Experiment Designed to Reveal Universe's Origin Makes Last Stop on Earth

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Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer Makes Last Stop on Earth
A new experiment designed to reveal the origin and structure of the universe has reached its last stop on Earth before it’s set to ride into orbit aboard space shuttle Endeavour early next year.

The long-awaited Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer-2 (AMS) arrived Aug. 26 at NAhttp://nasa-spacestation-info.blogspot.com/SA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida, secured in the belly of a U.S. Air Force C-5M cargo plane that arrived at the launch center with a late-morning touchdown on the shuttle's runway.

Nobel Prize-winning physicist Samuel Ting of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology nurtured AMS from concept to reality.

"I'm very pleased to be here," Ting said as he waited for the experiment's arrival. He was joined at the runway by several members of the international AMS team and the STS-134 astronaut crew.

Boasting a large magnet and state-of-the-art particle detector, AMS will use its lofty vantage point on the International Space Station's main truss to measure cosmic rays with unprecedented sensitivity and accuracy. In addition to a better understanding of cosmic radiation -- a major challenge of long-duration spaceflight -- the instrument could uncover evidence of mysterious dark matter or missing antimatter, discoveries that would help answer lingering questions about the universe and its beginnings.

"Over the last 50 years, all our knowledge about space has come from measuring light rays," Ting explained. "Hubble Telescope is a good example. But besides light rays, there are charged particles: electrons, positrons, protons, antiprotons, helium, and antihelium."

Ting and his scientific team believe that the best chance to detect these particles is in space, before they have hit Earth's atmosphere.

"And because it carries a charge, you need a magnet," he added.

Because AMS is the first experiment of its kind to fly in space for a long period of time, anything learned from it will be new knowledge.

"Nobody has really measured the charged-particle field precisely," Ting said. "So you enter into a new field."

The AMS instrument will be installed on the space station's main truss during the STS-134 mission, scheduled to be the last flight for space shuttle Endeavour. Led by Commander Mark Kelly, the mission's crew also comprises Pilot Gregory H. “Box” Johnson and Mission Specialists Michael Fincke, Greg Chamitoff, Andrew Feustel and European Space Agency astronaut Rhttp://nasa-spacestation-info.blogspot.com/oberto Vittori.

AMS is expected to operate for the rest of the station's life, at least 10 years.

"It's a really neat design and as an astronaut, I appreciate the elegance of it," said Fincke. During the flight, the Endeavour astronauts will use the shuttle's robotic arm to remove AMS from the payload bay and hand it off to the station's arm.


"We're going to put it right on the space station. No bolts required, no human intervention," he explained. "Box Johnson's going to hit a couple buttons, and it's going to be captured automatically. The two umbilicals for power and data are going to stretch right in, and it'll be up and running."

Sponsored by the Department of Energy, AMS-2 was developed by an international team of 56 scientific institutions from 16 countries. The roughly 15,000-pound experiment was built and tested at the European Laboratory for Particle Physics, or CERN, in Switzerland.

"NASA's extremely excited to have AMS on board the International Space Station, because we think that it is a perfect experiment for the International Space Station," said Trent Martin, AMS project manager for the agency's Johnson Space Center in Houston.

"It shows you can bring together 500 physicists, engineers and technicians into a collaboration, build an experiment, launch it to the International Space Station, operate it for an extended period of time and hopefully get extremely exciting data that tells us something about the origins of the universe," Martin said.

Several members of the international AMS team gathered at the runway, excited to see the product of so many years of hard work finally on the ground at Kennedy. A cheer, followed by the clicking of camera shutters, met the cargo plane as it rolled onto the runway's parking apron for offloading.

Still in its packing crate, the 15-foot-wide, 13-foot-tall experiment was carefully removed from the cargo plane and transported to Kennedy's Space Station Processing Facility, where it will undergo final testing and integration before it's deemed ready to fly.
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"We have our online testing that we have to do, which is basically making sure it works with the space station, making sure it can talk to the orbiter," said Joe Delai, payload mission manager for STS-134. "That should bring us to about the end of October, and in between October and February, the AMS folks will be calibrating their sensors. Then, we're ready for launch in February."

That's a sentiment shared by the entire team, including the STS-134 astronauts, who will have trained for this mission for about a year and a half when Endeavour is targeted to launch in February 2011.

"It's fitting that on its (Endeavour's) last assembly mission, the space station is going to be complete," STS-134 Commander Mark Kelly said. "It's Important to note it's going to be completed with a very complex and, hopefully, very successful physics experiment. We look forward to seeing the results that Dr. Ting is going to produce over the next decade."

NASA Satellites and Station Astronauts See Hurricanes in the Atlantic

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Danielle and Earl Dueling in the Atlantic: Earl Threat to U.S. East Coast

NASA Satellites and Station Astronauts See Hurricanes in the Atlantic,
Danielle and Earl are both spinning around in the Atlantic Ocean and NASA's Terra satellite captured one image of both storms at the same time, one in the Caribbean and the other approaching the North Atlantic Ocean. Both are expected to impact land.

Danielle is transitioning to an extra-tropical storm in the northern Atlantic and may impact southern Greenland. Before Earl reached hurricane status NASA's GRIP Hurricane Mission researchers flew out to analyze the storm. Earl is now threatening the U.S. east coast and earlier today, August 30, he became a major hurricane.
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The Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) instrument that flies aboard NASA's Terra satellite captured a stunning image of the large Hurricane Danielle and the smaller, less organized Hurricane Earl, far to Danielle's south. In the image, Danielle's eye can be seen, despite some high clouds filling in most of it. An eye is not visible in Earl, however. The image shows the western edge of Earl affecting the Leeward Islands when this image was captured on August 29 at 10:20 a.m. EDT.

Danielle started causing problems for U.S. east coast residents this weekend with large waves and dangerous surf conditions. News reports indicated that more than 100 people were rescued from dangerous currents in beaches from Maryland to New Jersey over the weekend. Large waves and dangerous surf conditions are diminishing around Bermuda today, and will gradually subside along the U.S. east coast over the next couple of days. Waves near 10 feet however are expected to develop this afternoon along parts of Newfoundland, Canada as Danielle tracks northward.

