScat can still be useful for cross-calibrating the mission's climate data record with measurements from other scatterometers, including the operational EUMETSAT ASCAT instrument, India's recently launched Oceansat-2 and a planned Chinese scatterometer. Specific operational forecasting applications such as polar ice measurements and limited hurricane observations may also be supportable.

Space shuttle news : The Huygens Probe

The Huygens Probe was named after Christiaan Huygens, a Dutch astronomer who in 1655 discovered Titan, Saturn's largest moon. The probe was designed by the European Space Agency (ESA), to perform an in-depth study of the clouds, atmosphere, and surface of Titan.

The Huygens probe will be plunging into a planetary atmosphere farther away from Earth than any other deep space probe has gone before.

Traveling onboard the Cassini orbiter throughout the seven-year journey to Saturn, the probe will undergo a series of in-flight tests and health checks to ensure that all of its instruments are working properly. This is essential, because the distance from Earth is too great to provide signals and commands. This means that the programming of the probe must be precise and work automatically so that valuable data can be communicated back to the orbiter and then back to Earth.

The 319-kilogram (703-pound) Huygens probe will separate from the Cassini orbiter in December of 2004, and will begin a 22-day coast phase toward Titan. Remaining on the Cassini orbiter will be the probe support equipment (PSE), which includes the electronics necessary to track the probe and to recover the data gathered during its descent. Then, in January of 2005, just 45 minutes before reaching the atmosphere of Titan, timers will wake up the Huygens probe.

As it finally enters Titan's atmosphere, three sets of parachutes will slow down the probe and provide a stable platform for scientific measurements. The fully instrumented robotic laboratory will reach the mysterious Titan's surface about two and half hours later.

Mars Odyssey Mission Status Report

NASA's Mars Odyssey orbiter put itself into a safe standby mode on Saturday, Nov. 28, and the team operating the spacecraft has begun implementing careful steps designed to resume Odyssey's science and relay operations within about a week.

Engineers have diagnosed the cause of the Nov. 28 event as the spacecraft's proper response to a memory error with a known source. The likely cause is an upset in the orbiter's "memory error external bus," as was the case with a similar event in June 2008.

In safe mode over the weekend, Odyssey remained in communication with ground controllers and maintained healthy temperatures and power. To clear the memory error, the team commanded Odyssey today to perform a cold reboot of the orbiter's onboard computer. The spacecraft reported that the reboot had been completed successfully.

"This event is a type we have seen before, so we have a known and tested path to resuming normal operations," said Odyssey Project Manager Philip Varghese of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif.

Odyssey has been orbiting Mars since 2001. In addition to its own major scientific discoveries and continuing studies of the planet, the Odyssey mission has played important roles in supporting the missions of the Mars rovers Spirit and Opportunity and the Phoenix Mars Lander.

Until Odyssey is available again as a communications relay, Spirit and Opportunity will be operating with direct communications to and from Earth.

Kennedy Space Center

Earhart's Scarf to Fly Again.

A scarf belonging to famed aviatrix Amelia Earhart will circle the Earth repeatedly as part of the personal cargo being carried into space by the astronauts of space shuttle Atlantis’ STS-129 mission.

Albert Bresnik was a personal photographer to Earhart, and now, astronaut Randy Bresnik is rekindling the family connection. The Marine aviator and first-time space flier received the white, green and red scarf from the 99s Museum of Women Pilots in Oklahoma City, an organization of female pilots that formed with the help of Earhart. Randy Bresnik is also bringing along a photo from the Amelia Earhart Birthplace Museum in Atchison, Kan.

In 1932, Earhart became the first woman to fly solo across the Atlantic Ocean, becoming in the process a prominent and celebrated adventurer. She, along with her navigator, disappeared over the Pacific Ocean five years later while trying to become the first woman to circumnavigate the globe in an airplane.

The remaining crew members of STS-129 have chosen a wide assortment of medals, shirts, patches and even a thumb drive to commemorate their 11-day venture to the International Space Station.

A cycling jersey from Lance Armstrong's LiveStrong Foundation will travel on the flight, completing the distance in seven minutes that Armstrong and the cyclists in the peloton rode in three weeks during the Tour de France. Veteran astronaut Charles O. Hobaugh, also a Marine pilot, commands the mission that will deliver a pair of racks loaded with equipment to the station.

