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محمدرضا صادقیان
12-03-2010, 08:10 PM
Hello.
I want to put this post to talk about latest news around astronomy, Its a new astronomical news page......
I'll appreciate if u help me with this post........


Thank u All

محمدرضا صادقیان
12-03-2010, 08:16 PM
Thu, 02 Dec 2010 23:00:00 -0600

Originally released Aug. 1, 2007, this Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter image shows an ridge in Mars' Terra Meridian that is most likely a former stream bed, now exposed in inverted relief.

The stream that formed this ridge must have been ancient as the ridge is buried by brighter rocks, which are themselves very old, having been thickly deposited and then heavily eroded. The Mars Exploration Rover

Opportunity landed in the same region of Mars, and the rocks it has examined are likely part of a sequence similar to that exposed here. The rocks exposed at the Opportunity landing site are mostly wind-deposited

sandstone, but show evidence of past water, reaching the surface at times.
Opportunity has access to only a few meters of a stack of sediments that is hundreds of meters thick.

NASA/JPL-Caltech/University of Arizona

محمدرضا صادقیان
12-03-2010, 08:21 PM
NASA managers will hold a news conference at 11 a.m. CST today at the agency's Johnson Space Center in Houston to discuss the next space shuttle mission, STS-133, and the progress of repairs since Discovery's original launch delay Nov. 5.

محمدرضا صادقیان
12-03-2010, 08:56 PM
Urgent News


Space shuttle Discovery's launch on the STS-133 mission has been targeted for no earlier than Feb. 3, 2011, to allow for more testing on the intertank stringers on the external tank.

محمدرضا صادقیان
12-03-2010, 11:22 PM
NASA managers have targeted space shuttle Discovery's launch for no earlier than Feb. 3 at 1:34 a.m. EST. Shuttle managers determined more tests and analysis are needed before proceeding with the launch of the STS-133 mission to the International Space Station.

The Program Requirements Control Board met Thursday and reviewed engineering evaluations associated with cracks on two 21-foot-long,

U-shaped aluminum brackets, called stringers, on the shuttle's external tank. NASA repaired the cracks and reapplied foam to the

exterior of the stringers. Managers decided the analysis and tests required to launch Discovery safely are not complete. They are planning to conduct an instrumented test on the external fuel tank and structural evaluations on stringer test articles to determine whether the analysis is correct. Details and timelines for the tanking test are in work, but plans call for temperature and strain gauge measurements in the intertank region near the top of the tank during the test.

NASA will review and analyze the data from the tests before setting a launch date. Because of Discovery's delayed launch, the earliest

opportunity for the liftoff of the final scheduled shuttle mission, STS-134 on Endeavour, is April 1.

farnoosh.d
12-04-2010, 08:24 PM
hey:)...can i ask where are this news from?
i mean any special web sites?
and....we should discuss about this topic in English?

محمدرضا صادقیان
12-04-2010, 08:48 PM
hey:)...can i ask where are this news from?
i mean any special web sites?
and....we should discuss about this topic in English?


Hi ... Yeah. the news should be in English in this topic

farnoosh.d
12-04-2010, 08:55 PM
oh...no take it easy :)
i thought u mean u r the English news...hahaaaaa :D...any way sry
and i'm ready 4 any help:)
:)
and thx 4 provide a topic like this ...i'd really enjoy :))))

محمدرضا صادقیان
12-08-2010, 02:21 PM
The first demonstration flight of SpaceX's Falcon 9 rocket and Dragon capsule for NASA's Commercial Orbital Transportation Services program has been scheduled for Wednesday, Dec. 8, from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida.

محمدرضا صادقیان
12-08-2010, 02:24 PM
NASA joined with Google, Microsoft, Yahoo! and the World Bank Dec. 3-4 to bring together computer experts looking for new approaches to disaster relief challenges.

محمدرضا صادقیان
12-14-2010, 12:02 AM
An instrumented test of space shuttle Discovery’s external fuel tank now will be conducted no earlier than Friday, Dec. 17, because wind and cold conditions at NASA's Kennedy Space Center prevented technicians from completing preparations for the test.

The forecast for the next several days calls for continuing cold conditions at Launch Pad 39A at the Florida spaceport. Technicians worked through the weekend to place dozens of sensors on the tank's ribbed intertank region so engineers can analyze temperature and tank movement as the tank is filled with cryogenic propellants. All the strain gauges have been attached in the intertank region near the top of the external tank where the stringers are located. Once the remaining temperature sensors are in place and foam insulation has been reapplied, the tank will be filled with about 535,000 gallons of liquid hydrogen and liquid oxygen to help verify repairs associated with cracks on the tops of two 21-foot-long, U-shaped aluminum brackets, called stringers, on the external tank and help engineers determine what caused the cracks in the first place.


Discovery’s STS-133 mission to the International Space Station. Discovery’s next launch opportunity is no earlier than Feb. 3 at 1:34 a.m. EST.

محمدرضا صادقیان
12-14-2010, 12:07 AM
The Soyuz TMA-20 spacecraft is rolled out by train on its way to the launch pad at the Baikonur Cosmodrome, Monday, Dec. 13, 2010, in Kazakhstan. The launch of the Soyuz spacecraft with Expedition 26 Soyuz Commander Dmitry Kondratyev, NASA Flight Engineer Catherine Coleman and Italian astronaut Paolo Nespoli is scheduled for Wednesday, Dec. 16. Image Credit: NASA/Carla Cioffi

محمدرضا صادقیان
12-14-2010, 12:10 AM
The call to stations at NASA's Kennedy Space Center is expected to begin this afternoon as the launch team takes its place for a tanking test scheduled to begin no earlier than Wednesday, Dec. 15. Technicians at Launch Pad 39A also are preparing space shuttle Discovery for the test which calls for dozens of instruments to be placed on the ribbed intertank region of Discovery's external tank.

The test will help verify repairs associated with cracks on the tops of two 21-foot-long, U-shaped aluminum brackets, called stringers, on the external tank and help engineers determine what caused the cracks in the first place. Technicians repaired the cracks and reapplied foam insulation on the stringers last month.

Discovery’s STS-133 mission to the International Space Station. Discovery’s next launch opportunity is no earlier than Feb. 3 at 1:34 a.m. EST.

محمدرضا صادقیان
12-14-2010, 12:14 AM
NASA has awarded a contract with a potential value of $171 million to Lockheed Martin Corp. of Gaithersburg, Md., for support of International Space Station cargo mission services.

محمدرضا صادقیان
12-14-2010, 12:17 AM
Hot Cities, Ice Volcanoes And California Quakes Among NASA News Highlights At American Geophysical Union Meeting


NASA researchers will present new findings on a wide range of Earth and space science topics at the 2010 fall meeting of the American Geophysical Union.

محمدرضا صادقیان
12-18-2010, 01:12 PM
How long is a minute? It is longer than you think when it is filled with fire, steam and noise – lots of noise.


On Dec. 17, at NASA's John C. Stennis Space Center, a team of operators from Stennis, Orbital Sciences Corporation and Aerojet filled 55 seconds with all three during the second verification test fire of an Aerojet AJ26 rocket engine. Once verified, the engine will be placed on a Taurus II space vehicle and used to launch a cargo supply mission to the International Space Station.

It is all part of NASA’s effort to partner with commercial companies to provide space flights through the Commercial Orbital Transportation Services joint research and development project. Through that program, Orbital has agreed to provide eight cargo supply missions to the space station by 2015. Stennis has partnered with Orbital to test the engines that will power the missions.

So, when Orbital’s Taurus II space vehicle lifts off, it will do so on engines proven flight worthy at Stennis. That is a big responsibility, but it is one which engine test personnel at Stennis are used to filling. They tested engines for every manned Apollo space flight and all of the engines used on more than 130 space shuttle missions.

محمدرضا صادقیان
12-18-2010, 01:17 PM
NASA's Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter is allowing researchers to create the most precise and complete map to date of the moon's complex, heavily cratered landscape.


"This dataset is being used to make digital elevation and terrain maps that will be a fundamental reference for future scientific and human exploration missions to the moon," said Dr. Gregory Neumann of NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md. "After about one year taking data, we already have nearly 3 billion data points from the Lunar Orbiter Laser Altimeter on board the LRO spacecraft, with near-uniform longitudinal coverage. We expect to continue to make measurements at this rate through the next two years of the science phase of the mission and beyond. Near the poles, we expect to provide near-GPS-like navigational capability as coverage is denser due to the spacecraft's polar orbit." Neumann will present the map at the American Geophysical Union meeting in San Francisco December 17.

The Lunar Orbiter Laser Altimeter (LOLA) works by propagating a single laser pulse through a Diffractive Optical Element that splits it into five beams. These beams then strike and are backscattered from the lunar surface. From the return pulse, the LOLA electronics determines the time of flight which, accounting for the speed of light, provides a precise measurement of the range from the spacecraft to the lunar surface. Range measurements, combined with accurate tracking of the spacecraft's location, are used to build a map revealing the contours of the lunar landscape. The five beams create a two-dimensional spot pattern that unambiguously reveals slopes. LOLA will also measure the spreading of the return pulse to get the surface roughness and the change in the transmitted compared to the return energy of the pulse to determine surface reflectance.

The new LOLA maps are more accurate and sample more places on the lunar surface than any available before. "The positional errors of image mosaics of the lunar far side, where direct spacecraft tracking – the most accurate -- is unavailable, have been one to ten kilometers (about 0.62 to 6.2 miles)," said Neumann. "We're beating these down to the level of 30 meters (almost 100 feet) or less spatially and one meter (almost 3.3 feet) vertically. At the poles, where illumination rarely provides more than a glimpse of the topography below the crater peaks, we found systematic horizontal errors of hundreds of meters (hundreds of yards) as well." In terms of coverage, the nearly three billion range measurements so far by LRO compare to about eight million to nine million each from three recent international lunar missions, according to Neumann. "They were limited to a mile or so between individual data points, whereas our measurements are spaced about 57 meters (about 187 feet) apart in five adjacent tracks separated by about 15 meters (almost 50 feet)."

"Recent papers have clarified some aspects of lunar processes based solely on the more precise topography provided by the new LOLA maps," adds Neumann, "such as lunar crater density and resurfacing by impacts, or the formation of multi-ring basins."

"The LOLA data also allow us to define the current and historical illumination environment on the moon," said Neumann. Lunar illumination history is important for discovering areas that have been shaded for long periods. Such places, typically in deep craters near the lunar poles, act like cold storage, and are capable of accumulating and preserving volatile material like water ice.

The landscape in polar craters is mysterious because their depths are often in shadow. The new LOLA dataset is illuminating details of their topography for the first time. "Until LRO and the recent Japanese Kaguya mission, we had no idea of what the extremes of polar crater slopes were," said Neumann. "Now, we find slopes of 36 degrees over several kilometers (several thousands of yards) in Shackleton crater, for example, which would make traverses quite difficult and apparently causes landslides. The LOLA measurements of shadowed polar crater slopes and their surface roughness take place at scales from lander size to kilometers. These measurements are helping the LRO science team model the thermal environment of these craters, and team members are developing temperature maps of them."

LRO and LOLA were built and are managed by NASA Goddard. The research was funded by NASA's Exploration Systems Mission Directorate at NASA Headquarters in Washington.

محمدرضا صادقیان
12-19-2010, 06:58 PM
For NASA, 2010 was another year of new exploration, exciting discoveries, and important milestones.


From spaceflight, to science and technology; from understanding life here on Earth, to where we might find it elsewhere. From protecting our home planet, to inspiring the next generation of explorers.


This was "This Year at NASA."

SPACEFLIGHT
The December 15th launch of the Soyuz spacecraft carrying Expedition 26 crew members Cady Coleman, Paolo Nespoli and Dimitry Kondratyev to the International Space Station capped another year of important milestones for the orbiting complex – and NASA’s space shuttle program, as the retirement of its fleet of orbiters approaches its retirement.

DOWN TO EARTH – JSC

Astronaut: "All right give me a smile."

Expedition 22 Commander Jeff Williams and Flight Engineer Max Suraev made a safe return to Earth in a Soyuz spacecraft which landed on the remote steppes of Kazakhstan.

Russian recovery teams worked in frigid temperatures to help the crew exit the spacecraft and begin their readjustment to Earth’s gravity.

NEW CREWMATES JOIN EXPEDITION 23 – JSC

Launch Announcer: "Liftoff of Alexander Skvortsov, Tracy Caldwell Dyson, and Mikhail Kornienko beginning their journey to the International Space Station."

The new members of the Expedition 23 crew began their journey to the International Space Station with a successful launch from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan. Soyuz Commander Alexander Skvortsov, Flight Engineers Mikhail Kornienko and Tracy Caldwell Dyson will spend the next six months aboard the orbiting complex.

SAFE RETURN – JSC
The crew of STS-131 returned home to Houston following their fifteen days in space aboard shuttle Discovery.

Mike Coates: "Nice landing. Well done."

A crowd of several hundred well-wishers greeted the seven astronauts at Ellington Field after their flight from the Kennedy Space Center one day after their safe landing.

PAD ABORT 1 LAUNCH – DFRC --

Launch Announcer: "4-3-2-1, launch, launch, launch."

The first test of the fully integrated Launch Abort System for the Orion crew vehicle was successfully completed at the White Sands Missile Range on May 6. The Pad Abort 1 test is part of an ongoing mission to develop safer vehicles for human spaceflight applications.

SHUTTLE RETURN – KSC
Carrying a six-astronaut crew – STS-132 Commander Ken Ham, Pilot Tony Antonelli and Mission Specialists Garrett Reisman, Steve Bowen, Mike Good and Piers Sellers, space shuttle Atlantis concluded its final flight, a 12-day trip to the International Space Station with a smooth landing at the Kennedy Space Center.

"And Houston/Atlantis we have wheel stop. Copy wheel stop Atlantis. That landing was something that your air force crewmates should of really been proud of; that was pretty sweet."

COOL UNDER PRESSURE – JSC
Bill Hardwood: "I think what a lot of us are wondering about is making sure that everything is up and running again."

Tracy Caldwell: "Shannon and Doug removed the last jumpers today and put the racks back and so it’s all spic and span and it’s back to business as usual it seems."

The International Space Station’s cooling system was reactivated and finally back in normal operation.

Mission Control: "The pump is looking good."

Doug Wheelock: "Oh, Sweet! We got our station back!"

Three spacewalks by Expedition 24 Flight Engineers Doug Wheelock and Tracy Caldwell Dyson were needed to remove and replace a failed ammonia pump that had disabled one of the station’s two cooling loops on July 31.

Tracy Caldwell: "I’ll pull it."

Doug Wheelock: "There you can see it."

Mission Control: "Yep I see."

EXPEDITION 25 HEADS TO STATION

Launch Announcer: "3-2-1 fueling tower separates, booster ignition, and liftoff of the Soyuz Rocket with Alexander Kaleri, Scott Kelly and Oleg Skripochka began their journey to the International Space Station."

Following several days of traditional pre-launch activities and preparations, the Expedition 25 crew successfully launched aboard a Soyuz TMA-01M rocket on October 7, beginning a two-day journey to the International Space Station. Soyuz Commander Alexander Kaleri, NASA Flight Engineer Scott Kelly and Russian Flight Engineer Oleg Skripochka are joining Commander Doug Wheelock and Flight Engineers Fyodor Yurchikhin and Shannon Walker, who have been in orbit since June.

SPACEX LAUNCH – KSC
The first SpaceX Falcon 9 demonstration launch for NASA's Commercial Orbital Transportation Services program lifted off on Wednesday, Dec. 8 from Launch Complex 40 at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida.

Launch Announcer: "We have liftoff of Falcon 9 stage one."

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. The demonstration mission proved key capabilities such as launch, structural integrity of the Dragon spacecraft, on-orbit operation, re-entry, descent and splashdown in the Pacific Ocean.

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PRESIDENT OBAMA

As he did in 2009, President Obama made several calls from the White House to astronauts in space…

But 2010 also saw the president visit the Kennedy Space Center in Florida to present his plans for NASA and reaffirm his support for space exploration.

PRESIDENT CALLS SPACE STATION – HQ

President Obama: "Hey guys!"

President Obama spoke with the crews of space shuttle Endeavour and the International Space Station from the Roosevelt Room of the White House.

President Obama: "I think I speak for the all young people here, and everybody back home how proud we are of you, how excited we are about the work that is being done on the Space Station, and how committed we are to continuing human space exploration in the future."

PRESIDENT OBAMA’S VISIT – KSC

President Barack Obama made a trip to the Kennedy Space Center on Thursday to explain his plan for America’s space program. Accompanied by Florida Senator and former shuttle astronaut Bill Nelson, Apollo astronaut Buzz Aldrin, and NASA Administrator Charles Bolden, President Obama addressed an audience comprised of elected officials, leaders from industry, academia and KSC employees.

President Obama: "I am 100% Committed to the mission of NASA and its future. (applause) Because broadening our capabilities in space will continue to serve our society in ways we can scarcely imagine. Because exploration will once more inspire wonder in a new generation: sparking passions, launching careers. And because, ultimately, if we fail to press forward in the pursuit of discovery, we are ceding our future, ceding that essential element of the American character."

"EDUCATE TO INNOVATE"

Administrator Charlie Bolden joined President Obama at a special White House ceremony honoring educators from across the country for their excellence in mathematics, science teaching and mentoring. The event was part of the President’s “Educate to Innovate” campaign to boost student achievement in STEM subjects: science, technology, engineering and math.

President Obama: "I've challenged the scientific community to think of new and creative ways to engage young people in their fields. That's why we launched the "Educate to Innovate" campaign -- a nationwide effort by citizens, non-for-profits, universities, and companies from across America to help us move to the top of the pack in math and science education."

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EDUCATION

Through a combination of hands-on projects, creative partnerships and public appearances, NASA continued to promote the education of our youth in science, technology, engineering, and math, the STEM disciplines so important to our nation’s future.

NASA SUPPORTS "ES EL MOMENTO" – HQ
NASA is teaming with Univision Communications Inc, the Department of Education and other organizations to support Univision’s initiative to improve Hispanic students high school graduation rates, prepare for college and encourage them to pursue careers in science, technology, engineering and mathematics.

Charlie Bolden: "It’s a great extension of the efforts that we’ve been making to foster STEM education to support the President’s ‘Educate to Innovate’ program, the ‘Race to the Top’; it all fits together for us. This program is designated, primarily, to reach kids in the high school area, but I think with our ‘Summer of Innovation’ that’s focused on kids in middle schools, they are kind of a perfect marriage."

STEM EDUCATORS WORKSHOP – LARC
Teachers became students while participating in the second annual NASA Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics -- STEM -- Educators, Workshops held this year in Charlotte, N.C. The 40-session workshop provided elementary, middle and high school teachers with creative hands-on ways to incorporate NASA content into their classrooms.

TECH TREK – DFRC

About 25 seventh-grade girls from area middle schools got up close and personal with unique aircraft and high technology when they participated in a "Tech Trek" tour of the Dryden Flight Research Center.

The Tech Trek, to develop interest and excitement about math and science and self-confidence among middle-school girls, included tours of Dryden's main aircraft hangar and several specialized research and support aircraft.

PREPARING NEXT GENERATION EXPLORERS – ARC
Dozens of teachers are conducting real science in an extreme environment. Through Ames Research Center’s Spaceward Bound project, NASA has sent teachers to California State University’s Desert Study Center in Zzyzx. (nat) Here, on the edge of the barren Mojave Desert, they help conduct NASA-related field science. The data and knowledge they glean at Zzyzx will be used to develop experiments, demonstrations and lesson plans for their students.

A CALL TO ACTION – HQ

NASA Administrator Charles Bolden joined with other NASA volunteers in helping these fifth graders become rocket scientists for day.

The students at the Langdon Elementary School in Washington built and test flew their own paper rockets using a high-power paper rocket launcher.

A STIMULATING EXPERIENCE – HQ

Leland Melvin: "Please give a warm welcome to Charlie Bolden."

Charles Bolden: "Allright, Allright, Allright. Hi ya doing?"

More than 250 students joined with astronaut Leland Melvin and Administrator Charles Bolden at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory to help kickoff NASA’s Summer of Innovation.

Bolden: "What we want to do this summer through the Summer of Innovation is take young men and women like Malik and we want them understand, yeah science and math may be difficult, but you can learn it."

NASA’s "SUMMER OF INNOVATION" DRAWS STARS – ARC
Also, over the Labor Day weekend, actor/rapper Mos Def and astronaut Leland Melvin teamed up to share NASA’s Summer of Innovation program with young people at the Instituting Science in Schools Science and Cultural Festival at the Chabot Observatory in Oakland, California, and people attending the Tom Joyner Morning Show Family Reunion in Orlando, Florida.

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NASA IN THE COMMUNITY

AL NARRATION: Once again, NASA employees proved the importance of community involvement. Centers threw open their doors to neighbors, and reached out to make new friends for the agency. NASA also provided technological assistance to a region of our country threatened with ecological disaster, and expertise to another member of the global community in their time of grave need.

ASSESSING IMPACT – GSFC/DFRC
NASA assets continue to help scientists track two events causing worldwide environmental and economic concern. NASA’s instrumented research aircraft, the Earth Resources-2, or ER-2, has been deployed to the Gulf of Mexico to do flyovers of the Deepwater Horizon BP oil spill and the coastline it threatens. The agency is also making extra satellite observations and conducting additional data processing to help U.S. disaster response agencies assess the spread and impact of the slick.

TURTLE HATCHLINGS RELEASED – KSC

"Okay guys, let’s go!"

The first hatchlings from endangered sea turtle eggs at possible risk by the BP oil spill were released into the Atlantic Ocean off the Kennedy Space Center on July 11.

"There they go. Yeah! That’s awesome."

After their collection at a Florida Panhandle beach, the eggs of twenty-two Kemp’s ridley turtles were brought to a secure, climate-controlled facility at Kennedy where the nest was monitored until incubation was complete.

NASA INSPIRES MEXICAN STUDENT – HQ

When she was just six years old, Carolina Gallardo fell in love with the night sky. As a teenager, the young woman from a poor family near Mexico City watched a television show about astronomy and the Hubble Space Telescope that would make the stars her life’s work. Carolina, then thirteen, was so inspired by Ed Weiler, the NASA scientist featured on the program that she initiated a correspondence with him that would encourage her studies for years to come.

Now, at age 30, Carolina Gallardo has finished a summer internship at the Goddard Space Flight Center to complete masters’ programs in aeronautics/astronautics and space technology. A special guest at the Science Mission Directorate’s monthly meeting at Headquarters, Caroline told senior managers how Weiler, now the directorate’s Associate Administrator and others at NASA have impacted her life.

Caroline Gallardo: "Now I graduate with two Masters in aerospace and I can say that thanks to you, thanks to your challenge, to your motivation, I can tell everyone that if it wasn’t for you, I wouldn’t have gone this far. Thank you very much."

PRESIDENT RECOGNIZES NASA TEAM – HQ

NASA Administrator Charles Bolden and the NASA team that traveled to Chile to assist the once-trapped miners met with President Obama on Oct. 28 in the White House Oval Office. The team advised Chilean rescue officials on how to maintain the psychological and physiological well-being of the 33 miners trapped a half-mile beneath the Earth’s surface, as well as the design of the rescue capsule in which each man would finally ascend after 69 days underground.

BUILDING FUTURES: NASA & LEGO – HQ
For nearly eighty years, the LEGO "brick" has helped enhance children’s creativity through playing and learning. Now, NASA is teaming up with LEGO to develop innovative educational and outreach activities to interest youngsters in science, technology, engineering and mathematics. The collaboration, called “Build the Future, kicked off at Kennedy with youngsters building their vision of the future in space.

CLIMATE STUDIES

The continuing study of ice sheets in the Arctic was just one way NASA researchers added to the data about changes in temperatures and sea levels around the globe.

"CLIMATE KIDS" – JSC
A new NASA Web site can help our future explorers and leaders better understand the how’s and why’s of climate change – and what they can do to make our planet more habitable.

Fish: "Kind of far south for a polar bear ain’t you?"

Polar Bear: "You don’t say. Look, my habitat is shrinking and I obviously fell asleep on the wrong iceberg."

Fish: "What you say?"

Climate Kids can be found at http://climate.nasa.gov/kids

OPERATION ICEBRIDGE: PHASE TWO – GSFC
Operation IceBridge has entered the second phase of its spring 2010 campaign. NASA’s DC-8 aircraft has returned from Greenland to the Dryden Flight Research Center in California, following a successful survey of the entire Arctic Ocean. The plane flew from Thule, Greenland to Fairbanks, Alaska providing a detailed snapshot of sea ice conditions.

NEW CLIMATE SIMULATERS UNVEILED – GSFC
As this year’s hurricane season gets underway, the Goddard Space Flight Center has unveiled, for the media, NASA’s new climate simulation center. An amalgam of supercomputing, visualization, and data interaction technologies, the climate simulation center, supports weather and climate prediction research at one of the world’s largest contingents of Earth scientists.

SCIENTISTS STUDY POLAR REGION – GSFC
A NASA-sponsored mission in Alaska is exploring how changes in the Arctic’s sea ice cover may be contributing to global warming. ICESCAPE, for Impacts of Climate on Ecosystems and Chemistry of the Arctic Pacific Environment," is working its way through the Bering Strait headed for the Chukchi and Beaufort seas.

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GOING GREEN
From laboratory and wind tunnel research to demonstration tests, NASA Aeronautics continued its green aviation initiatives. Their goal: to make air travel quieter, cleaner and more efficient while increasing the safety and comfort of passengers.

GREEN AVIATION SUMMIT – ARC
The Ames Research Center was the scene of a gathering of experts from government, industry and academia meeting to discuss the agency’s green aviation research efforts

Researcher: "…doing research in alternative bio-fuels."

and showcase groundbreaking solutions NASA and its partners are developing to reduce the impact of aviation systems on the environment.

Over a two day period, attendees heard researchers, scientists, technicians and leading policymakers, present on the latest emerging environmentally sensitive aviation technologies.

Jaiwon Shin: "Please join us in welcoming our NASA Administrator, Mr. Bolden."

NASA Administrator Charles Bolden addressed the group on day one of the event.

Charles Bolden: "We’re so excited at NASA about the opportunities we’re being given, in the coming years, to help develop solutions to some of our most pressing aviation problems, and create the next generation of air transportation systems that will last generations and make us all safer and make the planet a better place That’s a huge challenge, but we at NASA enthusiastically accept it."

Next week, more of This Year @NASA!

محمدرضا صادقیان
12-19-2010, 07:07 PM
BAY ST. LOUIS, Miss. -- NASA conducted a test fire Friday of the liquid-fuel AJ26 engine that will power the first stage of Orbital Sciences Corp.'s Taurus II space launch vehicle. The test at the agency's Stennis Space Center in Mississippi supports NASA's Commercial Transportation Services partnerships to enable commercial cargo flights to the International Space Station.

Orbital's Taurus II uses a pair AJ26 rocket engines built by Aerojet to provide first stage propulsion. Friday's test on the Stennis' E-1 test stand involved a team of Orbital, Aerojet, and Stennis engineers, with Stennis employees serving as test conductors.