At 11 a.m. EDT on August 30, Danielle's maximum sustained winds were near 75 mph, and it is expected to weaken in the next 48 hours and become extratropical. The center of Hurricane Danielle was located near latitude 40.9 north and longitude 50.7 west. Danielle is moving toward the northeast near 16 mph and is expected to speed up in this direction. The National Hurricane Center noted that Danielle will still remain a large and powerful cyclone over the far north Atlantic for the next two days. Tropical Storm force winds extend out from Danielle's center up to 310 miles, making this monster storm up to 620 miles in diameter!

As Danielle continues north and heads toward Greenland, Hurricane Earl has the residents of the U.S. East coast on watch. Earl reached hurricane strength as it approached the northern Leeward Islands on August 29 and NASA researchers were there collecting data.

NASA's Genesis and Rapid Intensification Processes (GRIP) experiment is a NASA Earth science field mission that's happening now out of Fort Lauderdale, Florida using three aircraft, 15 instruments and NASA satellites to better understand how tropical storms form and develop into major hurricanes.http://nasa-spacestation-info.blogspot.com/

NASA's DC-8 aircraft left Fort Lauderdale at 10:05 a.m. EDT on Saturday heading for St. Croix for a multi-day deployment that targeted (at that time) Tropical Storm Earl. Science missions to Earl were planned for Sunday and Monday in close support of operations being flown by NOAA aircraft. On Sunday, August 29, the DC-8 completed an 8.5-hour science flight over (then) Hurricane Earl west of St. Croix. The research aircraft flew at altitudes of 33,000 feet and 37,000 feet and descended to 7,000 feet northwest of the storm area to collect measurements of atmospheric aerosols. The flight originated in St. Croix but diverted to land in Fort Lauderdale, Fla., due to the degrading weather forecast for St. Croix associated with the approaching hurricane.

Early on August 30 at 0535 UTC (1:35 a.m. EDT), NASA's Atmospheric Infrared Sounder (AIRS) that flies on the Aqua satellite captured an infrared image that showed a very large area of powerful convection and strong, high thunderstorms (as cold as -63 Fahrenheit) that take up most of Hurricane Earl's center as it was moving through the Northern Leeward Islands and headed to Puerto Rico.

Later in the morning after NASA's Aqua satellite passed over Earl, it became a major hurricane (Category 3) with maximum sustained winds near 120 mph. Hurricane Earl was already impacting many islands and hurricane warnings are in effect. Earl's center was about 95 miles east-northeast of St. Thomas and 165 miles east of San Juan, Puerto Rico near 18.7 North and 63.6 West. It was moving west-northwest near 15 mph, and had a minimum central pressure of 960 millibars.

A hurricane warning is in effect for Anguilla, Saint Martin and Saint Barthelemy, St. Maarten, Saba, and St. Eustatius, the British Virgin Islands, the U.S. Virgin Islands and the Phttp://nasa-spacestation-info.blogspot.com/uerto Rican Islands of Culebra and Vieques. A Hurricane Watch is in effect for Puerto Rico. A tropical storm warning is in effect for Antigua, Barbuda, Montserrat, St. Kitts, and Nevis and Puerto Rico. A tropical storm watch is in effect for Turks and Caicos Islands.

The National Hurricane Center noted this morning, "Hurricane conditions will be spreading across the northern Virgin Islands during the next few hours. Tropical storm conditions will spread over portions of Puerto Rico this afternoon with Hurricane conditions possible this evening and tonight. Storm surge will raise water levels by as much as 3 to 5 feet above ground level primarily near the coast in areas of onshore wind within the hurricane warning area...and 1 to 3 feet in the tropical storm warning area. The surge will be accompanied by large and dangerous battering waves. Earl is expected to produce total rainfall accumulations of 4 to 8 inches over the Leeward Islands, The Virgin Islands and Puerto Rico with possible isolated maximum amounts of 12 inches especially over higher elevations."




Artemis Spacecraft First to Enter New Type of Orbit

The full Moon yesterday evening helped light the way for NASA's ARTEMIS-P1 to become the first spacecraft successfully placed into an Earth-Moon libration orbit.

At 12:33 a.m. on August 25 NASA engineers, in association with the University of Berkeley Space Sciences Laboratory operations facility, performed a propulsion maneuver to capture ARTEMIS-P1 into the Earth-Moon L2 Lagrangian point, located on the far side of the Moon from Earth about 38,100 miles (61,300 km) above the lunar surface. The orbit is unique because it relies on a precise balancing of the Sun, Earth, and Moon’s gravity.

In October, its sister spacecraft – ARTEMIS-P2 – will be captured into the Earth-Moon L1 Lagrangian point located between the Earth and Moon.

Tracing the Big Picture of Mars' Atmosphere

Tracing the Big Picture of Mars' Atmosphere: One of the instruments on a 2016 mission to orbit Mars will provide daily maps of global, pole-to-pole, vertical distributions of the temperature, dust, water vapor and ice clouds in the Martian atmosphere.

The joint European-American mission, ExoMars Trace Gas Orbiter, will seek faint gaseous clues about possible life on Mars. This instrument, called the ExoMars Climate Sounder, will supply crucial context with its daily profiling of the atmosphere's changing structure. The European Space Agency and NASA have selected five instruments for ExoMars Trace Gas Orbiter. The European Space Agency will provide one instrument and the spacecraft. NASA will provide four instruments, including ExoMars Climate Sounder, which is coming from NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif.

Two of the other selected instruments are spectrometers -- one each from Europe and the United States -- designed to detect very low concentrations of methane and other important trace gases in the Martian atmosphere.

"To put the trace-gas measurements into context, you need to know the background structure and circulation of the atmosphere," said JPL's Tim Schofield, principal investigator for the ExoMars Climate Sounder. "We will provide the information needed to understand the distribution of trace gases identified by the spectrometers. We'll do this by characterizing the role of atmospheric circulation and aerosols, such as dust and ice, in trace-gas transport and in chemical reactions in the atmosphere affecting trace gases."

The ExoMars Climate Sounder is an infrared radiometer designed to operate continuously, day and night, from the spacecraft's orbit about 400 kilometers (about 250 miles) above the Martian surface. It can pivot to point downward or toward the horizon, measuring temperature, water vapor, dust and ices for each 5-kilometer (3-mile) increment in height throughout the atmosphere from ground level to 90 kilometers (56 miles) altitude.

Schofield and his international team have two other main goals for the investigation, besides aiding in interpretation of trace-gas detections.