First-time shuttle Pilot Barry E. Wilmore has seen to it that Tennessee Technical University is well-represented in the commemorative assortment known as the Official Flight Kit. The school, which Wilmore graduated from with a master's in electrical engineering, will see a thumb drive, purple and gold placard, gold medallion, and a stuffed-toy eagle make the trip into space aboard space shuttle Atlantis.

The toy eagle will be joined by a stuffed-toy blue spider from the University of Richmond, the alma mater of veteran Mission Specialist Leland Melvin. A football jersey from Melvin's Heritage High School days also will make the trip. Melvin was drafted in 1986 by the NFL's Detroit Lions and took part in training camps with the Dallas Cowboys and Canadian Football League's Toronto Argonauts.

Nasa Space News : The View From Space

The View From Space: Two New Experiments Take Fresh Looks at Earth's Coast, Atmosphere.

They've only been on orbit a couple of months, but two new sensors examining our upper atmosphere and oceans already are demonstrating the International Space Station's value as an Earth science observing platform.

The experiments -- the Hyperspectral Imager for the Coastal Ocean, or HICO, and the Remote Atmospheric and Ionospheric Detection System, or RAIDS -- work in tandem as the HICO and RAIDS Experiment Payload, or HREP. The joint payload is operated by the U.S. Naval Research Laboratory in Washington and its partners.

HICO is the first hyperspectral sensor specifically designed to investigate the coastal ocean and nearby land regions from space. Its imaging shows unique characteristics across the electromagnetic spectrum, including those ranges not visible to the human eye, such as ultraviolet and infrared light.

RAIDS, built jointly by the Naval Research Laboratory and The Aerospace Corporation in El Segundo, Calif., is a hyperspectral sensor suite used to study the Earth's thermosphere and ionosphere -- layers of the atmosphere where the space shuttle and space station orbit. Its eight optical instruments measure the chemistry, composition and temperature of the thermosphere and ionosphere. It also is testing new techniques for remotely sensing these atmospheric regions, which are very difficult to measure, yet very important for understanding the behavior of low-altitude satellites, space junk and sub-orbital rocket systems.

"The instruments take advantage of the space station as a host platform for Earth observation," said Julie Robinson, International Space Station program scientist at the Johnson Space Center in Houston. "The space station was designed to host numerous instruments for looking at Earth and space, providing attachments sites, power and data."

NASA Assessing New Roles for Ailing QuikScat Satellite

NASA mission managers are assessing options for future operations of the venerable QuikScat satellite following the age-related failure of a mechanism that spins the scatterometer antenna. This spinning antenna had been providing near-real-time ocean- surface wind speed and direction data over 90 percent of the global ocean every day.

In recent months, the QuikScat project team has been monitoring a pattern of increasing friction in the bearings that allow the antenna to spin, leading to increased resistance and strain on the motor that turns QuikScat's rotating antenna. This degradation was fully expected, as the spin mechanism was designed to last about 5 years.

After experiencing further difficulties over the weekend, the antenna stopped spinning early today, Nov. 23. The QuikScat spacecraft and scatterometer instrument themselves remain in otherwise good health. Should engineers be unable to restart the antenna, QuikScat will be unable to continue its primary science mission, as the antenna spin is necessary to estimate wind speed and direction and form the wide data swath necessary to obtain nearly global sampling.

Over the coming days, NASA managers will review contingency plans for restarting the antenna and assess options for using the mission in its present degraded state to advance Earth system science in the event the antenna cannot be restarted. For example, degraded scatterometer measurements from QuikScat can still be useful for cross-calibrating the mission's climate data record with measurements from other scatterometers, including the operational EUMETSAT ASCAT instrument, India's recently launched Oceansat-2 and a planned Chinese scatterometer. Specific operational forecasting applications such as polar ice measurements and limited hurricane observations may also be supportable.

By any measure of success, the 10-year-old QuikScat mission is a unique national resource that has achieved and far surpassed its science objectives. Designed for a two-year lifetime, QuikScat has been used around the globe by the world's operational meteorological agencies to improve weather forecasts and identify the location, size and strength of hurricanes and other storms in the open ocean. The mission has also provided critical information for monitoring, modeling, forecasting and researching our atmosphere, ocean and climate.

