Spiders in Space – The Sequel!

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The very idea of spiders in space brings to mind campy, black and white horror films involving eight-legged monsters. In actuality, it is a scientific investigation called Commercial Generic Bioprocessing Apparatus Science Insert-05 or CSI-05, in which researchers observe arachnid habits in a microgravity environment. This is the second spider investigation on the International Space Station—the first was CSI-03—and researchers have high hopes that the sequel will eclipse the original.
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Scheduled to launch April 29, 2011 with STS-134, the spider habitat will transfer from the space shuttle Endeavour to the space station. Once aboard, the crew will place the two habitats into the Commercial Generic Bioprocessing Apparatus or CGBA. This equipment will maintain a consistent temperature, humidity and lighting cycle for the spiders and their sustenance supply of fruit flies. The CGBA also controls imaging for the investigation.

The spider pair currently planned for investigation with CSI-05 are both golden orb spiders (Nephila clavipes), which spin a three dimensional, asymmetric web. This is different from the two orb spiders (Larinioides patagiatus and Metepeira) that launched to the space station on STS-126, which were selected specifically for the symmetry of their web formation. Scientists are looking to see if and how the arachnids will spin their webs differently in microgravity. The results will help them to understand the behavioral role of gravity for the spiders and their fruit fly companions.

“I think people can relate to everyday insects and they can understand why the experiment is of interest,” said Stefanie Countryman, coordinator for CSI-05. “Plus, the visual aspects of this experiment make it very appealing to the general public.”
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When a sequel does top the original, in science as in movies, it usually has something to do with lessons learned during the first production. The CSI-03 investigation, for instance, was unfortunately restricted to eight days, due to the spiders’ fruit flies food ‘sliming’ the observation window. This obscured the view inside the habitat and limited the study. For CSI-05, which is funded by the National Space Biomedical Research Institute or NSBRI and the NASA National Lab Education Office, the fruit flies will have a separate compartment from the spiders. The crew will slowly introduce the flies—approximately every four days—into the two individual spider habitats, which should allow for clear imagery through the viewing window for the full 45-day duration of the investigation.

The fruit flies are not, however, simply nourishment for the spiders. They are actually a secondary study themselves. Scientists plan to look at their mobility over time to see if and how they react to the microgravity environment. They should be able to observe growth, behavioral and flight patterns as the flies develop.
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There also is an important education element to this investigation, sponsored by Baylor College of medicine Center for Educational Outreach and Orion’s Quest. While the N. clavipes is spinning in space, students on Earth will develop and observe their own spider habitats. Teachers can use a curriculum found on bioedonline.org. This Web site includes daily images sent from the space station to the BioServe Payload Operations and Control Center. This allows students to compare their spiders’ spinning habits to those of the spiders in microgravity in near real time. Orion’s Quest Web site—orionsquest.org—will focus on the habits of the fruit flies in space.

STS-134 Launch Scrubbed; Progress Docks to Station

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NASA Shuttle launch director Mike Leinbach stated that Endeavour’s launch will be no earlier than Monday at 2:33 p.m. EDT. Engineers need that time to troubleshoot an issue that resulted in today’s launch scrub.
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During today’s countdown, engineers detected a failure in one of two heater circuits associated with Auxiliary Power Unit (APU) 1. Heaters are required to keep the APUs’ hydrazine from freezing on orbit. Attempts to activate the heater were not successful and engineers now believe the problem might be associated with a Load Control Assembly, which is a switchbox, located in the aft end of Endeavour, or an electrical short in the wires leading into or out of the switchbox.

Because of this, Leinbach said there will be a minimum 72-hour scrub turnaround.

The ISS Progress 42 cargo craft docked to the Pirs docking compartment on the International Space Station at 10:28 a.m. EDT Friday, less than six hours before space shuttle Endeavour’s scheduled launch to the station on the STS-134 mission.

The cargo ship launched at 9:05 a.m. Wednesday from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan, carrying 1,940 pounds of propellant, 110 pounds of oxygen and air, 926 pounds of water and 2,976 pounds of maintenance hardware, experiment equipment and resupply items for the Expedition 28 crew.

The Big Picture Wins Big

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Remember life before cell phones? Or GPS? Or tablet computers? Kind of hard, isn't it? Air traffic management researchers feel the same way about life before the Future ATM (Air Traffic Management) Concepts Evaluation Tool, or FACET.

FACET is a computer program developed by NASA that generates simulations for managing air traffic scenarios. It provides a "big picture" view of what's happening in the skies overhead. For any given moment in time, it can show thousands of aircraft swarming through our national airspace. With each aircraft represented as a tiny icon, a FACET simulation can look like an "ant farm in the sky," with aircraft clustering around major airports like ants targeting a drop of peanut butter. You may have seen video generated from FACET on the morning news during air travel outlook reports.

