Get Ready for the Solstice Lunar Eclipse!

http://www.nasa-spacestation-info.blogspot.com/The first total lunar eclipse in two years will grace the sky the night of Monday, Dec. 20, and we want you to be there. Sure, it's a school night, but with winter solstice and a new year upon us, what better time to gather your family and friends to see the moon in a new light?

At NASA, we're pretty excited for this year's lunar eclipse, so we're offering a number of features and activities for astronomy buffs and moon-gazers alike. To learn about the science behind eclipses, visit NASA's Eclipse page, where Mr. Eclipse provides information about viewing the eclipse from all over the United States.

Want to know more about the lunar eclipse? Lunar experts from NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center will be hosting two live Web chats to discuss the eclipse. On Monday, Dec. 20 from 3-4 p.m. EST, Dr. Rob Suggs will answer your questions. Later on Dec. 20, make plans to stay "Up All Night" with astronomer Mitzi Adams at she answers your questions from midnight to 5:00 a.m. EST.
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Starting now, you can subscribe to NASA JPL's "I'm There: Lunar Eclipse" text campaign to connect with others in your area by texting us your viewing location and comments on the night of the eclipse. To sign up, text IMTHERE to 67463 and we'll send you a reminder to go out and watch on Dec. 20 (message and data rates may apply).

Want to share or flip through photos of the eclipsed moon? Join NASA JPL's lunar eclipse Flickr group and connect with other professional and amateur photographers as they capture the moon's path through the Earth's shadow. We'll choose one lucky photographer to have his or her work featured as official JPL wallpaper at http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/wallpaper.

If you don't want to brave the December chill, or if your weather doesn't cooperate for lunar viewing, we have you covered! A live video feed of the lunar eclipse will be streamed online on Dec. 20. The camera is mounted at NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Ala.

On Dec. 20 and 21, join the conversation on Twitter by including #eclipse and @NASAJPL in your lunar eclipse tweets, and you may even see them show up among our live comment stream on NASA JPL's "I'm There: Lunar Eclipse" program.

NASA Probe Sees Solar Wind Decline

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The 33-year odyssey of NASA's Voyager 1 spacecraft has reached a distant point at the edge of our solar system where there is no outward motion of solar wind.

Now hurtling toward interstellar space some 17.4 billion kilometers (10.8 billion miles) from the sun, Voyager 1 has crossed into an area where the velocity of the hot ionized gas, or plasma, emanating directly outward from the sun has slowed to zero. Scientists suspect the solar wind has been turned sideways by the pressure from the interstellar wind in the region between stars.
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The event is a major milestone in Voyager 1's passage through the heliosheath, the turbulent outer shell of the sun's sphere of influence, and the spacecraft's upcoming departure from our solar system.

"The solar wind has turned the corner," said Ed Stone, Voyager project scientist based at the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, Calif. "Voyager 1 is getting close to interstellar space."

Our sun gives off a stream of charged particles that form a bubble known as the heliosphere around our solar system. The solar wind travels at supersonic speed until it crosses a shockwave called the termination shock. At this point, the solar wind dramatically slows down and heats up in the heliosheath.

Launched on Sept. 5, 1977, Voyager 1 crossed the termination shock in December 2004 into the heliosheath. Scientists have used data from Voyager 1's Low-Energy Charged Particle Instrument to deduce the solar wind's velocity. When the speed of the charged particles hitting the outward face of Voyager 1 matched the spacecraft's speed, researchers knew that the net outward speed of the solar wind was zero. This occurred in June, when Voyager 1 was about 17 billion kilometers (10.6 billion miles) from the sun.

Because the velocities can fluctuate, scientists watched four more monthly readings before they were convinced the solar wind's outward speed actually had slowed to zero. Analysis of the data shows the velocity of the solar wind has steadily slowed at a rate of about 20 kilometers per second each year (45,000 mph each year) since August 2007, when the solar wind was speeding outward at about 60 kilometers per second (130,000 mph). The outward speed has remained at zero since June.

The results were presented today at the American Geophysical Union meeting in San Francisco.

"When I realized that we were getting solid zeroes, I was amazed," said Rob Decker, a Voyager Low-Energy Charged Particle Instrument co-investigator and senior staff scientist at the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory in Laurel, Md. "Here was Voyager, a spacecraft that has been a workhorse for 33 years, showing us something completely new again."

Scientists believe Voyager 1 has not crossed the heliosheath into interstellar space. Crossing into interstellar space would mean a sudden drop in the density of hot particles and an increase in the density of cold particles. Scientists are putting the data into their models of the heliosphere's structure and should be able to better estimate when Voyager 1 will reach interstellar space. Researchers currently estimate Voyager 1 will cross that frontier in about four years.

"In science, there is nothing like a reality check to shake things up, and Voyager 1 provided that with hard facts," said Tom Krimigis, principal investigator on the Low-Energy Charged Particle Instrument, who is based at the Applied Physics Laboratory and the Academy of Athens, Greece. "Once again, we face the predicament of redoing our models."

A sister spacecraft, Voyager 2, was launched in Aug. 20, 1977 and has reached a position 14.2 billion kilometers (8.8 billion miles) from the sun. Both spacecraft have been traveling along different trajectories and at different speeds. Voyager 1 is traveling faster, at a speed of about 17 kilometers per second (38,000 mph), compared to Voyager 2's velocity of 15 kilometers per second (35,000 mph). In the next few years, scientists expect Voyager 2 to encounter the same kind of phenomenon as Voyager 1.