"Once again, the Orbital and Aerojet team have achieved a major milestone with the AJ26 engine," said Doug Cooke, associate administrator for the Exploration Systems Mission Directorate at NASA Headquarters in Washington. "This success moves Orbital closer to its goal of providing NASA with commercial space transportation services to the space station."

The 55-second firing was the second in a series of verification tests being conducted at the south Mississippi facility. A third hot-fire test also is planned to verify tuning of engine control valves.

"This second test of the AJ26 engine not only moves Orbital's commercial space transport plans a step ahead, but also demonstrates again the quality and versatility of Stennis facilities and the expertise of our test and support team," Stennis Director Patrick Scheuermann said.

The AJ26 engine is designed to power the Taurus II space vehicle on flights to low Earth orbit. NASA's partnership with Orbital was formed under the agency's Commercial Orbital Transportation Services joint research and development project. The company is under contract with NASA to provide eight cargo missions to the space station through 2015.


For more information about NASA exploration, visit: http://www.nasa.gov/exploration

No.1
12-20-2010, 11:39 PM
Odyssey's longevity enables continued science, including the monitoring of seasonal changes on Mars from year to year and the most detailed maps ever made of most of the planet.
http://astronomy.com/en/News-Observing/News/2010/12/Odyssey%20spacecraft%20sets%20exploration%20record %20on%20Mars.aspx
By NASA/JPL — Published: December 20, 2010
NASA's Mars Odyssey, which launched in 2001, broke the record December 15 for longest-serving spacecraft at the Red Planet. Provided by NASA-JPL
NASA's Mars Odyssey, which launched in 2001, broke the record December 15 for longest-serving spacecraft at the Red Planet. The probe began its 3,340th day in martian orbit at 8:55 p.m. EST on the 15th to break the record set by NASA's Mars Global Surveyor, which orbited Mars from 1997 to 2006.

Odyssey's longevity enables continued science, including the monitoring of seasonal changes on Mars from year to year and the most detailed maps ever made of most of the planet. In 2002, the spacecraft detected hydrogen just below the surface throughout Mars' high-latitude regions. The deduction that the hydrogen is in frozen water prompted NASA's Phoenix Mars Lander mission, which confirmed the theory in 2008. Odyssey also carried the first experiment sent to Mars specifically to prepare for human missions, and found that radiation levels around the planet from solar flares and cosmic rays are 2 to 3 times higher than around Earth.

Odyssey also has served as a communication relay, handling most of the data sent home by Phoenix and NASA's Mars Exploration Rovers Spirit and Opportunity. Odyssey became the middle link for continuous observation of martian weather by NASA's Mars Global Surveyor and NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO).

Odyssey will support the 2012 landing of the Mars Science Laboratory (MSL) and surface operations of that mission. MSL will assess whether its landing area has had environmental conditions favorable for microbial life and preserving evidence about whether life has existed there. The rover will carry the largest, most advanced set of instruments for scientific studies ever sent to the martian surface.

"The Mars program clearly demonstrates that world-class science coupled with sound and creative engineering equals success and longevity," said Doug McCuistion from NASA headquarters in Washington, D.C.

Other recent NASA spacecraft at Mars include the Mars Global Surveyor that began orbiting the Red Planet in 1997. The Spirit and Opportunity rovers landed on Mars January 2004. They have been exploring for 6 years, far surpassing their original 90-day mission. Phoenix landed May 25, 2008, farther north than any previous spacecraft to the planet's surface. The mission's biggest surprise was the discovery of perchlorate, an oxidizing chemical on Earth that is food for some microbes, but potentially toxic for others. The solar-powered lander completed its 3-month mission and kept working until sunlight waned 2 months later. MRO arrived at Mars in 2006 on a search for evidence that water persisted on the planet's surface for a long period of time.

No.1
12-20-2010, 11:41 PM
The magnetic field strength in the core is 50 times stronger than that at Earth’s surface.
By University of California, Berkeley — Published: December 20, 2010
A cross-section of Earth's interior shows the outer crust, the hot gooey mantle, the liquid outer core, and the solid, frozen inner core (gray). Graphic: Calvin J. Hamilton
A University of California, Berkeley, geophysicist has made the first-ever measurement of the strength of the magnetic field inside Earth's core, 1,800 miles (2,900 kilometers) underground.

The magnetic field strength is 25 Gauss, or 50 times stronger than the magnetic field at the surface that makes compass needles align north-south. Although geophysicists predict this number is in the middle of the range, it puts constraints on the identity of the heat sources in the core that keep the internal dynamo running to maintain this magnetic field.

"This is the first really good number we've had based on observations, not inference," said Bruce A. Buffett from University of California, Berkeley. "The result is not controversial, but it does rule out a very weak magnetic field and argues against a very strong field."

A strong magnetic field inside the outer core means there is a lot of convection and a lot of heat being produced, which scientists would need to account for, Buffett said. The presumed sources of energy are the residual heat from 4 billion years ago when the planet was hot and molten, the release of gravitational energy as heavy elements sink to the bottom of the liquid core, and the radioactive decay of long-lived elements such as potassium, uranium, and thorium.

A weak field — 5 Gauss, for example — would imply that little heat is being supplied by radioactive decay, while a strong field, on the order of 100 Gauss, would imply a large contribution from radioactive decay.

"A measurement of the magnetic field tells us what the energy requirements are and what the sources of heat are," Buffett said.

About 60 percent of the power generated inside Earth likely comes from the exclusion of light elements from the solid inner core as it freezes and grows, he said. This constantly builds up crud in the outer core.

The Earth's magnetic field is produced in the outer two-thirds of the planet's iron/nickel core. This outer core, about 1,400 miles (2,300 km) thick, is liquid, while the inner core is a frozen iron and nickel wrecking ball with a radius of about 800 miles (1,300 km) — roughly the size of the Moon. A hot, gooey mantle and a rigid surface crust surround the core.

The cooling Earth originally captured its magnetic field from the planetary disk in which the solar system formed. That field would have disappeared within 10,000 years if not for the planet's internal dynamo, which regenerates the field thanks to heat produced inside the planet. The heat makes the liquid outer core boil, or "convect," and as the conducting metals rise and then sink through the existing magnetic field, they create electrical currents that maintain the magnetic field. This roiling dynamo produces a slowly shifting magnetic field at the surface.

"You get changes in the surface magnetic field that look a lot like gyres and flows in the oceans and the atmosphere, but these are being driven by fluid flow in the outer core," Buffett said.

Buffett is a theoretician who uses observations to improve computer models of Earth's internal dynamo. Now at work on a second-generation model, he admits that a lack of information about conditions in the Earth's interior has been a big hindrance to making accurate models.

He realized, however, that the tug of the Moon on the tilt of Earth's spin axis could provide information about the magnetic field inside. This tug would make the inner core precess — that is, make the spin axis slowly rotate in the opposite direction — which would produce magnetic changes in the outer core that damp the precession. Radio observations of distant quasars — extremely bright, active galaxies — provide precise measurements of the changes in Earth's rotation axis needed to calculate this damping.

"The Moon is continually forcing the rotation axis of the core to precess, and we're looking at the response of the fluid outer core to the precession of the inner core," he said.

By calculating the effect of the Moon on the spinning inner core, Buffett discovered that the precession makes the slightly out-of-round inner core generate shear waves in the liquid outer core. These waves of molten iron and nickel move within a tight cone only 100 to 130 feet (30 to 40 meters) thick, interacting with the magnetic field to produce an electric current that heats the liquid. This serves to damp the precession of the rotation axis. The damping causes the precession to lag behind the Moon as it orbits Earth. A measurement of the lag allowed Buffett to calculate the magnitude of the damping, and the magnetic field inside the outer core.

Buffett noted that the calculated field — 25 Gauss — is an average over the entire outer core. The field is expected to vary with position.

"I still find it remarkable that we can look to distant quasars to get insights into the deep interior of our planet," Buffett said.


Related Articles

solitary star
12-21-2010, 03:28 PM
i love so much "quantum loops" and that is about it!
Physicists from the Faculty of Physics, University of Warsaw have put forward -- on the pages of Physical Review D -- a new theoretical model of quantum gravity describing the emergence of space-time from the structures of quantum theory. It is not only one of the few models describing the full general theory of relativity advanced by Einstein, but it is also completely mathematically consistent. "The solutions applied allow to trace the evolution of the Universe in a more physically acceptable manner than in the case of previous cosmological models," explains Prof. Jerzy Lewandowski from the Faculty of Physics, University of Warsaw (FUW).
While the general theory of relativity is applied to describe the Universe on a cosmological scale, quantum mechanics is applied to describe reality on an atomic scale. Both theories were developed in the early 20th century. Their validity has since been confirmed by highly sophisticated experiments and observations. The problem lies in the fact that the theories are mutually exclusive.
According to the general theory of relativity, reality is always uniquely determined (as in classical mechanics). However, time and space play an active role in the events and are themselves subject to Einstein's equations. According to quantum physics, on the other hand, one may only gain a rough understanding of nature. A prediction can only be made with a probability; its precision being limited by inherent properties. But the laws of the prevailing quantum theories do not apply to time and space. Such contradictions are irrelevant under standard conditions -- galaxies are not subject to quantum phenomena and quantum gravity plays a minor role in the world of atoms and particles. Nonetheless, gravity and quantum effects need to merge under conditions close to the Big Bang.
Traditional cosmological models describe the evolution of the Universe within the framework of the general theory of relativity itself. The equations at the core of the theory suggest that the Universe is a dynamic, constantly expanding creation. When theorists attempt to discover what the Universe was like in times gone by, they reach the stage where density and temperature in the model become infinite -- in other words, they lose their physical sense. Thus, the infinities may only be indicative of the weaknesses of the former theory and the moment of the Big Bang does not have to signify the birth of the Universe.
In order to gain at least some knowledge of quantum gravity, scientists construct simplified quantum models, known as quantum cosmological models, in which space-time and matter are expressed in a single value or a few values alone. For example, the model developed by Ashtekar, Bojowald, Lewandowski, Pawłowski and Singh predicts that quantum gravity prevents the increase of matter energy density from exceeding a certain critical value (of the order of the Planck density). Consequently, there must have been a contracting universe prior to the Big Bang. When matter density had reached the critical value, there followed a rapid expansion -- the Big Bang, known as the Big Bounce. However, the model is a highly simplified toy model.
The real answer to the mystery of the Big Bang lies in a unified quantum theory of matter and gravity. One attempt at developing such a theory is loop quantum gravity (LQG). The theory holds that space is weaved from one-dimensional threads. "It is just like in the case of a fabric -- although it is seemingly smooth from a distance, it becomes evident at close quarters that it consists of a network of fibres," describes Wojciech Kamiński, MSc from FUW. Such space would constitute a fine fabric -- an area of a square centimetre would consists of 1066 threads.
Physicists Marcin Domagała, Wojciech Kamiński and Jerzy Lewandowski, together with Kristina Giesel from the Louisiana State University (guest), developed their model within the framework of loop quantum gravity. The starting points for the model are two fields, one of which is a gravitational field. "Thanks to the general theory of relativity we know that gravity is the very geometry of space-time. We may, therefore, say that our point of departure is three-dimensional space," explains Marcin Domagała, PhD (FUW).
The second starting point is a scalar field -- a mathematical object in which a particular value is attributed to every point in space. In the proposed model, scalar fields are interpreted as the simplest form of matter. Scalar fields have been known in physics for years, they are applied, among others, to describe temperature and pressure distribution in space. "We have opted for a scalar field as it is the typical feature of contemporary cosmological models and our aim is to develop a model that would constitute another step forward in quantum gravity research," observes Prof. Lewandowski.
In the model developed by physicists from Warsaw, time emerges as the relation between the gravitational field (space) and the scalar field -- a moment in time is given by the value of the scalar field. "We pose the question about the shape of space at a given value of the scalar field and Einstein's quantum equations provide the answer," explains Prof. Lewandowski. Thus, the phenomenon of the passage of time emerges as the property of the state of the gravitational and scalar fields and the appearance of such a state corresponds to the birth of the well-known space-time. "It is worthy of note that time is nonexistent at the beginning of the model. Nothing happens. Action and dynamics appear as the interrelation between the fields when we begin to pose questions about how one object relates to another," explains Prof. Lewandowski.
Physicist from FUW have made it possible to provide a more accurate description of the evolution of the Universe. Whereas models based on the general theory of relativity are simplified and assume the gravitational field at every point of the Universe to be identical or subject to minor changes, the gravitational field in the proposed model may differ at different points in space.
The proposed theoretical construction is the first such highly advanced model characterized by internal mathematical consistency. It comes as the natural continuation of research into quantization of gravity, where each new theory is derived from classical theories. To that end, physicists apply certain algorithms, known as quantizations. "Unfortunately for physicists, the algorithms are far from precise. For example, it may follow from an algorithm that a Hilbert space needs to be constructed, but no details are provided," explains Marcin Domagała, MSc. "We have succeeded in performing a full quantization and obtained one of the possible models."
There is still a long way to go, according to Prof. Lewandowski: "We have developed a certain theoretical machinery. We may begin to ply it with questions and it will provide the answers." Theorists from FUW intend, among others, to inquire whether the Big Bounce actually occurs in their model. "In the future, we will try to include in the model further fields of the Standard Model of elementary particles. We are curious ourselves to find out what will happen," says Prof.
Lewandowski

solitary star
12-21-2010, 03:47 PM
i think lqc is the best theory that can describe what happend before big bang but it maybe false because i think linking general gravity to quantm mechanics is very hard and so imposible and it's too exciting theroy for me for that reason!if they can explain what happend after rewriting general geravity in quantumeic basis & is 100% possible with out having a paradox it will be such as a quack in physics and other science!

X-BLACKHOLE
01-15-2011, 01:24 PM
ScienceDaily (Jan. 11, 2011) — One of the strangest space objects ever seen is being scrutinized by the penetrating vision of NASA's Hubble Space Telescope. A mysterious, glowing green blob of gas is floating in space near a spiral galaxy. Hubble uncovered delicate filaments of gas and a pocket of young star clusters in the giant object, which is the size of our Milky Way galaxy.
The Hubble revelations are the latest finds in an ongoing probe of Hanny's Voorwerp (Hanny's Object in Dutch), named for Hanny van Arkel, the Dutch teacher who discovered the ghostly structure in 2007 while participating in the online Galaxy Zoo project. Galaxy Zoo enlists the public to help classify more than a million galaxies catalogued in the Sloan Digital Sky Survey. The project has expanded to include the Hubble Zoo, in which the public is asked to assess tens of thousands of galaxies in deep imagery from the Hubble Space Telescope.

In the sharpest view yet of Hanny's Voorwerp, Hubble's Wide Field Camera 3 and Advanced Camera for Surveys have uncovered star birth in a region of the green object that faces the spiral galaxy IC 2497, located about 650 million light-years from Earth. Radio observations have shown an outflow of gas arising from the galaxy's core. The new Hubble images reveal that the galaxy's gas is interacting with a small region of Hanny's Voorwerp, which is collapsing and forming stars. The youngest stars are a couple of million years old.

"The star clusters are localized, confined to an area that is over a few thousand light-years wide," explains astronomer William Keel of the University of Alabama in Tuscaloosa, leader of the Hubble study. "The region may have been churning out stars for several million years. They are so dim that they have previously been lost in the brilliant light of the surrounding gas."

Recent X-ray observations have revealed why Hanny's Voorwerp caught the eye of astronomers. The galaxy's rambunctious core produced a quasar, a powerful light beacon powered by a black hole. The quasar shot a broad beam of light in Hanny's Voorwerp's direction, illuminating the gas cloud and making it a space oddity. Its bright green color is from glowing oxygen.

"We just missed catching the quasar, because it turned off no more than 200,000 years ago, so what we're seeing is the afterglow from the quasar," Keel says. "This implies that it might flicker on and off, which is typical of quasars, but we've never seen such a dramatic change happen so rapidly."

The quasar's outburst also may have cast a shadow on the blob. This feature gives the illusion of a gaping hole about 20,000 light-years wide in Hanny's Voorwerp. Hubble reveals sharp edges around the apparent opening, suggesting that an object close to the quasar may have blocked some of the light and projected a shadow on Hanny's Voorwerp. This phenomenon is similar to a fly on a movie projector lens casting a shadow on a movie screen.

Radio studies have revealed that Hanny's Voorwerp is not just an island gas cloud floating in space. The glowing blob is part of a long, twisting rope of gas, or tidal tail, about 300,000 light-years long that wraps around the galaxy. The only optically visible part of the rope is Hanny's Voorwerp. The illuminated object is so huge that it stretches from 44,000 light-years to 136,000 light-years from the galaxy's core.

The quasar, the outflow of gas that instigated the star birth, and the long, gaseous tidal tail point to a rough life for IC 2497.

"The evidence suggests that IC 2497 may have merged with another galaxy about a billion years ago," Keel explains. "The Hubble images show in exquisite detail that the spiral arms are twisted, so the galaxy hasn't completely settled down."

In Keel's scenario, the merger expelled the long streamer of gas from the galaxy and funneled gas and stars into the center, which fed the black hole. The engorged black hole then powered the quasar, which launched two cones of light. One light beam illuminated part of the tidal tail, now called Hanny's Voorwerp.

About a million years ago, shock waves produced glowing gas near the galaxy's core and blasted it outward. The glowing gas is seen only in Hubble images and spectra, Keel says. The outburst may have triggered star formation in Hanny's Voorwerp. Less than 200,000 years ago, the quasar dropped in brightness by 100 times or more, leaving an ordinary-looking core.

New images of the galaxy's dusty core from Hubble's Space Telescope Imaging Spectrograph show an expanding bubble of gas blown out of one side of the core, perhaps evidence of the sputtering quasar's final gasps. The expanding ring of gas is still too small for ground-based telescopes to detect.

"This quasar may have been active for a few million years, which perhaps indicates that quasars blink on and off on timescales of millions of years, not the 100 million years that theory had suggested," Keel says. He added that the quasar could light up again if more material is dumped around the black hole.

Keel is presenting his results on Jan. 10, 2011, at the American Astronomical Society meeting in Seattle, Wash.

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2011/01/110110090425.htm

planetstruck
01-16-2011, 01:17 PM
Hi There! I hope all of us have a snowy day full of fun & pleasure these days



Thank X_BACHHOLE for His/Her :slow:topic


I found some other sources about your topic
but i couldn't find various pictures about that
. If u find any other pics please paste it here.





The space oddity:crazy: was spied in 2007 by Dutch high-school teacher
Hanny van Arkel while participating in the online Galaxy Zoo project. The cosmic blob, called Hanny's Voorwerp (Hanny's Object in Dutch), appears to be a solitary green island floating near a normal-looking spiral galaxy, called IC 2497. Since the discovery, puzzled astronomers have used a slew of telescopes, including X-ray and radio observatories, to help unwrap the mystery. Astronomers found that Hanny's Voorwerp is the only visible part of a 300-light-year-long gaseous streamer stretching around the galaxy. The greenish Voorwerp is visible because a searchlight beam of light from the galaxy's core illuminated it. This beam came from a quasar, a bright, energetic object that is powered by a black hole. An encounter with another galaxy may have fed the black hole and pulled the gaseous streamer from IC 2497


Now, with the help of NASA's Hubble Space Telescope, astronomers have uncovered pocket of young star clusters (colored yellow-orange in the image) at the tip of the green-colored Hanny's Voorwerp. Hubble also shows that gas flowing from IC 2497 .(the pinkish object with the swirling spiral arms) may have instigated the star birth by compressing the gas in Hanny's Voorwerp



http://www.forexrainbow.com/files/lsgad6bb2zek09qva1pd.jpg (http://www.forexrainbow.com/)

X-BLACKHOLE
01-16-2011, 07:55 PM
hi dear planetstruck
also i hope that you and your clan have a pleasurable snowy winter with funny
i'm so sorry :you're kidding, rig .
i don't have more portrayal for this news that i inscribed .
but i guesstimate that this portrayal that attached to this news is manufacture and it is n't real portrayal .

محمدرضا صادقیان
01-16-2011, 11:28 PM
See asteroid profiles from recent occultations here (http://weblore.com/richard/Asteroid_Profiles.htm)
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
ASTEROID OCCULTATION VIDEOS*

1-10-second MPG format (1.8 Meg) GPS time inserted video clip of (http://weblore.com/richard/1587%20kahrstedt%20MPGI%2010-20-04.avi.mpg) occultation by 1587 Kahrstedt, 10-20-04. (http://weblore.com/richard/1587%20kahrstedt%20MPGI%2010-20-04.avi.mpg)


2- 16-second AVI video clip (1.6 Meg), of occultation by (http://weblore.com/richard/828%20Lindemannia%2011-10-02%20.avi.avi.avi) 828 Lindemania, 11-10-02 (http://weblore.com/richard/828%20Lindemannia%2011-10-02%20.avi.avi.avi).

3- 372 Palma January 26, 2007. From Tehama, California, 13.5 second event. (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pvnvdvqW6WI)
------------------------------------
*Videos by Richard Nugent
--------------------------------------------------------------------------
Hi my astronomical friends.
I propose that these videos are interesting to watch. I think pretty.
Best regards / Mohammad Reza Sadeghian

planetstruck
01-17-2011, 10:15 AM
! Hi
:grin:Thanks
............................So do u
.I strongly agree with u cause I searched but there weren’t any real pics of ur news

gandom
02-07-2011, 03:38 PM
first news
the sky event on february
Full Moon, 3:36 a.m.
The Full Moon of February (http://www.space.com/10629-post-obscure-full-moon-names-2011.html) is usually known as the Wolf Moon. In Algonquian it is called Snow Moon. Other names are Hunger Moon, Storm Moon, and Candles Moon.
In Hindi it is known as Magh Poornima. Its Sinhala (Buddhist) name is Navam Poya. The Full moon rises around sunset and sets around sunrise, the only night in the month when the moon is in the sky all night long. The rest of the month, the moon spends at least some time in the daytime sky.
Thu., February 24
Last Quarter Moon, 6:26 p.m.
The Last or Third Quarter Moon rises around 2 a.m. and sets around 11 a.m. It is most easily seen just after sunrise in the southern sky.
Observing Highlights
Fri., February 11, early evening
Moon close to the Pleiades
The First Quarter Moon passes just south of the brightest star cluster in the sky, the Pleiades (http://www.space.com/10710-orion-taurus-star-cluster-skywatching-tips.html) (Messier 45) in Taurus.
Mon., February 14, 3 a.m.
Moon close to Messier 35
The waxing gibbous Moon passes close to the open cluster Messier 35 in Gemini.
Sun., February 20–Sat., March 5
Zodiacal Light
Visible in the west after evening twilight, the faint glow of interplanetary dust particles.
Planets
Mercury is too close to the Sun all month to be observed. Superior conjunction is on February 25.
Venus is a brilliant “morning star” all month.
Mars is too close to the Sun to be observed. It is in conjunction with the Sun on February 4.
Jupiter is in the western sky in the early evening, setting around 9 p.m. It spends most of the month in Pisces, but begins a brief visit to the constellation Cetus on February 24. Yes, Cetus!
Saturn rises around 10 p.m. and is visible the rest of the night in Virgo. Its rings have returned to their usual glory after being on edge for the last two years.
Uranus is in Pisces all month. It sets around 8:30 p.m.
Neptune is too close to the Sun to be observed. It is in conjunction with the Sun on February 17.
Notice that no less that three planets are in conjunction with the Sun this month.


source:www.space.com

planetstruck
02-09-2011, 09:35 AM
Hi there
.As I connected 2 the internet today in the morning, I found a news in yahoo which makes me:slow::crazy: shocked
.Now I wanna put it here 2 inform u
The latest news about a disputed report of a 900-foot asteroid's threat to Earth prompts a search for answers

February 09, 2011

Who says the world is only full of bad news? NASA has largely dismissed a Russian report that an asteroid larger than two football fields could hit Earth by 2036. In other words, you can relax.Known as "99942 Apophis," the 900-foot-long asteroid has had the attention of scientists for some time. According to an article from SPACE.com, back in 2004, NASA scientists announced that Apophis could hit the planet in 2029. But, after further number crunching, that prediction was later retracted

The asteroid hurtled back into the news when Russia recently predicted 99942 Apophis may hit Earth on April 13, 2036. NASA acknowledges that there is a chance this may happen, but it is far from likely. Donald Yeomans, who heads up NASA's Near-Earth Object Program Office, estimates the odds at around 1 in 250,000. And, don't worry — NASA does have a backup plan. Should the need arise, the space agency will construct machinery to change the asteroid's orbit

The Russian scientists are also hedging their bets. Professor Leonid Sokolov of St. Petersburg State University remarked that 99942 Apophis would most likely disintegrate before hitting Earth

Still, a chance is a chance, and Web searchers immediately sought more information on the errant asteroid. Online lookups for "99942 Apophis" jumped sharply while "pictures of asteroids" and "apophis nasa report" also posted strong spikes in the Search box

And while the odds of 99942 Apophis "hitting home" are blissfully slim, there are some in the scientific community who believe its high time for "Earth protection strategies" just in case. Discovery.com lists several theories as to how best tackle any objects that might be on a collision course with EarthOdds are we'll never need them. But it's better to be safe than to end up in a situation that resembles a Michael Bay movie.

samaa
02-25-2011, 10:06 PM
Buried in the flood of data from the Kepler telescope is a planetary system unlike any seen before. Two of its apparent planets share the same orbit around their star. If the discovery is confirmed, it would bolster a theory that Earth once shared its orbit with a Mars-sized body that later crashed into it, resulting in the moon's formation

http://www.newscientist.com/data/images/ns/cms/dn20160/dn20160-1_300.jpg


more here (http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn20160-two-planets-found-sharing-one-orbit.html)

planetstruck
02-26-2011, 04:04 PM
Awe-struck astronaut captures Endeavour in dramatic silhouette against Earth's horizon

By DAILY MAIL REPORTER
16th February 2010



More than 200miles above Earth, the space shuttle Endeavour can be seen silhouetted against our planet's colourful horizon
The image was taken by a member of the Expedition 22 crew on board the International Space Station as the shuttle approached for docking last Tuesday
The tricky manoeuvre was performed while both the shuttle and station were travelling at more than 17,000mph

http://www.irfreeup.com/images/01141718471776336209.png (http://www.irfreeup.com/)

Shadow of the Earth: The silhouette of the space shuttle Endeavour above our planet



http://www.irfreeup.com/images/82196388594392885846.jpg (http://www.irfreeup.com/)

The International Space Station backdropped by Earth's horizon and the blackness of space

planetstruck
02-26-2011, 04:22 PM
Endeavour astronaut Stephen Robinson was awe-struck as the shuttle approached the station
'To look up and see what humankind could really accomplish in space was just almost impossible to believe. It seemed like science fiction"he said
'Now here we are with human beings that are living on board. That truly is the amazing legacy of the space shuttle programme
The shuttle has delivered vital food supplies and air cleaning equipment to the station as well as a new observation deck

http://www.irfreeup.com/images/67473745802823792326_thumb.jpg (http://www.irfreeup.com/viewer.php?file=67473745802823792326.jpg)
Nasa astronaut T.J. Creamer & Jeffrey Williams with fresh produce brought by the shuttle


http://www.irfreeup.com/images/02109905515957212671.jpg (http://www.irfreeup.com/)
The International Space Station is seen leaving Earth in this photo taken from the Intracoastal Waterway Bridge, in Ponte Vedra, Florida

samaa
02-26-2011, 10:13 PM
http://marsparticipate.jpl.nasa.gov/msl/images/msl/sendyournameMSL_th.jpg


Be come a part of history


look here (http://marsparticipate.jpl.nasa.gov/msl/participate/sendyourname/)

stargazer
04-21-2011, 10:27 AM
Geyser moon puts its mark on Saturn



http://www.newscientist.com/data/images/ns/cms/dn20399/dn20399-2_300.jpg



18:00 20 April 2011 by David Shiga (http://www.newscientist.com/search?rbauthors=David+Shiga)
For similar stories, visit the Solar System (http://www.newscientist.com/topic/solar-system) and Saturn and its moons (http://www.newscientist.com/topic/saturn-and-its-moons) Topic Guides

An electrical current is flowing from Saturn's moon Enceladus to the ringed planet, creating a glowing patch in the planet's atmosphere.