One is to extend the climate mapping record currently coming from a similar instrument, the Mars Climate Sounder, on NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, which has been working at Mars since 2006. The orbital geometry of the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter mission enables this sounder to record atmospheric profiles only at about 3 p.m. and 3 a.m. during the Martian day, except near the poles. The ExoMars Trace Gas Orbiter will fly an orbital pattern that allows the spacecraft to collect data at all times of day, at all latitudes. "We'll fill in information about variability at different times of day, and we'll add to the number of Mars years for understanding year-to-year variability," said Schofield. "The most obvious year-to-year change is that some years have global dust storms and others don't. We'd like to learn whether there's anything predictive for anticipating the big dust storms, and what makes them so variable from year to year."

A third research goal is to assist future landings on Mars by supplying information about the variable density of the atmosphere. At a chosen landing site, atmospheric density can change from one day to the next, affecting a spacecraft's descent.

"We want to provide background climatology for what to expect at a given site, in a given season, for a particular time of day, and also nearly real-time information for the atmospheric structure in the days leading up to the landing of a spacecraft launched after 2016," said Schofield.

The 2016 ExoMars Trace Gas Orbiter is the first in a series of planned Mars mission collaborations of the European Space Agency and NASA. A variable presence of small amounts of methane in the Martian atmosphere has been indicated from orbital and Earth-based observations. A key goal of the mission is to gain a better understanding of methane and other trace gases that could be evidence about possible biological activity. Methane can be produced both biologically and without life.

Besides the two spectrometers and the climate sounder, the orbiter's selected instruments include two NASA-provided imagers: a high-resolution, stereo, color imager, and a wide-angle, color, weather camera. The orbiter will also serve as a communications relay for missions on the surface of Mars and will carry a European-built descent-and-landing demonstration module designed to operate for a few days on the Mars surface. JPL, a division of the California Institute of Technology, manages NASA's roles in the mission.

New Study by NASA and NOAA Finds El Niños are Growing Stronger


PASADENA, Calif. – A relatively new type of El Niño new study by NASA and NOAA
, which has its warmest waters in the central-equatorial Pacific Ocean, rather than in the eastern-equatorial Pacific, is becoming more common and progressively stronger, according to a new study by NASA and NOAA. The research may improve our understanding of the relationship between El Niños and climate change, and has potentially significant implications for long-term weather forecasting.

Lead author Tong Lee of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif., and Michael McPhaden of NOAA's Pacific Marine Environmental Laboratory, Seattle, measured changes in El Niño intensity since 1982. They analyzed NOAA satellite observations of sea surface temperature, checked against and blended with directly-measured ocean temperature data. The strength of each El Niño was gauged by how much its sea surface temperatures deviated from the average. They found the intensity of El Niños in the central Pacific has nearly doubled, with the most intense event occurring in 2009-10.

The scientists say the stronger El Niños help explain a steady rise in central Pacific sea surface temperatures observed over the past few decades in previous studies--a trend attributed by some to the effects of global warming. While Lee and McPhaden observed a rise in sea surface temperatures during El Niño years, no significant temperature increases were seen in years when ocean conditions were neutral, or when El Niño's cool water counterpart, La Niña, was present.

"Our study concludes the long-term warming trend seen in the central Pacific is primarily due to more intense El Niños, rather than a general rise of background temperatures," said Lee.

"These results suggest climate change may already be affecting El Niño by shifting the center of action from the eastern to the central Pacific," said McPhaden. "El Niño's impact on global weather patterns is different if ocean warming occurs primarily in the central Pacific, instead of the eastern Pacific.

"If the trend we observe continues," McPhaden added, "it could throw a monkey wrench into long-range weather forecasting, which is largely based on our understanding of El Niños from the latter half of the 20th century."

El Niño, Spanish for "the little boy," is the oceanic component of a climate pattern called the El Niño-Southern Oscillation, which appears in the tropical Pacific Ocean on average every three to five years. The most dominant year-to-year fluctuating pattern in Earth's climate system, El Niños have a powerful impact on the ocean and atmosphere, as well as important socioeconomic consequences. They can influence global weather patterns and the occurrence and frequency of hurricanes, droughts and floods; and can even raise or lower global temperatures by as much as 0.2 degrees Celsius (0.4 degrees Fahrenheit).

During a "classic" El Niño episode, the normally strong easterly trade winds in the tropical eastern Pacific weaken. That weakening suppresses the normal upward movement of cold subsurface waters and allows warm surface water from the central Pacific to shift toward the Americas. In these situations, unusually warm surface water occupies much of the tropical Pacific, with the maximum ocean warming remaining in the eastern-equatorial Pacific.

Since the early 1990s, however, scientists have noted a new type of El Niño that has been occurring with greater frequency. Known variously as "central-Pacific El Niño," "warm-pool El Niño," "dateline El Niño" or "El Niño Modoki" (Japanese for "similar but different"), the maximum ocean warming from such El Niños is found in the central-equatorial, rather than eastern, Pacific. Such central Pacific El Niño events were observed in 1991-92, 1994-95, 2002-03, 2004-05 and 2009-10. A recent study found many climate models predict such events will become much more frequent under projected global warming scenarios.

Lee said further research is needed to evaluate the impacts of these increasingly intense El Niños and determine why these changes are occurring. "It is important to know if the increasing intensity and frequency of these central Pacific El Niños are due to natural variations in climate or to climate change caused by human-produced greenhouse gas emissions," he said.

Results of the study were published recently in Geophysical Research Letters.

JPL is managed for NASA by the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena.

'Avatar' Director James Cameron Shares NASA's Exploration of Earth


'Avatar' Director James Cameron Shares NASA's Exploration of Earth: NASA's Kepler spacecraft has discovered the first confirmed planetary system with more than one planet crossing in front of, or transiting, the same star.

The transit signatures of two distinct planets were seen in the data for the sun-like star designated Kepler-9. The planets were named Kepler-9b and 9c. The discovery incorporates seven months of observations of more than 156,000 stars as part of an ongoing search for Earth-sized planets outside our solar system. The findings will be published in Thursday's issue of the journal Science.

Kepler's ultra-precise camera measures tiny decreases in the stars' brightness that occur when a planet transits them. The size of the planet can be derived from these temporary dips.

The distance of the planet from the star can be calculated by measuring the time between successive dips as the planet orbits the star. Small variations in the regularity of these dips can be used to determine the masses of planets and detect other non-transiting planets in the system.

In June, mission scientists submitted findings for peer review that identified more than 700 planet candidates in the first 43 days of Kepler data. The data included five additional candidate systems that appear to exhibit more than one transiting planet. The Kepler team recently identified a sixth target exhibiting multiple transits and accumulated enough follow-up data to confirm this multi-planet system.