Recently, the creators of this simulation software at NASA's Ames Research Center in California won NASA's 2010 Government Invention of the Year. The award, presented by NASA's Inventions and Contributions Board, is given to inventions that have made a significant contribution to NASA's goals and to broader communities; in this case, the aeronautics community. Nominations are rated on use, creativity, benefits to the community, and overall significance to humankind.

"As the world's population grows and air travel demand increases, our airspace will become more crowded," said Banavar Sridhar, NASA senior scientist for Air Transportation Systems. "FACET helps air traffic management researchers find ways to increase airspace capacity and establish more efficient routes with the least impact on the environment, thereby saving fuel and minimizing emissions."

One of the best things about FACET is that it doesn't need supercomputers to run, even when asked to crunch data from thousands of flight plans. The software can operate on a single computer, which was a big leap forward that really helps researchers. FACET can model current traffic patterns to see where improvements could be made, or model entirely new patterns that result from new flight operations techniques, like new merging and spacing rules, weather avoidance techniques, or approach patterns into airports.

How does it work? FACET uses aircraft performance profiles, airspace models, weather data, and flight schedules to model trajectories for the climb, cruise, and descent phases of flight for each type of aircraft. Then a graphical interface displays the traffic patterns in two and three dimensions, under various current and projected conditions for specific airspace regions or over the entire continental United States. You'll see examples of all of these different models in the video linked from this page.

According to FACET team members, the software has become a valuable tool for Federal Aviation Administration traffic flow managers and commercial airline dispatchers. They use FACET technology to do real-time operations planning by combining live air traffic data from FAA radar systems and weather data from the National Weather Service to create a real-time big picture of what's happening in the air. With that information, airspace system operators can reroute flights around congested airspace and severe weather to maintain safety and minimize delay.

NASA Invites Public to Journey Toward Interstellar Space

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NASA will hold a special NASA Science Update at 10 a.m. PDT (1 p.m. EDT) on Thursday, April 28, to discuss the unprecedented journey of NASA's twin Voyager spacecraft to the edge of our solar system.

The event will be held at NASA Headquarters in Washington and will be broadcast live on NASA Television and streamed. In addition, the event will be carried live on Ustream, with a live chat box available.
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After 33 years in space, the spacecraft are still operating and returning data from about 16 billion kilometers (10 billion miles) away from our sun. The Voyagers also carry a collection of images and sounds from Earth as a message to possible life elsewhere in the galaxy.

The participants are:
-- Ed Stone, Voyager project scientist and professor of physics, California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, Calif.
-- Ann Druyan, creative director, Voyager Interstellar Message Project; Carl Sagan's co-author and widow
-- Suzanne Dodd, Voyager project manager, NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif.
-- Merav Opher, Voyager guest investigator and assistant professor of astronomy, Boston University

Flying Up the Middle of Midgard


On April 19, IceBridge's 23rd flight surveyed the centerline of Kangerdlugssuaq Glacier, Helheim Glacier, and several branches of Midgard Glacier. Midgard Glacier (above) has changed rapidly in recent years, making it of particular interest to researchers.


The P-3 crew navigated through clouds and moderate turbulence on April 18 to reach the fjords in southeast Greenland. A post-flight weather brief confirmed that the southeast was the clearest region and only viable site for a science flight. On April 16, the high priority targets in the southeast were socked in. So, teams re-flew the grid pattern over Jakobshavn to evaluate the repeatability of the magnetic measurements, and again over Russell Glacier to collect more data for a three-dimensional image of the bedrock beneath the glacier.

April 15 was a key day for IceBridge. Coordination with the European Space Agency (ESA) resulted in a successful overflight of a ground-based calibration campaign called CRYOVEX. Measurements from the air and ground will be used to calibrate and validate measurements from NASA ESA's ice-observing CryoSat-2 satellite. The same day marked the start of the deployment of a high-altitude lidar instrument on the B200 aircraft -- the first time that IceBridge has simultaneously operated two NASA planes.

T-38s Soar as Spaceflight Trainers

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Years before the space shuttle would glide home to a safe touchdown on runways in California and Florida, astronauts pitched the noses of T-38 jet trainers toward the same runways to find out what it would look like to land a spacecraft in such a way.

The T-38 remains a fixture for astronaut training more than 30 years later because the sleek, white jets make pilots and mission specialists think quickly in changing situations, mental experiences the astronauts say are critical to practicing for the rigors of spaceflight.

"It's actually our most important training that we do as astronauts," said Terry Virts, who flew as the pilot of STS-130 aboard shuttle Endeavour. "It’s the one place where we're not in a simulator. It's real flying and if you make a mistake, you can get hurt or break something or run out of gas. There are a lot of things that happen real-world in a T-38 that don't happen in the simulator."