Spotlight on NASA Science at 2010 American Geophysical Union Meeting

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NASA researchers are presenting new findings on a wide range of Earth and spacehttp://www.nasa-spacestation-info.blogspot.com/ science topics during the 2010 fall meeting of the American Geophysical Union. The meeting runs from Monday, Dec. 13, through Friday, Dec. 17, at San Francisco's Moscone Convention Center. They are all open to registered media representatives.

This NASA AGU media Web site contains detailed information about how media can participate in the press briefings, both on-site and remotely. The site will be updated throughout the week with additional information about NASA presentations.

View site:T shirt

NASA Scientists Theorize Final Growth Spurt for Planets

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A team of NASA-funded researchers has unveiled a new theory that contends planets gained the final portions of their mass from a limited number of large comet or asteroid impacts more than 4.5 billion years ago. These impacts added less than one percent of the planets' mass.

Scientists hope the research not only will provide a better historical picture of the birth and evolution of Earth, the moon and Mars, but also allow researchers to better explore what happened in our solar system's beginning and middle stages of planet formation.
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“No one has a model of precisely what happened at the end of planet formation—we’ve had a broad idea—but variables such as impactor size, the approximate timing of the impacts, and how they affect the evolution of the planets are unknown,” said William Bottke, principal investigator from the Southwest Research Institute (SWRI) in Boulder, Colo. “This research hopefully provides better insights into the early stages of planet formation.”

The team used numerical models, lunar samples returned by Apollo astronauts and meteorites believed to be from Mars to develop its findings. The scientists examined the abundances of elements such as gold and platinum in the mantles, or layers beneath the crust, of Earth, the moon and Mars. Consistent with previous studies, they concluded the elements were added by a process called late accretion during a planet's final growth spurt.

"These impactors probably represent the largest objects to hit Earth since the giant impact that formed our moon," Bottke said. “They also may be responsible for the accessible abundance of gold, platinum, palladium, and other important metals used by our society today in items ranging from jewelry to our cars’ catalytic convertors.”

The results indicate the largest Earth impactor was between 1,500 - 2,000 miles in diameter, roughly the size of Pluto. Because it is smaller than Earth, the moon avoided such enormous projectiles and was only hit by impactors 150 - 200 miles wide. These impacts may have played important roles in the evolution of both worlds. For example, the projectiles that struck Earth may have modified the orientation of its spin axis by 10 degrees, while those that hit the moon may have delivered water to its mantle.

"Keep in mind that while the idea the Earth-moon system owes its existence to a single, random event was initially viewed as radical, it is now believed that large impacts were commonplace during the final stages of planet formation,’ Bottke said. “Our new results provide additional evidence that the effects of large impacts did not end with the moon-forming event."

The paper, "Stochastic Late Accretion to the Earth, Moon, and Mars," was published in the Dec. 9 issue of Science. It was written by Bottke and David Nesvorny of SWRI; Richard J. Walker of the University of Maryland; James Day of the University of Maryland and Scripps Institution of Oceanography, University of California, San Diego; and Linda Elkins-Tanton of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. The research is funded by the NASA Lunar Science Institute (NLSI) at the agency's Ames Research Center in Moffett Field, Calif.

The NLSI is a virtual organization that enables collaborative, interdisciplinary research in support of NASA lunar science programs. The institute uses technology to bring scientists together around the world and comprises competitively selected U.S. teams and several international partners. NASA's Science Mission Directorate and the Exploration Systems Mission Directorate at the agency's Headquarters in Washington, funds the institute, which is managed by a central office at Ames.

SpaceX Launches Success with Falcon 9/Dragon Flight

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SpaceX Corp. tested its Falcon 9 and a fully functioning Dragon capsule combination during a brief mission launched from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station on Dec. 8, 2010. The uncrewed capsule parachuted back to Earth about three hours after liftoff following maneuvers in orbit, a first for the privately owned company.
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Flames erupted from the base of the Falcon 9 at 10:43 a.m. as it sat at Launch Complex-40. A few seconds later, the rocket and its Dragon capsule pushed above the surrounding lightning towers and headed into orbit.

The first stage separated on time and the second stage took over as planned. A camera on board the rocket showed the Dragon capsule separate from the second stage and trunk to orbit on its own.

After working through its maneuvers, the Dragon fired its braking rockets to begin re-entry. Like the Apollo spacecraft of the 1960s and 70s, the Dragon pierced Earth's atmosphere protected by an ablative heat shield. Parachutes deployed and the spacecraft splashed down in the Pacific Ocean off the coast of California.

"This has really been better than I expected," said Elon Musk, the founder and CEO of SpaceX. "It's actually almost too good."

The test flight was the first under a NASA contract called COTS, short for Commercial Orbital Transportation Services. The contract was set up to encourage private companies to ship cargo to the International Space Station.
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"This is really an amazing accomplishment for SpaceX," said Alan Lindenmoyer, NASA's Commercial Crew and Cargo program manager. "From all indications, it looks like it was 100 percent successful."

It was the second test flight for the Falcon 9, a 180-foot-tall, medium-lift booster SpaceX developed in part to service the station. The first Falcon 9 successfully launched a Dragon capsule simulator into orbit on June 4.

"We're beyond the 'Is it possible?' We did it and now we move on," said Gwynne Shotwell, president of SpaceX.

The successful mission could clear the way for a Dragon spacecraft to rendezvous with the station sometime next year, potentially delivering cargo on that flight.

Before the launch, NASA voiced a high level of support for the mission.
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"Getting this far this fast has been a remarkable achievement," said Phil McAlister, NASA's acting director of Commercial Space Flight Development. "No matter how this spaceflight goes, we are committed to this program."