"Kepler's high quality data and round-the-clock coverage of transiting objects enable a whole host of unique measurements to be made of the parent stars and their planetary systems," said Doug Hudgins, the Kepler program scientist at NASA Headquarters in Washington.

Scientists refined the estimates of the masses of the planets using observations from the W.M. Keck Observatory in Hawaii. The observations show Kepler-9b is the larger of the two planets, and both have masses similar to but less than Saturn. Kepler-9b lies closest to the star with an orbit of about 19 days, while Kepler-9c has an orbit of about 38 days. By observing several transits by each planet over the seven months of data, the time between successive transits could be analyzed.

"This discovery is the first clear detection of significant changes in the intervals from one planetary transit to the next, what we call transit timing variations," said Matthew Holman, a Kepler mission scientist from the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics in Cambridge, Mass. "This is evidence of the gravitational interaction between the two planets as seen by the Kepler spacecraft."

In addition to the two confirmed giant planets, Kepler scientists also have identified what appears to be a third, much smaller transit signature in the observations of Kepler-9. That signature is consistent with the transits of a super-Earth-sized planet about 1.5 times the radius of Earth in a scorching, near-sun 1.6 day-orbit. Additional observations are required to determine whether this signal is indeed a planet or an astronomical phenomenon that mimics the appearance of a transit.

NASA's Ames Research Center in Moffett Field, Calif., manages Kepler's ground system development, mission operations and science data analysis. NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif., managed Kepler mission development.

Ball Aerospace and Technologies Corp. in Boulder, Colo., developed the Kepler flight system and supports mission operations with the Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics at the University of Colorado in Boulder. The Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore archives, hosts and distributes the Kepler science data.

Hurricane Katrina: A NASA Satellite Video Retrospective


In early August 2005, Katrina was just a name. By September, it had become synonymous with the costliest and one of the deadliest tropical cyclones in U.S. history.

Five years later, NASA is revisiting Hurricane Katrina with a short video that shows the storm as captured by NASA satellites. NASA provides space-based satellite observations, field research missions, and computer climate modeling to further scientists' understanding of these storms. NASA also provides measurements and modeling of global sea surface temperatures, precipitation, winds and ocean heat content -- all ingredients that contribute to the formation of tropical cyclones (the general name for typhoons, tropical storms and hurricanes).

On Aug. 29, 2005, after passing over the Caribbean and Florida, Katrina made landfall along the Gulf Coast as a category 3 hurricane on the Saffir-Simpson scale. As hurricanes go, Katrina was actually only moderate in size when it reached the Mississippi and Louisiana coasts, having weakened from a category 5 the day before. However, Katrina had a very wide footprint, which caused a broad area of large ocean swells to develop within the Gulf of Mexico. As the hurricane made its final landfall, the resulting storm surge was massive and unrelenting. Ultimately, this storm surge was responsible for much of the damage as it flooded coastal communities, overwhelmed levees, and left at least 80 percent of New Orleans underwater.

By the time the hurricane subsided, Katrina had claimed more than 1,800 human lives and caused roughly $125 billion in damages.

As scientists and rescue organizations worked on the ground to prepare for the hurricane and assist in its wake, NASA provided data gathered from a series of Earth-observing satellites to help predict the hurricane's path and intensity. In the aftermath, NASA satellites also helped identify areas hardest hit.

In this 3 1/2-minute video created by NASA-TV producer Jennifer Shoemaker at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md., viewers will see many different kinds of data NASA satellites gathered about the storm. The video contains a sampling of the kinds of things NASA studies about hurricanes. Various additional data products are created in hurricane and post-hurricane research that are not depicted in the video.



The video opens with Atlantic Ocean sea surface temperatures data from an instrument called AMSR-E (Advanced Microwave Scanning Radiometer - Earth Observing System) that flies aboard NASA's Aqua satellite. Warm ocean waters (of 80 degrees Fahrenheit or warmer) provided energy to fuel the growing storm. Next, the MISR (Multi-angle Imaging SpectroRadiometer) instrument on NASA's Terra satellite captured the growth of cloud tops in the gathering storm.

Just before landfall, the Tropical Rainfall Measuring Mission (TRMM) satellite data revealed "hot towers" hidden within the hurricane -- powerful thunderstorms that helped intensify Katrina. TRMM also captured data on rainfall amounts throughout the hurricane's lifecycle.

Finally, the video shows Landsat satellite imagery of New Orleans before and during the flooding, as well as a more recent view of a city still rebuilding from the hurricane some five years later.

Katrina was just one of 28 named tropical cyclones during the 2005 hurricane season, but due to the tragedy it caused, it remains the one most remembered. The World Meteorological Organization has since retired the name "Katrina" from its list of hurricane names. As such, there will never be another Hurricane Katrina.

Meanwhile, NASA satellites continue to provide satellite data to study tropical cyclones around the world and to help forecasters make better predictions about storm's behavior and hurricane response organizations to better prepare for those yet to come. NASA also studies the effects of hurricanes long after the storm has passed, in order to better understand effects of large storms, which will ultimately help in restoration and preparation efforts in the future.

'Avatar' Director James Cameron Shares NASA's Exploration of Earth


James Cameron, director of "Avatar," the most successful film ever released, is featured in a series of new NASA public service announcements that describe the many contributions of the agency's Earth science program to environmental awareness and exploration of our home planet.

"When NASA ventures into space, it remembers to keep a steady eye on home," Cameron said. "Its fleet of Earth-orbiting satellites constantly reveals our whole planet: its remotest places, its mysteries and the powerful influence of humans."

Cameron's 3-D epic, based on the fictional planet of Pandora is coming back to theaters this week. The story centers on a beautiful planet threatened by forces that want to exploit its natural resources.

The public service announcements feature "Avatar" film imagery and include computer animations and data from NASA's fleet of Earth-observing satellites. NASA has 14 science satellites in orbit making cutting-edge global observations of the entire global system including the atmosphere, oceans, land surface, snow and ice.

'Part of the Global Network'

'A Steady Eye on Home'

A Planet in Peril

Technology Readiness Levels Demystified


In the research and development world, ideas are like schoolchildren. All new technologies must pass through a number of grades before they are declared ready for graduation.

At NASA, as in the rest of the research community, these grades are called technology readiness levels, or TRLs. Each TRL represents the evolution of an idea from a thought, perhaps written on a cocktail napkin or the back of an envelope, to the full deployment of a product in the marketplace.