"You're in a different world, a dynamic world, it doesn't matter whether it's a shuttle or a T-38," said Story Musgrave, a six-time shuttle flyer who posted thousands of hours in the T-38 and instructed others how to fly it, too. "It's understanding the rules, how to live within the rules."

Powered by two afterburning General Electric J85 engines, a T-38 can reach Mach 2 and soar above 40,000 feet, about 10,000 feet higher than airliners typically cruise. The plane can wrench its pilots through more than seven Gs, or seven times the force of gravity. That's enough to make simply lifting hands a feat of strength and breathing a labored chore. It'll make one's neck feel like it is balancing a cinder block. It's also more than enough to make the average person black out.

"The T-38 is a great aircraft for what we need at NASA because it's fast, it's high-performance and it's very simple," Virts said. "It's safe and it's known. So compared to other airplanes, it's definitely one of the best."

› Watch video as Terry Virts approaches thunderstorm in T-38

Made by Northrop, the T-38 was first fielded by the U.S. Air Force in 1961 as an advanced jet trainer, and it still serves the Air Force in that capacity. It was the preferred aircraft of the Air Force Thunderbirds during the 1970s, when the T-38s starred as the feature performers in air shows around the world.

A T-38's NASA paint scheme is largely white with a blue stripe down the length of its narrow fuselage, earning it the occasional nickname "white rocket." But mostly they're called T-38s or just "38s." NASA's small fleet is housed mainly at Ellington Field outside NASA's Johnson Space Center where a team of mechanics looks after them.

"Staying ahead of the jet" is the pilot-speak for constantly calculating fuel needs, navigation points, mission requirements and dozens of other things needed to fly successfully.

The Air Force pilots who would become astronauts and fly the shuttle learned the finer points of jet aircraft at the controls of T-38s. Virts, for example, learned to fly a T-38 when he was a 21-year-old lieutenant.

"It pulls Gs not quite like a frontline fighter," Virts said. "It's fast, but frontline fighters are faster, but the one thing the T-38 can do amazingly well is roll. You jam the stick to the side and it rolls really, really fast. That's something that on your first flight they always want to demo to you. At first, you're like, 'Oh, cool!' and then after a bunch of rolls, you're like, 'Alright, that's enough rolling the airplane.' "

Anyone who didn't fly a T-38 before they got to NASA learned to fly it once they joined the astronaut corps. Basic astronaut training includes T-38 courses, and mission specialists, who do not sit at the controls of a space shuttle, have to record four hours a month at the stick of a T-38. Commanders and pilots are required to fly the T-38 for 15 hours a month to keep up their proficiency.

"It requires you to think fast," Virts said.

The jet, with its thin, 25-foot-long wings, is seen most often flying the astronauts to NASA's Kennedy Space Center the week of launch. On their way to the Shuttle Landing Facility, the crews typically fly by the shuttle stack on the launch pad, banking slightly so the astronauts can look over their shoulders from about 1,500 feet and see their ride into space.

"One of the most fun things to do is to fly down to the Cape and see your space shuttle," Virts said.

But there is more to the planes than transportation. The aircraft roar around Kennedy on launch and landing day when astronauts use them to scout weather conditions in the hours before liftoff.

Any footage of early shuttle landings includes more than a glimpse of a few T-38s as they followed the shuttle down to a runway. From their vantage points around the shuttle, the chase pilots could radio the shuttle crews about the condition of the spacecraft and what to expect in the approach. They also could mirror the shuttle all the way through its approach on a glide path that is seven times steeper than an airliner's.

Taking a lightweight, nimble aircraft designed to teach pilots to fly high-performance fighters and making it into something with as much drag as a 110-ton glider took some modification and plenty of certification flights to prove it was safe. For the T-38, the modifications included and extra-large set of airbrakes on the bottom of the aircraft. Then astronauts had to prove it could fly safely with the landing gear down and those airbrakes open.

With those steps in place, astronauts could point a T-38s nose down at the ground and fly toward the runway faster than 300 mph. The flying is not an exact physical simulation; the astronauts use the Shuttle Training Aircraft, or STA, for that. But flying the approach in a T-38 shows them what a landing in the shuttle will look like, time and time again.

"As pilots we fly in the STA to learn how to land the shuttle, but the most important flying that we do as astronauts is in the T-38, because the skills we learn there apply generically to all aspects of our jobs," Virts said.

The rules of flying also cross from T-38 to spacewalking, even though mechanically there are no similarities. After all, a spacesuit doesn't have a control stick and rudder pedals.

However, on the mental side, a T-38 and a spacesuit have critical supplies that cannot be allowed to run out. That means the operators in both cases have to follow their progress carefully and make sure they aren't using too much fuel, in the case of the T-38, or running low on oxygen, in the case of the spacesuit.

"It's not the same, but it's being an operator," Musgrave said. "It's procedures, and it's checklists. It's getting on with it and it's learning the program and it's doing it right. It's all those things. It'll help you there, it'll help you everywhere else, too."