NASA wants rockets like the Falcon 9 and Orbital Sciences' Taurus II to carry important supplies, experiments and equipment to the space station after the space shuttle fleet is retired in 2011.

The rockets and capsules could one day carry astronauts to the station as well. But for this flight, the pressure was on SpaceX to demonstrate its nine-engine booster and accompanying capsule would work as advertised.

NASA's Spitzer Reveals First Carbon-Rich Planet

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PASADENA, Calif. -- Astronomers have discovered that a huge, searing-hot planet orbiting another star is loaded with an unusual amount of carbon. The planet, a gas giant named WASP-12b, is the first carbon-rich world ever observed. The discovery was made using NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope, along with previously published ground-based observations.

"This planet reveals the astounding diversity of worlds out there," said Nikku Madhusudhan of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, lead author of a report in the Dec. 9 issue of the journal Nature. "Carbon-rich planets would be exotic in every way -- formation, interiors and atmospheres."
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It's possible that WASP-12b might harbor graphite, diamond, or even a more exotic form of carbon in its interior, beneath its gaseous layers. Astronomers don't currently have the technology to observe the cores of exoplanets, or planets orbiting stars beyond our sun, but their theories hint at these intriguing possibilities.

The research also supports theories that carbon-rich rocky planets much less massive than WASP-12b could exist around other stars. Our Earth has rocks like quartz and feldspar, which are made of silicon and oxygen plus other elements. A carbon-rich rocky planet could be a very different place.

"A carbon-dominated terrestrial world could have lots of pure carbon rocks, like diamond or graphite, as well as carbon compounds like tar," said Joseph Harrington of the University of Central Florida, in Orlando, who is the principal investigator of the research.

Carbon is a common component of planetary systems and a key ingredient of life on Earth. Astronomers often measure carbon-to-oxygen ratios to get an idea of a star's chemistry. Our sun has a carbon-to-oxygen ratio of about one to two, which means it has about half as much carbon as oxygen. None of the planets in our solar system is known to have more carbon than oxygen, or a ratio of one or greater. However, this ratio is unknown for Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune. Unlike WASP-12b, these planets harbor water -- the main oxygen carrier -- deep inside their atmospheres, making it hard to detect.

WASP-12b is the first planet ever to have its carbon-to-oxygen ratio measured at greater than one (the actual ratio is most likely between one and two). This means the planet has excess carbon, some of which is in the form of atmospheric methane.

"When the relative amount of carbon gets that high, it's as though you flip a switch, and everything changes," said Marc Kuchner, an astronomer at NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Md., who helped develop the theory of carbon-rich rocky planets but is not associated with the study. "If something like this had happened on Earth, your expensive engagement ring would be made of glass, which would be rare, and the mountains would all be made of diamonds."

Madhusudhan, Harrington and colleagues used Spitzer to observe WASP-12b as it slipped behind its star, in a technique known as secondary eclipse, which was pioneered for exoplanets by Spitzer. These data were combined with previously published observations taken from the ground with the Canada-France-Hawaii Telescope at Mauna Kea, Hawaii. Madhusudhan used the data to conduct a detailed atmospheric analysis, revealing chemicals such as methane and carbon monoxide in the planet's atmosphere.

WASP-12b derives its name from the consortium that found it, the Wide Angle Search for Planets. It is 1.4 times as massive as Jupiter and located roughly 1,200 light-years away from Earth. This blistering world whips around its star in a little over a day, with one side always facing the star. It is so close to its star that the star's gravity stretches the planet into an egg-like shape. What's more, the star's gravity is siphoning mass off the planet into a thin disk that orbits around with it.

The Spitzer data also reveal more information about WASP-12b's temperature. The world was already known to be one of the hottest exoplanets found so far; the new observations indicate that the side that faces the star is 2,600 Kelvin, or 4,200 degrees Fahrenheit. That's more than hot enough to melt steel.
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Other authors of the paper are Kevin Stevenson, Sarah Nymeyer, Christopher Campo, Jasmina Blecic, Ryan Hardy, Nate Lust, Christopher Britt and William Bowman of University of Central Florida, Orlando; Peter Wheatley of the University of Warwick, United Kingdom; Drake Deming of NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Md.; David Anderson, Coel Hellier and Pierre Maxted of Keele University, United Kingdom; Andrew Collier-Cameron of the University of St. Andrews, United Kingdom; Leslie Hebb of Vanderbilt University, Nashville, Tenn.; Don Pollacco of Queen's University, United Kingdom; and Richard West of the University of Leicester, United Kingdom.

The Spitzer observations were made before it ran out of its liquid coolant in May 2009 and began its warm mission. NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif., manages the Spitzer mission for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, Washington. Science operations are conducted at the Spitzer Science Center at the California Institute of Technology, also in Pasadena. Caltech manages JPL for NASA.

Roster of Runways Ready to Bring a Shuttle Home

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Long before a space shuttle crew spots its intended landing target, mission controllers closely monitor the spacecraft, the astronauts and the weather at a roster of runways around the globe. Meanwhile, support crews are ready and eager to usher the astronauts in on the last leg of their journey.

The preferred finish line is the shuttle's home base at NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida -- a 15,000-foot-long runway that is about as wide as the length of a football field.
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"The 'go' for deorbit burn is usually done about the time we're in our last briefing," said Richard Merritt, a landing support manager with United Space Alliance. "You know they're not going to California, they're definitely coming here. So everybody kind of hoots and hollers and then we head out to the vehicles."