"NASA acknowledges the system as a useful, commonly understood method for explaining to collaborators and stakeholders just how mature a particular technology is," said Tony Strazisar, senior technologist for NASA's Aeronautics Research Mission Directorate in Washington.

In fact, NASA invented the system.

A NASA researcher, Stan Sadin, conceived the first scale in 1974. It had seven levels which were not formally defined until 1989. In the 1990s NASA adopted a scale with nine levels which gained widespread acceptance across industry and remains in use today.

Industry and other government organizations, such as the U.S. Air Force, have tailored definitions for certain TRLs to suit their own needs, but their overall scales match NASA's traditional scale very closely, Strazisar said.

Today's scale runs from TRL 1 through TRL 9.

The lowest level, TRL 1, indicates that information already learned from basic scientific research is taking its first step from an idea to a practical application of a lesson learned. For example, after learning that hydrogen and oxygen can be combined to generate electricity, some would suggest an idea for building a machine to do just that.

A technology that has achieved TRL 9 is one that has been incorporated fully into a larger system. It has been proven to work smoothly and is considered operational. An example of an operational TRL 9 technology is the fuel cells which combine hydrogen and oxygen to generate electricity for NASA's space shuttle.

In this example, if an engineer were to suggest a major improvement to the fuel cell technology, the new idea would be considered to be at TRL 1. It would make its way through the development process, while the original fuel cell design remained at TRL 9.

The distance between TRL 1 and TRL 9 often amounts to years of paper studies, prototype modeling, component building and testing, integration of tested components into other systems, and more tests in the laboratory and the real world.

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

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

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

"From basic concept to use on commercial aircraft, chevrons went through an almost meteoric rise through the TRLs in a space of just about seven years," Collier said. "We had a bunch of smart NASA people pushing hard, and that gave us the momentum necessary to carry the technology all the way."

Use of TRLs will remain important at NASA, especially as the agency's new Integrated Systems Research Program evolves. The program provides an opportunity for projects to move up the TRL scale from fundamental research to systems research.

At this range on the scale, a technology has moved beyond studies on paper and its components are undergoing active research and development. It is ready to be integrated into a larger system for further testing in increasingly realistic environments.

It is generally thought that NASA works on a new idea up through TRL 6, then turns it over to industry because higher TRLs are associated with technology commercialization and certification. But Strazisar said that view is not entirely accurate.

"In truth, we transfer knowledge at all technology readiness levels," he said. "This especially occurs when we work with industry and academia on collaborative projects. In those cases, NASA works with others as equal partners and information flows organically throughout the technology development life cycle."

NASA Sensors to Guide Spacecraft to Safe, Distant Landings


NASA Sensors to Guide Spacecraft to Safe: NASA is developing technologies that will allow landing vehicles to automatically identify and navigate to the location of a safe landing site while detecting landing hazards during the final descent to the surface. This is important because future missions -- whether to the Moon, an asteroid, Mars or other location -- will need this capability to land safely near specific resources that are located in potentially hazardous terrain.

Langley Research Center, Hampton, Va., has designed three light detection and ranging (lidar) sensors that together can provide all the necessary data for achieving safe autonomous precision landing.

One is a three-dimensional active imaging device, referred to as flash lidar, for detecting hazardous terrain features and identifying safe landing sites. The second is a Doppler lidar instrument for measuring the vehicle velocity and altitude to help land precisely at the chosen site. The third is a high-altitude laser altimeter providing data prior to final approach for correcting the flight trajectory towards the designated landing area.


In conjunction with laser/lidar sensor development at Langley, NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif., is developing algorithms, or mathematical procedures, for analyzing the acquired three-dimensional lidar maps and determining the most suitable landing site. The resulting Doppler lidar and laser altimeter data are used by the navigation system being developed by NASA Johnson Space Center, Houston, and Charles Draper Laboratory, Cambridge, Mass., to control the spacecraft to the identified location.

These technologies have been integrated as part of NASA's Autonomous Landing and Hazard Avoidance Technology (ALHAT) project and are in the process of being demonstrated in a series of flight tests.

The most recent flight tests occurred at NASA's Dryden Flight Research Center, Edwards, Calif., in July.

"These were the first tests where we had all three of our laser systems on board and working together as a complete sensor suite," said Langley's Farzin Amzajerdian, technical lead for development of the sensors. "These tests are being viewed as critical by many within NASA."

Robert Reisse, Langley project manager, added, "We were pleased that the flight tests we've conducted so far have resulted in better than expected performance of these sensors."

The main objective of the first test, carried out in May 2008, was to demonstrate the application of 3-D imaging technology, or 'flash' lidar, for topography mapping and hazard detection.

The second round of flight tests, completed in August 2008, was to evaluate the capabilities of the Doppler lidar. This lidar provides high reliability vehicle velocity vector, altitude and attitude with about two orders of magnitude higher precision than radars.

The third flight test campaign was conducted in June 2009 in which the flash lidar and laser altimeter were integrated and flown onboard a fixed-wing aircraft to assess its performance for terrain relative navigation and altimetry functions. Several flights were performed in areas of Death Valley and in the Nevada Test Site with various flight profiles and altitudes reaching more than five miles above ground level. Locations were selected primarily because of topographical similarities to the lunar terrain.

For the most recent field test, a Sikorsky S-64 helicopter carried all three lidar systems in a pod along with their support instruments. The flash lidar was mounted on a gimbal controlled by the ALHAT processor box that included a navigation filter built specifically for ALHAT by Draper Labs and a human interface module built by NASA Johnson. The processor box also included a 3-D elevation map generator developed by NASA JPL.

NASA Johnson leads the eight-year ALHAT task, begun in early 2006, for NASA's Exploration Technology Development Program. Support is also provided by Draper Labs and the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory, Baltimore.

Drought Drives Decade-Long Decline in Plant Growth


Drought Drives Decade-Long Decline in Plant Growth: Earth has done an ecological about-face: Global plant productivity that once flourished under warming temperatures and a lengthened growing season is now on the decline, struck by the stress of drought.

NASA-funded researchers Maosheng Zhao and Steven Running, of the University of Montana in Missoula, discovered the global shift during an analysis of NASA satellite data. Compared with a six-percent increase spanning two earlier decades, the recent ten-year decline is slight -- just one percent. The shift, however, could impact food security, biofuels, and the global carbon cycle.