Ultraviolet images taken by the Cassini spacecraft revealed the patch, which is distinct from the planet's auroras. It lies near Saturn's north pole – exactly where electrons emitted by Enceladus would hit after being chanelled along the planet's magnetic field lines, report Wayne Pryor (http://www.centralaz.edu/Home/Academics/Faculty_Pages/Faculty_Profiles/Wayne_Pryor.htm) of Central Arizona College in Coolidge and colleagues.
Where do the electrons come from? The team believes that sunlight knocks them off water molecules spewed by geysers (http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg19526181.500-geyser-teaser-the-moon-that-should-be-colder.html) at Enceladus's south pole.
The brightness of the patch varies, which could be due to variations in the amount of water vapour released by Enceladus, says the team.

Journal reference: Nature (http://www.nature.com/), DOI: 10.1038/nature09928

گلناز
06-28-2011, 12:43 PM
NASA Twitter Followers Will Fly Shuttle Simulator During Tweetup At Johnson Space Center

HOUSTON -- So you think you can pilot the space shuttle? NASA will give 30 of its Twitter followers a chance to test their skills at space shuttle ascent, rendezvous or landing aboard the same simulator astronauts use to train for their missions.

NASA's Johnson Space Center is hosting a daylong Tweetup on July 19, during space shuttle Atlantis' STS-135 mission to the International Space Station. Participants will get a behind-the-scenes tour at Johnson and a hands-on opportunity aboard the shuttle simulator to take control in a training scenario. The tour includes a look at the Mission Control Center and astronauts' training facilities. Visitors also will have the opportunity to speak with flight directors, trainers, astronauts and managers.

Atlantis is targeted to launch from NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida at 10:26 a.m. CDT on July 8. If it launches as planned, the Tweetup will take place one day before the last orbiter of the shuttle fleet makes its final landing.

Tweetup registration opens at 11 a.m. on Tuesday, June 28, and closes 24 hours later at 11 a.m. on Wednesday, June 29. NASA will select 30 individuals randomly from the online registrants.

Reporters are invited to cover the Tweetup from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. Media representatives planning to attend should contact Tammie Letroise-Brown at 281-483-4942.

گلناز
06-28-2011, 12:48 PM
What's to Blame for Wild Weather? "La Nada"

Such sheets of fire, such bursts of horrid thunder,
Such groans of roaring wind and rain, I never
Remember to have heard; man's nature cannot carry
The affliction nor the fear … from Shakespeare's Tragedy of King Lear

June 21, 2011: Record snowfall, killer tornadoes, devastating floods: There’s no doubt about it. Since Dec. 2010, the weather in the USA has been positively wild. But why?
Some recent news reports have attributed the phenomenon to an extreme "La Niña," a band of cold water stretching across the Pacific Ocean with global repercussions for climate and weather. But NASA climatologist Bill Patzert names a different suspect: "La Nada."
"La Niña was strong in December," he says. "But back in January it pulled a disappearing act and left us with nothing – La Nada – to constrain the jet stream. Like an unruly teenager, the jet stream took advantage of the newfound freedom--and the results were disastrous."
La Niña and El Niño are opposite extremes of a great Pacific oscillation. Every 2 to 7 years, surface waters across the equatorial Pacific warm up (El Niño) and then they cool down again (La Niña). Each condition has its own distinct effects on weather.
http://science.nasa.gov/media/medialibrary/2011/06/24/lanina_strip.jpg/image_full (http://science.nasa.gov/media/medialibrary/2011/06/24/lanina.jpg)
The blue and purple band in this satellite image of the Pacific Ocean traces the cool waters of the La Niña phenomenon in December 2010. (from Ocean Surface Topography Mission (OSTM)/Jason-2 satellite, Credit: NASA JPL)

The winter of 2010 began with La Niña conditions taking hold. A "normal" La Niña would have pushed the jet stream northward, pushing cold arctic air (one of the ingredients of severe weather) away from the lower US. But this La Niña petered out quickly, and no El Niño rose up to replace it. The jet stream was free to misbehave.

"By mid-January 2011, La Niña weakened rapidly and by mid-February it was 'adios La Niña,' allowing the jet stream to meander wildly around the US. Consequently the weather pattern became dominated by strong outbreaks of frigid polar air, producing blizzards across the West, Upper Midwest, and northeast US."1
The situation lingered into spring -- and things got ugly. Russell Schneider, Director of the NOAA-NWS Storm Prediction Center, explains:
"First, very strong winds out of the south carrying warm, moist air from the Gulf of Mexico met cold jet stream winds racing in from the west. Stacking these two air masses on top of each other created the degree of instability that fuels intense thunderstorms."
Extreme contrasts in wind speeds and directions of the upper and lower atmosphere transformed ordinary thunderstorms into long-lived rotating supercells capable of producing violent tornadoes.2
In Patzert's words, "The jet stream -- on steroids -- acted as an atmospheric mix master, causing tornadoes to explode across Dixie and Tornado Alleys, and even into Massachusetts."
http://science.nasa.gov/media/medialibrary/2011/06/24/lanada_strip.jpg/image_full (http://science.nasa.gov/media/medialibrary/2011/06/24/lanada.jpg)
This satellite image, taken in April 2011, reveals La Niña's rapid exit from the equator near the US coast. The cool (false-color blue) water was gone by early spring. (from Ocean Surface Topography Mission (OSTM)/Jason-2 satellite, Credit: NASA JPL)

All this because of a flaky La Niña?
"La Niña and El Niño affect the atmosphere's energy balance because they determine the location of warm water in the Pacific, and that in turn determines where huge clusters of tropical thunderstorms form," explains Schneider. "These storms are the main energy source from the tropics influencing the large scale pattern of the jet stream that flows through the US."
In agreement with Patzert, he notes that the very strong and active jet stream across the lower US in April "may have been related to the weakening La Niña conditions observed over the tropical Pacific."
And of course there's this million dollar question: "Does any research point to climate change as a cause of this wild weather?"
"Global warming is certainly happening," asserts Patzert, "but we can't discount global warming or blame it for the 2011 tornado season. We just don't know ... Yet."3
What will happen next? And please don't say, "La Nada."

Author: Dauna Coulter (dauna.d.coulter@nasa.gov?subject=feedback%20on%20 Wild%20Weather) | Editor: Dr. Tony Phillips (dr.tony.phillips@earthlink.net?subject=feedback%2 0on%20Wild%20Weather) | Credit: Science@NASA
End Notes(1) Other atmospheric factors also contributed to the inflow of frigid polar air, says Patzert. One of the most significant was a weakening in the whirlpool motion of the air around the North Pole. As a result of this weakening, more cold air flowed away from the pole and down toward the states. Climatologists call this an "arctic oscillation."
(2) Imagine a paddle wheel oriented like a Ferris wheel and placed in winds that that are much stronger at the top than at the bottom. The wheel will spin in the direction of the strong winds above. This spring, these strong, turning winds led to ongoing rotation of the supercells themselves. So we ended up with intense rotation and updraft close to Earth's surface -- conditions ripe for strong tornadoes.
(3) On May 26, 2011, Patzert posted a comment about this topic on Andrew Revkin’s The New York Times' DOT EARTH Blog, "Demography, Design, Atom Bombs and Tornado Deaths."

گلناز
06-28-2011, 12:56 PM
Free-Floating Planets May Be More Common Than Stars

May 18, 2011: Astronomers have discovered a new class of Jupiter-sized planets floating alone in the dark of space, away from the light of a star. The team believes these lone worlds are probably outcasts from developing planetary systems and, moreover, they could be twice as numerous as the stars themselves.
"Although free-floating planets have been predicted, they finally have been detected," said Mario Perez, exoplanet program scientist at NASA Headquarters in Washington. "[This has] major implications for models of planetary formation and evolution."
The discovery is based on a joint Japan-New Zealand survey that scanned the center of the Milky Way galaxy during 2006 and 2007, revealing evidence for up to 10 free-floating planets roughly the mass of Jupiter. The isolated orbs, also known as orphan planets, are difficult to spot, and had gone undetected until now. The planets are located at an average approximate distance of 10,000 to 20,000 light years from Earth.
http://science.nasa.gov/media/medialibrary/2011/05/18/concept_strip.jpg/image_full (http://science.nasa.gov/media/medialibrary/2011/05/18/concept_strip.jpg/image_full)
This artist's concept illustrates a Jupiter-like planet alone in the dark of space, floating freely without a parent star. [larger image (http://www.nasa.gov/topics/universe/features/pia14093.html)] [video (http://www.nasa.gov/topics/universe/features/planet20110518-video.html)]

This could be just the tip of the iceberg. The team estimates there are about twice as many free-floating Jupiter-mass planets as stars. In addition, these worlds are thought to be at least as common as planets that orbit stars. This adds up to hundreds of billions of lone planets in our Milky Way galaxy alone.
"Our survey is like a population census," said David Bennett, a NASA and National Science Foundation-funded co-author of the study from the University of Notre Dame in South Bend, Ind. "We sampled a portion of the galaxy, and based on these data, can estimate overall numbers in the galaxy."
The study, led by Takahiro Sumi from Osaka University in Japan, appears in the May 19 issue of the journal Nature. The survey is not sensitive to planets smaller than Jupiter and Saturn, but theories suggest lower-mass planets like Earth should be ejected from their stars more often. As a result, they are thought to be more common than free-floating Jupiters.
Previous observations spotted a handful of free-floating planet-like objects within star-forming clusters, with masses three times that of Jupiter. But scientists suspect the gaseous bodies form more like stars than planets. These small, dim orbs, called brown dwarfs, grow from collapsing balls of gas and dust, but lack the mass to ignite their nuclear fuel and shine with starlight. It is thought the smallest brown dwarfs are approximately the size of large planets.
http://science.nasa.gov/media/medialibrary/2011/05/18/lens_med.jpg (http://science.nasa.gov/media/medialibrary/2011/05/18/lens_med.jpg)
A video from JPL (http://www.nasa.gov/topics/universe/features/planet20110518-video.html) describes the microlensing technique astronomers used to detect the orphan planets.

On the other hand, it is likely that some planets are ejected from their early, turbulent solar systems, due to close gravitational encounters with other planets or stars. Without a star to circle, these planets would move through the galaxy as our sun and others stars do, in stable orbits around the galaxy's center. The discovery of 10 free-floating Jupiters supports the ejection scenario, though it's possible both mechanisms are at play.
"If free-floating planets formed like stars, then we would have expected to see only one or two of them in our survey instead of 10," Bennett said. "Our results suggest that planetary systems often become unstable, with planets being kicked out from their places of birth."
The observations cannot rule out the possibility that some of these planets may be in orbit around distant stars, but other research indicates Jupiter-mass planets in such distant orbits are rare.
The survey, the Microlensing Observations in Astrophysics (MOA), is named in part after a giant wingless, extinct bird family from New Zealand called the moa. A 5.9-foot (1.8-meter) telescope at Mount John University Observatory in New Zealand is used to regularly scan the copious stars at the center of our galaxy for gravitational microlensing events. These occur when something, such as a star or planet, passes in front of another more distant star. The passing body's gravity warps the light of the background star, causing it to magnify and brighten. Heftier passing bodies, like massive stars, will warp the light of the background star to a greater extent,resulting in brightening events that can last weeks. Small planet-size bodies will cause less of a distortion, and brighten a star for only a few days or less.
A second microlensing survey group, the Optical Gravitational Lensing Experiment (OGLE), contributed to this discovery using a 4.2-foot (1.3 meter) telescope in Chile. The OGLE group also observed many of the same events, and their observations independently confirmed the analysis of the MOA group.

From:http://www.nasa.gov/topics/universe/

planetstruck
06-28-2011, 01:44 PM
NASA Twitter Followers Will Fly Shuttle Simulator During Tweetup At Johnson Space Center
.................................................. ..................... and so on


Hi dear Golnaz!
thank u 4 ur News.
please put the refrences of that news
I couldn't find it my self in due to put it here

گلناز
06-28-2011, 03:58 PM
WASHINGTON -- NASA will host a two-day launch Tweetup for 150 of its Twitter followers on Aug. 4 - 5 at the agency's Kennedy Space Center in Florida. The Tweetup is expected to culminate in the launc
h of the Jupiter-bound Juno spacecraft aboard an Atlas V rocket.

The launch window opens at 11:39 a.m. EDT on Aug. 5. The spacecraft is expected to arrive at Jupiter in 2016. The mission will investigate the gas giant's origins, structure, atmosphere and magnetosphere. Juno's color camera will provide close-up images of Jupiter, including the first detailed glimpse of the planet's poles.

The Tweetup will provide @NASA Twitter followers with the opportunity to tour the Kennedy Space Center Visitor Complex; speak with scientists and engineers from the Juno and other upcoming missions; and, if all goes as scheduled, view the spacecraft launch. The event also will provide participants the opportunity to meet fellow tweeps and members of NASA's social media team.

Juno is the second of four space missions launching this year, making 2011 one of the busiest ever in planetary exploration. Aquarius was launched June 10 to study ocean salinity; Grail will launch Sept. 8 to study the moon's gravity field; and the Mars Science Laboratory/Curiosity rover heads to the Red Planet no earlier than Nov. 25.

گلناز
06-28-2011, 04:13 PM
Chris Ferguson: "Thanks for coming out and greeting the crew for what is the final opportunity to do this, at least in front of a space shuttle and I couldn’t think of a better backdrop."

The final space shuttle crew spoke with reporters at the Kennedy Space Center's Launch Pad 39A as they completed the Terminal Countdown Demonstration Test for STS-135. The TCDT gives the crew and support personnel time to familiarize themselves with equipment and procedures surrounding an upcoming launch.

The four veteran astronauts are targeted to lift off aboard Atlantis for the International Space Station on July 8 on what will be the final mission of the space shuttle era.

Rex Walheim: "The space shuttle program has been amazing what it’s done, all the great accomplishments, and you just don’t want to let that momentum down, and so there is a lot of pressure to do your job right."

COMINGS AND GOINGS – JSC
The International Space Station welcomed the Progress 43 unpiloted cargo ship carrying close to three tons of food, fuel and supplies for the six Expedition 28 crewmembers on board.

That came several days after the unpiloted European Space Agency’s “Johannes Kepler” Automated Transfer Vehicle-2 undocked from the station. ATV-2 had delivered several tons of supplies to the crew in February. A day after its undocking, ATV-2 burned up on reentry over the Pacific Ocean.

SPACE WEATHER FORUM - HQ
NASA experts spoke at the annual Space Weather Enterprise Forum held at the National Press Club in Washington. Space weather refers to conditions and events on the sun and near-Earth that can threaten human safety, and hamper national security by impacting critical systems like electric power grids, communications, and satellite positioning and navigation systems.

John Allen: "Selection of older crew members is a benefit, rather than younger, in terms of how much radiation they can exposed to because of the finite period at which time radiation might express itself."

Dr. John Allen addressed the increased exposure to radiation faced by astronauts during adverse space weather conditions – and what can be done to prepare them for such events.

The Space Weather Enterprise brings together researchers, policymakers, forecasters, and others to share information and raise awareness of space weather and its effects on society. Space weather is predicted to increase as the sun reaches its forecasted peak of activity in 2013.

GLENN LECTURE – HQ

Moderator: "When you’re training to be astronauts no one had ever had that job description before, so what did astronaut training entail?"

Scott Carpenter: "Everything; every test you could imagine."

Fifty years after the first human spaceflights, NASA’s two surviving Mercury 7 astronauts – John Glenn and Scott Carpenter sat down to talk about their experiences at the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum in Washington.

John Glenn: "NASA's predecessor, the national advisory committee for aeronautics, was doing some studies on a computer they had down at Langley that were about orbital flight, and wanted someone to come down there and go through some of that and I volunteered for that and that's when we first when I realized that we really were going into this; I realized anyway."

Scott Carpenter: "The order said: report to Washington at such and such time; do not discuss or speculate with anyone. So, I obeyed, though I did discuss and speculate with my wife, however. I went to a briefing at the Pentagon and that’s how I heard about the NASA project."

On February 20, 1962, John Glenn piloted his Friendship 7 spacecraft on the United States’ first orbital Mercury mission. At age 77, Glenn flew in space a second time in 1998 aboard Space Shuttle Discovery on STS-95 after representing his native Ohio in the U.S. Senate. Scott Carpenter flew into space on May 24, 1962, aboard Aurora 7, a three-orbit science mission. The fourth American in space, Carpenter also performed important habitability research on the ocean floor.

BLUMBERG REMEMBERED - ARC
The Ames Research Center hosted a tribute to Baruch 'Barry' Blumberg, the former NASA scientist who identified, and developed the vaccine for, the Hepatitis B virus.

Blumberg died after suffering a heart attack earlier this year at the International Lunar Research Park Exploratory Workshop at Ames, where he was a featured speaker.

And now, Centerpieces…

DREAM CHASER - LARC
A good idea rarely goes out of style – just ask some of the firms developing next generation spacecraft.

Sierra Nevada, one of four winners of second-round funding from NASA’s Commercial Crew Development program, based its Dream Chaser design on the HL-20 space taxi concept.

That idea was developed by NASA's Langley Research Center in the 80s and 90s.

Company and NASA headquarters officials came to the center in Hampton, Va. to recognize those studies and Langley's 50-year history of lifting body research.

Lori Garver: "We're proud of the work we at NASA did on the HL-20 on the lifting body concept and we’re pleased that it's being utilized today."

Mark Sirangelo: "We would not be here. I would not be at this podium if it wasn't for the great work you did."

Langley engineers devised an entire plan for the HL-20.

They created pilot landing scenarios for flight simulators – some of which are now adapted for newer facilities.

They tested designs in wind tunnels and even built a full-scale model, with the help of universities, to study crew challenges; that model is at Sierra Nevada.

Many of the researchers who gave birth to the HL-20 attended the recognition ceremony.

Bill Piland: "We really appreciate this opportunity to get together again and the recognition you provided us for a job we were excited about. We still are excited about and quite frankly I thought this day would never come."

Also while in Hampton, NASA's Deputy Administrator Lori Garver and Chief Technologist Bobby Braun got the chance to see a manufacturing technique, developed at Langley that could revolutionize the way aerospace parts are made.

NEW “GREEN” BUILDING - LaRC
With a blast of confetti, Center Director Lesa Roe and several elected officials cut the ribbon to celebrate the opening of the new “green” headquarters facility at the Langley Research Center.

The first new building constructed at Langley in thirty-five years, it covers seventy-nine thousand square feet, and houses more than two hundred and fifty employees from six different center organizations.

Lesa Roe: "Today's ceremony and the building behind me, dramatically signify a new Langley and the completion of the first element in our revitalization plan."

The new structure uses some of the newest technology to reduce its impact on the environment. Its roof deflects heat and reduces storm-water runoff, and geothermal wells assist in heating and cooling, all to achieve the highest rating by the U.S. Green Building Council

Congressman Rob Wittman: "These buildings will stand as an icon in this community for that science, for that technology, for that development, for what NASA does each and every day and for what it stands for going into the future."

The second element in Langley's revitalization plan -- an integrated services building that will house a new cafeteria, conference center and additional office spaces -- will break ground later this year.

ROCKET U. – WFF
The Wallops Flight Facility became Rocket University for seven days in June as more than 120 high school educators and university students and instructors spent a week learning about rocketry and conducting science experiments in space.

SARAH HARDIN: "We've learned a great deal, there's a lot more to rockets than I ever dreamed of. We’ve gotten to actually build rockets, hands on, make our own, we've got to shoot 'em off."

SEAN MCCULLOUGH: "A lot of nice people to talk to and learn how they do things at other schools and what their specialties are."

Flying on this NASA Terrier-Improved Orion suborbital sounding rocket were experiments constructed by the student participants. After launch and payload recovery, the participants conducted preliminary data analysis and discussed their results.

JENNY JEAN: "You get to do this part, I’ll do the next part later. I mean it was a lot of team work that was involved for something that was so little."

CHRIS KOEHLER: "It was a great day for a launch, we had perfect weather, you could see everything clearly, great skies, great winds. Lots of people, lots of excitement, one of the best launches I’ve ever seen."

The annual, week-long workshop is supported by NASA’s Sounding Rocket Program, the Office of Education, and the agency’s National Space Grant College and Fellowship Program in partnership with the Space Grant Consortia of Colorado and Virginia.

SEAN MICHAEL O’BRADY: "This experience, absolutely incredible!"

JENNY JEAN: "Heck Yeah I’m coming back next year!"

NASA ANNIVERSARY: JUNE 27, 1995, FIRST SHUTTLE-MIR DOCKING
Sixteen years ago, on June 27, 1995, shuttle Atlantis became the 100th U.S. human spaceflight launched from Cape Canaveral, embarking on a mission that would link it with Mir for the first US space shuttle-Russian space station docking. STS-71 would also mark the first on-orbit crew changeout of shuttle crew. Atlantis Commander Hoot Gibson and crew brought with them the members of the new Mir 19 mission, Anatoly Solovyev and Nikolai Budarin, and would return home with the Mir 18 crew of Norm Thagard, Vladimir Dezhurov and Gannady Strekalov. Over a five-day period, astronauts and cosmonauts conducted joint biomedical and scientific investigations. Atlantis undocked on the Fourth of July, and landed back at the Kennedy Space Center on July7th.

گلناز
06-28-2011, 05:15 PM
Near-Earth asteroid 2011 MD will pass only 12,000 kilometers (7,500 miles) above the Earth's surface on Monday June 27 at about 9:30 EDT. The asteroid was discovered by the LINEAR near-Earth object discovery team observing from Socorro, New Mexico. This small asteroid, only 5-20 meters in diameter, is in a very Earth-like orbit about the Sun, but an orbital analysis indicates there is no chance it will actually strike Earth on Monday. If a rocky asteroid the size of 2011 MD were to enter Earth's atmosphere, it would be expected to burn up high in the atmosphere and cause no damage to Earth's surface. The accompanying diagram gives a view of the asteroid's trajectory from the general direction of the Sun. This view indicates that 2011 MD will reach its closest Earth approach point in extreme southern latitudes (in fact over the southern Atlantic Ocean). The incoming trajectory leg passes several thousand kilometers outside the geosynchronous ring of satellites and the outgoing leg passes well inside the ring. One would expect an object of this size to come this close to Earth about every 6 years on average. For a brief time, it may be bright enough to be seen even with a modest-sized telescope.

stargazer
06-29-2011, 10:52 AM
Thursday, June 30


Low in the west-northwest during twilight, Mercury finally forms a straight line with fainter Castor and Pollux, as shown here. Look about 45 minutes after sunset.



http://media.skyandtelescope.com/images/Webvic11_Jun30ev.jpg (http://media.skyandtelescope.com/images/Webvic11_Jun30ev.jpg)
All this week, Mercury climbs higher after sunset toward its June 30th lineup with fainter Pollux and Castor.
Sky & Telescope (https://secure.palmcoastd.com/pcd/FormRedirect?iID=4011181) diagram





Friday, July 1


A small telescope shows Saturn's largest moon, Titan, about four ring-lengths east of the planet this evening and tomorrow evening. They're a little less than 3 arcminutes apart. Bright Porrima is about 30 arcminutes to Saturn's northwest. And a little closer to Saturn's northeast is a yellow star of 6th magnitude.



New Moon (exact at 4:54 a.m. EDT). A slight partial eclipse of the Sun is theoretically visible just above the horizon for a small section of the stormy winter ocean off Antarctica. This is an eclipse that not a single human is likely to see, and probably not even penguins or albatrosses.



Saturday, July 2


Mercury is becoming better placed for observers at mid-northern latitudes; look low above the west-northwest horizon as the glow of sunset fades, as shown below. This evening, see if you can spot the very thin crescent Moon below it about 20 or 30 minutes after sunset. Bring binoculars.



[/URL]
[URL="http://media.skyandtelescope.com/images/Webvic11_Jul03mo.jpg"]http://media.skyandtelescope.com/images/Webvic11_Jul03mo.jpg (http://media.skyandtelescope.com/images/Webvic11_Jul03mo.jpg)

Watch the waxing crescent Moon thicken and advance eastward from day to day as July gets going.
Sky & Telescope (https://secure.palmcoastd.com/pcd/FormRedirect?iID=4011181) diagram




From: Sky & Telescope.

گلناز
06-29-2011, 12:13 PM
CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. -- News conferences, events and operating hours for the news center at NASA's Kennedy Space Center, Fla., are set for the final space shuttle launch.

Atlantis is scheduled to liftoff at 11:26 a.m. EDT on July 8, to begin the STS-135 mission to the International Space Station.

A NASA blog will provide countdown updates beginning at 6:30 a.m. on July 8. Originating from Kennedy's Launch Control Center, the blog is the definitive Internet source for information leading up to lift off.

During the mission, visitors to NASA's shuttle website can read about the crew's progress. As Atlantis' flight concludes, the NASA blog will detail the spacecraft's return to Earth. For NASA's launch blog and continuous mission updates, visit:

http://www.nasa.gov/shuttle

Detailed lists of countdown milestones, news briefing times and participants, and hours of operation for Kennedy's news center and media credentialing office are available at:

http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/shuttle/news

The NASA News Twitter feed will be updated throughout the shuttle launch countdown, mission and landing. To follow, visit:

http://www.twitter.com/nasa

Free wireless Internet access is provided at the Kennedy Press Site news center and annex. Instructions for wireless access will be available at the news center. Due to the volume of users, accessibility may be limited. Reporters should bring a backup.

For NASA TV streaming video, scheduling and downlink information, visit:

http://www.nasa.gov/ntv


- end -

گلناز
06-29-2011, 07:37 PM
CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. -- Space shuttle Atlantis' Commander Chris Ferguson and his three crewmates are scheduled to begin a 12-day mission to the International Space Station with a launch at 11:26 a.m. EDT on July 8, from NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida. The STS-135 mission is the final flight of the Space Shuttle Program.