Construction of Kennedy's Shuttle Landing Facility wrapped up in 1976, but the site didn't host any shuttles until 1984. From the first shuttle mission in 1981, the primary landing site was Edwards Air Force Base, adjacent to NASA's Dryden Flight Research Center in California.

Merritt said Florida's marshy terrain was the main reason it took nearly a decade to move from one coast to another.

"If you didn't make the runway here, you'd be talking to the alligators," Merritt said. "Out in the desert, we landed on the dry lakebed. It's just lots of room to land if you had some kind of problem and you didn't quite make the runway."

Columbia was the first shuttle to complete a spaceflight when it touched down on the desert's dry, expansive target April 14, 1981, ending the STS-1 mission.

As NASA's back-up site today, mainly because of Florida's often-finicky weather, Edwards has welcomed home more than 50 shuttle crews.

NASA Convoy Commander and Ground Operations Manager Dean Schaaf said the main difference in landing at Kennedy and Edwards is all in the processing. At Kennedy, ground crews get a shuttle ready to be moved off the runway to its hangar, then three or four hours later, it's towed to an orbiter processing facility.
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"Out there, we tow it up to the mate-demate device, the MDD, and we have side access platforms that lower down and around the orbiter and we do all the processing," Schaaf said. "It takes us seven days from landing to being ready to ferry after we attach the tailcone and back out and everything."

As expected, Schaaf said, processing outdoors has its share of hurdles.

"It's all done out in the elements and we have had rain, and hail and lightning . . . all of those elements to work around out there at Dryden."

Kennedy and Edwards aren't the only options for the shuttle. There's also White Sands Space Harbor in New Mexico, which is where astronauts practice landing their Shuttle Training Aircraft because of its close proximity to NASA's Johnson Space Center in Houston. It's only been called upon one time to host a real shuttle landing, though: Columbia on the STS-3 mission on March 30, 1982.

It wasn't easy processing the shuttle in the gypsum-filled desert, though. And Merritt said there's a reason it's called "white sands."

"Parts of it look like a moon with dunes. It's just pure, pure white, part of the desert is. So it's a real fine powder . . . not quite like flour, but it's real fine and gets into everything," Merritt said.
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After that first-and-only landing, NASA chose to relocate the processing turnaround area to minimize the wind. However, Schaaf said it would still take about 46 days to prepare a shuttle for its return to Kennedy.

"We’ve built a tow way from the lakebed over to the west side of the range and we're out of the blowing gypsum. We have a pad, a 100 by 100-foot turnaround pad there, that the shuttle would be parked on. And all the processing would be done off of that concrete slab," Schaaf said.

The end of a mission is not the only time NASA focuses on a landing site. If a shuttle were to encounter a problem during launch, it could go to a transoceanic abort landing site, also called a TAL site. There are two in Spain -- Moron and Zargoza --and one in southern France -- Istres. Other countries that once hosted TAL sites include the Republic of the Gambia, Senegal and Morocco.

"The Shuttle Landing Facility reminds me of the site we used to have in Ben Guerir, Morocco. It was a landing strip out in the middle of the desert with a tower and very little else. And we built a building there and we used that for missions all the way up until the early 2000s when we closed that site and opened up Istres, France," Schaaf said.

Glen Lockwood, also a NASA ground operations manager, flies out to a Thttp://www.nasa-spacestation-info.blogspot.com/AL site before every launch and said even if it's a perfect day in Florida, bad weather elsewhere could be a showstopper.

"Our No. 1 concern here is safety," Lockwood said. "One site needs to be ready to support an orbiter landing for every launch. That's why we augment three TAL sites, because weather sometimes eliminates one site, perhaps two, sometimes all three TAL sites. If all three TAL sites are down because of weather, then we cannot launch."

In the Space Shuttle Program's nearly 30-year-history, a TAL site has never been needed, but that doesn't change the intensity of preparations for the team.

"I remember back in '99, it was Eileen Collins' mission. I think she was commander at that time, and we had some technical problem with the vehicle upon launch. And so we were concerned that we might be needed, but we weren't, thankfully," Lockwood said. "We've never been used. And of course everybody when we go over there, we are basically programmed to be ready, but we are all hoping that we will not be needed."
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Along with TAL sites, there are a myriad of commercial airports and military-operated air stations and bases that could be used to land the shuttle in an emergency situation. Personnel at those sites receive training from NASA on what to do if a shuttle heads their way.

As the Space Shuttle Program comes to an end, landing support team members are looking forward to getting their hands on each space shuttle for the last time.

"It's just awesome to see this big heavy, bulky thing coming out of the sky. And almost coming straight down like a brick," Merritt said. "I always say it's like a brick, and it just glides down and lands.

"It's excitement and anxiousness, and some sadness in there because you know it's wrapping up. And each one, as we get closer to the end means a lot to everybody."

So you Think you can Solve a Cosmology Puzzle?

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Cosmologists have come up with a new way to solve their problems. They are inviting scientists, including those from totally unrelated fields, to participate in a grand competition. The idea is to spur outside interest in one of cosmology's trickiest problems -- measuring the invisible dark matter and dark energy that permeate our universe.

The results will help in the development of new space missions, designed to answer fundamental questions about the history and fate of our universe.
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"We're hoping to get more computer scientists interested in our work," said cosmologist Jason Rhodes of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif., who is helping to organize the challenge, which begins on Dec. 3, 2010. "Some of the mathematical problems in our field are the same as those in machine-learning applications -- for example facial-recognition software."

JPL and several European Universities, including The University of Edinburgh and University College London in the United Kingdom, are helping to support the event, which is funded by a European Union group called Pattern Analysis, Statistical Modelling and Computation Learning. The principal investigator is Thomas Kitching of the University of Edinburgh.