International Space Station News

After coordinating with Russian flight controllers, International Space Station Flight Director Kwatsi Alibaruho decided Friday night that a Debris Avoidance Maneuver would not be required on Saturday to steer the complex clear of a remnant of a Delta rocket that launched the Stardust mission in February 1999. The rocket body had been moving toward the vicinity of the orbital outpost over the past few days based on tracking by NASA Flight Dynamics and ballistics officers.

Although earlier tracking data indicated that the debris was steadily approaching the station, additional tracking runs on Friday afternoon and Friday evening confirmed that the debris was, in fact, moving further away and would not come any closer than 9 kilometers, or 5 ½ miles of the station, posing no threat.

Flight controllers are now keeping an eye on a second debris source, the remnant of an old Hitchhiker science payload, which tracking picked up on Friday afternoon. This piece of space junk is currently forecast to come within an overall miss distance of about 14 kilometers, or 8.6 miles, around 9:05 a.m. EST on Monday. It is not currently considered enough of a threat to require an avoidance maneuver. If further tracking Saturday shows a greater concern, planning for a maneuver will begin in earnest.

Meanwhile, the departing Expedition 21 crew, Soyuz Commander Roman Romanenko, European Space Agency Flight Engineer Frank De Winne and Canadian Space Agency Flight Engineer Bob Thirsk will spend the weekend preparing their Soyuz TMA-15 spacecraft for its undocking Monday night at 10:56 p.m., heading for a landing in Kazakhstan at 2:16 a.m. Tuesday (1:16 p.m. Kazakhstan time) to conclude their 188 days in space, 186 days on the station.

Expedition Commander Jeff Williams and Flight Engineer Max Suraev will remain on the station after Romanenko, De Winne and Thirsk depart, comprising the new Expedition 22 crew as a two-man contingent for three weeks until the arrival Dec. 23 of Russian cosmonaut Oleg Kotov, NASA's T.J. Creamer, and Soichi Noguchi of the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency, who will launch to the station Dec. 21 on the Soyuz TMA-17 craft.

Space News : NASA Receives Tranquility

The last major component set to be added to the International Space Station, the Node 3 module known as Tranquility, was officially transferred from the European Space Agency to NASA during a ceremony Nov. 20.

Inside the cavernous Space Station Processing Facility at NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida, officials from the two cooperating space agencies took the opportunity to reflect on the nearly completed station and its role in future space exploration.

"Station is truly a phenomenal engineering accomplishment, but as important as all that hardware is on orbit, what it really is, it’s the unity of all of us as partners," said Bob Cabana, Kennedy's director and a former astronaut who commanded the first space station construction mission. "All those different cultures coming together and working together as one for the betterment of not just our own countries, but our world, and preparing us to go beyond low Earth orbit to explore in space."

The pressurized node will provide additional room for crew members and many of the space station's life support and environmental control systems already on board. These systems include air revitalization, oxygen generation and water recycling. A waste and hygiene compartment and a treadmill also will be relocated from other areas of the station.

"ISS is the first necessary step in human's exploration beyond low Earth orbit," echoed Michael Suffredini, NASA's program manager for the International Space Station. "That's what the ISS was built to start, and that's what the ISS is now ready to do."

Tranquility was built for NASA by Thales Alenia Space in Turin, Italy, under contract to the European Space Agency. The module was part of ESA's barter agreement for which NASA delivered the Columbus laboratory to the station.

"The goal of tomorrow is to use this station, this beautiful achievement, to the maximum extent," said Bernardo Patti, head of the European Space Agency's space station program. "Now the ISS is becoming a full development program and it will be used as a platform to support an exploration program. We have all the ingredients to make that a success. We have the talent, we have the experience, and we have all the passion and the ideas."

Nasa Space News

NASA Pushes Social Media Experience to New Heights.

NASA launched a social media experience at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida that quickly turned into an unprecedented world-wide event as more than 100 Twitter users got a unique look inside America's space program and front row seats to the Nov. 16 liftoff of the space shuttle Atlantis.

People from as far away as New Zealand participated in Kennedy's first Tweetup, an event where bloggers meet face-to-face and share their experiences in 140 character online bursts. During the two-day event Twitter users, or Tweeps, took behind-the-scenes tours of Kennedy, spoke at length with NASA astronauts, technicians, engineers and managers, and saw a launch from the vantage point usually reserved for more traditional media.