The launch date was announced Tuesday at the conclusion of a flight readiness review at Kennedy. During the meeting, senior NASA and contractor managers assessed the risks associated with the mission and determined the shuttle and station's equipment, support systems and personnel are ready.

Atlantis' STS-135 mission will deliver the Raffaello multi-purpose logistics module filled with supplies and spare parts to sustain space station operations after the shuttles are retired.

The mission also will fly the Robotic Refueling Mission (RRM), an experiment designed to demonstrate and test the tools, technologies and techniques needed to robotically refuel satellites in space - even satellites not designed to be serviced. The crew also will return an ammonia pump that recently failed on the station. Engineers want to understand why the pump failed and improve designs for future spacecraft.

The crew consists of Commander Ferguson, Pilot Doug Hurley, and Mission Specialists Sandy Magnus and Rex Walheim. They are scheduled to arrive at Kennedy on Monday, July 4, for final launch preparations.
STS-135 is the 135th shuttle mission, Atlantis' 33rd flight and the 37th shuttle mission to the station.

For more information about the STS-135 mission, visit:

http://www.nasa.gov/shuttle

For more information about the space station, visit:

http://www.nasa.gov/station


- end -

گلناز
06-29-2011, 07:40 PM
WASHINGTON -- NASA's new video series offers the public a fast and fun way to learn about scientific discoveries and facts about Earth, the solar system and beyond.

Called "ScienceCasts," the videos are created by an astrophysicist and a team of agency narrators and videographers. The videos are posted online every Thursday afternoon at approximately 4 p.m. EDT. The format is designed to increase understanding of the world of science through simple, clear presentations.

"If you want entertaining, yet very informative, these videos are for you," said Ruth Netting, manager for communications and public engagement in NASA's Science Mission Directorate in Washington.

Future episodes will focus on citizen science research; the search for new galaxies; how to watch this summer's Perseid meteor shower; and the causes of recent wild weather events in the United States.

NASA's Science Mission Directorate seeks new knowledge and understanding of Earth, the sun, solar system and the universe. The directorate also constantly looks for inventive ways to reach out to the public via museums, classrooms, science centers and home schools.

To view the latest science videos online, visit:


http://www.youtube.com/user/scienceatnasa

For a complete list of ScienceCast episodes, visit:

http://sciencecasts.nasa.gov (http://sciencecasts.nasa.gov/)


- end -

گلناز
06-29-2011, 08:06 PM
WASHINGTON -- NASA's industry partners have met all their initial milestones in developing commercial crew transportation capabilities to reduce the gap in U.S. human spaceflight capability.

NASA posted its first status report on the agency's Commercial Crew Development 2 (CCDev2) program to its website. The report highlights the progress and accomplishments for the agency's commercial spaceflight development efforts. Designed to be a bi-monthly report, it is targeted toward the interested layperson and other non-technical stakeholders in order to keep them informed of our achievements.

"We're only 60 days into CCDev 2, and their progress is right on schedule," said Phil McAlister, NASA's acting director, commercial spaceflight development.

NASA's Commercial Crew Development program is investing financial and technical resources to stimulate efforts within the private sector to develop and demonstrate safe, reliable, and cost-effective space transportation capabilities.

For the report and more information about CCDev2, visit:

http://www.nasa.gov/exploration/commercial


- end -

گلناز
06-29-2011, 08:16 PM
SOFIA Successfully Observes Challenging Pluto Occultation

file:///I:/fateme/11-21_files/562438main_ED11-0173-094-HIPO-on-simulator_226px.jpg
Visitors are briefed on the operation of the telescope simulator with the High-Speed Imaging Photometer for Occultations, or HIPO, instrument attached during the SOFIA science and education media day on June 8, 2011 at the Dryden Aircraft Operations Facility in Palmdale, Calif. (NASA / Tom Tschida) PALMDALE, Calif. - On June 23, NASA's Stratospheric Observatory for Infrared Astronomy (SOFIA) observed the dwarf planet Pluto as it passed in front of a distant star. This event, known as an "occultation," allowed scientific analysis of Pluto and its atmosphere by flying SOFIA at the right moment to an exact location where Pluto's shadow fell on Earth.

"This was the first demonstration in practice of one of SOFIA's major design capabilities," said Bob Meyer, SOFIA's program manager. "Pluto's shadow traveled at 53,000 mph across a mostly empty stretch of the Pacific Ocean. SOFIA flew more than 1,800 miles out over the Pacific Ocean from its base in Southern California to position itself in the center of the shadow's path, and was the only observatory capable of doing so."

SOFIA is a highly modified Boeing 747SP aircraft that carries a telescope with a 100-inch (2.5-meter) reflecting mirror that conducts astronomy research not possible with ground-based telescopes. By operating in the stratosphere at altitudes up to 45,000 feet, SOFIA can make observations above the water vapor in Earth's lower atmosphere.

"Occultations give us the ability to measure pressure, density, and temperature profiles of Pluto's atmosphere without leaving the Earth," said Ted Dunham of the Lowell Observatory in Flagstaff, Ariz., who led the team of scientists aboard SOFIA during the Pluto observations. "Because we were able to maneuver SOFIA so close to the center of the occultation we observed an extended, small, but distinct brightening near the middle of the occultation. This change will allow us to probe Pluto's atmosphere at lower altitudes than is usually possible with stellar occultations."

Dunham is the principal investigator for the High-Speed Imaging Photometer for Occultation (HIPO), essentially an extremely fast and accurate electronic light meter. He was a member of the group that originally discovered Pluto's atmosphere by observing a stellar occultation from SOFIA's predecessor, the Kuiper Airborne Observatory, in 1988. Pluto itself was discovered at Lowell Observatory in 1930.

A group of SOFIA German scientists and engineers were also aboard to monitor the performance of the German-built telescope and Fast Diagnostic Camera (FDC). That camera has been used on previous flights to measure the stability of SOFIA and its optical systems. On this flight, the FDC provided supplemental observations of the Pluto occultation.

There were some tense moments for SOFIA's international science team in the minutes leading up to Thursday's occultation. The precise position of Pluto in relation to Earth could not be sufficiently refined until a few hours before the event. That evening, a Lowell astronomer used facilities at the U.S. Naval Observatory in Flagstaff to take multiple photographs of Pluto and the star. Those data were passed to collaborators at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in Cambridge, Mass., who refined their prediction of the exact position and timing of Pluto's shadow track.

About two hours before the occultation, the MIT group contacted SOFIA in-flight with the news that the center of the shadow would cross 125 miles north of the position on which the airborne observatory's flight plan had been based. After recalculating and filing a revised flight plan, SOFIA's flight crew and science team had to wait an anxious 20 minutes before receiving permission from air traffic control to alter the flight path accordingly.

"We have already shown that SOFIA is a first-rank international facility for infrared astronomy research. This successful occultation observation adds substantially to SOFIA's ability to serve the world's scientific community," said Pamela Marcum, SOFIA project scientist.

SOFIA is a joint project of NASA and the German Aerospace Center (DLR), and is based and managed at NASA's Dryden Aircraft Operations Facility in Palmdale, Calif., for NASA's Science Mission Directorate in Washington, D.C. NASA's Ames Research Center in Moffett Field, Calif., manages the SOFIA science and mission operations in cooperation with the Universities Space Research Association headquartered in Columbia, Md., and the German SOFIA Institute (DSI) at the University of Stuttgart.

For more information about SOFIA, visit:
http://www.nasa.gov/sofia

For information about SOFIA's science mission, visit:
http://www.sofia.usra.edu (http://www.sofia.usra.edu/) and http://www.dlr.de/en/sofia

For more about NASA Dryden Flight Research Center, visit:
http://www.nasa.gov/centers/dryden



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گلناز
06-29-2011, 08:19 PM
WASHINGTON -- The National Science Foundation (NSF) will take the lead with NASA and two other federal agencies to support the administration's National Robotics Initiative.

The initiative complements the administrations' Advanced Manufacturing Initiative and technology transfer efforts and supports the development and use of robots in the United States that work beside, or cooperatively, with people and that enhance individual human capabilities, performance and safety.

"To help everyone from factory workers to astronauts carry out more complicated tasks, NASA and other agencies will support research into next-generation robotics," President Obama said during a speech Friday at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh.

Over the past five years, tremendous advancements in robotics technology have enabled a new generation of assistive systems and devices in industries as diverse as manufacturing, logistics, medicine, health care, military, agriculture, and consumer products.

"NASA has been focused on human-robotic interaction for more than a decade, leading to flight of our newest crew member on the International Space Station, Robonaut2," said NASA's Chief Technologist Bobby Braun. "Our challenge today is to develop robotics technology that can increase the effectiveness and safety of humans in space and deliver cutting-edge science. Through our participation in the National Robotics Initiative, NASA will create the new knowledge, technology and capabilities needed for our future space missions while benefiting life here on Earth, today."

It is becoming increasingly evident that these early, next generation products are a harbinger of numerous, large-scale, global, robotics technology markets likely to develop in the coming decade. The robotics initiative, which pays particular attention to fundamental research and education by academia and industry, seeks to engage our next generation of scientists and engineers in fields essential in the new global technology economy.

"It's exciting to be on the forefront of creating new knowledge and to play a catalytic role in the development of smart technology that enhances America's productivity and ultimately the quality of life of Americans," said NSF Director Subra Suresh. "It's also an opportunity to harness the expertise of our colleagues in several government agencies to tackle a major challenge and to bolster creative science and the U.S. economy. NSF is proud to lead this effort."

The purpose of the initiative is to encourage innovative collaborative research that combines computer and systems science with mechanical, electrical and materials engineering and social, behavioral and economic sciences to tackle the most important and challenging problems in producing this class of human-assisting co-robotics.

Investments in the initiative from NASA, NIH, NSF and United States Department of Agriculture may reach $40 to $50 million in the first year, with anticipated growth in funding as other agencies and industry partners engage.

NIH has used robotics for the rapid screening of potential drugs and the subsequent discovery of new drugs. NIH anticipates robotics will play an important role in rehabilitation, home health care, and advanced robotic surgery in the near future.

The USDA encourages automated systems and improved robotics for inspection, sorting, processing or handling of animal or plant products, as well as multi-modal and rapid sensing systems for detecting defects, ripeness, physical damage, microbial contamination, size shape and other quality attributes of such products.

NSF will manage the solicitation and peer review selection process. All participating federal agencies will work with partners to foster the exchange of ideas and technologies that will directly benefit American today and well into the future. For more information about the National Science Foundation, visit:


http://www.nsf.gov (http://www.nsf.gov/)

For more information about NASA, visit:





http://www.nasa.gov (http://www.nasa.gov/)



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گلناز
06-29-2011, 08:21 PM
WASHINGTON -- NASA's Cassini spacecraft has discovered the best evidence yet for a large-scale saltwater reservoir beneath the icy crust of Saturn's moon Enceladus. The data came from the spacecraft's direct analysis of salt-rich ice grains close to the jets ejected from the moon.

Data from Cassini's cosmic dust analyzer show the grains expelled from fissures, known as tiger stripes, are relatively small and usually low in salt far away from the moon. But closer to the moon's surface, Cassini found that relatively large grains rich with sodium and potassium dominate the plumes. The salt-rich particles have an "ocean-like" composition and indicate that most, if not all, of the expelled ice and water vapor comes from the evaporation of liquid salt-water. The findings appear in this week's issue of the journal Nature.

"There currently is no plausible way to produce a steady outflow of salt-rich grains from solid ice across all the tiger stripes other than salt water under Enceladus's icy surface," said Frank Postberg, a Cassini team scientist at the University of Heidelberg, Germany, and the lead author on the paper. When water freezes, the salt is squeezed out, leaving pure water ice behind. If the plumes emanated from ice, they should have very little salt in them.

The Cassini mission discovered Enceladus' water-vapor and ice jets in 2005. In 2009, scientists working with the cosmic dust analyzer examined some sodium salts found in ice grains of Saturn's E ring, the outermost ring that gets its material primarily from Enceladean jets. But the link to subsurface salt water was not definitive.

The new paper analyzes three Enceladus flybys in 2008 and 2009 with the same instrument, focusing on the composition of freshly ejected plume grains. The icy particles hit the detector target at speeds between 15,000 and 39,000 mph (23,000 and 63,000 kilometers per hour), vaporizing instantly. Electrical fields inside the cosmic dust analyzer separated the various constituents of the impact cloud.

The data suggest a layer of water between the moon's rocky core and its icy mantle, possibly as deep as about 50 miles (80 kilometers) beneath the surface. As this water washes against the rocks, it dissolves salt compounds and rises through fractures in the overlying ice to form reserves nearer the surface. If the outermost layer cracks open, the decrease in pressure from these reserves to space causes a plume to shoot out. Roughly 400 pounds (200 kilograms) of water vapor is lost every second in the plumes, with smaller amounts being lost as ice grains. The team calculates the water reserves must have large evaporating surfaces, or they would freeze easily and stop the plumes.

"This finding is a crucial new piece of evidence showing that environmental conditions favorable to the emergence of life can be sustained on icy bodies orbiting gas giant planets," said Nicolas Altobelli, the European Space Agency's project scientist for Cassini.

Cassini's ultraviolet imaging spectrograph also recently obtained complementary results that support the presence of a subsurface ocean. A team of Cassini researchers led by Candice Hansen of the Planetary Science Institute in Tucson, Ariz., measured gas shooting out of distinct jets originating in the moon's south polar region at five to eight times the speed of sound, several times faster than previously measured. These observations of distinct jets, from a 2010 flyby, are consistent with results showing a difference in composition of ice grains close to the moon's surface and those that made it out to the E ring. The paper was published in the June 9 issue of Geophysical Research Letters.

"Without an orbiter like Cassini to fly close to Saturn and its moons -- to taste salt and feel the bombardment of ice grains -- scientists would never have known how interesting these outer solar system worlds are," said Linda Spilker, NASA's Cassini project scientist at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Pasadena, Calif.

The Cassini-Huygens mission is a cooperative project of NASA, the European Space Agency and the Italian Space Agency. The mission is managed by JPL for NASA's Science Mission Directorate in Washington.

For more information about Cassini, visit:


http://www.nasa.gov/cassini



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گلناز
06-29-2011, 08:22 PM
WASHINGTON -- NASA's Dawn spacecraft is on track to begin the first extended visit to a large asteroid. The mission expects to go into orbit around Vesta on July 16 and begin gathering science data in early August. Vesta resides in the main asteroid belt and is thought to be the source of a large number of meteorites that fall to Earth.

"The spacecraft is right on target," said Robert Mase, Dawn project manager at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Pasadena, Calif. "We look forward to exploring this unknown world during Dawn's one year stay in Vesta's orbit."

After traveling nearly four years and 1.7 billion miles (2.7 billion kilometers), Dawn is approximately 96,000 miles (155,000 kilometers) away from Vesta. When Vesta captures Dawn into its orbit, there will be approximately 9,900 miles (16,000 kilometers) between them. They will be approximately 117 million miles (188 million kilometers) away from Earth.

After Dawn enters Vesta's orbit, engineers will need a few days to determine the exact time of capture. Unlike other missions where a dramatic, nail-biting propulsive burn results in orbit insertion around a planet, Dawn has been using its placid ion propulsion system to subtly shape its path for years to match Vesta's orbit around the sun.

Images from Dawn's framing camera, taken for navigation purposes, show the slow progress toward Vesta. They also show Vesta rotating about 65 degrees in the field of view. The images are about twice as sharp as the best images of Vesta from NASA's Hubble Space Telescope, but the surface details Dawn will obtain are still a mystery.

"Navigation images from Dawn's framing camera have given us intriguing hints of Vesta, but we're looking forward to the heart of Vesta operations, when we begin officially collecting science data," said Christopher Russell, Dawn principal investigator, at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA). "We can't wait for Dawn to peel back the layers of time and reveal the early history of our solar system."

Dawn's three instruments are all functioning and appear to be properly calibrated. The visible and infrared mapping spectrometer, for example, has started to obtain images of Vesta that are larger than a few pixels in size. During the initial reconnaissance orbit, at approximately 1,700 miles (2,700 kilometers), the spacecraft will get a broad overview of Vesta with color pictures and data in different wavelengths of reflected light. The spacecraft will move into a high altitude mapping orbit, about 420 miles (680 kilometers) above the surface to systematically map the parts of Vesta's surface illuminated by the sun; collect stereo images to see topographic highs and lows; acquire higher resolution data to map rock types at the surface; and learn more about Vesta's thermal properties.

Dawn then will move even closer, to a low-altitude mapping orbit approximately 120 miles (200 kilometers) above the surface. The primary science goals of this orbit are to detect the byproducts of cosmic rays hitting the surface and help scientists determine the many kinds of atoms there, and probe the protoplanet's internal structure. As Dawn spirals away from Vesta, it will pause again at the high-altitude mapping orbit altitude. Because the sun's angle on the surface will have progressed, scientists will be able to see previously hidden terrain while obtaining different views of surface features.

"We've packed our year at Vesta chock-full of science observations to help us unravel the mysteries of Vesta," said Carol Raymond, Dawn's deputy principal investigator at JPL. Vesta is considered a protoplanet, or body that never quite became a full-fledged planet.

Dawn launched in September 2007. Following a year at Vesta, the spacecraft will depart for its second destination, the dwarf planet Ceres, in July 2012. Dawn's mission to Vesta and Ceres is managed by JPL for NASA's Science Mission Directorate in Washington. Dawn is a project of the directorate's Discovery Program, managed by NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Ala.

UCLA is responsible for overall Dawn mission science. Orbital Sciences Corp. of Dulles, Va., designed and built the spacecraft. The German Aerospace Center, the Max Planck Institute for Solar System Research, the Italian Space Agency and the Italian National Astrophysical Institute are part of the mission team.

For more information about Dawn, visit:


http://www.nasa.gov/dawn


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گلناز
06-29-2011, 08:24 PM
WASHINGTON -- Analysis of samples returned by NASA’s Genesis mission indicates our sun and its inner planets may have formed differently than scientists previously thought.

The data revealed slight differences in the types of oxygen and nitrogen present on the sun and planets. The elements are among the most abundant in our solar system. Although the differences are slight, the implications could help determine how our solar system evolved.

The air on Earth contains three different kinds of oxygen atoms, which are differentiated by the number of neutrons they contain. Nearly 100 percent of oxygen atoms in the solar system are composed of O-16, but there also are tiny amounts of more exotic oxygen isotopes called O-17 and O-18. Researchers studying the oxygen of Genesis samples found that the percentage of O-16 in the sun is slightly higher than on Earth, the moon, and meteorites. The other isotopes’ percentages were slightly lower.

"The implication is that we did not form out of the same solar nebula materials that created the sun -- just how and why remains to be discovered," said Kevin McKeegan, a Genesis co-investigator from the University of California, Los Angeles and the lead author of one of two Science papers published this week.

The second paper detailed differences in the amount of nitrogen on the sun and planets. Like oxygen, nitrogen has one isotope, N-14, that makes up nearly 100 percent of the atoms in the solar system, but there also is a tiny amount of N-15. Researchers studying the same samples saw that when compared to Earth's atmosphere, nitrogen in the sun and Jupiter has slightly more N-14, but 40 percent less N-15. Both the sun and Jupiter appear to have the same nitrogen composition.

"These findings show that all solar system objects, including the terrestrial planets, meteorites and comets, are anomalous compared to the initial composition of the nebula from which the solar system formed," said Bernard Marty, a Genesis co-investigator from Centre de Recherches Petrographiques et Geochimiques in Nancy, France and the lead author of the second new Science paper. "Understanding the cause of such a heterogeneity will impact our view on the formation of the solar system."

Data were obtained from analysis of Genesis samples collected from the solar wind -- the material ejected from the outer portion of the sun. This material can be thought of as a fossil of our nebula because the preponderance of scientific evidence suggests that the outer layer of our sun has not changed measurably for billions of years.

"The sun houses more than 99 percent of the material currently in our solar system so it's a good idea to get to know it better," said Genesis principal investigator Don Burnett of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, Calif. "While it was more challenging than expected we have answered some important questions, and like all successful missions, generated plenty more."

Genesis launched in August 2000. The spacecraft traveled to Earth’s L1 Lagrange Point about 1 million miles from Earth, where it remained for 886 days between 2001 and 2004, passively collecting solar-wind samples.

On Sept. 8, 2004, the spacecraft released a sample return capsule, which made a hard landing as a result of a failed parachute in the Utah Test and Training Range in Dugway, Utah. This marked NASA’s first sample return since the final Apollo lunar mission in 1972, and the first material collected beyond the moon. NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston curates the samples and supports analysis and sample allocation.

NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif., managed the Genesis mission for NASA’s Science Mission Directorate in Washington. The Genesis mission was part of the Discovery Program managed at NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Ala. Lockheed Martin Space Systems in Denver developed and operated the spacecraft. Analysis at the Centre de Recherches Petrographiques et Geochimiques was supported by the Centre National d’Etudes Spatiales and the French National Center for Scientific Research in Paris.
For more information on the Genesis mission, visit:


http://genesismission.jpl.nasa.gov (http://genesismission.jpl.nasa.gov/)



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گلناز
06-30-2011, 11:11 PM
GREENBELT, Md. -- NASA awarded a follow-on contract to Lockheed Martin Space Systems Corporation (LMSSC) for Mission Operations, Systems Engineering and Software (MOSES-II) for the Hubble Space Telescope.

This is a five-year cost-plus-award fee sole source contract with LMSSC with a value of $133,070,796, which includes the maximum award fee.

Under this contract, LMSSC will continue to maintain Hubble's health and safety through the next phase of its science mission. The scope of this effort includes all elements of operations other than science operations, and systems engineering tasks required to maintain Hubble flight and ground systems.

Mission operations responsibilities include safe and efficient control and utilization of Hubble, maintenance and operation of its facilities and equipment, as well as creation, maintenance, and utilization of Hubble operations processes and procedures. Critical systems engineering responsibilities consist of optimizing mission system capabilities to ensure Hubble operations are effective to continue scientific results.

For more information about NASA and agency programs, visit:






http://www.nasa.gov (http://www.nasa.gov/)

For more information about Hubble, visit:


http://www.nasa.gov/hubble



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گلناز
06-30-2011, 11:13 PM
WASHINGTON -- The final launch of the space shuttle program is scheduled for 11:26 a.m. EDT on July 8, and NASA has invited 150 followers of the agency's Twitter account to be there. People selected will have a behind-the-scenes perspective from the press site at the agency's Kennedy Space Center in Florida.

NASA randomly selected the participants from more than 5,500 online registrants during a 24-hour opportunity on June 1-2. Attendees represent 44 U.S. states, the District of Columbia, Australia, Canada, France, Germany, Ireland, Japan, Mexico, Netherlands, Spain, Switzerland and the U.K.

Tweetup participants are coming from Alaska, Arizona, Arkansas, California, Colorado, Connecticut, Florida, Georgia, Hawaii, Idaho, Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, Mississippi, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, Nevada, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, North Carolina, Ohio, Oklahoma, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas, Utah, Virginia, Washington, West Virginia and Wisconsin.

They will share their experiences with their more than 1.5 million combined followers through the social networking site Twitter. Beginning at 10:30 a.m. on July 7, NASA will broadcast a portion of the Tweetup when participants get to talk with Bill Gerstenmaier, associate administrator for Space Operations, astronaut Mike Massimino and Angie Brewer, space shuttle Atlantis' flow director at Kennedy.

Joining them will be a special guest, Sesame Street's Elmo. Sesame Street will be at Kennedy to film Elmo, as he learns about space exploration at NASA.

To watch the broadcast, visit:

http://www.ustream.tv/channel/nasatelevision

Participants also will tour Kennedy; make an up close visit to the launch pad, and wave at Atlantis' crew members on their drive to the launch pad. The Tweetup culminates with the shuttle's lift off.

Reporters credentialed to cover the launch also may cover the NASA Tweetup at Kennedy's press site. Reporters interested in interviewing Tweetup attendees in advance should contact Stephanie Schierholz at 202-358-1100 or stephanie.schierholz@nasa.gov.

This is the fifth time NASA has invited Twitter followers to experience a space shuttle launch. Previously, groups attended lift offs of Atlantis' STS-129 and STS-132 missions, Discovery's STS-133 mission, and Endeavour's STS-134 mission.

To follow the Tweetup participants on Twitter, as they experience the prelaunch events and shuttle liftoff, follow the #NASATweetup hashtag and the list of attendees at:

http://twitter.com/nasatweetup/sts-135-launch

All four of Atlantis' crew members are posting updates to Twitter. You can follow Commander Chris Ferguson, Pilot Doug Hurley, and Mission Specialists Sandy Magnus and Rex Walheim at:

http://www.twitter.com/Astro_Ferg

http://www.twitter.com/Astro_Doug

http://www.twitter.com/Astro_Sandy

http://www.twitter.com/Astro_Rex

To connect with NASA on Twitter and other social networking sites, visit:

http://www.nasa.gov/connect

For more information about space shuttle Atlantis' STS-135 mission, visit:

http://www.nasa.gov/shuttle


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گلناز
06-30-2011, 11:16 PM
CLEVELAND -- NASA has selected Alphaport Inc. of Cleveland to provide technical support services to the NASA Safety Center.
The type of services to be provided include training course development and support; mishap investigation training, reporting and office support; information dissemination and outreach; technical writing and graphics design; system failure case studies development; agency-wide safety and mission assurance conference support; operational support of the Safety Center’s information technology systems; change control and knowledge management; engineering services; NASA Incident Reporting Information System data quality, analysis, trending, and special studies; and project management. The services will be provided primarily at the NASA Safety Center in Cleveland.

The cost-plus-fixed-fee, indefinite-delivery/indefinite-quantity contract has a period of performance of five years with a potential value of $28.5 million.

The NASA Safety Center supports the safety and mission assurance requirements of NASA's portfolio of programs and projects. The center reports to the Office of Safety and Mission Assurance at NASA Headquarters in Washington.

For information about the NASA Safety Center, visit:


http://www.nasa.gov/offices/nsc/home

For information about NASA and agency programs, visit:


http://www.nasa.gov (http://www.nasa.gov/)



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گلناز
06-30-2011, 11:18 PM
HOUSTON -- NASA Flight Directors Kwatsi Alibaruho (KWAT-see Ah-lee-buh-roo-hoe) of Maywood, Ill., and Chris Edelen of Martinsville, Va., are available for live satellite interviews from 6 to 7:50 a.m. CDT on Wednesday, July 6. Just two days later, they will support the scheduled launch of space shuttle Atlantis on its STS-135 mission, the final flight of the 30-year Space Shuttle Program.

On July 8, Atlantis and four NASA astronauts are scheduled to lift off from NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida. During the 12-day mission, they will transfer tons of supplies to the station from the Raffaello multi-purpose logistics module.