This year, the competition, which has operated since 2008, is called GREAT 2010, after GRavitational lEnsing Accuracy Testing. The challenge is to solve a series of puzzles involving distorted images of galaxies. Occasionally in nature, a galaxy is situated behind a clump of matter that is causing the light from the galaxy to bend. The result is a magnified and skewed image of the galaxy. In the most extreme cases, the warping results in multiple images and even a perfect ring, called an Einstein Ring after Albert Einstein, who predicted the effect. But most of the time, the results are more subtle and a galaxy image is distorted just a tiny bit -- not even enough to be perceived by eye. This is called weak gravitational lensing, or just weak lensing for short.

Weak lensing is a powerful tool for unlocking the fabric of our universe. Only four percent of our universe consists of the stuff that makes up people, stars and anything with atoms. Twenty-four percent is dark matter -- a mysterious substance that we can't see but which tugs on the regular matter we can see. Most of our universe, 72 percent, consists of dark energy, which is even more baffling than dark matter. Dark energy is gravity's nemesis -- where gravity pulls, dark energy pushes. By studying lensed, or distorted, galaxies, scientists can create better maps of dark matter -- and by studying how dark matter changes over time, they can better understand dark energy.

Weak lensing is a promising method for tackling these questions. The 2010 U.S. National Research Council Decadal Survey on astronomy and astrophysics has ranked mission proposals using this method as high priorities.

The GREAT 2010 challenge is designed to improve weak-lensing know-how. Participants will start with fuzzy pictures of galaxies that have been distorted ever so slightly by invisible dark matter parked in front of them. The effect is so small that you can't see it with your eyes. The problem is even trickier because the telescopes are also distorting the galaxy images to an even greater degree than the dark matter. It takes complex techniques -- mathematical models and image-analysis algorithms -- to tease apart these various influences and ultimately discover how dark matter is warping a galaxy's shape.

"This is an image-analysis challenge. You don't need to be an astronomer or cosmologist to help measure the weak-lensing effect," said Kitching. "This challenge is meant to encourage a multidisciplinary approach to the problem."

Participants will have nine months to solve a series of thousands of puzzles. The winners will be announced at a closing ceremony and workshop held at JPL. Prize-winners can expect some kind of cool gadget -- as well as the satisfaction of having brought the world one step closer to understanding what makes our universe tick.

NASA Ejects Nanosatellite From Microsatellite in Space

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On Dec. 6 at 1:31 a.m. EST, NASA for the first time successfully ejected a nanosatellite from a free-flying microsatellite. NanoSail-D ejected from the Fast, Affordable, Science and Technology Satellite, FASTSAT, demonstrating the capability to deploy a small cubesat payload from an autonomous microsatellite in space.

Nanosatellites or cubesats are typically launched and deployed from a mechanism called a Poly-PicoSatellite Orbital Deployer (P-POD) mounted directly on a launch vehicle. This is the first time NASA has mounted a P-POD on a microsatellite to eject a cubesat.
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FASTSAT, equipped with six science and technology demonstration payloads, including NanoSail-D, launched Friday, Nov. 19 at 8:25 p.m. EST from Kodiak Island, Alaska. During launch, the NanoSail-D flight unit, about the size of a loaf of bread, was stowed inside FASTSAT in a P-POD.

"The successful ejection of NanoSail-D demonstrates the operational capability of FASTSAT as a cost-effective independent means of placing cubesat payloads into orbit safely," said Mark Boudreaux, FASTSAT project manager at the Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Ala. "With this first step behind us, we have demonstrated we can launch a number of different types of payloads using this common deployment system from an autonomous microsatellite like FASTSAT."

"NanoSail D has multiple enabling technology demonstration objectives for this flight," said Joe Casas, FASTSAT project scientist at Marshall. Casas said when the NanoSail-D sail is deployed it will use its large sail made of thin polymer material, a material much thinner than a single human hair, to significantly decrease the time to de-orbit the small satellite without the use of propellants as most traditional satellites use.

The NanoSail-D flight results will help to mature this technology so it could be used on future large spacecraft missions to aid in de-orbiting space debris created by decommissioned satellites without using valuable mission propellants.

"This is a great step for our solar sail team with the successful ejection of the NanoSail-D satellite from FASTSAT," said Dean Alhorn, NanoSail-D principal investigator and aerospace engineer at the Marshall Center. "We had to carefully plan and calculate the ejection time, so we'd be lined up over the United States and our ground controllers to execute the next phase of the mission."

After ejection, a timer within NanoSail-D will begin a three day countdown as the satellite orbits the Earth. Once the timer reaches zero, four booms will quickly deploy and the NanoSail-D sail will start to unfold to a 100 square foot polymer sail. Within five seconds the sail fully unfurls.

If the deployment is successful, NanoSail-D will stay in low-Earth orbit between 70 and 120 days, depending on atmospheric conditions. NanoSail-D is designed to demonstrate deployment of a compact solar sail boom system that could lead to further development of this alternative solar sail propulsion technology and FASTSAT’s ability to eject a nanosatellite from a microsatellite -- while avoiding re-contact with the FASTSAT satellite bus.
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NanoSail-D was designed and built by engineers in Huntsville and managed at the Marshall Center with technical and hardware support from NASA's Ames Research Center in Moffett Field, Calif. This experiment is a combined effort between the Space and Missile Defense Command, Von Braun Center for Science and Innovation, both located in Huntsville, Ala. and NASA.