"We were very excited by the extraordinary number of people from all over the world who participated," said Lori Garver, NASA's deputy administrator. "NASA will continue to evolve with the social media environment and look for new ways to engage the public and spread the word about the tremendous things we do."

The Tweetup, identified by the search term #nasatweetup, was the third highest trending topic Nov. 15 on the social networking service. The micro-blogs, or tweets, are text-based Internet posts that are delivered to the author's subscribers. The more than 100 people in attendance had over 150,000 followers. As people share and forward the information, the potential online reach could be in the millions.

People from 21 states and the District of Columbia attended, as did guests who flew from Canada, England, Morocco and New Zealand. Participants ranged in age from 18 to more than 60, with most being under age 40. NASA Television also streamed video of Tweetup events online where more than 7,500 viewers watched the events prior to launch.

"The way people are communicating and receiving information is undergoing a global revolution," said Morrie Goodman, NASA's assistant administrator for Public Affairs. "NASA is a recognized leader in adopting social media and this is another exciting 'first' for the agency."

NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory held the first NASA Tweetup on Jan. 21. NASA Headquarters held its first Tweetup on July 21, followed by another from Headquarters Sept. 24 that featured the STS-127 space shuttle crew. On Oct. 21, NASA held a smaller Tweetup, allowing 35 Tweeps to talk with Nicole Stott and Jeff Williams aboard the International Space Station via a live downlink.

Aviation Pioneer Richard T. Whitcomb

Aviation pioneer Richard Whitcomb has died in Newport News at the age of 88. The NASA Langley Research Center engineer has been called the most significant aerodynamic contributor of the second half of the 20^th century.

If you look at almost any large airplane today -- especially those that fly at supersonic speeds -- you can see the genius of Dick Whitcomb.

"Dick Whitcomb's intellectual fingerprints are on virtually every commercial aircraft flying today," said Tom Crouch, noted aviation historian at the Smithsonian Institution. "It's fair to say he was the most important aerodynamic contributor in the second half of the century of flight."

Born in Illinois in 1921, Richard Travis Whitcomb was the son and grandson of engineers. He grew up in Worcester, Mass., building model airplanes, in an era when aviation pioneers such as Charles Lindbergh were household names.

His interest in aeronautics continued into college at Worcester Polytechnic Institute, where he joined the aeronautics club and spent a lot of time in the school's wind tunnel.

Whitcomb came to what is now NASA's Langley Research Center in Hampton, Va., in 1943, during World War II, right after graduating with a Bachelor of Science in mechanical engineering and highest honors.

It was a busy time for aeronautical engineers working to improve America's military air superiority and Whitcomb dived right in. In less than a decade he tackled and solved one of the biggest challenges of the day -- how to achieve practical, efficient transonic and supersonic flight.

In interviews over the years Whitcomb told how he was sitting one day with his feet up on his desk when he had a "Eureka!" moment and came up with what is known as the Whitcomb area rule. He theorized the shape of the fuselage could be changed to reduce the aircraft shock wave drag that occurs near the speed of sound. The basic idea was to ensure a smooth cross sectional area distribution between the front and back of the plane. "We built airplane models with Coke bottle-shaped fuselages and lo and behold the drag of the wing just disappeared," said Whitcomb. "The wind tunnel showed it worked perfectly."

Cassini's Big Sky: The View from the Center of Our Solar System

• NASA's Cassini spacecraft is helping to rewrite our understanding of the shape of our solar system as it moves through the local Milky Way galaxy.
• Previous models pictured our solar system as having a comet-like appearance. The new results suggest a picture more like a bubble.
• Cassini scientists created an image from this exotic region of space by detecting particles known as energetic neutral atoms.
• It complements data collected by NASA's Interstellar Boundary Explorer.

When NASA's Cassini spacecraft began orbiting Saturn five years ago, a dozen highly-tuned science instruments set to work surveying, sniffing, analyzing and scrutinizing the Saturnian system.

But Cassini recently revealed new data that appeared to overturn the decades-old belief that our solar system resembled a comet in shape as it moves through the interstellar medium (the matter between stars in our corner of the Milky Way galaxy).