Alibaruho, the lead space shuttle flight director for STS-135, and Edelen, the lead International Space Station flight director, will discuss their roles and the shuttle mission. To participate in the interviews, reporters must contact Stephanie Stoll at 281-483-9071 or at stephanie.r.stoll@nasa.gov before 3 p.m. on Tuesday, July 5.

Alibaruho became a NASA flight director in 2005. He will be available from 6 to 6:50 a.m. He is a graduate of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge, Mass.

Edelen, a NASA flight director since 2007, will be available from 7 to 7:50 a.m. He is a graduate of Virginia Tech and the University of Houston, Clear Lake.

NASA Television will air b-roll footage of STS-135 mission preparations beginning at 5:30 a.m.

The NASA Live Interview Media Outlet (LIMO) used for the interviews and preceding b-roll is a digital satellite C-band downlink by uplink provider Americom. It is on satellite AMC 3, transponder 9C, located at 87 degrees west; downlink frequency 3865.5 Mhz based on a standard C-band, horizontal downlink polarity, FEC is 3/4, data rate is 6.0 Mbps, symbol rate is 4.3404 Msps, transmission DVB-S, 4:2:0.
Alibaruho's interviews will be simulcast on NASA TV's Public and Media Channels. Edelen's interviews will be simulcast on the Media Channel only due to other programming on the NASA TV Public Channel at that time.

For NASA TV streaming video, downlink and scheduling information, visit:


http://www.nasa.gov/ntv

For more information about the STS-135 mission, visit:





http://www.nasa.gov/shuttle

For more information about the space station, visit:





http://www.nasa.gov/station



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گلناز
06-30-2011, 11:23 PM
WASHINGTON -- Mirrors are a critical part of a telescope. The quality is crucial, so completion of mirror polishing represents a major milestone. All of the mirrors that will fly aboard NASA's James Webb Space Telescope have been polished so the observatory can see objects as far away as the first galaxies in the universe.

The Webb telescope is comprised of four types of mirrors. The primary one has an area of approximately 25 square meters (29.9 square yards), which will enable scientists to capture light from faint, distant objects in the universe faster than any previous space observatory. The mirrors are made of Beryllium and will work together to relay images of the sky to the telescope's science cameras.

"Webb's mirror polishing always was considered the most challenging and important technological milestone in the manufacture of the telescope, so this is a hugely significant accomplishment," said Lee Feinberg, Webb Optical Telescope manager at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md.

The mirrors were polished at the L3 Integrated Optical Systems - Tinsley in Richmond, Calif. to accuracies of less than one millionth of an inch. That accuracy is important for forming the sharpest images when the mirrors cool to -400°F (-240°C) in the cold of space.

"The completion of the mirror polishing shows that the strategy of doing the hardest things first has really paid off," said Nobel Prize Winner John C. Mather, Webb's senior project scientist at Goddard. "Some astronomers doubted we could make these mirrors."

After polishing, the mirrors are being coated with a microscopically thin layer of gold to enable them to efficiently reflect infrared light. NASA has completed coating 13 of 18 primary mirror segments and will complete the rest by early next year. The 18 segments fit together to make one large mirror 21.3 feet (6.5 meters) across.

"This milestone is the culmination of a decade-long process," said Scott Willoughby, vice president and Webb Telescope Program manager for Northrop Grumman Aerospace Systems. "We had to invent an entire new mirror technology to give Webb the ability to see back in time."

Northrop Grumman Corp. in Redondo Beach, Calif. is the telescope's prime contractor.

As the successor to the Hubble Space Telescope, the Webb telescope is the world's next-generation space observatory. It is the most powerful space telescope ever built. More than 75 percent of its hardware is either in production or undergoing testing. The telescope will observe the most distant objects in the universe, provide images of the first galaxies ever formed and study planets around distant stars. NASA, the European Space Agency and the Canadian Space Agency are collaborating on this project.

For related images and more information about the mirrors, visit:

http://www.nasa.gov/topics/universe/features/webb-mirrors-done.html

To view the "Behind the Webb: Wax on, Wax Off" video explaining the mirror polishing process, visit:

http://webbtelescope.org/webb_telescope/behind_the_webb/10

For more information about the James Webb Space Telescope, visit:

http://www.jwst.nasa.gov (http://www.jwst.nasa.gov/)


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گلناز
06-30-2011, 11:25 PM
It's what Bill Patzert, a climatologist and oceanographer at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif., likes to call a "La Nada" – that puzzling period between cycles of the El Niño-Southern Oscillation climate pattern in the Pacific Ocean when sea surface heights in the equatorial Pacific are near average.
The comings and goings of El Niño and La Niña are part of a long-term, evolving state of global climate, for which measurements of sea surface height are a key indicator. For the past three months, since last year's strong La Niña event dissipated, data collected by the U.S.-French Ocean Surface Topography Mission (OSTM)/Jason-2 oceanography satellite have shown that the equatorial Pacific sea surface heights have been stable and near average. Elsewhere, however, the northeastern Pacific Ocean remains quite cool, with sea levels much lower than normal. The presence of cool ocean waters off the U.S. West Coast has also been a factor in this year's cool and foggy spring there.
The current state of the Pacific is shown in this OSTM/Jason-2 image, based on the average of 10 days of data centered on June 18, 2011. The image depicts places where Pacific sea surface height is higher (warmer) than normal as yellow and red, while places where the sea surface is lower (cooler) than normal are shown in blue and purple. Green indicates near-normal conditions. Sea surface height is an indicator of how much of the sun's heat is stored in the upper ocean.
For oceanographers and climate scientists like Patzert, "La Nada" conditions can bring with them a high degree of uncertainty. While some forecasters (targeting the next couple of seasons) have suggested La Nada will bring about "normal" weather conditions, Patzert cautions previous protracted La Nadas have often delivered unruly jet stream patterns and wild weather swings.
In addition, some climatologists are pondering whether a warm El Niño pattern (which often follows La Niña) may be lurking over the horizon. Patzert says that would be perfectly fine for the United States.
"For the United States, there would be some positives to the appearance of El Niño this summer," Patzert said. "The parched and fire-ravaged southern tier of the country would certainly benefit from a good El Niño soaking. Looking ahead to late August and September, El Niño would also tend to dampen the 2011 hurricane season in the United States. We've had enough wild and punishing weather this year. Relief from the drought across the southern United States and a mild hurricane season would be very welcome."
Jason-2 scientists will continue to monitor Pacific Ocean sea surface heights for signs of El Niño, La Niña or prolonged neutral conditions.
JPL manages the U.S. portion of the OSTM/Jason-2 mission for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, Washington, D.C.
For more information on NASA's ocean surface topography missions, visit: http://sealevel.jpl.nasa.gov/missions/ .
To view the latest Jason-1 and OSTM/Jason-2 data, visit: http://sealevel.jpl.nasa.gov/science/elninopdo/latestdata/ .

گلناز
07-03-2011, 01:24 PM
HOUSTON -- University of Wisconsin students topped two other university teams to win the 2011 NASA eXploration Habitat (X-Hab) Academic Innovation Challenge, a competition to design and build a space habitat. The team will now take its inflatable space loft to NASA's annual Desert Research and Technology Studies (Desert RATS) field test in Arizona in September. It will be tested as part of a simulated astronaut mission to an asteroid.

"University students are helping NASA develop potential habitats for future space missions," said Kriss Kennedy, habitat demonstration unit project manager at Johnson. "The teams collaborated to demonstrate how technology we might use in the future could actually be developed."

The tree teams totaling 135 students each spent a week this month at NASA's Johnson Space Center in Houston setting up and deploying their inflatable lofts for judging. Teams from Oklahoma State University, Stillwater, and the University of Maryland, College Park also competed.

"This is a great example of how NASA can obtain innovative system concepts from universities," said Doug Craig, strategic analysis manager for analog systems at NASA Headquarters in Washington. "These technology concepts are a valuable part of our human space exploration planning activities."

According to the judges, the 14-member University of Wisconsin team's design held promise for habitability and application to the Desert RATS mission simulation and was ready for field use because it had little leakage in the inflatable systems. The loft will be part of the home for a crew of four during the field test.

In June 2010, NASA invited university teams to submit inflatable loft concepts for the X-Hab Challenge. The three competing universities received $48,000 of seed funding to assist with their projects. The winning university will receive $10,000 to offset costs associated with the desert field test.

Next year's competition, X-Hab 2012, will look at volume, geometry and habitability of a deep space habitat and technologies for plant growth and geo-science sample handling. The competition is designed to engage and retain students in the science, technology, engineering and math disciplines, which in turn will help develop the next generation of innovators and explorers. It also tests concepts and solutions for potential future NASA missions.

X-Hab is sponsored by NASA's Exploration Systems Mission Directorate and the Innovative Partnerships Office in the Office of the Chief Technologist at NASA headquarters in Washington. For more information about the X-Hab competition and updates about each team's designs, visit:

http://www.nasa.gov/exploration/analogs/xhab_challenge.html


- end -

گلناز
07-03-2011, 01:35 PM
WASHINGTON -- NASA's DISCOVER-AQ air quality field campaign is scheduled to take to the skies over the Baltimore-Washington traffic corridor on Friday, July 1, from 10:30 a.m. to 6:30 p.m. EDT. The flight is part of a mission to enhance the capability of satellites to measure ground-level air quality from space.

NASA's P-3B research aircraft will fly at low altitudes over the northeast Maryland study region. The P-3B is a large, 117-foot, four-engine turboprop, carrying nine scientific instruments. It will fly as low as 1,000 feet above the ground along a route that will take it over major roadway traffic corridors. The P-3B also will make spiral ascents and descents over six locations where air-quality measurements are being made from ground stations.

Approximately 14 DISCOVER-AQ flights are planned through July when weather conditions are appropriate. NASA will announce each flight by 5 p.m. the day before the aircraft is scheduled to fly. The flights will occur between 6 a.m. and 8 p.m.

DISCOVER-AQ, which stands for Deriving Information on Surface conditions from Column and Vertically Resolved Observations Relevant to Air Quality, is a NASA Earth Science Division research effort conducted in collaboration with the Maryland Department of the Environment, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and several universities.

A detailed map of the P-3B's low-altitude flight path is available at:

http://go.usa.gov/ZiP

For more information about the DISCOVER-AQ mission, visit:

http://www.nasa.gov/discover-aq



- end -

گلناز
07-03-2011, 01:39 PM
Space shuttle Atlantis is scheduled to launch at approximately 8:26 a.m. PDT on July 8, 2011. Members of the public are invited to the NASA Ames Conference Center to view the live, televised launch and to commemorate the end of the Space Shuttle Program. Admission is free, but registration is required to obtain a ticket into the event. The doors will open at 7:30 a.m.

The final, historic lift-off of Atlantis will be televised live on a large screen in the ballroom of the NASA Ames Conference Center (building 3). The STS-135 mission will carry the Raffaello multipurpose logistics module to deliver supplies, logistics and spare parts to the International Space Station.

Admission into the event is free, but seating is limited. Visitors must register and get a ticket for each member of their party to enter the event. ALL visitors over the age of 12 must also have a driver's license or other photo identification to enter the base. Once the event is full, please plan to watch the launch from home.

Event registration: http://www.eventbrite.com/event/1853117725

گلناز
07-03-2011, 01:40 PM
WASHINGTON -- NASA scientists are seeing new evidence that suggests traces of water on Mars are under a thin varnish of iron oxide, or rust, similar to conditions found on desert rocks in California's Mojave Desert.

Mars could be spotted with many more patches of carbonates than originally suspected. Carbonates are minerals that form readily in large bodies of water and can point to a planet's wet history. Although only a few small outcrops of carbonates have been detected on Mars, scientists believe many more examples are blocked from view by the rust. The findings appear in the Friday July 1, online edition of the International Journal of Astrobiology.

"The plausibility of life on Mars depends on whether liquid water dotted its landscape for thousands or millions of years," said Janice Bishop, a planetary scientist at NASA's Ames Research Center at the SETI Institute at Moffett Field, Calif., and the paper's lead author. "It's possible that an important clue, the presence of carbonates, has largely escaped the notice of investigators trying to learn if liquid water once pooled on the Red Planet."

Scientists conduct field experiments in desert regions because the extremely dry conditions are similar to Mars. Researchers realized the importance of the varnish earlier this year when Bishop and Chris McKay, a planetary scientist at Ames investigated carbonate rocks coated with iron oxides collected in a location called Little Red Hill in the Mojave Desert.

"When we examined the carbonate rocks in the lab, it became evident that an iron oxide skin may be hindering the search for clues to the Red Planet's hydrological history," McKay said. "We found that the varnish both altered and partially masked the spectral signature of the carbonates."

McKay also found dehydration-resistant blue-green algae under the rock varnish. Scientists believe the varnish may have extended temporarily the time that Mars was habitable, as the planet's surface slowly dried up.

"The organisms in the Mojave Desert are protected from deadly ultraviolet light by the iron oxide coating," McKay said. "This survival mechanism might have played a role if Mars once had life on the surface."

In addition to being used to help characterize Mars' water history, carbonate rocks also could be a good place to look for the signatures of early life on the Red Planet. Every mineral is made up of atoms that vibrate at specific frequencies to produce a unique fingerprint that allows scientists to accurately identify its composition.

Research data were similar to observations provided by NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO) spacecraft, as it orbited an ancient region of Mars called Nili Fossae. The area revealed the strongest carbonate signature ever found. Although MRO recently detected small patches of carbonates, approximately 200-500 feet wide, on the Martian surface, the Mojave study suggests more patches may have been overlooked because their spectral signature could have been changed by the pervasive varnish.

"To better determine the extent of carbonate deposits on Mars, and by inference the ancient abundance of liquid water, we need to investigate the spectral properties of carbonates mixed with other minerals," Bishop said.

The varnish is so widespread that NASA's Mars Exploration Rovers, Spirit and Opportunity, used a motorized grinding tool to remove the rust-like overcoat on rocks before other instruments could inspect them. In 2010, scientists using data collected by Spirit also identified a small carbonate outcrop at a crater called Gusev. NASA's newest and most capable rover, the Mars Science Laboratory Curiosity is schedule to launch in November. It will use tools to study whether the Mars had environmental conditions favorable for supporting microbial life and favorable for preserving clues about whether life existed.

Launched in 2006, MRO observes Mars' surface, subsurface and atmosphere in unprecedented detail. Opportunity and Spirit completed their three-month prime missions on Mars in April 2004, but continued to collect data. NASA ended operations for Spirit this year to focus only on Opportunity activities. NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena manages MRO, Mars rovers and Curiosity for NASA's Science Mission Directorate in Washington. For more information about NASA's Mars missions, visit:



http://www.nasa.gov/mars


- end -

گلناز
07-03-2011, 06:05 PM
WASHINGTON -- NASA is inviting reporters and the public to join agency leaders, technologists and innovators from a variety of fields at TEDxNASA@SiliconValley 2011 on Aug. 17. The event will be held at the Marriott Marquis hotel in San Francisco from 2:30 to 8:30 p.m. PDT.
The event is in the spirit of the TED (Technology, Entertainment and Design) conferences that bring together leading thinkers to create a dialogue about important global challenges.

Speakers include an aeronautics researcher developing a silent, carbonless airplane; a tree geneticist cloning the world's largest trees; a fish-loving researcher creating the next biofuel from a salt-loving succulent; a computer that beats Jeopardy! Champions; and a Tony-winning street theater company. Each presentation on the theme "Extreme Green" will last 18 minutes or less.

"NASA is synonymous with taking big dreams and making them happen," said Pete Worden, director of NASA's Ames Research Center at Moffett Field, Calif. "TEDxNASA allows us to further explore the power of ideas and the potential to change life here on Earth."

The event is free and open to the public, but pre-registration is required. Registration opens Friday, July 1, and seating is limited. Reporters interested in attending should contact Jessica Culler at jessica.culler@nasa.gov by Aug. 12. If unable to attend in person, the conference will be streamed live on the TEDxNASA website. For the stream and to register, visit.


http://tedxnasa.com (http://tedxnasa.com/)

Esther Dyson, chair of the NASA Advisory Council's Technology and Innovation Committee, will serve as the master of ceremonies for the event. "I'm excited to be part of this fertile combination of NASA and TEDx format," Dyson said. "Both are dedicated to far-out, long-term thinking, and both understand the promise of hybrid vigor."

NASA's four research centers, Ames; Dryden Flight Research Center in Edwards, Calif.; Glenn Research Center in Cleveland; Langley Research Center and the National Institute of Aerospace, both in Hampton Va., are co-hosts of the event.

TEDx is a program of local, self-organized events that bring people together to share an experience. These events are branded TEDx, where "x" means an independently organized TED event. TED is a non-profit organization founded in 1984. TED presentations are available for free at:





http://www.TED.com (http://www.ted.com/)

For more information about NASA and agency programs, visit:





http://www.nasa.gov (http://www.nasa.gov/)



- end -

گلناز
07-03-2011, 06:07 PM
WASHINGTON -- Mirrors are a critical part of a telescope. The quality is crucial, so completion of mirror polishing represents a major milestone. All of the mirrors that will fly aboard NASA's James Webb Space Telescope have been polished so the observatory can see objects as far away as the first galaxies in the universe.

The Webb telescope is comprised of four types of mirrors. The primary one has an area of approximately 25 square meters (29.9 square yards), which will enable scientists to capture light from faint, distant objects in the universe faster than any previous space observatory. The mirrors are made of Beryllium and will work together to relay images of the sky to the telescope's science cameras.

"Webb's mirror polishing always was considered the most challenging and important technological milestone in the manufacture of the telescope, so this is a hugely significant accomplishment," said Lee Feinberg, Webb Optical Telescope manager at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md.

The mirrors were polished at the L3 Integrated Optical Systems - Tinsley in Richmond, Calif. to accuracies of less than one millionth of an inch. That accuracy is important for forming the sharpest images when the mirrors cool to -400°F (-240°C) in the cold of space.

"The completion of the mirror polishing shows that the strategy of doing the hardest things first has really paid off," said Nobel Prize Winner John C. Mather, Webb's senior project scientist at Goddard. "Some astronomers doubted we could make these mirrors."

After polishing, the mirrors are being coated with a microscopically thin layer of gold to enable them to efficiently reflect infrared light. NASA has completed coating 13 of 18 primary mirror segments and will complete the rest by early next year. The 18 segments fit together to make one large mirror 21.3 feet (6.5 meters) across.

"This milestone is the culmination of a decade-long process," said Scott Willoughby, vice president and Webb Telescope Program manager for Northrop Grumman Aerospace Systems. "We had to invent an entire new mirror technology to give Webb the ability to see back in time."

Northrop Grumman Corp. in Redondo Beach, Calif. is the telescope's prime contractor.

As the successor to the Hubble Space Telescope, the Webb telescope is the world's next-generation space observatory. It is the most powerful space telescope ever built. More than 75 percent of its hardware is either in production or undergoing testing. The telescope will observe the most distant objects in the universe, provide images of the first galaxies ever formed and study planets around distant stars. NASA, the European Space Agency and the Canadian Space Agency are collaborating on this project.

For related images and more information about the mirrors, visit:

http://www.nasa.gov/topics/universe/features/webb-mirrors-done.html

To view the "Behind the Webb: Wax on, Wax Off" video explaining the mirror polishing process, visit:

http://webbtelescope.org/webb_telescope/behind_the_webb/10

For more information about the James Webb Space Telescope, visit:

http://www.jwst.nasa.gov (http://www.jwst.nasa.gov/)


- end -

گلناز
07-03-2011, 06:08 PM
HOUSTON -- University of Wisconsin students topped two other university teams to win the 2011 NASA eXploration Habitat (X-Hab) Academic Innovation Challenge, a competition to design and build a space habitat. The team will now take its inflatable space loft to NASA's annual Desert Research and Technology Studies (Desert RATS) field test in Arizona in September. It will be tested as part of a simulated astronaut mission to an asteroid.

"University students are helping NASA develop potential habitats for future space missions," said Kriss Kennedy, habitat demonstration unit project manager at Johnson. "The teams collaborated to demonstrate how technology we might use in the future could actually be developed."

The tree teams totaling 135 students each spent a week this month at NASA's Johnson Space Center in Houston setting up and deploying their inflatable lofts for judging. Teams from Oklahoma State University, Stillwater, and the University of Maryland, College Park also competed.

"This is a great example of how NASA can obtain innovative system concepts from universities," said Doug Craig, strategic analysis manager for analog systems at NASA Headquarters in Washington. "These technology concepts are a valuable part of our human space exploration planning activities."

According to the judges, the 14-member University of Wisconsin team's design held promise for habitability and application to the Desert RATS mission simulation and was ready for field use because it had little leakage in the inflatable systems. The loft will be part of the home for a crew of four during the field test.

In June 2010, NASA invited university teams to submit inflatable loft concepts for the X-Hab Challenge. The three competing universities received $48,000 of seed funding to assist with their projects. The winning university will receive $10,000 to offset costs associated with the desert field test.

Next year's competition, X-Hab 2012, will look at volume, geometry and habitability of a deep space habitat and technologies for plant growth and geo-science sample handling. The competition is designed to engage and retain students in the science, technology, engineering and math disciplines, which in turn will help develop the next generation of innovators and explorers. It also tests concepts and solutions for potential future NASA missions.

X-Hab is sponsored by NASA's Exploration Systems Mission Directorate and the Innovative Partnerships Office in the Office of the Chief Technologist at NASA headquarters in Washington. For more information about the X-Hab competition and updates about each team's designs, visit:

http://www.nasa.gov/exploration/analogs/xhab_challenge.html


- end -

گلناز
07-03-2011, 06:09 PM
WASHINGTON -- NASA Administrator Charles Bolden delivered a speech Friday about the agency's future. Below are excerpts from his speech at the National Press Club in Washington.

"Some say that our final shuttle mission will mark the end of America's 50 years of dominance in human spaceflight; as a former astronaut and the current NASA administrator, I'm here to tell you that American leadership in space will continue for at least the next half-century because we have laid the foundation for success – and failure is not an option."

"President Obama has given us a Mission with a capital "M" -- to focus again on the big picture of exploration and the crucial research and development that will be required for us to move beyond low Earth orbit. He's charged us with carrying out the inspiring missions only NASA can do that will take us farther than we've ever been. To orbit Mars and eventually land on it. He's asked us to start planning a mission to an asteroid."

"The president is asking us to harness that American spirit of innovation, the drive to solve problems and create capabilities that is so embedded in our story and has led us to the moon, to great observatories, and to humans living and working in space, possibly indefinitely. That American ingenuity is alive and well, and it will fire up our economy and help us create and win the future now."

"So when I hear people say -- or listen to media reports -- that the final Shuttle flight marks the end of U.S. human spaceflight, I have to say . . . these folks must be living on another planet."

"We are not ending human space flight, we are recommitting ourselves to it and taking the necessary -- and difficult -- steps today to ensure America’s pre-eminence in human spaceflight for years to come."

"We have to get out of the business of owning and operating low-Earth orbit transportation systems and hand that off to the private sector, with sufficient oversight to ensure the safety of our astronauts. American companies and their spacecraft should send our astronauts to the ISS, rather than continuing to outsource this work to foreign governments."

"Our destinations for humans beyond Earth remain ambitious. They include: the moon, asteroids, and Mars. The debate is not if we will explore, but how we'll do it."

"The International Space Station is the centerpiece of our human space flight for the coming decade. Every research investigation and all of the systems that keep the ISS operational help us figure out how to explore farther from our planet and improve life here."

"I made a decision to base the new multi-purpose crew vehicle, or MPCV – our deep space crew module -- on the original work we've done on the Orion capsule. We're nearing a decision on the heavy lift rocket, the Space Launch System, or SLS, and will announce that soon."

"Our partners in the Commercial Orbital Transportation Service program, SpaceX and Orbital, continue to meet milestones. The new participants in the second round of our Commercial Crew Development Program have just met their first set of milestones required by NASA."

"In addition to this space flight progress, we have a huge number of amazing science missions coming up. We'll advance aeronautics research to create a safer, more environmentally friendly and efficient air travel network."

"NASA is moving the ball down the field, because the status quo is no longer what we need. President Obama has outlined an urgent national need to out-innovate, out-educate, and out-build our competitors and create new capabilities that will take us farther into the solar system and help us learn even more about our place in it. NASA is ready for this grand challenge."

Administrator Bolden's entire speech is available at:


http://www.nasa.gov/news/speeches/admin/index.html

For more information about NASA's future endeavors, visit:


http://www.nasa.gov/next



- end -

گلناز
07-04-2011, 06:09 PM
WASHINGTON -- NASA's DISCOVER-AQ air quality field campaign is scheduled to take to the skies over the Baltimore-Washington traffic corridor on Friday, July 1, from 10:30 a.m. to 6:30 p.m. EDT. The flight is part of a mission to enhance the capability of satellites to measure ground-level air quality from space.

NASA's P-3B research aircraft will fly at low altitudes over the northeast Maryland study region. The P-3B is a large, 117-foot, four-engine turboprop, carrying nine scientific instruments. It will fly as low as 1,000 feet above the ground along a route that will take it over major roadway traffic corridors. The P-3B also will make spiral ascents and descents over six locations where air-quality measurements are being made from ground stations.

Approximately 14 DISCOVER-AQ flights are planned through July when weather conditions are appropriate. NASA will announce each flight by 5 p.m. the day before the aircraft is scheduled to fly. The flights will occur between 6 a.m. and 8 p.m.

DISCOVER-AQ, which stands for Deriving Information on Surface conditions from Column and Vertically Resolved Observations Relevant to Air Quality, is a NASA Earth Science Division research effort conducted in collaboration with the Maryland Department of the Environment, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and several universities.

A detailed map of the P-3B's low-altitude flight path is available at:

http://go.usa.gov/ZiP

For more information about the DISCOVER-AQ mission, visit:

http://www.nasa.gov/discover-aq


- end -

گلناز
07-04-2011, 06:13 PM
WASHINGTON -- Galaxies once thought of as voracious tigers are more like grazing cows, according to a new study using NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope.

Astronomers have discovered that galaxies in the distant universe continuously ingested their star-making fuel over long periods of time. This goes against previous theories that galaxies devoured their fuel in quick bursts after run-ins with other galaxies.

"Our study shows the merging of massive galaxies was not the dominant method of galaxy growth in the distant universe," said Ranga-Ram Chary of NASA's Spitzer Science Center at the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, Calif. "We're finding this type of galactic cannibalism was rare. Instead, we are seeing evidence for a mechanism of galaxy growth in which a typical galaxy fed itself through a steady stream of gas, making stars at a much faster rate than previously thought."

Chary is the principal investigator of the research appearing in the Aug. 1 issue of the Astrophysical Journal. According to his findings, these grazing galaxies fed steadily over periods of hundreds of millions of years and created an unusual amount of plump stars, up to 100 times the mass of our sun.

"This is the first time that we have identified galaxies that supersize themselves by grazing," said Hyunjin Shim, also of the Spitzer Science Center and lead author of the paper. "They have many more massive stars than our Milky Way galaxy."