FASTSAT launched on the STP-S26 mission -- a joint activity between NASA and the U.S. Department of Defense Space Test Program. The satellite was designed, developed and tested at the Marshall Center in partnership with the Von Braun Center for Science & Innovation and Dynetics Inc. of Huntsville. Dynetics provided key engineering, manufacturing and ground operations support for the new microsatellite. Thirteen Huntsville-area firms, as well as the University of Alabama in Huntsville, also were part of the project team.

Blacker Than Black

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Black is black, right? Not so, according to a team of NASA engineers now developing a blacker-than pitch material that will help scientists gather hard-to-obtain scientific measurements or observe currently unseen astronomical objects, like Earth-sized planets in orbit around other stars.

The nanotech-based material now being developed by a team of 10 technologists at the NASA Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md., is a thin coating of multi-walled carbon nanotubes — tiny hollow tubes made of pure carbon about 10,000 times thinner than a strand of human hair. Nanotubes have a multitude of potential uses, particularly in electronics and advanced materials due to their unique electrical properties and extraordinary strength. But in this application, NASA is interested in using the technology to help suppress errant light that has a funny way of ricocheting off instrument components and contaminating measurements.



Better than Paint

"This is a technology that offers a lot of payback," said engineer Leroy Sparr, who is assessing its effectiveness on the Ocean Radiometer for Carbon Assessment (ORCA), a next-generation instrument that is designed to measure marine photosynthesis. "It's about 10 times better than black paint" typically used by NASA instrument designers to suppress stray light, he said.

The technology works because of its super-absorption abilities. The nanotubes themselves are packed vertically much like a shag rug. The tiny gaps between the tubes absorb 99.5 percent of the light that hits them. In other words, very few photons are reflected off the carbon-nanotube coating, which means that stray light cannot reflect off surfaces and interfere with the light that scientists actually want to measure. The human eye sees the material as black because only a small fraction of light reflects off the material.

The team began working on the technology in 2007. Unbeknownst to the group, the New York-based Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute also had initiated a similar effort and announced in 2008 that its researchers had developed the darkest carbon nanotube-based material ever made — more than three times darker than the previous record. "Our material isn't quite as dark as theirs," said John Hagopian, the principal investigator leading the development team. "But what we're developing is 10 times blacker than current NASA paints that suppress system stray light. Furthermore, it will be robust for space applications," he said.
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That is an important distinction, said Carl Stahle, assistant chief of technology for Goddard's Instrument Systems and Technology Division. Not all technology can be used in space because of the harsh environmental conditions encountered there. "That's the real strength of this effort," Stahle said. "The group is finding ways to apply new technology and fly it on our instruments."

Big Breakthrough

The breakthrough was the discovery of a highly adhesive underlayer material upon which to grow the carbon nanotubes, which are just a few tens of nanometers in diameter. To grow carbon nanotubes, materials scientists typically apply a catalyst layer of iron to an underlayer on the silicon substrate. They then heat the material in an oven to about 750° C (1,382° F). While heating, the material is bathed in carbon-containing feedstock gas.

Stephanie Getty, the materials scientist on Hagopian's team, varied the underlayer as well as the thickness of the catalyst materials to create carbon nanotubes that not only absorb light, but also remain fixed to the material upon which they are grown. As a result, they are more durable and less likely to scratch off. The team also has grown durable nanotube coatings on titanium, a better structural material for space use. The team now is fine-tuning production techniques to assure consistent quality and light-suppression capabilities, Hagopian said.

New Capabilities Added

Should the team prove the material's suitability in space, the material would provide real benefits to instrument developers, Hagopian added.

Currently, instrument developers apply black paint to baffles and other components to reduce stray light. Because reflectance tests have shown the coating to be more effective than paint, instrument developers could grow the carbon nanotubes on the components themselves, thereby simplifying instrument designs because fewer baffles would be required. To accommodate larger components, the team now is installing a six-inch furnace to grow nanotubes on components measuring up to five inches in diameter. And under a NASA R&D award, the team also is developing a separate technique to create sheets of nanotubes that could be applied to larger, non-conforming surfaces.

In addition to simplifying instrument design, the technology would allow scientists to gather hard-to-obtain measurements because of limitations in existing light-suppression techniques or to gather information about objects in high-contrast areas, including planets in orbit around other stars, Hagopian said.

The ORCA team, which is fabricating and aligning an instrument prototype, is the first to actually apply and test the technology. The instrument is the front-runner for the proposed Aerosol/Cloud/Ecosystems (ACE) mission and requires robust light-suppression technologies because more than 90 percent of the light gathered by the instrument comes from the atmosphere. Therefore, the team is looking for a technique to suppress the light so that it doesn't contaminate the faint signal the team needs to retrieve.

"It's been an issue with all the (ocean sensors) we've flown so far," said ORCA Principal Investigator Chuck McClain.
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Working with the ORCA team, Hagopian's group grew the coating on a slit, the conduit through which all light will pass on ORCA. "Having an efficient absorber is critical and the nanotubes could provide the solution," McClain said. "Right now, it looks promising," Sparr added. "If I can support them and they can continue advancing the technology so that it can be applied to other spacecraft components, it could be a very important development for NASA."

Goddard Chief Technologist Peter Hughes agrees, and, in fact, selected Hagopian and his team to receive his organization’s 2010 "Innovator of the Year" award. "Our job is to develop and advance new technology that will ultimately result in better scientific measurements. Goddard has a well-deserved reputation for creating technologies that enhance instrument performance because we are adept at quickly infusing emerging technology for specific spaceflight applications. John’s team demonstrated that key strength. And in doing so, he’s leading the way in NASA’s quest to bring about a new level of scientific discovery," Hughes said.