"We see this as a bit of a surprise, and potentially significant on a policy level because previous interpretations suggested that global warming might actually help plant growth around the world," Running said.

"These results are extraordinarily significant because they show that the global net effect of climatic warming on the productivity of terrestrial vegetation need not be positive -- as was documented for the 1980’s and 1990’s," said Diane Wickland, of NASA Headquarters and manager of NASA's Terrestrial Ecology research program.

Conventional wisdom based on previous research held that land plant productivity was on the rise. A 2003 paper in Science led by then University of Montana scientist Ramakrishna Nemani (now at NASA Ames Research Center, Moffett Field, Calif.) showed that global terrestrial plant productivity increased as much as six percent between 1982 and 1999. That's because for nearly two decades, temperature, solar radiation and water availability -- influenced by climate change -- were favorable for growth.

Setting out to update that analysis, Zhao and Running expected to see similar results as global average temperatures have continued to climb. Instead, they found that the impact of regional drought overwhelmed the positive influence of a longer growing season, driving down global plant productivity between 2000 and 2009. The team published their findings Aug. 20 in Science.

"This is a pretty serious warning that warmer temperatures are not going to endlessly improve plant growth," Running said.

The discovery comes from an analysis of plant productivity data from the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) on NASA's Terra satellite, combined with growing season climate variables including temperature, solar radiation and water. The plant and climate data are factored into an algorithm that describes constraints on plant growth at different geographical locations.

For example, growth is generally limited in high latitudes by temperature and in deserts by water. But regional limitations can very in their degree of impact on growth throughout the growing season.

Zhao and Running's analysis showed that since 2000, high-latitude northern hemisphere ecosystems have continued to benefit from warmer temperatures and a longer growing season. But that effect was offset by warming-associated drought that limited growth in the southern hemisphere, resulting in a net global loss of land productivity.

"This past decade’s net decline in terrestrial productivity illustrates that a complex interplay between temperature, rainfall, cloudiness, and carbon dioxide, probably in combination with other factors such as nutrients and land management, will determine future patterns and trends in productivity," Wickland said.


Researchers are keen on maintaining a record of the trends into the future. For one reason, plants act as a carbon dioxide "sink," and shifting plant productivity is linked to shifting levels of the greenhouse gas in the atmosphere. Also, stresses on plant growth could challenge food production.

"The potential that future warming would cause additional declines does not bode well for the ability of the biosphere to support multiple societal demands for agricultural production, fiber needs, and increasingly, biofuel production," Zhao said.

"Even if the declining trend of the past decade does not continue, managing forests and croplands for multiple benefits to include food production, biofuel harvest, and carbon storage may become exceedingly challenging in light of the possible impacts of such decadal-scale changes," Wickland said.

NASA Marks 35th Anniversary of Mars Viking Mission


Mars. Roman god of war. The Red Planet.


35th Anniversary of Mars Viking Mission: From the perennial Mars hoax to Ray Bradbury's The Martian Chronicles, no other body in our solar system has so captured the human imagination. Throughout history mankind has gazed into the night sky wondering what civilizations awaited those who landed on the Red Planet's surface. The novels of Burroughs and others tout the planet's allure and films have warned humanity of its dangers.

In 1965, the Mariner 4 spacecraft sent the first images of another planet to waiting scientists on Earth. Since that image, the Red Planet has revealed a world strangely familiar, yet challenging. Each time scientists feel close to understanding Mars, new discoveries send them back to the drawing board to revise existing theories.

In the 35 years since NASA launched Viking 1 on Aug. 20, 1975, the ambitious mission only whetted the scientific world and public's enthusiasm for future space exploration. In the ensuing years, NASA has launched the Phoenix Mars Lander, Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter and Mars Exploration Rovers, among others. Perhaps the most successful of these missions is Mars Exploration Rovers. Launched in June and July 2003, respectively, Spirit and Opportunity landed on Mars each for a 90-day mission that continues after more than 6 years.

For centuries, scientists wondered if Mars might be covered with vegetation -- or even inhabited by intelligent beings. Today, we know Mars to be quite different. It is a frozen desert world with now silent volcanoes and deep canyons. Polar ice caps expand and contract with the Martian seasons.

While the story began years earlier, it culminated in August and September 1975 with the launch of two large, nearly identical spacecraft from Cape Canaveral, Fl. Vikings 1 and 2, named for the fearless Nordic explorers of Earth, finally give humans a close-up look at this alien world.

Viking 1 and 2, each consisting of an orbiter and a lander, became the first space probes to obtain high resolution images of the Martian surface; characterize the structure and composition of the atmosphere and surface; and conduct on-the-spot biological tests for life on another planet.

Among the discoveries about Mars over the years, one stands out above all others: the possible presence of liquid water, either in its ancient past or preserved in the subsurface today. Water is key because almost everywhere water is found on Earth, so is life. If Mars once had liquid water, or still does today, it's compelling to ask whether any microscopic life forms could have developed on its surface.

Viking 1 arrived at Mars on June 19, 1976. On July 20, 1976, the Viking 1 lander separated from the orbiter and touched down at Chryse Planitia. Viking 2 was launched Sept. 9, 1975, and entered Mars orbit Aug. 7, 1976. The Viking 2 lander touched down at Utopia Planitia on Sept. 3, 1976

NASA Statement on Astro2010 Report


NASA is pleased to receive the National Research Council's Astro2010 report, New Worlds, New Horizons in Astronomy and Astrophysics*. We appreciate the science community's efforts in defining a set of compelling science objectives for space-based astrophysical research for the coming decade, and for carefully considering the cost of the initiatives the report recommends.

We look forward to assessing the report's findings and recommendations for strengthening the nation's world-class space astrophysics program. From new worlds to new physics, the coming decade of discovery leverages not only our current space observatories – such as the Hubble, Spitzer, Chandra and Fermi space telescopes – but also our planned facilities – especially those from previous decadal surveys, the James Webb Space Telescope and the Stratospheric Observatory for Infrared Astronomy (SOFIA). The survey calls for new facilities that expand our reach into the cosmos that will include opportunities for coordination and cooperation with other Federal agencies and international partners.

There are exciting times ahead and NASA is proud to be a part of it.

Image of the Day


Sailing Amongst the Stars
Making the stuff of science fiction into reality, NASA engineers are testing solar sails--a unique propulsion technology that one day could enable deep space missions. Much like the wind pushing a sailboat through water, solar sails rely on sunlight to propel vehicles through space. The sail captures constantly streaming solar particles, called photons, with giant sails built from a lightweight material. Over time, the buildup of these particles provides enough thrust for a small spacecraft to travel in space.