Instead, the new results suggest our heliosphere more closely resembles a bubble - or a rat - being eaten by a boa constrictor: as the solar system passes through the "belly" of the snake, the ribs, which mimic the local interstellar magnetic field, expand and contract as the rat passes. An animation is available here http://photojournal.jpl.nasa.gov/catalog/PIA12310.

"At first I was incredulous," said Tom Krimigis, principal investigator of the Magnetospheric Imaging Instrument (MIMI) at Johns Hopkins University's Applied Physics Laboratory in Laurel, Md. "The first thing I thought was, 'What's wrong with our data?'"

Krimigis and his colleagues on the instrument team published the Cassini findings in the Nov. 13 issue of the journal Science, which featured complementary results from NASA's Interstellar Boundary Explorer (IBEX). Together, the results create the first map of the heliosphere and its thick outer layer known as the heliosheath, where solar wind streaming out from the sun gets heated and slowed as it interacts with the interstellar medium.

NASA and Microsoft Allow Earthlings to Become Martians

NASA and Microsoft Corp. of Redmond, Wash., have collaborated to create a Web site where Internet users can have fun while advancing their knowledge of Mars.

Drawing on observations from NASA's Mars missions, the "Be a Martian" Web site will enable the public to participate as citizen scientists to improve Martian maps, take part in research tasks, and assist Mars science teams studying data about the Red Planet.

"We're at a point in history where everyone can be an explorer," said Doug McCuistion, director of the Mars Exploration Program at NASA Headquarters in Washington. "With so much data coming back from Mars missions that are accessible by all, exploring Mars has become a shared human endeavor. People worldwide can expand the specialized efforts of a few hundred Mars mission team members and make authentic contributions of their own."

Participants will be able to explore details of the solar system's grandest canyon, which resides on Mars. Users can call up images in the Valles Marineris canyon before moving on to chart the entire Red Planet. The collaboration of thousands of participants could assist scientists in producing far better maps, smoother zoom-in views, and make for easier interpretation of Martian surface changes.

By counting craters, the public also may help scientists determine the relative ages of small regions on Mars. In the past, counting Martian craters has posed a challenge because of the vast numbers involved. By contributing, Web site users will win game points assigned to a robotic animal avatar they select.

With a common goal of inspiring digital-age workforce development and life-long learning in science, technology, engineering and mathematics, NASA and Microsoft unveiled the Web site at the Microsoft Professional Developers Conference in Los Angeles this week. The site also beckons software developers to win prizes for creating tools that provide access to and analysis of hundreds of thousands of Mars images for online, classroom and Mars mission team use.

"Industry leaders like NASA and Microsoft have a social responsibility as well as a vested interest in advancing science and technology education," said Walid Abu-Hadba, corporate vice president of the Developer and Platform Evangelism Group at Microsoft. "We are excited to be working with NASA to provide new opportunities to engage with Mars mission data, and to help spark interest and excitement among the next generation of scientists and technologists."

NASA's Wise Gets Ready to Survey the Whole Sky

NASA's Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer, or Wise, is chilled out, sporting a sunshade and getting ready to roll. NASA's newest spacecraft is scheduled to roll to the pad on Friday, Nov. 20, its last stop before launching into space to survey the entire sky in infrared light.

Wise is scheduled to launch no earlier than 6:09 a.m. PST (9:09 a.m. EST) on Dec. 9 from Vandenberg Air Force Base in California. It will circle Earth over the poles, scanning the entire sky one-and-a-half times in nine months. The mission will uncover hidden cosmic objects, including the coolest stars, dark asteroids and the most luminous galaxies."The eyes of Wise are a vast improvement over those of past infrared surveys," said Edward "Ned" Wright, the principal investigator for the mission at UCLA. "We will find millions of objects that have never been seen before."

The mission will map the entire sky at four infrared wavelengths with sensitivity hundreds to hundreds of thousands of times greater than its predecessors, cataloging hundreds of millions of objects. The data will serve as navigation charts for other missions, pointing them to the most interesting targets. NASA's Hubble and Spitzer Space Telescopes, the European Space Agency's Herschel Space Observatory, and NASA's upcoming Sofia and James Webb Space Telescope will follow up on Wise finds.

"This is an exciting time for space telescopes," said Jon Morse, NASA's Astrophysics Division director at NASA Headquarters in Washington. "Many of the telescopes will work together, each contributing different pieces to some of the most intriguing puzzles in our universe."