Joining the agency in 1967, Musgrave would take the planes on checkout flights to make sure a jet could handle the demanding requirements of flying at the hands of test pilots.

"It's the best flying to me because you do absolutely everything the airplane can do," Musgrave said. "That's very good flying."

The T-38 is hailed by the astronauts for its simplicity, safety and reliability. It has surprised its pilots on a few occasions, though.

One of Musgrave's experiences came during a T-38 check flight when the aircraft was supposed to hold itself level in a stall, which is when the wings are no longer providing lift. In Musgrave's case, the aircraft rolled over onto its back.

"To be fully stalled and inverted with the wheels pointing skyward in a swept-wing, high-performance aircraft is more than uncomfortable, it's frightening ," he wrote in his book, "The NASA Northrop T-38 Talon."

Musgrave released the control stick and let the jet flop around in the air and sort itself out until it pointed its nose down and once again became flyable. He performed the same test in the same jet with the same results repeatedly after the mechanics could not find out what was wrong. He took the same plane out again years later and it passed the stall test completely.

For astronauts, the seating arrangement, with one pilot behind the other, is the same as they encounter on the flight deck of a shuttle, where a pair of mission specialists, one serving as flight engineer, sit behind the commander and pilot.

Just as they would during a shuttle launch and landing, the astronaut in the front seat of the T-38 handles the flying and the mission specialist in the back seat passes on important information, talks to the control towers and takes care of aspects of navigation.

"The reason for the T-38 is spaceflight readiness training," Virts said.

Musgrave describes the T-38 as "a classic, timeless beauty."

"If you didn't know what a shark was and I showed you a picture of a shark and asked you, 'Can it swim?' Of course it can," Musgrave said. "A thousand years from now, you'd say the T-38's a classic, but it'll be beautiful then, too."

NASA's Hubble Celebrates 21st Anniversary with 'Rose' of Galaxies

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To celebrate the 21st anniversary of the Hubble Space Telescope's deployment into space, astronomers at the Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore, Md., pointed Hubble's eye at an especially photogenic pair of interacting galaxies called Arp 273.

"For 21 years, Hubble has profoundly changed our view of the universe, allowing us to see deep into the past while opening our eyes to the majesty and wonders around us," NASA Administrator Charles Bolden said."I was privileged to pilot space shuttle Discovery as it deployed Hubble. After all this time, new Hubble images still inspire awe and are a testament to the extraordinary work of the many people behind the world's most famous observatory."

Hubble was launched April 24, 1990, aboard Discovery's STS-31 mission. Hubble discoveries revolutionized nearly all areas of current astronomical research from plahttp://nasa-spacestation-info.blogspot.com/netary science to cosmology.

"Hubble is America's gift to the world," Sen. Barbara Mikulski of Maryland said. "Its jaw-dropping images have rewritten the textbooks and inspired generations of schoolchildren to study math and science. It has been documenting the history of our universe for 21 years. Thanks to the daring of our brave astronauts, a successful servicing mission in 2009 gave Hubble new life. I look forward to Hubble's amazing images and inspiring discoveries for years to come."

The newly released Hubble image shows a large spiral galaxy, known as UGC 1810, with a disk that is distorted into a rose-like shape by the gravitational tidal pull of the companion galaxy below it, known as UGC 1813. A swath of blue jewel-like points across the top is the combined light from clusters of intensely bright and hot young blue stars. These massive stars glow fiercely in ultraviolet light.

The smaller, nearly edge-on companion shows distinct signs of intense star formation at its nucleus, perhaps triggered by the encounter with the companion galaxy.

Arp 273 lies in the constellation Andromeda and is roughly 300 million light-years away from Earth. The image shows a tenuous tidal bridge of material between the two galaxies that are separated from each other by tens of thousands of light-years.

A series of uncommon spiral patterns in the large galaxy are a tell-tale sign of interaction. The large, outer arm appears partially as a ring, a feature seen when interacting galaxies actually pass through one another. This suggests the smaller companion dived deep, but off-center, through UGC 1810. The inner set of spiral arms is highly warped out of the plane, with one of the arms going behind the bulge and coming back out the other side. How these two spiral patterns connect is not precisely known.

The larger galaxy in the UGC 1810 - UGC 1813 pair has a mass about five times that of the smaller galaxy. In unequal pairs such as this, the relatively rapid passage of a companion galaxy produces the lopsided or asymmetric structure in the main spiral. Also in such encounters, the starburst activity typically begins in the minor galaxies earlier than in the major galaxies. These effects could be because the smaller galaxies have consumed less of the gas present in their nuclei, from which new stars are born.

The interaction was imaged on Dec. 17, 2010, with Hubble's Wide Field Camera 3 (WFC3). The picture is a composite of data taken with three separate filters on WFC3 that allow a broad range of wavelengths covering the ultraviolet, blue, and red portions of the spectrum.