This image is of a four-quadrant solar sail system, measuring 66 feet on each side that is being tested in the world's largest vacuum chamber at NASA's Glenn Research Center at Plum Brook Station in Sandusky, Ohio.

NASA Chat: Ask Your Questions Today About Sailing Among the Stars


This fall, NASA researchers will move one step closer to sailing among the stars.

Engineers at NASA have designed and built NanoSail-D, a "solar sail" that will test NASA's ability to deploy a massive but fragile spacecraft from an extremely compact structure. Much like the wind pushing a sailboat through water, solar sails rely on sunlight to propel vehicles through space. The sail captures constantly streaming solar particles, called photons, with giant sails built from a lightweight material. Over time, the buildup of these particles provides enough thrust for a small spacecraft to travel in space.

One of NanoSail-D's several mission objectives is to demonstrate the capability to deploy a large sail structure from a highly compacted volume without recontacting the spacecraft. The mission also will demonstrate and test the de-orbiting capabilities of solar sails.

NASA hopes to one day use thin membranes to de-orbit satellites and space debris. Finally, engineers hope to successfully demonstrate solar sailing. While NanoSail-D’s relatively low altitude means drag from Earth’s atmosphere may dominate any propulsion from the sun, the nanosatellite remains a small first step towards eventually deploying solar sails at higher altitudes.

On Thursday, Aug. 19, principal investigator NanoSail-D, Dean Alhorn, at NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Ala. will answer your questions about the NanoSail-D mission and solar sails in general. Joining the chat is easy. Simply visit this page on Thursday, Aug. 19, from 3 to 4 p.m. EDT. The chat window will open at the bottom of this page starting at 2:30 p.m. EDT. You can log in and be ready to ask questions at 3 p.m. See you in chat!

More About Chat Expert Dean Alhorn

Alhorn, a NASA Marshall employee since 1991, is an expert in electro-mechanical systems and the principle investigator for NanoSail-D, slated to launch from Kodiak Island, Alaska, no earlier than Oct. 1. Alhorn has prior flight systems experience with the Chandra X-ray Observatory telescope; the Fast, Affordable, Science and Technology Satellite; and the Suppression of Transient Accelerations by Levitation Experiment. Alhorn continues to perform research in the area of solar sail propulsion technology.

He is a native of Albuquerque, N.M., and holds a Bachelor of Science degree in Mechanical Engineering from the University of New Mexico, and a Master of Science degree from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Eclipsing Pulsar Promises Clues to Crushed Matter

Eclipsing Pulsar Promises Clues to Crushed Matter: Astronomers using NASA's Rossi X-ray Timing Explorer (RXTE) have found the first fast X-ray pulsar to be eclipsed by its companion star. Further studies of this unique stellar system will shed light on some of the most compressed matter in the universe and test a key prediction of Einstein's relativity theory.

The pulsar is a rapidly spinning neutron star -- the crushed core of a massive star that long ago exploded as a supernova. Neutron stars pack more than the sun's mass into a ball nearly 60,000 times smaller. With estimated sizes between 10 and 15 miles across, a neutron star would just span Manhattan or the District of Columbia.

"It's difficult to establish precise masses for neutron stars, especially toward the higher end of the mass range theory predicts," said Craig Markwardt at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt. "As a result, we don't know their internal structure or sizes as well as we'd like. This system takes us a step closer to narrowing that down."

Known as Swift J1749.4-2807 -- J1749 for short -- the system erupted with an X-ray outburst on April 10. During the event, RXTE observed three eclipses, detected X-ray pulses that identified the neutron star as a pulsar, and even recorded pulse variations that indicated the neutron star's orbital motion.

J1749 was discovered in June 2006, when a smaller eruption brought it to the attention of NASA's Swift satellite. Observations by Swift, RXTE and other spacecraft revealed that the source was a binary system located 22,000 light-years away in the constellation Sagittarius and that the neutron star was actively capturing, or accreting, gas from its stellar partner. This gas gathers into a disk around the neutron star.

"Like many accreting binary systems, J1749 undergoes outbursts when instabilities in the accretion disk allow some of the gas to crash onto the neutron star," said Tod Strohmayer, RXTE's project scientist at Goddard.

The pulsar's powerful magnetic field directs infalling gas onto the star's magnetic poles. This means that the energy release occurs in hot spots that rotate with the neutron star, producing fast X-ray pulses. How fast? J1749 is spinning 518 times a second -- a city-sized sphere rotating as fast as the blades of a kitchen blender.

In addition, the pulsar's orbital motion imparts small but regular changes in the frequency of the X-ray pulses. These changes indicate that the stars revolve around each other every 8.8 hours.

During the week-long outburst, RXTE observed three periods when J1749's X-ray emission briefly disappeared. Each eclipse, which lasts 36 minutes, occurs whenever the neutron star passes behind the normal star in the system.

"This is the first time we've detected X-ray eclipses from a fast pulsar that is also accreting gas," Markwardt said. "Using this information, we now know the size and mass of the companion star with unprecedented accuracy."

By comparing RXTE observations across the theoretical mass range for neutron stars, the astronomers determined that J1749's normal star weighs in with about 70 percent of the sun's mass -- but the eclipses indicate that the star is 20 percent larger than it should be for its mass and apparent age.

"We believe that the star's surface is 'puffed up' by radiation from the pulsar, which is only about a million miles away from it," Markwardt explained. "This additional heating probably also makes the star's surface especially disturbed and stormy."

Writing about their findings in the July 10 issue of The Astrophysical Journal Letters, Markwardt and Strohmayer note that they have all but one orbital variable needed to nail down the mass of the pulsar, which is estimated to be between about 1.4 and 2.2 times the sun's mass.

"We need to detect the normal star in the system with optical or infrared telescopes," Strohmayer said. "Then we can measure its motion and extract the same information about the pulsar that the pulsar's motion told us about the star."

However, a pioneering X-ray measurement well within the capability of RXTE may make a hunt for the star irrelevant.

One consequence of relativity is that a signal -- such as a radio wave or an X-ray pulse -- experiences a slight timing delay when it passes very close to a massive object. First proposed by Irwin Shapiro at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in Cambridge, Mass., in 1964 as a new test for predictions of Einstein's relativity, the delay has been demonstrated repeatedly using radio signals bounced off of Mercury and Venus and experiments involving spacecraft communications.