NASA-Funded Research Discovers Life Built With Toxic Chemical

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NASA-funded astrobiology research has changed the fundamental knowledge about what comprises all known life on Earth.
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Researchers conducting tests in the harsh environment of Mono Lake in California have discovered the first known microorganism on Earth able to thrive and reproduce using the toxic chemical arsenic. The microorganism substitutes arsenic for phosphorus in its cell components.

"The definition of life has just expanded," said Ed Weiler, NASA's associate administrator for the Science Mission Directorate at the agency's Headquarters in Washington. "As we pursue our efforts to seek signs of life in the solar system, we have to think more broadly, more diversely and consider life as we do not know it."

This finding of an alternative biochemistry makeup will alter biology textbooks and expand the scope of the search for life beyond Earth. The research is published in this week's edition of Science Express.
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Carbon, hydrogen, nitrogen, oxygen, phosphorus and sulfur are the six basic building blocks of all known forms of life on Earth. Phosphorus is part of the chemical backbone of DNA and RNA, the structures that carry genetic instructions for life, and is considered an essential element for all living cells.

Phosphorus is a central component of the energy-carrying molecule in all cells (adenosine triphosphate) and also the phospholipids that form all cell membranes. Arsenic, which is chemically similar to phosphorus, is poisonous for most life on Earth. Arsenic disrupts metabolic pathways because chemically it behaves similarly to phosphate.

"We know that some microbes can breathe arsenic, but what we've found is a microbe doing something new -- building parts of itself out of arsenic," said Felisa Wolfe-Simon, a NASA Astrobiology Research Fellow in residence at the U.S. Geological Survey in Menlo Park, Calif., and the research team's lead scientist. "If something here on Earth can do something so unexpected, what else can life do that we haven't seen yet?"

The newly discovered microbe, strain GFAJ-1, is a member of a common group of bacteria, the Gammaproteobacteria. In the laboratory, the researchers successfully grew microbes from the lake on a diet that was very lean on phosphorus, but included generous helphttp://www.nasa-spacestation-info.blogspot.com/ings of arsenic. When researchers removed the phosphorus and replaced it with arsenic the microbes continued to grow. Subsequent analyses indicated that the arsenic was being used to produce the building blocks of new GFAJ-1 cells.

The key issue the researchers investigated was when the microbe was grown on arsenic did the arsenic actually became incorporated into the organisms' vital biochemical machinery, such as DNA, proteins and the cell membranes. A variety of sophisticated laboratory techniques was used to determine where the arsenic was incorporated.

The team chose to explore Mono Lake because of its unusual chemistry, especially its high salinity, high alkalinity, and high levels of arsenic. This chemistry is in part a result of Mono Lake's isolation from its sources of fresh water for 50 years.

The results of this study will inform ongoing research in many areas, including the study of Earth's evolution, organic chemistry, biogeochemical cycles, disease mitigation and Earth system research. These findings also will open up new frontiers in microbiology and other areas of research.

"The idea of alternative biochemistries for life is common in science fiction," http://www.nasa-spacestation-info.blogspot.com/said Carl Pilcher, director of the NASA Astrobiology Institute at the agency's Ames Research Center in Moffett Field, Calif. "Until now a life form using arsenic as a building block was only theoretical, but now we know such life exists in Mono Lake."

The research team included scientists from the U.S. Geological Survey, Arizona State University in Tempe, Ariz., Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in Livermore, Calif., Duquesne University in Pittsburgh, Penn., and the Stanford Synchroton Radiation Lightsource in Menlo Park, Calif.

NASA's Astrobiology Program in Washington contributed funding for the research through its Exobiology and Evolutionary Biology program and the NASA Astrobiology Institute. NASA's Astrobiology Program supports research into the origin, evolution, distribution, and future of life on Earth.

Pits, Flows, Other Scenes in New Set of Mars Images

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Newly released images from 340 recent observations of Mars by the High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment (HiRISE) camera aboard NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter show details of a wide assortment of Martian environments.
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Strewn boulders and rippled sand lie on the floors of two shadowy, steep-walled pits. Mounds in another region appear to be mud volcanoes, which may have brought fine-grained material to the surface from deep underground. In the Tharsis volcanic region, the intersection of a lava flow with a trough caused by ground collapse allows seeing whether the flow happened before or after the collapse.

These and thousands of other images from HiRISE observations between Oct. 1 and Nov. 1, 2010, are now available on NASA's Planetary Data System (http://pds.jpl.nasa.gov/) and the camera team's website (http://hirise.lpl.arizona.edu).

The camera is one of six instruments on NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, which reached Mars in 2006. It has made more than 17,000 observations. Each observation covers an area of several square miles on Mars and reveals details as small as desks.

NASA Aids in Characterizing Super-Earth Atmosphere

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A team of astronomers, including two NASA Sagan Fellows, has made the first characterizations of a super-Earth's atmosphere, by using a ground-based telescope. A super-Earth is a planet up to three times the size of Earth and weighing up to 10 times as much. The findings, reported in the Dec. 2 issue of the journal Nature, are a significant milestone toward eventually being able to probe the atmospheres of Earth-like planets for signs of life.

The team determined the planet, GJ 1214b, is either blanketed with a thin layer of water steam or surrounded by a thick layer of high clouds. If the former, the planet itself would have an icy composition. If the latter, the planet would be rocky or similar to the composition of Neptune, though much smaller.
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"This is the first super-Earth known to have an atmosphere," said Jacob Bean, a NASA Sagan Fellow and astronomer at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics in Cambridge, Mass. "But even with these new measurements, we can't say yet what that atmosphere is made of. This world is being very shy and veiling its true nature from us."