Visible light is just one slice of the universe's electromagnetic rainbow. Infrared light, which humans can't see, has longer wavelengths and is good for seeing objects that are cold, dusty or far away. In our solar system, Wise is expected to find hundreds of thousands of cool asteroids, including hundreds that pass relatively close to Earth's path. Wise's infrared measurements will provide better estimates of asteroid sizes and compositions -- important information for understanding more about potentially hazardous impacts on Earth.

Atlantis on the Way to the Station

Space shuttle Atlantis lifted off from Kennedy Space Center, Fla., at 2:28 p.m. EST Monday, beginning STS-129, the 31st shuttle flight to the International Space Station.

Expedition 21 Commander Frank De Winne and Flight Engineers Robert Thirsk, Roman Romanenko, Nicole Stott, Maxim Suraev and Jeffrey Williams are making final preparations for Atlantis’s arrival, set for Wednesday.

The STS-129 mission will focus on storing spare hardware on the exterior of the station. The 11-day flight will include three spacewalks and the installation of two platforms to the station’s truss, or backbone.

The platforms will hold spare parts to sustain station operations after the shuttles are retired. This equipment is large and can only be transported using the unique capability of the shuttle.

The mission also will return station crew member Nicole Stott to Earth and is slated to be the final space shuttle crew rotation flight.

Students Send Microbe Experiment on Space Shuttle Atlantis

An experiment by college students that will study how microbes grow in microgravity is heading to orbit aboard space shuttle Atlantis.

Undergraduate and graduate students at Texas Southern University in Houston developed the experiment that will fly as part of the STS-129 mission. The mission is scheduled to launch at 2:28 p.m. EST on Nov. 16 from NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida.

"I'm thrilled that giving students the chance to design and research an experiment to fly in space is one of the tools we have at NASA to engage them in science, technology, engineering and mathematics," NASA Deputy Administrator Lori B. Garver said." These young people are our future, and providing an opportunity to inspire them is a major part of our mission at NASA."

NASA's Office of Education selected Texas Southern University as a 2008 University Research Center. Texas Southern established a Center for Bio-nanotechnology and Environmental Research. Students at the center developed the Microbial-1 experiment to evaluate the morphological and molecular changes in E. coli and B. subtilis bacteria.

"The University Research Center Project is designed to enhance the research infrastructure and capacity at minority institutions," said Katrina Emery, NASA's University Research Center project manager at the agency's Dryden Flight Research Center in Edwards, Calif. "By engaging in participatory learning opportunities like this experiment, students can see themselves as researchers, now and in the future."

This space shuttle flight experiment is a proof-of-concept model for the URC project to give students hands-on experience. The experiment provides the university students the opportunity to design, monitor and execute the study in laboratories, as well as near real-time on the space shuttle. Each component of the experiment is designed for easy reproduction in the classroom, providing a valuable experience to students.

"This is an amazing opportunity for our students, and it reflects the growing quality of our research programs at Texas Southern," said John M. Rudley, president of Texas Southern University. "We are excited our students have the opportunity to participate in such relevant research. We are also pleased that with our partnerships with area school districts, we are able to take these projects beyond the university to the school classrooms to encourage more students to study science, math, and technology."

The View From Space: Two New Experiments Take Fresh Looks at Earth's Coast, Atmosphere

They've only been on orbit a couple of months, but two new sensors examining our upper atmosphere and oceans already are demonstrating the International Space Station's value as an Earth science observing platform.

The experiments -- the Hyperspectral Imager for the Coastal Ocean, or HICO, and the Remote Atmospheric and Ionospheric Detection System, or RAIDS -- work in tandem as the HICO and RAIDS Experiment Payload, or HREP. The joint payload is operated by the U.S. Naval Research Laboratory in Washington and its partners.

HICO is the first hyperspectral sensor specifically designed to investigate the coastal ocean and nearby land regions from space. Its imaging shows unique characteristics across the electromagnetic spectrum, including those ranges not visible to the human eye, such as ultraviolet and infrared light.

RAIDS, built jointly by the Naval Research Laboratory and The Aerospace Corporation in El Segundo, Calif., is a hyperspectral sensor suite used to study the Earth's thermosphere and ionosphere -- layers of the atmosphere where the space shuttle and space station orbit. Its eight optical instruments measure the chemistry, composition and temperature of the thermosphere and ionosphere. It also is testing new techniques for remotely sensing these atmospheric regions, which are very difficult to measure, yet very important for understanding the behavior of low-altitude satellites, space junk and sub-orbital rocket systems.