The Hubble Space Telescope is a project of international cooperation between NASA and the European Space Agency. NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center manages the telescope. The Space Telescope Science Institute (STScI) conducts Hubble science operations. STScI is operated for NASA by the Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy Inc. in Washington, D.C.

NASA Orbiter Reveals Big Changes in Mars' Atmosphere

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NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter has discovered the total amount of atmosphere on Mars changes dramatically as the tilt of the planet's axis varies. This process can affect the stability of liquid water, if it exists on the Martian surface, and increase the frequency and severity of Martian dust storms.

Researchers using the orbiter's ground-penetrating radar identified a large,http://nasa-spacestation-info.blogspot.com/ buried deposit of frozen carbon dioxide, or dry ice, at the Red Planet's south pole. The scientists suspect that much of this carbon dioxide enters the planet's atmosphere and swells the atmosphere's mass when Mars' tilt increases. The findings are published in this week's issue of the journal Science.

The newly found deposit has a volume similar to Lake Superior's nearly 3,000 cubic miles (about 12,000 cubic kilometers). The deposit holds up to 80 percent as much carbon dioxide as today's Martian atmosphere. Collapse pits caused by dry ice sublimation and other clues suggest the deposit is in a dissipating phase, adding gas to the atmosphere each year. Mars' atmosphere is about 95 percent carbon dioxide, in contrast to Earth's much thicker atmosphere, which is less than .04 percent carbon dioxide.

"We already knew there is a small perennial cap of carbon-dioxide ice on top of the water ice there, but this buried deposit has about 30 times more dry ice than previously estimated," said Roger Phillips of Southwest Research Institute in Boulder, Colo. Phillips is deputy team leader for the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter's Shallow Radar instrument and lead author of the report.

"We identified the deposit as dry ice by determining the radar signature fit the radio-wave transmission characteristics of frozen carbon dioxide far better than the chhttp://nasa-spacestation-info.blogspot.com/aracteristics of frozen water," said Roberto Seu of Sapienza University of Rome, team leader for the Shallow Radar and a co-author of the new report. Additional evidence came from correlating the deposit to visible sublimation features typical of dry ice.

"When you include this buried deposit, Martian carbon dioxide right now is roughly half frozen and half in the atmosphere, but at other times it can be nearly all frozen or nearly all in the atmosphere," Phillips said.

An occasional increase in the atmosphere would strengthen winds, lofting more dust and leading to more frequent and more intense dust storms. Another result is an expanded area on the planet's surface where liquid water could persist without boiling. Modeling based on known variation in the tilt of Mars' axis suggests several-fold changes in the total mass of the planet's atmosphere can happen on time frames of 100,000 years or less.

The changes in atmospheric density caused by the carbon-dioxide increase also would amplify some effects of the changes caused by the tilt. Researchers plugged the mass of the buried carbon-dioxide deposit into climate models for the period when Mars' tilt and orbital properties maximize the amount of summer sunshine hitting the south pole. They found at such times, global, year-round average air pressure is approximately 75 percent greater than the current level.

"A tilted Mars with a thicker carbon-dioxide atmosphere causes a greenhouse effect that tries to warm the Martian surface, while thicker and longer-lived polar ice caps try to cool it," said co-author Robert Haberle, a planetary scientist at NASA's Ames Research Center in Moffett Field, Calif. http://nasa-spacestation-info.blogspot.com/"Our simulations show the polar caps cool more than the greenhouse warms. Unlike Earth, which has a thick, moist atmosphere that produces a strong greenhouse effect, Mars' atmosphere is too thin and dry to produce as strong a greenhouse effect as Earth's, even when you double its carbon-dioxide content."

The Shallow Radar, one of the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter's six instruments, was provided by the Italian Space Agency, and its operations are led by the Department of Information Engineering, Electronics and Telecommunications at Sapienza University of Rome. NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, manages the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter project for NASA's Science Mission Directorate at the agency's headquarters in Washington. Lockheed Martin Space Systems in Denver built the spacecraft.

NASA Awards Next Set Of Commercial Crew Development Agreements

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NASA has awarded four Space Act Agreements in the second round of the agency's Commercial Crew Development (CCDev2) effort. Each company will receive between $22 million and $92.3 million to advance commercial crew space transportation system concepts and mature the design and development of elements of their systems, such as launch vehicles and spacecraft.

The selectees for CCDev2 awards are:

-- Blue Origin, Kent, Wash., $22 million

-- Sierra Nevada Corporation, Louisville, Colo., $80 million

-- Space Exploration Technologies (SpaceX), Hawthorne, Calif., $75 million

-- The Boeing Company, Houston, $92.3 million

"We're committed to safely transporting U.S. astronauts on American-made spacecraft and ending the outsourcing of this work to foreign governments," NASA Administrator Charles Bolden said. "These agreements are significant milestones in NASA's plans to take advantage of American ingenuity to get to low-Earth orbit, so we can concentrate our resources on deep space exploration."