Galaxies like our Milky Way are giant collections of stars, gas and dust. They grow in size by feeding off gas and converting it to new stars. A long-standing question in astronomy is: Where did distant galaxies that formed billions of years ago acquire this stellar fuel?

The most favored theory was that galaxies grew by merging with other galaxies, feeding off gas stirred up in the collisions.

Chary and his team addressed this question by using Spitzer to survey more than 70 remote galaxies that existed 1 to 2 billion years after the big bang (our universe is approximately 13.7 billion years old). To the surprise of the astronomers, these galaxies were blazing with what is called H alpha, radiation from hydrogen gas that has been hit with ultraviolet light from stars. High levels of H alpha indicate stars are forming vigorously. Seventy percent of the surveyed galaxies show strong signs of H alpha. By contrast, only 0.1 percent of galaxies in our local universe possess the signature.

Previous studies using ultraviolet-light telescopes found about six times less star formation than Spitzer, which sees infrared light.

Scientists think this may be due to large amounts of obscuring dust, through which infrared light can sneak. Spitzer opened a new window onto the galaxies by taking very long-exposure infrared images of a patch of sky called the GOODS fields, for Great Observatories Origins Deep Survey.

NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena manages the Spitzer Space Telescope mission for the agency's Science Mission Directorate in Washington. Science operations are conducted at the Spitzer Science Center. Caltech manages JPL for NASA. For more information about Spitzer, visit:

http://www.nasa.gov/spitzer


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nima
07-05-2011, 12:28 AM
http://rasadgar.persiangig.com/image/565743main_transformers3_7082.jpg



On the Fourth of July, the four STS-135 crew members arrived in two T-38 jets at NASA Kennedy Space Center's Shuttle Landing Facility at approximately 2:30 p.m. EDT. Commander Chris Ferguson, Pilot Doug Hurley and Mission Specialists Sandy Magnus and Rex Walheim spoke to media before being transported to the Astronaut Crew Quarters in Kennedy's Operations and Checkout Building, where they will spend the next few days training and spend time with family before liftoff.

"I think I speak for the whole crew in that we are delighted to be here after a very arduous nine month training flow and we're thrilled to finally be here in Florida for launch week," said Ferguson.

Launch of space shuttle Atlantis is scheduled for Friday, July 8, at 11:26 a.m.


http://www.nasa.gov/images/content/153212main_135-arrive-m.jpg

Space shuttle Atlantis is set to liftoff on the final flight of the shuttle program, STS-135, a 12-day mission to the International Space Station. Launch is currently targeted for July 8. Atlantis will carry a crew of four: Commander Chris Ferguson, Pilot Doug Hurley, and Mission Specialists Sandy Magnus and Rex Walheim.


nasa.gov

stargazer
07-06-2011, 08:23 AM
Wednesday, July 6


Have you learned, really learned, the star pattern of little Lyra around bright Vega? Look very high in the east after dusk. The main part of Lyra dangles to Vega's lower right. Get out your sky atlas: Epsilon (ε), Zeta (ζ), and Delta (δ) Lyrae are fine binocular or telescopic double stars, Beta (β) Lyrae is an eclipsing variable, the Ring Nebula is located between Beta and Gamma (γ), and faint T
Lyrae, a carbon star near Vega, is one of the reddest stars in the sky.






http://media.skyandtelescope.com/images/Webvic11_Jul07ev.jpg (http://media.skyandtelescope.com/images/Webvic11_Jul07ev.jpg)


The waxing Moon this month again passes under Virgo with Saturn and Spica.
Sky & Telescope (https://secure.palmcoastd.com/pcd/FormRedirect?iID=4011181) diagram






Thursday, July 7


The first-quarter Moon forms a nice triangle with Spica and Saturn above it this evening, as shown above.



Friday, July 8


Spica shines to the Moon's upper right during and after dusk, as shown above.



Saturday, July 9


Arcturus is the brightest star very high in the southwest or west after dark. Vega is the brightest very high in the east. A third of the way from Arcturus to Vega, look for the mostly dim semicircle of Corona Borealis, the Northern Crown. Two-thirds of the way, look for the Keystone of Hercules.


From: Sky and Telescope

گلناز
07-06-2011, 03:33 PM
GREENBELT, Md. -- Media representatives in the Washington Metropolitan area are invited to NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md. to view the launch of STS-135, the final voyage in NASA’s space shuttle program. Atlantis is scheduled to launch from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida on July 8, at 11:26 a.m. EDT.

During the 12-day mission Atlantis will deliver supplies, logistics and spare parts as well as deliver a Goddard payload to station. The Robotic Refueling Mission (RRM) module will be positioned on the International Space Station. This joint effort with the Canadian Space Agency will investigate the potential for robotically refueling existing satellites in orbit.

The Exploration and Space Communications (ESC) Projects Division at Goddard has played a critical role in every shuttle mission providing tracking, data and voice communications. Goddard managers and team members will be available for media interviews.

Journalists planning to attend the July 8 viewing event must arrive at main gate at the Goddard Space Flight Center no later than 10:15 a.m. on July 8. Contact Ed Campion at 301-286-0697 or Malissa Reyes 301-286-0918 if you have questions.

For information about RRM, visit:

http://ssco.gsfc.nasa.gov/

For information about ESC, visit:

http://esc.gsfc.nasa.gov/

For information about the STS-135 mission, visit:

http://go.nasa.gov/STS-135

گلناز
07-06-2011, 04:20 PM
What's Up for July: Asteroids.

Hello and welcome! I'm Jane Houston Jones at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California.

Asteroids are scraps of the original building material of our solar system. So they tell us about our own origins.

After the planets formed, residual material remained. Bits of dust and rock bumped into each other, sometimes sticking together and sometimes scattering.

Most asteroids orbit the sun between Mars and Jupiter in a region known as the asteroid belt.

This month NASA's Dawn mission, which launched in 2007, arrives at the asteroid Vesta, the first of two objects it'll explore.

Dawn will study the conditions and processes of the solar system's earliest time. And Vesta and Ceres are the right two bodies to study.

Vesta is an asteroid and Ceres is a dwarf planet, like Pluto.

Vesta and Ceres reside in the boundary area of the asteroid belt, where the composition of bodies changes from being almost dry to showing the effects of hydration.

Scientists believe Vesta is very dry, while Ceres may have a layer of water-ice or even liquid water beneath its crust.

Dawn will study the roles of water -- and size -- in determining the evolution of the planets.

The spacecraft will orbit Vesta for a year. Next July it'll depart for the dwarf planet Ceres, arriving in February of 2015.

You can see Vesta yourself this month and next. It'll be a little brighter in August.

It's the only asteroid bright enough to see with your unaided eye, because of its high albedo. Albedo refers to how well an object reflects light.

Ceres, though larger than Vesta, is farther away and not as bright. You can easily spot Ceres in your telescopes next month. Check out the Dawn mission's Vesta Fiesta event page and find a viewing event near you. Or host a Vesta viewing event yourself.

گلناز
07-06-2011, 04:27 PM
WASHINGTON -- NASA's Hubble Space Telescope crossed another milestone in its space odyssey of exploration and discovery. On Monday, July 4, the Earth-orbiting observatory logged its one millionth science observation during a search for water in an exoplanet's atmosphere 1,000 light-years away.

"For 21 years Hubble has been the premier space science observatory, astounding us with deeply beautiful imagery and enabling ground-breaking science across a wide spectrum of astronomical disciplines," said NASA Administrator Charles Bolden. He piloted the space shuttle mission that carried Hubble to orbit. "The fact that Hubble met this milestone while studying a faraway planet is a remarkable reminder of its strength and legacy."

Although Hubble is best known for its stunning imagery of the cosmos, the millionth observation is a spectroscopic measurement, where light is divided into its component colors. These color patterns can reveal the chemical composition of cosmic sources.

Hubble's millionth exposure is of the planet HAT-P-7b, a gas giant planet larger than Jupiter orbiting a star hotter than our sun. HAT-P-7b, also known as Kepler 2b, has been studied by NASA's planet-hunting Kepler observatory after it was discovered by ground-based observations. Hubble now is being used to analyze the chemical composition of the planet's atmosphere.

"We are looking for the spectral signature of water vapor. This is an extremely precise observation and it will take months of analysis before we have an answer," said Drake Deming of the University of Maryland and NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md. "Hubble demonstrated it is ideally suited for characterizing the atmospheres of exoplanets, and we are excited to see what this latest targeted world will reveal."

Hubble was launched April 24, 1990, aboard space shuttle's Discovery's STS-31 mission. Its discoveries revolutionized nearly all areas of astronomical research from planetary science to cosmology. The observatory has collected more than 50 terabytes of data to-date. The archive of that data is available to scientists and the public at:

http://hla.stsci.edu/

Hubble's odometer reading includes every observation of astronomical targets since its launch and observations used to calibrate its suite of instruments. Hubble made the millionth observation using its Wide Field Camera 3, a visible and infrared light imager with an on-board spectrometer. It was installed by astronauts during the Hubble Servicing Mission 4 in May 2009.

"The Hubble keeps amazing us with groundbreaking science," said Sen. Barbara A. Mikulski, the chairwoman of the Senate Commerce, Justice, Science and Related Agencies Appropriations Subcommittee that funds NASA. "I championed the mission to repair and renew Hubble not just to get one million science observations, but also to inspire millions of children across the planet to become our next generation of stargazers, scientists, astronauts and engineers."

Hubble is a project of international cooperation between NASA and the European Space Agency. Goddard 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.

For more information about Hubble, galleries of videos and images, visit:

http://www.nasa.gov/hubble

and

http://hubblesite.org/news/2011/22

For details about the exoplanet Kepler 2b, including an animation of its orbit, visit:

http://kepler.nasa.gov/Mission/discoveries/kepler2b/

گلناز
07-07-2011, 09:45 PM
CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. -- NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida is entering into an agreement with Sierra Nevada Space Systems (SNSS) of Sparks, Nev., to offer technical capabilities from the center's uniquely skilled work force.

The umbrella space act agreement is Kennedy's latest step in its transition from a historically government-only launch complex to a multi-user spaceport. Sierra Nevada also has space act agreements with NASA's Johnson Space Center in Houston; NASA's Langley Research Center in Hampton, Va.; NASA's Dryden Flight Research Center at Edwards, Calif.; and NASA's Ames Research Center in Moffett Field, Calif.

"We're pleased that our partner Sierra Nevada is going to make use of the deep resources existing at the Kennedy Space Center to enhance its ongoing work," said NASA Administrator Charles Bolden. "Sierra Nevada's agreements with Kennedy and other NASA centers demonstrate its commitment to using the full resources of NASA as the agency facilitates commercial cargo and crew capabilities to the International Space Station."

Kennedy will help Sierra Nevada with the ground operations support of its lifting body reusable spacecraft called "Dream Chaser," which resembles a smaller version of the space shuttle orbiter. The spacecraft would carry as many as seven astronauts to the space station.

Through the new agreement, Kennedy's work force will use its experience of processing the shuttle fleet for 30 years to help Sierra Nevada define and execute Dream Chaser's launch preparations and post-landing activities.

"The partnership is an effort to bring new commercial space activities to the center and help transition Kennedy from a government, program-focused, single user launch complex to a diverse, multi-use spaceport, enabling both government and commercial space providers," said Kennedy Center Director Bob Cabana.

In 2010 and 2011, Sierra Nevada was awarded grants as part of the initiative to stimulate the private sector in developing and demonstrating human spaceflight capabilities for NASA's Commercial Crew Program. The goal of the program, which is based at Kennedy, is to facilitate the development of a U.S. commercial crew space transportation capability by achieving safe, reliable and cost-effective access to and from the space station and future low Earth orbit destinations.

"Our Dream Chaser vehicle was born at NASA, and NASA has continued to be an important partner in the vehicle's development," said Mark Sirangelo, head of SNSS. "By adding the Kennedy Space Center, with its highly experienced technical staff and world-class facilities, to the Sierra Nevada Dream Chaser Program we blend the best of both the NASA shuttle heritage alongside the best of industry practices."

NASA also has space act agreements with other commercial partners under the agency's Commercial Crew Program. Pratt & Whitney Rocketdyne has agreements with NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Ala., for development of the J-2X upper-stage engine; NASA's Stennis Space Center in Mississippi for hardware assurance testing; and NASA's Glenn Research Center in Cleveland, for propulsion related technology development. Space Exploration Technologies Corp. (SpaceX) in Hawthorne, Calif., has agreements with Marshall for engineering development work, and Orbital Sciences Corp. in Dulles, Va., has agreements with Marshall and Stennis for AJ-26 engine engineering support.

For more information about Kennedy, visit:

http://www.nasa.gov/kennedy

For information about NASA's commercial transportation programs, visit:



http://www.nasa.gov/exploration/commercial/index.html

گلناز
07-08-2011, 07:31 PM
WASHINGTON -- NASA has launched the free NASA App for Android (TM), a new application designed for mobile devices that run the open source Android platform.

The NASA App is available for free on Android MarketTM at:


https://market.android.com/details?id=gov.nasa
[LEFT]

"The NASA App for iPhone and iPad has been a phenomenal success with over five million downloads so far," said Jerry Colen, NASA App project manager at NASA's Ames Research Center in Moffett Field, Calif. "Making a version of the NASA App for Android has been the number one request from users. We are delighted to fulfill this request and put NASA's amazing content into the hands of millions of Android users around the world."

The NASA App for Android showcases a huge collection of NASA content, including images, videos on-demand, live streaming video from NASA Television, mission information, feature stories and breaking news. Users also can find sighting opportunities for the International Space Station and track the current positions of spacecraft currently orbiting Earth. App users also easily can share NASA content with their friends and followers on Facebook, Twitter or via e-mail.

For more information about the NASA App for Android, visit:



http://www.nasa.gov/nasaapp

Android and Android Market are trademarks of Google Inc. Use of these trademarks is subject to Google permission.


- end -

گلناز
07-08-2011, 07:37 PM
MOFFETT FIELD, Calif. – NASA's Ames Research Center will send a variety of life science experiments and technology demonstrations aboard the final space shuttle to better our understanding of how robots can help humans live and work in space and how spaceflight affects the human body, the growth of cells, yeast and plants. Future astronauts on long-term space missions in low-Earth orbit, to asteroids, other planets and beyond will rely on robots and need to understand how to prevent illnesses during space travel.

On July 8, space shuttle Atlantis and four NASA astronauts are scheduled to lift off from NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida. During the 12-day mission, they will transfer tons of supplies to the International Space Station from the Raffaello multi-purpose logistics module. They also will deliver several experiments developed in collaboration with Ames, including:

Human Exploration Telerobotics-Smartphone will equip small, free-flying satellites called Synchronized Position Hold, Engage, Reorient, Experimental Satellites (SPHERES) with a Samsung Electronics Nexus S™ handset that features Google’s open-source Android™ platform. The experiment, led by Ames researcher DW Wheeler, will use the smartphone-enhanced SPHERES as remotely operated robots to conduct interior surveys and inspections, capture mobile camera images and video, and to study how robots can support future human exploration.

Space Tissue Loss experiments will study how wounds heal in space. Eduardo Almeida, a scientist at Ames, will examine how stem cells differentiate to regenerate epidermal tissues in microgravity. The experiments will use Cell Culture Module (CCM) hardware on the Shuttle Middeck as developed by Tissue Genesis Inc., to grow cells and tissues in space using an automated hollow fiber cell culture system. This experiment will help scientists understand how to treat wounds during long-duration space missions and in extreme environments on Earth. Rasha Hammamieh at the U.S. Army Medical Research and Materiel Command and Joon Paek, an investigator funded by the Telemedicine and Advanced Technology Research Center of Fort Detrick, Md., also are conducting tissue engineering experiments using the CCM for the Department of Defense (DoD). Space Tissue Loss is a DoD payload integrated by the DoD’s Space Test Program.

Commercial Biomedical Test Module-3 experiment will study whether a new drug treatment could prevent bone loss in mice living in space. Astronauts experience bone loss after spending prolonged time in space; humans on Earth experience similar problems, due to aging, disease, injury or inactivity. This work will enhance interventions that prevent bone degeneration due to microgravity exposure, an various other conditions. This collaborative experiment is supported by Ames, BioServe Space Technologies, the University of Colorado, Boulder, and Amgen Inc., Thousand Oaks, Calif., and marks the 26th time the Ames-developed Animal Enclosure Module will be flown aboard a space shuttle. BioServe will manage the overall mission and integrate experiments led by Ted Bateman of the University of North Carolina; Virginia Ferguson of the University of Colorado and a team of Amgen researchers. The NASA Ames-sponsored principal investigators include Mary Bouxsein of the Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, Boston, Mass., and Harvard Medical School, Boston, and Ronald J. Midura of Cleveland Clinic. Other researchers will be involved in a specimen sharing program to maximize the mission's science return.

Micro-2A experiment will study how microgravity changes the way microbes grow on surfaces enabling scientists to develop new strategies to combat their formation and reduce the impact on crew health and spacecraft operations. The growth of microbes on surfaces, called biofilms, has become an issue on spacecraft and a health concern for astronauts. On Earth, biofilms contaminate medical devices and corrode industrial work places. In collaboration with Ames, the University of Toronto, and Bioserve Space Technologies, the study, led by Cynthia Collins of Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, Troy, N.Y., will help scientists expand their knowledge of biofilms and test the efficiency of new antimicrobial coatings.

Micro-4 study uses special genetically engineered yeast cells to understand how they physically respond and adapt to the effects of microgravity and determine which strains are best suited to survive spaceflight. The results of this study will allow researchers to better understand the genes that play a role in the growth and reproduction of microbes while in microgravity. Researchers also will learn the effects of microgravity on living systems and in life-based support systems for long-term human habitation in space. This experiment is supported by Ames, BioServe Space Technologies. Timothy Hammond of the Durham Veterans Affairs Medical Center, Durham, N.C., is the principal investigator.

Plant Signaling will study the molecular responses of plants to the space environment. The microgravity environment of space causes plants to grow differently than on Earth. Plants sense the difference in gravity and generate chemical responses within the cells. A collaboration between NASA and the European Space Agency, the experiment will use the Ames-developed Seed Cassettes within the European Modular Cultivation System. As the plants grow, images will be captured and down-linked to Earth. Samples of the plants will be harvested and returned to Earth for analysis. Scientists expect the results of this experiment could help produce food during future long-duration space missions in addition to enhancing crop production on Earth. Scientists also hope to develop supplemental methods to recycle carbon dioxide into breathable oxygen. This experiment is supported by Ames, and Imara Perera of North Carolina State University, Raleigh, is the principal investigator.

Ultrasound-2 is a cardiovascular ultrasound system to replace and upgrade a 10-year-old unit on the station that stopped operating earlier this year. The device provides images of internal organs and muscles and will be used to assess astronauts' health. It also will be used in NASA investigations, such as Integrated Cardiovascular, which studies the weakening of heart muscles associated with long-duration spaceflight, and the Integrated Resistance and Aerobic Training Study, which looks at high-intensity, low-volume exercise training to minimize loss of muscle, bone and cardiovascular performance in astronauts. Ultrasound-2 uses devices similar to those used in medical care on Earth, including the commercially-developed General Electric Medical Systems, Vivid-q™ that was modified and tested by Ames for spaceflight, as well as a custom-built external video/power converter assembly developed at NASA's Johnson Space Center, Houston. This system is part of the ISS Medical Project in NASA’s Human Research Program.

Forward Osmosis Bag (FOB) system is designed to convert dirty water into a liquid that is safe for astronauts to drink, using a semi-permeable membrane and a concentrated sugar solution. Forward osmosis is the natural diffusion of water through a semi-permeable membrane. The membrane acts as a barrier that allows small molecules, such as water, to pass through, while blocking larger molecules like salts, sugars, starches, proteins, viruses, bacteria and parasites. The FOB experiment will study the performance of a forward osmosis membrane during spaceflight. Michael Flynn, a researcher at Ames, developed this technology, and scientists at NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida will conduct the flight experiment. A small forward osmosis device could be incorporated into new long-exposure EVA suits in order to recycle metabolic wastewater (i.e., sweat and urine) into drinkable fluid.

The International Space Station Research Project Office and Space Biosciences Division at Ames collaboratively developed these experiments. The experiments are funded by the Human Exploration and Operations Mission Directorate at NASA Headquarters, Washington.

For more information about science on the International Space Station, visit:

http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/station/science
For more information about the Space Biosciences Division at Ames, visit:

http://spacebiosciences.arc.nasa.gov (http://spacebiosciences.arc.nasa.gov/)

- end -

cooleli
07-12-2011, 10:45 AM
1786 (http://www.allposters.com/-sp/Excellent-Narrow-Angle-Camera-Views-of-the-Planet-Neptune-Taken-from-Voyager-2-Spacecraft-Posters_i5298173_.htm?aid=1254586054)


Happy 1st birthday to Neptune! After 164.79 Earth years, today the planet completes its first orbit of the Sun since its discovery in 1846. http://www.allposters.com/​-sp/Excellent-Narrow-Angle​-Camera-Views-of-the-Plane​t-Neptune-Taken-from-Voyag​er-2-Space (http://www.allposters.com/-sp/Excellent-Narrow-Angle-Camera-Views-of-the-Planet-Neptune-Taken-from-Voyager-2-Spacecraft-Posters_i5298173_.htm?aid=1254586054)craft-Posters_i5​298173_.htm?aid=1254586054 (http://www.allposters.com/-sp/Excellent-Narrow-Angle-Camera-Views-of-the-Planet-Neptune-Taken-from-Voyager-2-Spacecraft-Posters_i5298173_.htm?aid=1254586054)

Neptune lies about 2.7 billion miles away from Earth, and even though scientists have long known about its existence, very little is known about it—this is partly because Neptune couldn’t be viewed by the naked eye until the Hubble telescope was introduced in 1990. However, there are some Neptune-facts we know for certain: the planet is made frozen gases, it’s extremely stormy there (winds reach up to 1,200 miles/hour), and each season lasts a whopping 40 Earth years—talk about an eternal summer!

For more posters of Neptune, check out our gallery: http://www.allposters.com/​-st/Neptune-Posters_c50399​_.htm?aid=1254586054 (http://www.allposters.com/-st/Neptune-Posters_c50399_.htm?aid=1254586054)

Excellent Narrow-Angle Camera Views of the Planet Neptune Taken from Voyager 2 Spacecraft
Item #: 5298173
http://www.allposters.com/​-sp/Excellent-Narrow-Angle​-Camera-Views-of-the-Plane​t-Neptune-Taken-from-Voyag​er-2-Spacecraft-Posters_i5​ (http://www.allposters.com/-sp/Excellent-Narrow-Angle-Camera-Views-of-the-Planet-Neptune-Taken-from-Voyager-2-Spacecraft-Posters_i5298173_.htm?aid=1254586054)
298173_.htm?aid=1254586054 (http://www.allposters.com/-sp/Excellent-Narrow-Angle-Camera-Views-of-the-Planet-Neptune-Taken-from-Voyager-2-Spacecraft-Posters_i5298173_.htm?aid=1254586054)



Origin : www.allposters.com (http://www.allposters.com)
http://www.facebook.com/allposters.com (http://www.allposters.com)

گلناز
07-13-2011, 08:29 PM
WASHINGTON – NASA, through the Harvard-NASA Tournament Laboratory, is supporting an online challenge for artists to design a T-shirt commemorating the final space shuttle mission and the program's contributions to exploration.

The challenge is run by Threadless, an online design site, and the Harvard-NASA Tournament Laboratory. The lab is administered by Harvard University, which is under contract to NASA to study crowd sourced innovation that leads to tournaments for scientific and engineering challenges.

Threadless, an online community of amateur and professional designers, is challenging its 1.5 million international artists and the public to design a shirt about "The Final Frontier" by July 22. Threadless will produce the design chosen through online votes. The chosen designer will receive a $500 cash prize, a $500 Threadless gift certificate and a shuttle-flown patch from his or her home country. The Harvard-NASA Tournament Laboratory will provide the patch.

For more information about the final space shuttle mission and the shuttle program, visit:





http://www.nasa.gov/shuttle

For more information about the Harvard-NASA Tournament Lab, visit:


http://www.nasa.gov/directorates/somd/ntl/

گلناز
07-13-2011, 08:30 PM
HOUSTON -- The 10 crew members aboard space shuttle Atlantis and the International Space Station will hold a news conference at 8:24 a.m. CDT on Friday, July 15. Reporters may ask questions in person from participating NASA centers, including Johnson Space Center in Houston, Kennedy Space Center in Florida and NASA Headquarters in Washington.

To participate, U.S. journalists must call the public affairs office at one of the NASA centers by 4 p.m. local time on Tuesday, July 12.

Reporters at Johnson who do not have STS-135 mission credentials must request access badges by July 14. Reporters must be in place at least 20 minutes before the news conference begins.

The final shuttle mission is delivering the Raffaello multi-purpose logistics module filled with supplies and spare parts to sustain space station operations after the shuttles are retired.

NASA Television will provide live coverage of the 40-minute news conference. Part of the conference will be for Japanese media outlets in native language. NASA TV will replay the event with translation at 10 a.m.

For NASA TV downlink, schedule and streaming video information, visit:

http://www.nasa.gov/ntv

For information about the STS-135 and the Space Shuttle Program, visit:

http://www.nasa.gov/shuttle

For information about the station's Expedition 28 crew and the station program, visit:

http://www.nasa.gov/station

گلناز
07-13-2011, 08:32 PM
HOUSTON – Transfer work will be going on inside and outside of the International Space Station today, as the crew performs the first and only spacewalk of the STS-135 mission.

Space shuttle Atlantis’ crew was awakened at 1:59 a.m. by the song “More” by Matthew West. It was played for Mission Specialist Rex Walheim.

Walheim today will be choreographing from inside the space station the spacewalk being done outside by Expedition 28 Flight Engineers Mike Fossum and Ron Garan. Fossum and Garan will be packing a pump module that failed in 2010 into the shuttle’s cargo bay. It was moved into a temporary storage location on external stowage platform-2 during the STS-133 mission earlier this year. Returning it to Earth will allow engineers to look into what caused its failure and then refurbish it for use as a spare.

Fossum and Garan will also be installing the Robotic Refueling Mission experiment on a platform used by the Special Purpose Dexterous Manipulator, or Dextre, to hold spare parts. The Robotic Refueling Mission will demonstrate and test the tools, technologies and techniques needed to robotically refuel and repair satellites in space.

The spacewalk is scheduled to begin at 7:44 a.m., and last six and a half hours.

Meanwhile, inside the space station, every member of the shuttle crew and many of the station crew will be working to unload the newly installed Raffaello multipurpose logistics module. It brought up 9,400 pounds of cargo to the space station, all of which must be unloaded and replaced with 5,700 pounds of trash and used equipment to return home.

The next status report will be issued at the end of the crew’s day or earlier if warranted. The crew is scheduled to go to sleep just before 6 p.m.

گلناز
07-13-2011, 08:42 PM
MOFFETT FIELD, Calif. -- The 10 crew members aboard STS-135 space shuttle Atlantis and the International Space Station will hold a news conference at 6:24 a.m. PDT, Friday, July 15. Reporters may view the televised press conference at NASA's Ames Research Center in the main auditorium, Bldg. N-201, and ask questions of the participants via a phone link.