The instruments take advantage of the space station as a host platform for Earth observation," said Julie Robinson, International Space Station program scientist at the Johnson Space Center in Houston. "The space station was designed to host numerous instruments for looking at Earth and space, providing attachments sites, power and data."

New Celestial Map Gives Directions for GPS

Many of us have been rescued from unfamiliar territory by directions from a Global Positioning System (GPS) navigator. GPS satellites send signals to a receiver in your GPS navigator, which calculates your position based on the location of the satellites and your distance from them. The distance is determined by how long it took the signals from various satellites to reach your receiver. The system works well, and millions rely on it every day, but what tells the GPS satellites where they are in the first place?

"For GPS to work, the orbital position, or ephemeris, of the satellites has to be known very precisely," said Dr. Chopo Ma of NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md. "In order to know where the satellites are, you have to know the orientation of the Earth very precisely."

This is not as obvious as simply looking at the Earth – space is not conveniently marked with lines to determine our planet's position. Even worse, "everything is always moving," says Ma. Earth wobbles as it rotates due to the gravitational pull (tides) from the moon and the sun. Even apparently minor things like shifts in air and ocean currents and motions in Earth's molten core all influence our planet's orientation.

Just as you can use landmarks to find your place in a strange city, astronomers use landmarks in space to position the Earth. Stars seem the obvious candidate, and they were used throughout history to navigate on Earth. "However, for the extremely precise measurements needed for things like GPS, stars won't work, because they are moving too," says Ma.

What is needed are objects so remote that their motion is not detectable. Only a couple classes of objects fit the bill, because they also need to be bright enough to be seen over incredible distances. Things like quasars, which are typically brighter than a billion suns, can be used. Many scientists believe these objects are powered by giant black holes feeding on nearby gas. Gas trapped in the black hole's powerful gravity is compressed and heated to millions of degrees, giving off intense light and/or radio energy.

Most quasars lurk in the outer reaches of the cosmos, over a billion light years away, and are therefore distant enough to appear stationary to us. For comparison, a light year, the distance light travels in a year, is almost six trillion miles. Our entire galaxy, consisting of hundreds of billions of stars, is about 100,000 light years across.

A collection of remote quasars, whose positions in the sky are precisely known, forms a map of celestial landmarks in which to orient the Earth. The first such map, called the International Celestial Reference Frame (ICRF), was completed in 1995. It was made over four years using painstaking analysis of observations on the positions of about 600 objects.

Space Shuttle Mission: STS-129

Atlantis and Crew Prepare for Flight

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.

Atlantis will launch on the STS-129 mission at 2:28 p.m. EST Nov. 16.

Hurricane Season 2009: Hurricane Ida (Western Caribbean)

Tropical Depression Ida was raining over eastern Honduras. The National Hurricane Center's forecast track brings Ida out into the western Caribbean and then near Mexico's Yucatan Peninsula over the weekend before taking it into the Gulf of Mexico.

By mid-week next week, Ida is expected to transform into an extra-tropical storm. Right now, the forecast track brings Ida in the direction of Florida's west coast, so residents there should be on guard.

At 10 a.m. ET on Friday, November 6, the airport at Puerto Lempira, Honduras reported rain with calm winds. Roatan also reported calm winds, but no rain and just overcast skies. A number of other cities and towns were also just reporting overcast skies, such as Amapala, Catacamas, Nueva Ocotepeque, Tela and Yoro.

Satellite imagery shows why those locations aren't reporting any rain. A visible satellite image from the Geostationary Operational Environmental Satellite, GOES-11 at 10 a.m. ET showed most of the clouds and rainfall associated with Ida are located to the northwest, north and northeast of the center of Ida's circulation. At 10 a.m. ET, the government of Honduras discontinued the tropical storm watch for the coast of Honduras from the Nicaragua/Honduras border to Limon.

At 10 a.m. ET, Tropical Depression Ida's maximum sustained winds remain near 35 mph, and some re-strengthening is expected after the center moves back over water. Ida's center was located near latitude 15.0 north...longitude 84.0 west or about 55 miles west of Cabo Gracias a Dios on the Nicaragua/Honduras border. Ida is moving north near 7 mph.