The goal of CCDev2 is to accelerate the availability of U.S. commercial crew transportation capabilities and reduce the gap in American human spaceflight capability. Through this activity, NASA also may be able to spur economic growth as potential new space markets are created.

Once developed, crew transportation capabilities could become available to commercial and government customers.

"The next American-flagged vehicle to carry our astronauts into space is going to be a U.S. commercial provider," said Ed Mango, NASA's Commercial Crew Program manager. "The partnerships NASA is forming with industry will support the development of multiple American systems capable of providing future access to low-Earth orbit."

These awards are a continuation of NASA's CCDev initiatives, which began in 2009 to stimulate efforts within U.S. industry to develop and demonstrate human spaceflight capabilities.

It's a "Go" for Endeavour's Launch on April 29

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NASA managers announced that space shuttle Endeavour is ready to launch next week on its final flight to the International Space Station following a daylong Flight Readiness Review on Tuesday. Endeavour is scheduled to launch Friday, April 29, at 3:47 p.m. EDT.

"We had a very extensive and thorough review today," said Bill Gerstenmaier, NASA's associate administrator for Space Operations. "I think the things that impressed me the most is that the team is still continuing to really work issues and look at the vehicle performance on each and every flight just like they would during any normal mission."

"We're ready to go fly," Gerstenmaier said.
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All analysis and inspections of External Fuel Tank-122 confirmed its integrity after repairs were made because of damage sustained during Hurricane Katrina, according to Gerstenmaier.

"It was a really good review today from both the station and shuttle prospective," said Mike Moses, chairman of the Mission Management Team. "Endeavour and the team are in great shape."

Endeavour is poised on Launch Pad 39A at NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida. The countdown is to begin Tuesday at 2 p.m.

"The final processing flow for Endeavour is going extremely well out at the pad," said Mike Leinbach, shuttle launch director. "I'm very proud of the team and we'll going to have a good launch and a good mission."

The STS-134 crew is scheduled to arrive at Kennedy on Tuesday, April 26, for final launch preparations.

NASA Telescopes Help Discover Surprisingly Young Galaxy

http://nasa-spacestation-info.blogspot.com/Astronomers have uncovered one of the youngest galaxies in the distant universe, with stars that formed 13.5 billion years ago, a mere 200 million years after the Big Bang. The finding addresses questions about when the first galaxies arose, and how the early universe evolved.

NASA's Hubble Space Telescope was the first to spot the newfound galaxy. Detailed observations from the W.M. Keck Observatory on Mauna Kea in Hawaii revealed the observed light dates to when the universe was only 950 million years old; the universe formed about 13.7 billion years ago.
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Infrared data from both Hubble and the post-coolant, or "warm," phase of NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope mission revealed the galaxy's stars are quite mature, which means they must have formed when the universe was just a toddler.

"This challenges theories of how soon galaxies formed in the first years of the universe," said Johan Richard of the Centre de Recherche Astronomique de Lyon, Université Lyon 1 in France, lead author of a new study accepted for publication in the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society. "It could even help solve the mystery of how the hydrogen fog that filled the early universe was cleared."

This galaxy is not the most distant ever observed, but it is one of the youngest to be observed with such clarity. Normally, galaxies like this one are extremely faint and difficult to study, but, in this case, nature has provided the astronomers with a cosmic magnifying glass. The galaxy's image is being magnified by the gravity of a massive cluster of galaxies parked in front of it, making it appear 11 times brighter. This phenomenon is called gravitational lensing.

"Without this big lens in space, we could not study galaxies this faint with currently available observing facilities," said co-author Eiichi Egami of the University of Arizona in Tucson. "Thanks to nature, we have this great opportunity to see our universe as it was eons ago."

The findings may help explain how the early universe became "reionized." At some point in our universe's early history, it transitioned from the so-called dark ages to a period of light, as the first stars and galaxies began to ignite. This starlight ionized neutral hydrogen atoms floating around in space, giving them a charge. Ultraviolet light could then travel unimpeded through what had been an obscuring fog.

The discovery of a galaxy possessing stars that formed only 200 million years after the big bang helps astronomers probe this cosmic reionization epoch. When this galaxy was developing, its hot, young stars would have ionized vast amounts of the neutral hydrogen gas in intergalactic space. A population of similar galaxies probably also contributed to this reionization, but they are too faint to see without the magnifying effects of gravitational lensing.

NASA's James Webb Space Telescope (JWST), scheduled to launch later this decade, will be able to see these faint galaxies lacking magnification. A successor to Hubble and Spitzer, JWST will see infrared light from the missing population of early galaxies. As a result, the mission will reveal some of our universe's best-kept secrets.