To participate, journalists must contact Rachel Hoover at rachel.hoover@nasa.gov (rachel.hoover@nasa.gov) by 4 p.m. PDT today, Tuesday, July 12. Reporters must be in place at least 20 minutes before the news conference begins.

Atlantis will carry a system to investigate the potential for robotically refueling existing spacecraft and bring back a failed ammonia pump to help NASA better understand and improve pump designs for future systems. It also will deliver spare parts to sustain space station operations after the shuttles retire from service.

The final shuttle mission is delivering the Raffaello multi-purpose logistics module filled with supplies and spare parts to sustain space station operations after the shuttles are retired. In addition to transferring tons of supplies to the space station, astronauts also will deliver several life science experiments and technology demonstrations developed in collaboration with Ames. Scientists and engineers expect the payloads will better our understanding of how robots can help humans live and work in space and how spaceflight affects the human body, the growth of cells, yeast and plants.

STS-135 Mission Specialist Rex Walheim was born in Redwood City, Calif., and considers San Carlos, Calif., his hometown. He graduated from San Carlos High School and received a bachelor of science degree in mechanical engineering from the University of California, Berkeley.

NASA Television will provide live coverage of the 40-minute news conference. Part of the conference will be for Japanese media outlets in their native language. NASA TV will replay the event with translation at 8 a.m. PDT.

To reach NASA Ames, take U.S. Highway 101 to the Moffett Field, NASA Parkway exit and drive east on Moffett Boulevard towards the main gate. In order to gain entry, visitor badges must be obtained from the Visitor Badge Office, Bldg. 26, located at the main gate.

For NASA TV downlink, schedule and streaming video information, visit:

http://www.nasa.gov/ntv
For information about the STS-135 and the Space Shuttle Program, visit:

http://www.nasa.gov/shuttle
For information about the station's Expedition 28 crew and the station program, visit:

http://www.nasa.gov/station

گلناز
07-13-2011, 08:49 PM
Mike Leinbach, Shuttle Launch Director: There are so many things that can keep a shuttle on the ground, weather being one of them. It's one of the more visible ones to the public, of course.

Narrator: Weather is often the difference between "go" and "no go" when a space shuttle is ready to lift off from NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida.

The task of tracking the weather and determining whether or not it's safe for a shuttle to launch falls to the Launch Weather Officer.

It's a service provided by the U.S. Air Force 45th Weather Squadron, based at nearby Cape Canaveral Air Force Station.

Kathy Winters, Shuttle Launch Weather Officer: Well it's a very tropical environment here in Florida. We have the sea breeze that occurs, we have the river breezes that occur. Anytime we get some low-level convergence and we have enough moisture, we can develop showers and thunderstorms, particularly in the summer time. And so, working the weather, you want to really be able to nail it down, but there's a lot of times where there's a lot of iffy situations. And so that's where it's really challenging.

Narrator: Space shuttle launches are governed by a complex set of weather rules, called "launch commit criteria," designed to keep the shuttle and astronauts safe.

There are limits for rain, lightning, clouds and winds. And if any one of the rules is violated, that's a "no-go."

Winters: It may look good out here, but we actually could be red. And so I know a lot of people think, "It wasn't that bad!" But it's violating our launch commit criteria and we have a safety issue. So we have to call it.

Narrator: The team can only begin filling the shuttle's 15-story external fuel tank if weather permits -- and of course, conditions must be favorable at the launch pad at liftoff.

They also need good conditions for a landing, in case the shuttle develops a problem during flight and must come back to land at Kennedy -- an unlikely, last-resort emergency landing option called a Return to Launch Site abort.

Winters relies on several forecasting tools including radars, satellite imagery, weather balloons and other data sources.

Winters: The location of the radar is off to the west, as opposed to the south. So our new radar being off to the left allows us to pick up the sea breeze a lot better, particularly now because we have Doppler capability with this radar.

Narrator: Conditions can change quickly, so the launch team often will go ahead with a countdown -- despite a gloomy forecast -- just to be ready in case the weather changes for the better.

Leinbach: I recall one mission where we decided to tank and go for launch with only 5 percent chance of launching that day, and indeed, we launched. And so that's a case where we got lucky, probably. There've been other cases where we had, you know, about an 80 percent "go" for launch, and then we end up scrubbing for weather. More often than not, we'll give it a shot.

Narrator: The team has weathered some memorable days -- one of which took place in August 2006, when Hurricane Ernesto threatened Kennedy Space Center as shuttle Atlantis waited on the launch pad.

Leinbach: Hurricanes and a shuttle on the launch pad are incompatible, as you might imagine. And so we have very strict criteria to roll the vehicle back to the VAB in the event of a threatening hurricane.

Narrator: Space shuttle Atlantis began the long, slow roll from the launch pad to the safety of the Vehicle Assembly Building in advance of the storm.

But when the shuttle was only a third of the way through the six-hour move, Leinbach learned Ernesto had not strengthened -- and he sent the shuttle back to the launch pad.

Leinbach: And we went back to the pad, the storm passed about 50 miles offshore, got a little bit of rain and some wind, but no big deal -- and we were able to launch about seven or eight days later.

Winters: It was just so unique. It was very challenging. At the time I probably wouldn't have called it my favorite, but now, looking back, it's one of our favorite stories to talk about.

Narrator: Winters is part of a team of about 40 people supporting launch at the 45th Weather Squadron.

That's in addition to personnel at Johnson Space Center's Spaceflight Meteorology Group in Houston, the Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, and the weather office here at Kennedy.

But the working relationship between the launch director and launch weather officer is critical.

Leinbach: We do a daily weather tag-up every day. Monday through Friday, every day, for about 10, 15 minutes. Doing a daily with her is really helpful, not only for the people processing the vehicle at the pad, but it builds that relationship between she and I that is very critical on launch day.

Leinbach: Range weather.

Winters: Weather has no constraints for launch.

Leinbach: Thank you, Kathy.

Winters: There's been times we've been in tough situations and I think Mike can tell just from the sound of my voice what I'm feeling, what I'm thinking about a particular situation. So he knows if I'm getting more concerned about something just by the tone of my voice.

Narrator: NASA will never control the weather, but a talented team and strict safely guidelines will always help protect the nation's spacecraft... and crews.

گلناز
07-14-2011, 06:31 PM
WASHINGTON – NASA, through the Harvard-NASA Tournament Laboratory, is supporting an online challenge for artists to design a T-shirt commemorating the final space shuttle mission and the program's contributions to exploration.

The challenge is run by Threadless, an online design site, and the Harvard-NASA Tournament Laboratory. The lab is administered by Harvard University, which is under contract to NASA to study crowd sourced innovation that leads to tournaments for scientific and engineering challenges.

Threadless, an online community of amateur and professional designers, is challenging its 1.5 million international artists and the public to design a shirt about "The Final Frontier" by July 22. Threadless will produce the design chosen through online votes. The chosen designer will receive a $500 cash prize, a $500 Threadless gift certificate and a shuttle-flown patch from his or her home country. The Harvard-NASA Tournament Laboratory will provide the patch.

For more information about the final space shuttle mission and the shuttle program, visit:





http://www.nasa.gov/shuttle

For more information about the Harvard-NASA Tournament Lab, visit:


http://www.nasa.gov/directorates/somd/ntl/

To submit a design, vote or view current submissions, visit Threadless at:





http://atrium.threadless.com/nasa/

گلناز
07-14-2011, 06:35 PM
http://www.nasa.gov/images/content/570048main_psrj0357.jpg

A spinning neutron star is tied to a mysterious tail -- or so it seems. Astronomers using NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory have found that this pulsar, known as PSR J0357+3205 (or PSR J0357 for short), apparently has a long, X-ray bright tail streaming away from it.

This composite image shows Chandra data in blue and Digitized Sky Survey data in yellow. The position of the pulsar at the upper right end of the tail is seen by mousing over the image. The two bright sources lying near the lower left end of the tail are both thought to be unrelated background objects located outside our galaxy.

PSR J0357 was originally discovered by the Fermi Gamma Ray Space Telescope in 2009. Astronomers calculate that the pulsar lies about 1,600 light years from Earth and is about half a million years old, which makes it roughly middle-aged for this type of object.

If the tail is at the same distance as the pulsar then it stretches for 4.2 light years in length. This would make it one of the the longest X-ray tails ever associated with a so-called "rotation-powered" pulsar, a class of pulsar that get its power from the energy lost as the rotation of the pulsar slows down. (Other types of pulsars include those driven by strong magnetic fields and still others that are powered by material falling onto the neutron star.)

The Chandra data indicate that the X-ray tail may be produced by emission from energetic particles in a pulsar wind, with the particles produced by the pulsar spiraling around magnetic field lines. Other X-ray tails around pulsars have been interpreted as bow-shocks generated by the supersonic motion of pulsars through space, with the wind trailing behind as its particles are swept back by the pulsar's interaction with the interstellar gas it encounters.

However, this bow-shock interpretation may or may not be correct for PSR J0357, with several issues that need to be explained. For example, the Fermi data show that PSR J0357 is losing a very small amount of energy as its spin slows down with time. This energy loss is important, because it is converted into radiation and powering a particle wind from the pulsar. This places limits on the amount of energy that particles in the wind can attain, and so might not account for the quantity of X-rays seen by Chandra in the tail.

Another challenge to this explanation is that other pulsars with bow-shocks show bright X-ray emission surrounding the pulsar, and this is not seen for PSR J0357. Also, the brightest portion of the tail is well away from the pulsar and this differs from what has been seen for other pulsars with bow-shocks.

Further observations with Chandra could help test this bow-shock interpretation. If the pulsar is seen moving in the opposite direction from that of the tail, this would support the bow-shock idea.

These results were published in the June 1st, 2011 issue of The Astrophysical Journal. The first author is Andrea De Luca of Institute of Advanced Study in Pavia, Italy (IUSS), the National Institute of Nuclear Physics (INFN) in Rome, and the National Institute for Astrophysics (INAF) in Milano.

The co-authors are M. Marelli of INAF, Milano and the University of Insubria in Italy; R. Mignani of University College London, UK and University of Zielona Gora, Poland; P. Caraveo of INAF, Milano; W. Hummel of ESO, Germany; S. Collins and A. Shearer of National University of Ireland; P. Saz Parkinson of University of California at Santa Cruz; A. Belfiore of University of California at Santa Cruz and University of Pavia; and, G. Bignami of IUSS, Pavia and INAF, Milano.

گلناز
07-14-2011, 06:44 PM
MOFFETT FIELD, Calif. -- NASA and the Canadian Space Agency invite the news media to join the international, multidisciplinary Pavilion Lake Research Project (PLRP) team as it explores, studies and documents rare freshwater rock formations that thrive in Kelly Lake, British Columbia, Canada. The research project blends science and technology to advance knowledge of astrobiology and study life in an extreme environment using a combination of underwater vehicles and scuba divers.

It will take more than building rockets and selecting astronauts for humans to voyage to another planet; it also will take considerable planning and operations expertise. The PLRP's underwater environment presents a unique opportunity to integrate science and exploration field activities and serves as an analog to better understand the challenges associated with conducting scientific research in extreme environments. It is this knowledge that will form the basis of future exploration concepts for human research voyages to such destinations as near-Earth asteroids, Mars, and other destinations in space.

News media will have an opportunity to interview PLRP team members, including a NASA astronaut, from Sunday, July 17, 2011, to Saturday, July 23, 2011. News media interested in attending must contact Rachel Hoover at rachel.hoover@nasa.gov, as space is limited. News media also will be required to attend a safety and logistical session before gaining access to the PLRP Project field site at Kelly Lake.

This year at Kelly Lake, the team will launch new tools, such as the Exploration Ground Data Systems developed at NASA's Ames Research Center, Moffett Field, Calif., to enable them to rapidly synthesize, manage and analyze large data sets, as well as plan and manage flight scheduling. These tools also will be used to manage the "delayed communications" research that will build 50-second communication delays between the submarine pilot and the mission operations crew to simulate what it is like conducting science on asteroids with human explorers.

The team also will use a new planning tool to better manage a dynamic and complex operations schedule, as well as gain a new degree of situational awareness about all field camp activities. To achieve this, human spaceflight operations planners from NASA's Johnson Space Center, Houston, will share their expertise and experience gained from supporting mission operations for the space shuttle and International Space Station. The operations planning team will support real-time operations by managing and distributing plans via a website developed by engineers at Ames called Score Mobile, to allow for re-planning when activities don¹t go as scheduled, and provide situational awareness to the team.

This year's field team also includes a member from Google Inc, Mountain View, Calif., who will help the team evolve its use of mapping activities and develop cutting-edge data integration platforms based on Google Earth.

In addition to achieving its science and technology goals, this year's field test also will provide local teachers a unique opportunity to learn how a lake in their community will be used to train astronauts and scientists and prepare them for space exploration. The teachers will participate in hands-on field activity workshops so they can share what they learned with their students and inspire the next generation of space enthusiasts.

For more information about this year's Pavilion Lake Research Project, visit:

http://www.pavilionlake.com (http://www.pavilionlake.com/)
For more information about NASA's Exploration Analog Missions, visit:

http://www.nasa.gov/exploration/home/analogs.html

گلناز
07-14-2011, 06:49 PM
MOFFETT FIELD, Calif. – Lunar researchers from all over the world have been invited to the fourth annual Lunar Science Forum July 18-21 at NASA’s Ames Research Center, Moffett Field, Calif.

Hosted by the NASA Lunar Science Institute, the forum focuses on science of the moon, on the moon and from the moon, and features scientists from NASA’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO), Lunar CRater Observation and Sensing Satellite (LCROSS) Lunar Atmosphere and Dust Environment Explorer (LADEE), Gravity Recovery and Interior Laboratory (GRAIL) and the Acceleration, Reconnection, Turbulence and Electrodynamics of the Moon's Interaction with the Sun (ARTEMIS) missions.

The forum also will host the pre-forum debut of the Braille book, “Getting a Feel for Lunar Craters,” which will take place from 6 p.m. to 7:30 p.m. PDT on Monday, July 18. Author David Hurd, a space science professor at Edinboro University of Pennsylvania, and students from the California School for the Blind, Fremont, Calif., are scheduled to attend the event.

Additionally, from 6:30 to 8:30 p.m. on Tuesday, July 19, the Shoemaker medal for lifetime contributions to lunar science will be awarded at NASA night. The medal commemorates the life and work of Gene Shoemaker, one of the founders of the field of planetary science and a lunar science pioneer. “We look forward to another outstanding program and delight in revealing the Shoemaker medal recipient, someone who is truly one of our communities’ most distinguished researchers,” said Yvonne Pendleton, director of NASA's Lunar Science Institute.

News media planning to attend must contact Cathy Weselby at 650-604-4789 or cathy.weselby@nasa.gov before 5 p.m. on July 18 for credentials.

For more information about the Lunar Science Forum, visit:

http://lunarscience2011.arc.nasa.gov (http://lunarscience2011.arc.nasa.gov/)

For the complete schedule, visit:

http://lunarscience2011.arc.nasa.gov/agenda

For more information about the NASA Lunar Science Institute, visit:

http://lunarscience.nasa.gov (http://lunarscience.nasa.gov/)

گلناز
07-14-2011, 06:52 PM
WASHINGTON -- NASA’s History Program Office is releasing a new book that examines the different psychological factors that affect astronauts during space travel, especially long-duration missions.

The book, “Psychology of Space Exploration: Contemporary Research in Historical Perspective,” is a collection of essays from leading space psychologists. They place their recent research in historical context by looking at changes in space missions and psychosocial science over the past 50 years. What makes up the “right stuff” for astronauts has changed as the early space race gave way to international cooperation. Different coping skills and sensibilities are now necessary to communicate across cultural boundaries and deal with interpersonal conflicts.

“The essays give a comprehensive overview of this complex subject, providing novel insights for behavioral researchers and historians alike,” NASA’s Chief Historian Bill Barry said. “The data is important as we work to send astronauts to Mars, which will mean longer missions without real-time communication with family and friends leading to increased potential psychosocial stresses.”

The book’s editor, Douglas A. Vakoch, is a professor in the Department of Clinical Psychology at the California Institute of Integral Studies in San Francisco. He also is a manager at the SETI Institute.

The book is available for purchase through the Government Printing Office at:


http://cot.ag/nyCekB

For a review copy, please contact Nadine Andreassen at nadine.j.andreassen@nasa.gov

For more information about NASA history, visit:


http://history.nasa.gov (http://history.nasa.gov/)

For information about NASA and agency programs, visit:


http://www.nasa.gov (http://www.nasa.gov/)

گلناز
07-14-2011, 06:54 PM
1878


This image of Atlantis' payload bay, focusing on the docking mechanism, was photographed by the STS-135 crew from inside the crew cabin. The orbiter boom sensor system and a portion of the remote manipulator system's robot arm are visible in the frame, exposed during a busy third day in space for the astronauts. The photo was made shortly before the shuttle docked with the International Space Station.

گلناز
07-14-2011, 06:58 PM
HOUSTON – Space shuttle Atlantis’ crew will be getting down to the main objective of their mission today, as they temporarily install the Raffaello multipurpose logistics module on the International Space Station and begin unloading its contents.

The crew started their fourth day in space at 2:02 a.m., after being awakened by the Chumbawamba song “Tubthumping.” It was played for Mission Specialist Sandy Magnus.

Magnus, along with Pilot Doug Hurley, will be at the controls of the space station’s robotic arm beginning at 4:09 a.m. to remove the Raffaello module from the shuttle’s cargo bay. They’ll install it on the station’s Harmony node 30 minutes later.

Once that is complete, Magnus will work with Commander Chris Ferguson to prepare the module’s hatch for opening at 12:39 p.m., after which the crew will begin unloading the 9,402 pounds of supplies it carried into space.

In addition, Ferguson and Mission Specialist Rex Walheim will begin moving another 2,281 pounds of cargo brought up on Atlantis’ middeck over to the space station. And later in the day, the entire shuttle crew will come together with station Flight Engineers Ron Garan, Satoshi Furukawa and Mike Fossum to review the procedures for the mission’s spacewalk. Fossum and Garan will perform that spacewalk on Tuesday.

Meanwhile, here on the ground, flight controllers were able to verify that the track of a piece of orbital debris they began watching on Saturday will not be a threat to the shuttle and station. No adjustments to the shuttle and station’s orbit will be necessary to avoid the debris, which is part of satellite COSMOS 375 and one of more than 500,000 pieces of debris tracked in Earth’s orbit.

گلناز
07-14-2011, 06:59 PM
HOUSTON – Atlantis astronauts moved the Raffaello cargo carrier from the shuttle’s cargo bay to the Earth-facing port of the International Space Station’s Harmony node early Monday.

Pilot Doug Hurley and Mission Specialist Sandra Magnus moved the multi-purpose logistics module using the station’s Canadarm2. The installation of Raffaello was completed a little after 5:45 a.m. CDT.

After leak checks, hatches between Raffaello and the station were opened before noon. Unloading of the more than 9,400 pounds of supplies and equipment aboard Raffaello was scheduled to begin early Tuesday.

The module is to be unloaded, then filled with 5,666 pounds of equipment and discards no longer needed on the station. It is scheduled to be taken from the Harmony node port and reinstalled in Atlantis’ cargo bay on Monday, July 18, several hours before crews of the two spacecraft say goodbye and close hatches. Atlantis is now scheduled to undock from the station that evening at 11:56 p.m.

Mission managers said Monday afternoon Atlantis’ stay at the station would be extended for one day. The first Kennedy Space Center landing opportunity for Atlantis would be at 4:56 a.m. July 21. Landing had been scheduled for July 20, but conservation of power-generating consumables made the extension possible.

Managers also determined that after Saturday’s inspection, further detailed inspections of Atlantis’ heat shield are not required. A customary, final inspection will be completed after Atlantis undocks from the station.

Other activities on the crews’ schedules today included continuing transfer of items between the shuttle’s middeck and the station. Atlantis brought almost 2,300 pounds of experiments, equipment and supplies for the station in the shuttle’s middeck lockers.

Shortly before the end of their workday, the four shuttle crew members and station Flight Engineers Ron Garan, Mike Fossum and Satoshi Furuakawa met for about an hour to review procedures for Tuesday’s spacewalk. Beginning about 7:45 a.m., Garan and Fossum, who did three spacewalks together during STS-124 in June 2008, will leave the Quest airlock for the 6.5-hour outing.

Major spacewalk activities include retrieving a failed 1,400-pound pump module and installing it in the shuttle cargo bay for return to Earth, installing a robotic satellite refueling experiment and setting up a materials experiment.

گلناز
07-14-2011, 07:00 PM
HOUSTON -- The public can share a virtual dinner with the final space shuttle crew on Thursday, July 14 by preparing grilled chicken, barbecue brisket, baked beans and southwestern corn at home using NASA's recipes.

Food scientists at NASA's Johnson Space Center in Houston prepared the special "All-American Meal" for the STS-135 shuttle crew, as the iconic American spacecraft makes its last voyage. The four shuttle astronauts, and possibly the six International Space Station crew members, are scheduled to eat the meal on the fifth day of the STS-135 mission.

"Since the mission is in July, we thought it would be fun to have a typical summer meal often enjoyed in our backyards with friends and family," said Michele Perchonok, NASA food scientist and manager of the shuttle food system.

For the special space recipes or "formulations" as they are called by NASA food scientists, plus more information, video and imagery, visit:

http://go.nasa.gov/AllAmericanMeal

The crew's All American menu begins with crackers, brie cheese and sausage. The main course features grilled chicken, Southwestern corn and baked beans. The meal concludes with the quintessential American dessert, apple pie. The shuttle and station crews both have the meal on their menus, but the station crew has barbecued brisket as the entree.

The crackers, brie, sausage and apple pie are commercial off-the-shelf products repackaged for spaceflight. NASA food scientists prepared the chicken, brisket, corn and beans in a laboratory at Johnson before the mission.

For more information about the STS-135 mission, including the crew's full menus, visit:

http://go.nasa.gov/STS-135

NASA's web coverage of STS-135 includes mission information, a press kit, interactive features, news conference images, graphics and videos. Mission coverage, including the latest NASA Television schedule, is available on the main space shuttle website at:

http://www.nasa.gov/shuttle

NASA is providing continuous television and Internet coverage of the mission. NASA TV features live mission events, daily status news conferences and 24-hour commentary. For NASA TV streaming video, downlink and schedule information, visit:

http://www.nasa.gov/ntv

Live updates to the NASA News Twitter feed will be added throughout the mission and landing. To access the feed, go to the NASA.gov homepage or visit:

http://www.twitter.com/nasa

All four of Atlantis' crew members are posting updates to Twitter. You can follow them at:

http://www.twitter.com/Astro_Ferg



http://www.twitter.com/Astro_Doug



http://www.twitter.com/Astro_Sandy



http://www.twitter.com/Astro_Rex



To connect with NASA on Twitter and other social networking sites, visit:

http://www.nasa.gov/connect

For more information about the space station, visit:

http://www.nasa.gov/station

گلناز
07-16-2011, 08:27 PM
Launch Commentator George Diller:
Go for main engine start.

T-10
9
8
7
6

(Roar of engines igniting)

5

All three engines up and burning.

Two

One

zero and liftoff!

The final liftoff of Atlantis. On the shoulders of the space shuttle, America will continue the dream.

Commander Chris Ferguson: Roll program, Houston.

CAPCOM Barry Wilmore: Roger Roll, Atlantis.
Flight Commentator Rob Navius: Houston now controlling the flight of Atlantis.

The space shuttle spreads it wings one final time for the start of a sentimental journey into history.

Twenty-four seconds into the flight, roll program complete, Atlantis now heads-down, wings level on the proper alignment for its eight-and-half minute ride into orbit.

Four and half million pounds of hardware and humans taking aim on the International Space Station.

Forty seconds in to the flight, the three liquid-fueled main engines throttling back to 72 percent of their rated performance in the bucket, reducing stress on the shuttle as it goes transonic for the final time.

Engines now revving up, standing by for the throttle-up call.

CAPCOM Barry Wilmore:
Atlantis, go at throttle up, no action DTDT.

Commander Chris Ferguson:
Go at throttle up, no action on the DTDT.
Flight Commentator Rob Navius:
That call from CAPCOM Barry Wilmore a transducer, instrumentation only, no action required.

Atlantis now 15 miles in altitude, already 16 miles downrange from the Kennedy Space Center, one minute, 40 seconds into the flight. Atlantis flexing its muscles one final time.

Atlantis traveling almost 2,600 mph, 21 miles in altitude, 24 miles downrange.

Standing by for solid rocket booster separation.

Booster officer confirms staging, a good solid rocket booster separation, guidance now converging, the main engines now steering the shuttle on a pinpoint path to its preliminary orbit

گلناز
07-17-2011, 07:50 PM
PASADENA, Calif. -- NASA's Dawn spacecraft on Saturday became the first probe ever to enter orbit around an object in the main asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter.

Dawn will study the asteroid, named Vesta, for a year before departing for a second destination, a dwarf planet named Ceres, in July 2012. Observations will provide unprecedented data to help scientists understand the earliest chapter of our solar system. The data also will help pave the way for future human space missions.

"Today, we celebrate an incredible exploration milestone as a spacecraft enters orbit around an object in the main asteroid belt for the first time," NASA Administrator Charles Bolden said. "Dawn's study of the asteroid Vesta marks a major scientific accomplishment and also points the way to the future destinations where people will travel in the coming years. President Obama has directed NASA to send astronauts to an asteroid by 2025, and Dawn is gathering crucial data that will inform that mission."

The spacecraft relayed information to confirm it entered Vesta's orbit, but the precise time this milestone occurred is unknown at this time. The time of Dawn's capture depended on Vesta's mass and gravity, which only has been estimated until now. The asteroid's mass determines the strength of its gravitational pull. If Vesta is more massive, its gravity is stronger, meaning it pulled Dawn into orbit sooner. If the asteroid is less massive, its gravity is weaker and it would have taken the spacecraft longer to achieve orbit. With Dawn now in orbit, the science team can take more accurate measurements of Vesta's gravity and gather more accurate timeline information.

Dawn, which launched in September 2007, is on track to become the first spacecraft to orbit two solar system destinations beyond Earth. The mission to Vesta and Ceres is managed by NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif., for the agency's Science Mission Directorate in Washington. Dawn is a project of the directorate's Discovery Program, which is managed by NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Ala.

The University of California, Los Angeles, is responsible for the overall Dawn mission science. Orbital Sciences Corp. of Dulles, Va., designed and built the spacecraft. The German Aerospace Center, the Max Planck Institute for Solar System Research, the Italian Space Agency and the Italian National Astrophysical Institute are part of the mission's team.

For information about the Dawn mission, visit:

http://www.nasa.gov/dawn


To follow the mission on Twitter, visit:

http://www.twitter.com/NASA_Dawn

گلناز
07-17-2011, 07:52 PM
PASADENA, Calif. -- NASA's Dawn spacecraft on Saturday became the first probe ever to enter orbit around an object in the main asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter.