GJ 1214b, first discovered in December 2009, is 2.7 times the size of Earth and 6.5 times as massive. Previous observations of the planet's size and mass demonstrated it has a low density for its size, leading astronomers to conclude the planet is some kind of solid body with an atmosphere.

The planet orbits close to its dim star, at a distance of 0.014 astronomical units. An astronomical unit is the distance between Earth and the sun, approximately 93 million miles. GJ 1214b circles too close to its star to be habitable by any life forms.

Bean and his team observed infrared light as the planet crossed in front of its star. During such transits, the star's light filters through the atmosphere. Gases absorb the starlight at particular wavelengths, leaving behind chemical fingerprints detectable from Earth. This same type of technique has been used to study the atmospheres of distant "hot Jupiters," or Jupiter-like planets orbiting close to their stars, and found gases like hydrogen, methane and sodium vapor.

In the case of the super-Earth, no chemical fingerprints were detected; however, this doesn't mean there are no chemicals present. Instead, this information ruled out some possibilities for GJ 1214b's atmosphere, and narrowed the scope to either an atmosphere of water steam or high clouds. Astronomers believe it's more likely the atmosphere is too thin around the planet to let enough light filter through and reveal chemical fingerprints.

"A steamy atmosphere would have to be very dense – about one-fifth water vapor by volume -- compared to our Earth, with an atmosphere that's four-fifths nitrogen and one-fifth oxygen with only a touch of water vapor," Bean said. "During the next year, we should have some solid answers about what this planet is truly like."

The team, which included Bean's co-authors -- Eliza Miller-Ricci Kempton, a NASA Sagan Fellow at the University of California in Santa Cruz, and Derek Homeier of the Institute for Astrophysics in Gottingen, Germany -- examined GJ 1214b using the ground-based Very Large Telescope at Paranal Observatory in Chile.

"This is an important step forward, narrowing our understanding of the atmosphere of this planet," said NASA Exoplanet Exploration Program Scientist Douglas Hudgins at NASA Headquarters in Washington. "Bizarre worlds like this make exoplanet science one of the most compelling areas in astrophysics today."

The Sagan Fellowship Program is administered by the NASA Exoplanet Science Institute at the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena. Its purpose is to advance the scientific and technical goals of NASA's Exoplanet Exploration Program. The program is managed for NASA by the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif. Caltech manages JPL for NASA.

NASA Sets Coverage for COTS 1 Launch Targeted for Dec. 7

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CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. -- The first SpaceX Falcon 9 demonstration launch for NASA's Commercial Orbital Transportation Services program is targeted for liftoff on Tuesday, Dec. 7. Liftoff will occur from Launch Complex 40 at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida. The launch window extends from 9:03 a.m. to 12:22 p.m. EST. If necessary, launch opportunities also are available on Dec. 8 and Dec. 9 with the same window.

Known as COTS 1, the launch is the first flight of the Dragon spacecraft and the first commercial attempt to re-enter a spacecraft from orbit. This is the first of three test launches currently planned in the Falcon 9 test flight series. It is intended as a demonstration mission to prove key capabilities such as launch, structural integrity of the Dragon spacecraft, on-orbit operation, re-entry, descent and splashdown in the Pacific Ocean.

NASA established the COTS program to procure a commercial launch service to stimulate the commercial space industry, to facilitate a private industry cargo capability to the International Space Station as soon as achievable, and to achieve cost-effective access to low Earth orbit that will attract private customers.

PRELAUNCH NEWS CONFERENCE

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The prelaunch news conference for the COTS 1 Falcon 9 launch is planned for L-1, currently Monday, Dec. 6, at 1:30 p.m., at the press site at NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida. NASA Television will provide live coverage, and the briefing will be streamed at http://www.nasa.gov/ntv.

The prelaunch news conference participants will be:

* Phil McAlister, acting director, Commercial Space Flight Development
NASA Headquarters, Washington

* Alan Lindenmoyer, manager, Commercial Crew and Cargo Program
NASA's Johnson Space Center, Houston

* Gwynne Shotwell, president
SpaceX, Hawthorne, Calif.

* Mike McAleenan, Falcon 9 Launch Weather Officer
45th Weather Squadron, Cape Canaveral Air Force Station

A post-mission news conference will be held at Kennedy approximately one hour after splashdown occurs.

Audio of the prelaunch and post-mission news conferences also will be carried on the NASA "V" circuits, which can be accessed directly by dialing 321-867-1220, 1240, 1260 or 7135.

SOFIA Flight Tests for Early Science Progress

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The Stratospheric Observatory for Infrared Astronomy 747SP aircraft is currently flying the second segment of flight tests to prepare the observatory for Early Science missions. When completed, the SOFIA program will operate a fully capable observatory cleared for telescope cavity, door-open science instrument flights up to 45,000 feet.
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Early Science is divided into two milestone events, Short Science and Basic Science. Short Science requirements involve clearing the SOFIA system for telescope assembly operations at or above 35,000 feet and with the telescope assembly and aperture operated at up to 40 degrees elevation. The second phase, Basic Science, requires the observatory to fly above 41,000 feet with the telescope assembly and aperture operating in its full range of 23 to 58 degrees elevation, which is the full range of vertical movement.

The nine flights planned for June through August include evaluation of the performance, handling qualities and structural characteristics of the aircraft. Test data will be collected to quantify airframe and telescope cavity acoustic and vibration characteristics. Results of testing during these and subsequent flights will meet airworthiness requirements for the 747 flying observatory and its 20-year operational lifetime.