"Seeing a galaxy as it appeared near the beginning of the universe is an awe-inspiring feat enabled by innovative technology and the fortuitous effect of gravitational lensing," said Jon Morse, NASA's Astrophysics Division director at the agency's headquarters in Washington. "Observations like this open a window across space and time, but more importantly, they inspire future work to one day peer at the stars that lit up the universe following the big bang."

WISE Delivers Millions of Galaxies, Stars, Asteroids

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Astronomers across the globe can now sift through hundreds of millions of galaxies, stars and asteroids collected in the first bundle of data from NASA's Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer (WISE) mission.
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"Starting today thousands of new eyes will be looking at WISE data, and I expect many surprises," said Edward (Ned) Wright of UCLA, the mission's principal investigator.

WISE launched into space on Dec. 14, 2009 on a mission to map the entire sky in infrared light with greatly improved sensitivity and resolution over its predecessors. From its polar orbit, it scanned the skies about one-and-a-half times while collecting images taken at four infrared wavelengths of light. It took more than 2.7 million images over the course of its mission, capturing objects ranging from faraway galaxies to asteroids relatively close to Earth.

Like other infrared telescopes, WISE required coolant to chill its heat-sensitive detectors. When this frozen hydrogen coolant ran out, as expected, in early October, 2010, two of its four infrared channels were still operational. The survey was then extended for four more months, with the goal of finishing its sweep for asteroids and comets in the main asteroid belt of ohttp://nasa-spacestation-info.blogspot.com/ur solar system.

The mission's nearby discoveries included 20 comets, more than 33,000 asteroids between Mars and Jupiter, and 133 near-Earth objects (NEOs), which are those asteroids and comets with orbits that come within 28 million miles (about 45 million kilometers) of Earth's path around the sun. The satellite went into hibernation in early February of this year.

Today, WISE is taking the first major step in meeting its primary goal of delivering the mission's trove of objects to astronomers. Data from the first 57 percent of the sky surveyed is accessible through an online public archive. The complete survey, with improved data processing, will be made available in the spring of 2012. A predecessor to WISE, the Infrared Astronomical Satellite, served a similar role about 25 years ago, and those data are still valuable to astronomers today. Likewise, the WISE legacy is expected to endure for decades.

"We are excited that the preliminary data contain millions of newfound objects," said Fengchuan Liu, the project manager for WISE at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pashttp://nasa-spacestation-info.blogspot.com/adena, Calif. "But the mission is not yet over -- the real treasure is the final catalog available a year from now, which will have twice as many sources, covering the entire sky and reaching even deeper into the universe than today's release."

Astronomers will use WISE's infrared data to hunt for hidden oddities, and to study trends in large populations of known objects. Survey missions often result in the unexpected discoveries too, because they are looking everywhere in the sky rather than at known targets. Data from the mission are also critical for finding the best candidates for follow-up studies with other telescopes, including the European Space Agency's Herschel observatory, which has important NASA contributions.

"WISE is providing the newest-generation 'address book' of the infrared universe with the precise location and brightness of hundreds of millions of celestial objects," said Roc Cutri, lead scientist for WISE data processing at the Infrared Processing and Analysis Center at the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, Calif. "WISE continues the long tradition of infrared sky surveys supported by Caltech, stretching back to the 1969 Two Micron Sky Survey."

So far, the WISE mission has released dozens of colorful images of the cosmos, in which infrared light has been assigned colors we see with our eyes.
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JPL manages and operates the Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, Washington. The principal investigator, Edward Wright, is at UCLA. The mission was competitively selected under NASA's Explorers Program managed by the Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Md. The science instrument was built by the Space Dynamics Laboratory, Logan, Utah, and the spacecraft was built by Ball Aerospace & Technologies Corp., Boulder, Colo. Science operations and data processing take place at the Infrared Processing and Analysis Center at the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena. Caltech manages JPL for NASA.

Mission Into Ice Clouds: Q&A with MACPEX Pilot Bill Rieke

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The Mid-latitude Airborne Cirrus Properties Experiment (MACPEX) is a NASA field campaign that is investigating cirrus cloud properties and the processes that affect their impact on solar radiation. The campaign uses NASA's WB-57 research aircraft based at http://nasa-spacestation-info.blogspot.com/Ellington, Texas, to conduct science flights over Oklahoma, the southeastern United States and the Gulf of Mexico this month.

Research pilot William Rieke from NASA's Johnson Space Center, Houston, has flown more than 3,500 hours in numerous aircraft, including the F/A 18 Hornet strike fighter when he was in the United States Navy. Since then, Rieke has been a flight engineer on Boeing 727's and 737-200's for a major airline. As a pilot for NASA since 2004, he has flown the NorthropT-38N Talon jet, the 747 Shuttle Carrier Aircraft, which NASA uses to transport Space Shuttle orbiters, and the WB-57.