Ida is expected to turn north-northwest on Saturday, November 7 (because of a ridge of high pressure building in over the central Caribbean Sea) as it emerges in the northwestern Caribbean Sea. It is then forecast to brush past the Yucatan Peninsula bringing gusty winds and rains there on Sunday as it continues to move north.

Over the weekend, U.S. residents along the Gulf of Mexico should keep updated on the whereabouts and intensity of Ida as she makes her way north. Storm updates over the weekend can be found at the National Hurricane Center's Web site: http://www.nhc.noaa.gov.

Carbon Atmosphere Discovered on Neutron Star

Evidence for a thin veil of carbon has been found on the neutron star in the Cassiopeia A supernova remnant. This discovery, made with NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory, resolves a ten-year mystery surrounding this object.

"The compact star at the center of this famous supernova remnant has been an enigma since its discovery," said Wynn Ho of the University of Southampton and lead author of a paper that appears in the latest issue of Nature. "Now we finally understand that it can be produced by a hot neutron star with a carbon atmosphere."

By analyzing Chandra's X-ray spectrum -- akin to a fingerprint of energy -- and applying it to theoretical models, Ho and his colleague Craig Heinke, from the University of Alberta, determined that the neutron star in Cassiopeia A, or Cas A for short, has an ultra-thin coating of carbon. This is the first time the composition of an atmosphere of an isolated neutron star has been confirmed.

The Chandra "First Light" image of Cas A in 1999 revealed a previously undetected point-like source of X-rays at the center. This object was presumed to be a neutron star, the typical remnant of an exploded star, but researchers were unable to understand its properties. Defying astronomers' expectations, this object did not show any X-ray or radio pulsations or any signs of radio pulsar activity.

By applying a model of a neutron star with a carbon atmosphere to this object, Ho and Heinke found that the region emitting X-rays would uniformly cover a typical neutron star. This would explain the lack of X-ray pulsations because -- like a lightbulb that shines consistently in all directions -- this neutron star would be unlikely to display any changes in its intensity as it rotates.

Scientists previously have used a neutron star model with a hydrogen atmosphere giving a much smaller emission area, corresponding to a hot spot on a typical neutron star, which should produce X-ray pulsations as it rotates. Interpreting the hydrogen atmosphere model without pulsations would require a tiny size, consistent only with exotic stars made of strange quark matter.

"Our carbon veil solves one of the big questions about the neutron star in Cas A," said Craig Heinke. "People have been willing to consider some weird explanations, so it's a relief to discover a less peculiar solution."

Unlike most astronomical objects, neutron stars are small enough to understand on a human scale. For example, neutron stars typically have a diameter of about 14 miles, only slightly longer than a half-marathon. The atmosphere of a neutron star is on an even smaller scale. The researchers calculate that the carbon atmosphere is only about 4 inches thick, because it has been compressed by a surface gravity that is 100 billion times stronger than on Earth.

Successful Flight Through Enceladus Plume

The Cassini spacecraft has weathered the Monday, Nov. 2, flyby of Saturn's moon Enceladus in good health and has been sending images and data of the encounter back to Earth. Cassini had approached Enceladus more closely before, but this passage took the spacecraft on its deepest plunge yet through the heart of the plume shooting out from the south polar region. Scientists are eagerly sifting through the results.

In an unprocessed image (top right), sunlight brightens a crescent curve along the edge of Enceladus and highlights the moon's misty plume. The image was captured by Cassini's narrow-angle camera as the spacecraft passed about 190,000 kilometers (120,000 miles) over the moon.

A second raw image (bottom right) appears to show separate jets spewing from the moon. This image was taken from approximately 330,000 kilometers (200,000 miles) away.

At its closest point on Nov. 2, Cassini flew about 100 kilometers (60 miles) above the surface of Enceladus.

Since the discovery of the plume in 2005, scientists have been captivated by the enigmatic jets. Previous flybys detected water vapor, sodium and organic molecules, but scientists need to know more about the plume's composition and density to characterize the source, possibly a liquid ocean under the moon's icy surface. It would also help them determine whether Enceladus has the conditions necessary for life.

Mission managers did extensive studies to make sure the spacecraft could fly safely through the plumes and not use an excessive amount of propellant.

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.