"High-precision measurements of the X-ray pulses just before and after an eclipse would give us a detailed picture of the entire system," Strohmayer said. For J1749, the predicted Shapiro delay is 21 microseconds, or 10,000 times faster than the blink of an eye. But RXTE's superior timing resolution allows it to record changes 7 times faster.

With only three eclipses observed during the 2010 outburst, RXTE didn't capture enough data to reveal a large delay. However, the measurements set a limit on how massive the normal star can be. The study shows that if the star's mass was greater than 2.2 times the sun's, RXTE would have seen the delay.

"We believe this is the first time anyone has set realistic limits for this effect at X-ray wavelengths outside of our solar system," Markwardt noted. "The next time J1749 has an outburst, RXTE absolutely could measure its Shapiro delay."

Launched in late 1995, RXTE is second only to Hubble as the longest serving of NASA's currently operating astrophysics missions. RXTE discovered the first accreting millisecond pulsar -- SAX J1808.4-3658 -- in 1998 and continues to provide a unique observing window into the extreme environments of neutron stars and black holes.

Image of the day


Into the Night

Researchers do not yet know what is lighting up IRAS 05437+2502, a small, faint nebula that spans only 1/18th of a full moon toward the constellation of the Taurus. Particularly enigmatic is the bright upside-down V that defines the upper edge of this floating mountain of interstellar dust.

This ghost-like nebula involves a small star-forming region filled with dark dust that was first noted in images taken by the IRAS satellite in infrared light in 1983. This recently released image from the Hubble Space Telescope shows many new details, but has not uncovered a clear cause of the bright sharp arc.

Ping-Pong Balls to Float Crew Capsule Simulator

http://nasa-spacestation-info.blogspot.com/
If ping-pong balls can float a sunken boat, they should be able to keep an uncrewed space capsule simulator from sinking.

Right?

That's what a team of summer students and engineers think at NASA's Langley Research Center in Hampton, Va. Langley is fabricating a proposed design of an astronaut crew module simulator for uncrewed flight-testing as part of the agency's effort to build a vehicle http://nasa-spacestation-info.blogspot.com/to replace the space shuttle.

The Orion crew exploration vehicle is the nation's next generation spacecraft designed to carry up to four astronauts to low Earth orbit and beyond.

Orion's first suborbital flight test will launch to 400,000 feet, or 75 miles above Earth. Because the crew module will not be pressurized during the test, it will not have the buoyancy of a pressurized spacecraft. This puts the simulated crew module at risk of sinking to the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean after splashdown.

To save the valuable test article for analysis and possible reuse, Langley called on a team of creative minds for a solution.

And as it turned out, inexpensive, lightweight ping-pong balls provided the answer. Langley engineer John DiNonno proposed the idea, and the Orion Flight Test Office told the team to study it.

The idea quickly became "very plausible," said student Caroline Kirk.

Way to go

"At first we didn't really realize that we were going to get so far in proving that it would be possible," said Kirk, a Suffolk, Va., native attending Virginia Tech as an aerohttp://nasa-spacestation-info.blogspot.com/space engineering major. "But when we thought about everything logically, it just seemed like ping-pong balls were the way to go."

She and a team of seven other students worked the project in Langley's Mechanical Systems Branch, where they were assigned for the summer.

DiNonno got the idea from a Discovery Channel program about raising a sunken boat using 27,000 ping-pong balls.

Engineer David Covington said that when DiNonno suggested the ping-pong ball idea, "I just laughed. Not a 'what are you thinking' kind of laugh, but more of a 'that's the most awesome thing I've heard in a long time' laugh. I asked him 'are you serious?' and he said 'yeah, we're authorized to do a four-week study.' So we went straight to work."

Ensuring the outcome would be relatively low-cost was a top priority, said DiNonno.

"Recovering the capsule was not a requirement, but it was a desire," he said. "So there wasn't going to be a lot of investment in it."


Testing process

The students divided the tasks needed to determine if the idea was feasible, each becoming a "principal investigator" for a specific area.http://nasa-spacestation-info.blogspot.com/

They tested ping-pong balls of varying quality, much the way spacecraft hardware is tested. They studied how the balls would react to the near-vacuum at the edge of space. Using buoyancy tests, they determined how well the balls would float.

The students also subjected the ping-pong balls to mechanical loads using a hydraulic press, and heated them to see how they would react to the high temperatures of descent into the Earth's atmosphere. And they performed electrostatic discharge tests to determine if the balls would produce a static charge that could disrupt the space capsule's electronics.

The ping-pong balls passed all the challenges, said Heather Blount, a materials science engineering student at Virginia Tech.

"Through all our testing and calculations, we figured out that it could be a safe and viable option," said Blount, of Yorktown, Va.

Keeping the crew module afloat would take at least 150,000 ping-pong balls, the students estimate, at a retail price of 50 cents or less each -- a fraction of the cost of traditional options. The students hope to reduce the cost through a bulk purchase.

If the flight test is approved, the ping-pong ball concept would still need to be vetted with the flight test team and reviewed by NASA senior management. If implemented, the ping-pong balls probably will be put into netted bags and secured inside the crew module just prior to launch. They would virtually fill the available space inside the uncrewed capsule.

Then, when the unsealed capsule splashes down, the buoyancy of the ping-pong balls will offset the weight of incoming water and it will float instead of sink.

The ping-pong balls also will reduce the volume of air that needs to be vented from the capsule during ascent - as well as drawn in during descent - as the capsule travels through significant changes in atmospheric pressure.


'Awesome' students

Approval of the flight test, as well as a launch date, has yet to be determined. "Even if it is not used, it's an idea that's out there that someone else could use," said Langley engineer Amanda Cutright, a student mentor.

Cutright said she has been enthused by the students.

"It's awesome working with them," she said. "They bring a different perspective. I've been really impressed with how quickly they pick up new ideas and new technology. It seems each team of students that we mentor learns quicker and is able to provide creative ideas."

Kirk said the ping-pong ball project has been a unique experience. At school, she said, "we do lab experiments but nothing similar to this at all. Being able to develop an experiment that will be used for space flight tests is an opportunity of a lifetime."

NASA employees and contractors involved in the project include engineers Amanda Cutright; Brendan Shaughnessy, Analytical Services and Materials Inc.; David Covington, ATK Space Systems Inc.; and John DiNonno, all of the Mechanical Systems Branch.