There are numerous high altitude aircraft, so why was the NASA WB-57 selected for this mission? Is there any advantage to a two-seater aircraft for missions? Does a project scientist sit in the other seat, and what kinds of instruction do you receive while in flight?

William Rieke: The WB-57 aircraft is a very good high-altitude platform that can take more than 6,000 lbs. of experiments very high into the atmosphere . There are two aircrew in the WB-57, a pilot and a Sensor Equipment Operator (SEO). The SEO is usually very busy taking care of the science instruments and communicating to scientists on the ground the status of our flight. Both the pilot and SEO have a preflight brief with the scientists who decide whttp://nasa-spacestation-info.blogspot.com/here the aircraft needs to be positioned to collect the desired atmospheric data. In flight, the WB-57 has the capability to communicate via radio or satellite phone to the mission scientist on the ground to communicate the real-time weather picture. With their input, the aircrew then plans an appropriate course.

Have you flown similar airborne missions?

WR: The WB-57 program has completed many similar missions to MACPEX. I have flown several campaigns to Costa Rica, Hawaii and England, to name a few.

What is your biggest concern when flying these missions?

Anywhere we go, NASA ensures the safety of the people first. They are the most treasured assets NASA has. The mission managers ensure that the airfield has the proper equipment available to take care of the WB-57, or we bring it ourselves. While flying, my concern is to keep the aircraft within the requested boundaries. Sometimes they can be very restrictive which makes it difficult to maneuver to collect data.http://nasa-spacestation-info.blogspot.com/

What’s it like to fly the WB-57 through ice clouds? Are ice clouds dense? If you’re flying through clouds, isn’t your visibility distorted? Can you hear the ice crystals hit the plane? Are the ice crystals microscopic or big, like hailstones? How fast are you flying? Does the density or visibility of the clouds slow down your flights?

WR: Flying through clouds is similar to driving through fog in a car – you just can’t see as well! Aircraft have confidently been flying through clouds ever since we learned to trust our instruments. When the pilot cannot see the horizon, they need to rely on accurate instrumentation to get the aircraft through it. At high altitudes, ice crystals can sometimes be very apparent. The ice crystals that I have flown through have a shimmery look to them as the sun is reflected off each tiny particle when it zips by the aircraft. However, the crystals are very small and therefore, not a danger to the aircraft.

Do Cosmic Strings of Gas Come From Sonic Booms

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The NASA Herschel Space Observatory has revealed that clouds between stars contain networks of tangled gaseous filaments. Intriguingly, each filament is approximately the same width, hinting that they may result from interstellar sonic booms throughout our Milky Way galaxy.
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The filaments are huge, stretching for tens of light years through space, and Herschel has shown that newborn stars are often found in the densest parts of them. One filament imaged by Herschel in the Aquila region contains a cluster of about 100 infant stars.

Such filaments in interstellar clouds have been glimpsed before by other infrared satellites, but they have never been seen clearly enough to have their widths measured. Now, Herschel has shown that, regardless of the length or density of a filament, the width is always roughly the same.

The team suggests that as sonic booms from exploding stars travel through the clouds, they lose energy and, where they finally dissipate, they leave these filaments of compressed material.

Herschel is a European Space Agency cornerstone mission, with science instruments provided by consortia of European institutes and with important participation by NASA. NASA's Herschel Project Office is based at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif. JPL contributed mission-enabling technology for two of Herschel's three science instruments. The NASA Herschel Science Center, part of the Infrared Processing and Analysis Center at the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, supports the United States astronomical community. Caltech manages JPL for NASA.

30 Years of the Space Shuttle The Space Shuttle Era: 1981-2011

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Since 1981, NASA space shuttles have been rocket from the Florida coast into Earth orbit. The five orbiters — Columbia, Challenhttp://nasa-spacestation-info.blogspot.com/ger, Discovery, Atlantis and Endeavour — have fly more than 130 times, haulage over 350 people into space and travelling more than half a billion miles, more than adequate to reach Jupiter. Intended to return to Earth and land like a giant glider, the shuttle was the world's first reusable space vehicle. Additional than all of that, though, the shuttle program expanded the limits of human achievement and broadened our understanding of our world.

It all started with STS-1, launched on April 12, 1981, just twenty years to the day after Soviet cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin became the first human in space. When astronauts John Young and Robert Crippen launched that morning in Columbia, it was the first time in history a new spacecraft was launched on its maiden voyage with a crew aboard.

For an entire generation, the space shuttle was NASA. We've watched a parade of firsts -- Sally Ride, Guy Bluford, Kathy Sullivan, John Glenn and others. We've seen astronauts float free, and launch and repair spacecraft like Hubble which have fundamentally changed our understanding of the universe.

In this feature, we look back at the Shuttle's historic missions, the people it flew into space, and its achievements.