Dawn will study the asteroid, named Vesta, for a year before departing for a second destination, a dwarf planet named Ceres, in July 2012. Observations will provide unprecedented data to help scientists understand the earliest chapter of our solar system. The data also will help pave the way for future human space missions.

"Today, we celebrate an incredible exploration milestone as a spacecraft enters orbit around an object in the main asteroid belt for the first time," NASA Administrator Charles Bolden said. "Dawn's study of the asteroid Vesta marks a major scientific accomplishment and also points the way to the future destinations where people will travel in the coming years. President Obama has directed NASA to send astronauts to an asteroid by 2025, and Dawn is gathering crucial data that will inform that mission."

The spacecraft relayed information to confirm it entered Vesta's orbit, but the precise time this milestone occurred is unknown at this time. The time of Dawn's capture depended on Vesta's mass and gravity, which only has been estimated until now. The asteroid's mass determines the strength of its gravitational pull. If Vesta is more massive, its gravity is stronger, meaning it pulled Dawn into orbit sooner. If the asteroid is less massive, its gravity is weaker and it would have taken the spacecraft longer to achieve orbit. With Dawn now in orbit, the science team can take more accurate measurements of Vesta's gravity and gather more accurate timeline information.

Dawn, which launched in September 2007, is on track to become the first spacecraft to orbit two solar system destinations beyond Earth. The mission to Vesta and Ceres is managed by NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif., for the agency's Science Mission Directorate in Washington. Dawn is a project of the directorate's Discovery Program, which is managed by NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Ala.

The University of California, Los Angeles, is responsible for the overall Dawn mission science. Orbital Sciences Corp. of Dulles, Va., designed and built the spacecraft. The German Aerospace Center, the Max Planck Institute for Solar System Research, the Italian Space Agency and the Italian National Astrophysical Institute are part of the mission's team.

For information about the Dawn mission, visit:

http://www.nasa.gov/dawn


To follow the mission on Twitter, visit:

http://www.twitter.com/NASA_Dawn

گلناز
07-17-2011, 07:52 PM
HOUSTON – All four Atlantis crew members worked Saturday to move equipment and supplies between the International Space Station and the multi-purpose logistics module Raffaello.

Commander Chris Ferguson, Pilot Doug Hurley and Mission Specialists Sandra Magnus and Rex Walheim, with help from their station colleagues, were nearing the home stretch in transfer activities. Most of the 9,400 pounds of equipment brought up in Raffaello is aboard the station, and the loading of 5,700 pounds of return items is well under way. Raffaello is scheduled to be unberthed from the station’s Harmony node and returned to the shuttle’s cargo bay early Monday.

Early Saturday Ferguson and Hurley fixed a latch on a door in the floor of Atlantis’ middeck. The air revitalization system compartment beneath the door houses lithium hydroxide canisters, used to scrub carbon dioxide from the shuttle’s cabin atmosphere.

The system will be needed once hatches between Atlantis and the station are closed about 8:30 a.m. CDT Monday. Atlantis is scheduled to undock from the station about 1:30 a.m. Tuesday, and land at Kennedy Space Center just before 5 a.m. on Thursday.

Magnus spent about an hour and a half Saturday morning taking microbial air samples in the station. They will be returned in Atlantis for study and analysis.

Walheim continued his work with spacewalking tools and equipment. Some will be left on the station, and be available for use in upcoming Russian spacewalks from the Pirs docking compartment. It will be about a year before the next scheduled U.S. spacewalk from the station’s Quest airlock takes place.

The astronauts also provided a recorded message as a tribute to Atlantis, the entire Space Shuttle Program and team. In the message, Ferguson spoke about the U.S. flag displayed behind them that was flown on the first space shuttle mission, STS-1. It was flown on this mission to be presented to the space station crew and it will remain displayed onboard the station until the next crew launched from the U.S. retrieves it for return to Earth. It will fly from Earth again, with the next crew that launches from the U.S. on a journey of exploration beyond Earth orbit.

The tribute video is available online at:

http://www.nasa.gov/multimedia/videogallery/index.html?media_id=101615961

گلناز
07-17-2011, 07:53 PM
HOUSTON – After several days of wakeup calls from celebrities, the STS-135 crew kicked off their 10th day in space with a message from some of the stars of the Space Shuttle Program.

“Good morning Atlantis, from your friends at Stennis Space Center,” Stennis employees said in a message recorded before launch. “It’s time to fire up your engines – laissez les bons temps rouler!”

“Laissez les bons temps rouler,” is a Cajun French phrase that translates “Let the good times roll.” Stennis Space Center, located in southern Mississippi, 50 miles from New Orleans, is home to the test stands that verified each of the main engines that helped propel space shuttles into low Earth orbit – including the three used in the STS-135 launch – was in good working order before it was installed.

The message was fittingly preceded by the wakeup song, “Celebration” by Kool and the Gang, which was played for Mission Specialist Sandy Magnus. The wakeup call came at 9:59 p.m.

Flight day 10 will see the wrap up of transfer work inside the Raffaello multipurpose logistics module, before the crew closes its hatch and returns it to the shuttle’s cargo bay on Monday. They started the day with 96 percent of the work inside Raffaello done.

In addition, Commander Chris Ferguson and Pilot Doug Hurley are scheduled at 5:09 a.m. to answer videotaped questions from students at NASA Explorer Schools across the country, in the last interactive educational event with a space shuttle crew.

Following that, the crew will have two hours of off duty time.

The next status report will be issued at the end of the crew’s day or earlier if warranted. The crew is scheduled to go to sleep just before 1:30 p.m.

stargazer
09-14-2011, 12:29 PM
Space Farm 7 and NASA: A Corn Maze Experience

09.12.11


[/URL][URL="http://www.nasa.gov/images/content/586165main_maze_226.jpg"]http://www.nasa.gov/images/content/586165main_maze_226.jpg (http://www.nasa.gov/images/content/586165main_maze_226.jpg)

The 2011 maze by Dewberry Farm of Brookshire, Texas, honors NASA's 50 years of human space flight and Houston's Johnson Space Center. Image Courtesy of Space Farm 7. Space Farm 7 is a celebration of NASA's space, science and exploration programs that both honors the agency's missions and features a contest, the grand prize winner of which will win four tickets to visit the Kennedy Space Center and dine with an astronaut.

Each of the seven participating farms planted corn mazes that feature designs celebrating NASA's achievements and each of the Space Farms are paired with the closest NASA center in order to highlight that region’s contribution to the agency. The farms are open to the public and feature NASA-related educational games and activities. This outreach project will expose participants to NASA's space exploration and other missions.

Visit Space Farm 7 (http://www.spacefarm7.com/) to vote on your favorite maze. A winner will be selected at random in October.


From: NASA (http://www.nasa.gov/topics/nasalife/index.html)

stargazer
11-22-2011, 03:50 PM
Cassini Chronicles Life of Saturn's Giant Storm



ScienceDaily (Nov. 21, 2011) — New images and animated movies from NASA's Cassini spacecraft chronicle the birth and evolution of the colossal storm that ravaged the northern face of Saturn for nearly a year.



[/URL]http://www.sciencedaily.com/images/2011/11/111121135919-large.jpg (http://www.sciencedaily.com/images/2011/11/111121135919-large.jpg)


http://forum.avastarco.com/images/2011/11/111121135919.jpg (http://forum.avastarco.com/images/2011/11/111121135919.jpg)

Churning Psychedelia: These two false-color views from NASA's Cassini spacecraft show detailed patterns that change during one Saturn day within the huge storm in the planet's northern hemisphere. (Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Space Science Institute)


These new full-color mosaics and animations show the storm from its emergence as a tiny spot in a single image almost one year ago, on Dec. 5, 2010, through its subsequent growth into a storm so large it completely encircled the planet by late January 2011.....


Read full story from this address:
[URL]http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2011/11/111121135919.htm

گلناز
11-22-2011, 06:15 PM
CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. -- NASA has updated the news conferences, events and operating hours for the press site at NASA's Kennedy Space Center, Fla., for the agency's Mars Science Laboratory (MSL) Curiosity rover launch.

MSL is scheduled to liftoff at 10:02 a.m. EST on Nov. 26 from Space Launch Complex 41 at nearby Cape Canaveral Air Force Station (CCAFS).

NASA Television's countdown launch commentary begins at 7:30 a.m. on Nov. 26. That also is when a NASA blog will begin providing countdown updates. Originating from CCAFS Hangar AE, the blog is the definitive Internet source for information leading up to liftoff.

Detailed lists of news briefing times and participants, prelaunch media tours and photo opportunities and hours of operation for Kennedy's press site are available at:



http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/msl/news/index.html


The Curiosity rover has 10 science instruments to search for evidence about whether Mars had environments favorable for microbial life, including the chemical ingredients for life. The rover will use a laser to look inside rocks and release their gasses so its spectrometer can analyze and send the data back to Earth.

Free wireless Internet access currently is not available at Kennedy's press site. Media representatives must bring their own equipment for wireless connectivity.

For NASA TV streaming video, scheduling and downlink information, visit:



http://www.nasa.gov/ntv



For the latest online information on the MSL mission, visit:




http://www.nasa.gov/msl

گلناز
11-23-2011, 11:27 AM
MOFFETT FIELD, Calif. — News media are invited to observe a live televised broadcast of the launch of NASA's Mars Science Laboratory (MSL) spacecraft with the Curiosity rover on Saturday, Nov. 26, 2011, in the Exploration Center at NASA's Ames Research Center, Moffett Field, Calif.

The spacecraft is scheduled to launch from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida. The launch window opens at 7:02 a.m. PST, and the Exploration Center at Ames will open at 6:30 a.m. PST. The launch will be preceded with brief comments from NASA scientist Tori Hoehler, who will share information about the upcoming mission. The spacecraft is scheduled to arrive at Mars in August 2012.

Curiosity has 10 science instruments to search for evidence about whether Mars has had environments favorable for microbial life, including the chemical ingredients for life. Ames scientist David Blake is the principal investigator for CheMin, an X-ray diffraction and fluorescence instrument designed to identify and quantify the minerals in rocks and soils, and to measure bulk composition. CheMin data will be useful in the search for potential mineral biosignatures, energy sources for life or indicators of past habitable environments.

All of the science instruments on Curiosity utilize Mars Science Laboratory InterfaCE (MSLICE), a software tool developed to plan the actions of the Mars rover. The planning software ensures that mission scientists can work closely with rover and instrument engineers to create a plan that is both safe for the rover to perform and maximizes scientific research. NASA Ames designed and developed the planning and scheduling software for MSLICE.

NASA Ames also played a part preparing MSL for its entry into the Red Planet's atmosphere next year. MSL will be protected from Mars’ atmosphere by a unique thermal protection system consisting of tiles made of phenolic impregnated carbon ablator (PICA) material invented at NASA Ames.

Embedded in the MSL spacecraft's heat shield is a set of sensors named MSL Entry, Descent, and Landing Instrument (MEDLI) Suite to measure atmospheric conditions and performance of the heat shield. MEDLI consists of seven pressure sensors and seven plugs with multiple temperature sensors. The instrument suite was designed and developed by NASA Langley Research Center, Hampton, Va, and NASA Ames designed and built the thermal sensing plugs. NASA Ames also designed and performed the qualification and certification testing of the spacecraft's thermal protection system.


On Saturday, Nov. 26 NASA TV coverage of the launch will begin at 4:30 a.m. PST. Recorded launch status reports will be available starting Nov. 21 on the Kennedy Space Center media phone line, 1- 321-867-2525. Extensive prelaunch and launch day coverage of the liftoff of the Mars Science Laboratory spacecraft aboard an Atlas V rocket will be available on NASA's home page: http://www.nasa.gov (http://www.nasa.gov/)


Reporters interested in viewing the live broadcast at NASA Ames must send requests for media credentials to Jessica Culler, Jessica.s.culler@nasa.gov or call 650-604-4789 by 1 p.m. PST Friday, Nov. 25, 2011.

NASA's Exploration Center is the large white dome located at the main gate of NASA's Ames Research Center. To reach NASA Ames, take U.S. Highway 101 to the Moffett Field, NASA Parkway exit and drive east on Moffett Boulevard towards the main gate and bear right into the parking lot. For more information about the Mars Science Laboratory, visit:


http://www.nasa.gov/msl

For information about the NASA Ames, visit:

http://www.nasa.gov/centers/ames






- end -

گلناز
11-25-2011, 09:08 AM
[/URL]http://www.nasa.gov/images/content/601379main1_aurora_kuenzli-670.jpg (http://www.nasa.gov/images/content/601379main1_aurora_kuenzli-670.jpg)

View larger (http://www.nasa.gov/images/content/601366main_aurora_kuenzli-orig_full.jpg)
Auroras are but one part of a complex system of magnetic fields and charged particles surrounding Earth. Instruments on FASTSAT are beginning to paint a picture of how the different components act in concert. Image courtesy of Bud Kuenzli

Space around Earth is anything but a barren vacuum. The area seethes with electric and magnetic fields that change constantly. Charged particles flow through, moving energy around, creating electric currents, and producing the aurora. Many of these particles stream in from the solar wind, starting out 93 million miles away on the surface of the sun. But some areas are dominated by particles of a more local source: Earth's atmosphere.

These are the particles being watched by FASTSAT’s Miniature Imager for Neutral Ionospheric Atoms and Magnetospheric Electrons (MINI-ME) instrument. For one well-defined event, scientists have compared MINI-ME's observations to those from two other instruments. The event shows a detailed picture of this dynamic region, with a host of interrelated phenomena -- such as electric current and outflowing particles – occurring together.

"We're seeing structures that are fairly consistent throughout a handful of instruments," says Michael Collier at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md., who is the principal investigator for MINI-ME. "We put all of these observations together and it tells a story greater than the sum of its parts."

Unlike the hotter hydrogen coming from the sun, Earth’s upper atmosphere generally supplies cooler oxygen ions that course outward along Earth's magnetic field lines. This "ion outflow" occurs continuously, but is especially strong during periods when there is more solar activity such as solar flares and coronal mass ejections that burst off the sun and move toward Earth. Such activity drives oxygen ions out of our planet’s upper atmosphere, particularly in regions where aurora displays are strong.

"These ion outflow events are important because they help us understand the space weather environment around Earth," says Goddard's Doug Rowland who is the principal investigator for FASTSAT's Plasma Impedance Spectrum Analyzer, or PISA instrument. "The heavy ions flowing away from Earth can act as a brake, or damper, on incoming energy from the solar wind. The flow also indicates ways in which planets can lose their atmospheres – something that happens slowly on Earth, but more quickly on smaller planets with weaker magnetic fields, like Mars."

MINI-ME has been successfully spotting such outflows since the instrument first began to collect data in the winter of 2010. The instrument counts ions as it moves through a part of Earth's atmosphere called the ionosphere. This is the region where the particles gain enough speed and energy to overcome Earth's gravity, so it's an ideal place to study the first step in the outflow process.

http://www.nasa.gov/images/content/601341main1_fastsat-670.jpg (http://www.nasa.gov/images/content/601341main1_fastsat-670.jpg)

› View larger (http://www.nasa.gov/images/content/505229main_FASTSAT_illustration_full.jpg)
This artist's concept drawing shows the Fast, Affordable, Science and Technology SATellite (FASTSAT) -- NASA's first microsatellite, which launched on November 19, 2010 and has been collecting data on the dynamic atmosphere surrounding Earth. Credit: NASA

Late on March 31, 2011, the FASTSAT spacecraft flew through an ion outflow with well-defined areas of increased fast moving, or "energetic," particles.

Simultaneous observations from PISA, which measures the density of material in the atmosphere, also showed that this was a highly structured auroral zone. In addition, the scientists turned to the National Science Foundation's Active Magnetosphere and Planetary Electrodynamics Response Experiment (AMPERE), a mission managed by the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory, which measures current flow and magnetic features through a network of instruments placed on commercial satellites owned by Iridium Communications. AMPERE data showed current structures that were also consistent with what is expected for an auroral zone.

"This is just one event," says Collier. "But it helps confirm the idea that the current and ion-outflows are all connected. As we continue to go through the data, there will be many more events to follow. We'd like to be able to pin down the origin of all these mechanisms in the ionosphere."

Over time, data like this will allow scientists to determine where these ions come from, what drives them, and how their intensity varies with incoming solar activity

[URL]http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/smallsats/fastsat/nearEarth-region.html

گلناز
11-25-2011, 09:25 PM
Highlights Local Firm on Eve of Small Business Saturday

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. -- NASA Administrator Charles Bolden toured Kegman Inc. of Melbourne, Fla., one company that supplied technology and engineering support to the Mars Science Laboratory (MSL) Curiosity rover.

Bolden's tour of Kegman coincided with the Second Annual Small Business Saturday, a day to support the local small businesses that create jobs, boost the economy and preserve neighborhoods around the country.

"On Saturday, NASA will be launching our most sophisticated science laboratory to date, the Mars Science Laboratory, and the work of dozens of small businesses helped make this happen," Bolden said. "Even in a project as expansive and with dramatic long-range impact, small businesses like Kegman and nearly two dozen other small businesses around the nation are playing a large role."

Kegman Inc. is an economically disadvantaged, woman-owned, veteran-owned small business. It monitors and analyzes the wind impact during launch preparations.

The data is used by the mission's weather officer to determine whether conditions are right to launch the Curiosity rover. The $2.5 billion laboratory will study past and present potentially habitable environments on Mars after it lands on the planet in August 2012.

NASA officials estimate more than 40 American companies, universities and organizations with over 5,000 workers in 31 states and nine countries contributed to the development and construction of Curiosity. Of those companies, at least two dozen are small businesses.

"Curiosity's mission is to get Mars to give up its secrets," Bolden said. "But we can't get Mars to talk without the contributions of companies like Kegman who contribute technology, innovation, component parts and know-how to the project."

For more information about the Mars Science Laboratory launch and mission, visit:


http://www.nasa.gov/msl


For more information about Small Business Saturday, visit:


http://www.smallbusinesssaturday.com (http://www.smallbusinesssaturday.com/)



- end -

گلناز
11-28-2011, 01:33 PM
A new NASA Hubble Space Telescope image shows globular cluster NGC 1846, a spherical collection of hundreds of thousands of stars in the outer halo of the Large Magellanic Cloud, a neighboring dwarf galaxy of the Milky Way that can be seen from the southern hemisphere.

http://www.nasa.gov/images/content/605786main1_p1135ay-670.jpg (http://www.nasa.gov/images/content/605786main1_p1135ay-670.jpg)

A new NASA Hubble Space Telescope image shows globular cluster NGC 1846, a spherical collection of hundreds of thousands of stars in the outer halo of the Large Magellanic Cloud, a neighboring dwarf galaxy of the Milky Way that can be seen from the southern hemisphere. (Credit: NASA and the Hubble Heritage Team, STScI/AURA; Acknowledgment: P. Goudfrooij, STScI)
› Larger image (http://www.nasa.gov/images/content/605787main_p1135ay.jpg) | globular cluster alone (http://www.nasa.gov/images/content/605788main_p1135b1k.jpg)

Aging bright stars in the cluster glow in intense shades of red and blue. The majority of middle-aged stars, several billions of years old, are whitish in color. A myriad of far distant background galaxies of varying shapes and structure are scattered around the image.

The most intriguing object, however, doesn’t seem to belong in the cluster. It is a faint green bubble near the bottom center of the image. This so-called ‘planetary nebula’ is the aftermath of the death of a star. The burned-out central star can be seen inside the bubble. It is uncertain whether the planetary nebula is a member of NGC 1846, or simply lies along the line of sight to the cluster. Measurements of the motion of the cluster stars and the planetary nebula’s central star suggest it might be a cluster member.

This Hubble image was taken with the Advanced Camera for Surveys in January of 2006. The cluster was observed in filters that isolate blue, green, and infrared starlight. As a member of the Large Magellanic Cloud, NGC 1846 is located roughly 160,000 light-years away in the direction of the constellation Doradus. The Hubble Space Telescope is a project of international cooperation between NASA and the European Space Agency. NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center (http://www.nasa.gov/goddard) 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.

گلناز
12-02-2011, 03:28 PM
http://www.nasa.gov/images/content/607170main1_award20111130-673.jpg (http://www.nasa.gov/images/content/607170main1_award20111130-673.jpg)

Artist concept of NASA's MESSENGER, Mars Science Laboratory and Dawn missions. Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech › Larger view (http://www.nasa.gov/images/content/607172main_award20111130-full.jpg)



PASADENA, Calif. -- NASA's Dawn, Mars Science Laboratory and MESSENGER missions have earned recognition from Popular Science magazine as innovations worthy of the publication's "Best of What's New" Award in the aviation and space category.
Dawn and Mars Science Laboratory are managed by NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif. Dawn is currently orbiting and exploring the massive main-belt asteroid Vesta. The Mars Science Laboratory and its Curiosity rover launched on Nov. 26 on a journey to the Red Planet, where the rover will look for signs of past or present habitability.
The MESSENGER mission is currently orbiting Mercury.
More information on the award winners is online at: http://www.popsci.com/bown/2011/category/aviation-amp-space .

JPL, a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, manages Dawn and Mars Science Laboratory for NASA's Science Mission Directorate in Washington. Dawn is a project of the directorate's Discovery Program, managed by NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Ala. UCLA is responsible for overall Dawn mission science. Orbital Sciences Corp. in Dulles, Va., designed and built the spacecraft. The German Aerospace Center, the Max Planck Institute for Solar System Research, the Italian Space Agency and the Italian National Astrophysical Institute are international partners on the mission team.
Sean Solomon, of the Carnegie Institution of Washington, leads the MESSENGER mission as principal investigator. The Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory built and operates the MESSENGER spacecraft for NASA.

رخساره روشنی
01-04-2012, 11:44 PM
After a four and a half day journey from the Earth, the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter, or LRO, has
successfully entered orbit around the moon. Engineers at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md., confirmed the spacecraft's lunar orbit insertion at 6:27 a.m. EDT Tuesday.

During transit to the moon, engineers performed a mid-course correction to get the spacecraft in the proper position to reach its lunar destination. Since the moon is always moving, the spacecraft shot for a target point ahead of the moon. When close to the moon, LRO used its rocket motor to slow down until the gravity of the moon caught the spacecraft in lunar orbit.
"Lunar orbit insertion is a crucial milestone for the mission," said Cathy Peddie, LRO deputy project manager at Goddard. "The LRO mission cannot begin until the moon captures us. Once we enter the moon's orbit, we can begin to buildup the dataset needed to understand in greater detail the lunar topography, features and resources. We are so proud to be a part of this exciting mission and NASA's planned return to the moon."

A series of four engine burns over the next four days will put the satellite into its commissioning
phase orbit. During the commissioning phase each of its seven instruments is checked out and brought online. The commissioning phase will end approximately 60 days after launch, when LRO will use its engines to transition to its primary mission orbit.
For its primary mission, LRO will orbit above the moon at about 31 miles, or 50 kilometers, for one year. The spacecraft's instruments will help scientists compile high resolution, three-dimensional maps of the lunar surface and also survey it at many spectral wavelengths.
The satellite will explore the moon's deepest craters, examining permanently sunlit and shadowed regions, and provide understanding of the effects of lunar radiation on humans. LRO will return more data about the moon than any previous mission.

رخساره روشنی
01-07-2012, 07:16 PM
Across much of the United States, there's not much snow (http://www.cnn.com/2012/01/06/travel/ski-season-seeking-snow/index.html?hpt=hp_t3) on the ground. There is, however, ice in the air. You can see it around the Moon


http://www.spaceweather.com/images2012/07jan12/Dan-Bush1_strip.jpg (http://www.spaceweather.com/images2012/07jan12/Dan-Bush1_strip.jpg)

"
There was a remarkable halo around the Moon this Friday evening," says photographer Dan Bush of Albany, Missouri. "It was the most vivid and long lasting one I've seen in 15+ years."

Moon haloes are caused by ice crystals (http://www.atoptics.co.uk/halo/common.htm) in cirrus clouds 5 to 10 km above the ground. Crystals catch the light of the Moon and bend its rays into a luminous ring (http://www.atoptics.co.uk/halo/circmoon.htm), as shown above. With the full Moon only two days away, now is a good time to be alert for Moon haloes.

more images: from Francesc Pruneda (http://spaceweather.com/submissions/large_image_popup.php?image_name=Francesc-Pruneda-20111209_halo1_1325946496.jpg) of Palamós, Catalonia, Spain; from Chris Hetlage (http://spaceweather.com/submissions/large_image_popup.php?image_name=Chris-Hetlage-Winter-halo-under-Orion-over-DAV_med_1325911229.jpg) of Deerlick Astronomy Village, GA; from Eddie Ledbetter (http://spaceweather.com/submissions/large_image_popup.php?image_name=Eddie-Ledbetter-moon-halo21_1325919098.jpg) of Register, GA; from Tanner Schaaf (http://spaceweather.com/submissions/large_image_popup.php?image_name=Tanner-Schaaf-IMG_0482watermarkRESIZED_1325870125.jpg) of Kingston, Minnesota; from Jim Tegerdine (http://spaceweather.com/submissions/large_image_popup.php?image_name=Jim-Tegerdine-IMG_6817_1325739055.jpg) of Marysville, Washington; from Guy (http://spaceweather.com/submissions/large_image_popup.php?image_name=Guy-jupitermoon_1325868150.jpg) of Masset, B.C., Canada

source : www.spaceweather.com (http://www.spaceweather.com)

faezeh_kh
01-19-2012, 01:41 PM
The High Frequency Instrument aboard the Planck space telescope has completed its survey of the remnant light from the Big Bang explosion that created our universe. The sensor ran out of coolant on Jan. 14, as expected, ending its ability to detect this faint energy.

"The High Frequency Instrument has reached the end of its observing life, but the Low Frequency Instrument will continue observing for another year, and analysis of data from both instruments is still in the early phase," said Charles Lawrence, the U.S. Planck project scientist at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif. "The scientific payoff from the High Frequency Instrument's brilliantly successful operation is still to come."

NASA plays an important role in the Planck mission, which is led by the European Space Agency. In addition to helping with the analysis of the data, NASA contributed several key components to the mission itself. JPL built the state-of-the-art detectors that allowed the High Frequency Instrument to detect icy temperatures down to nearly absolute zero, the coldest temperature theoretically attainable.

Less than half a million years after the universe was created 13.7 billion years ago, the initial fireball cooled to temperatures of about 4,000 degrees Celsius (about 7,200 degrees Fahrenheit), releasing bright, visible light. As the universe has expanded, it has cooled dramatically, and its early light has faded and shifted to microwave wavelengths.

By studying patterns imprinted in that light today, scientists hope to understand the Big Bang and the very early universe, as it appeared long before galaxies and stars first formed.

Planck has been measuring these patterns by surveying the whole sky with its High Frequency Instrument and its Low Frequency Instrument. Combined, they give Planck unparalleled wavelength coverage and the ability to resolve faint details.

Launched in May 2009, the minimum requirement for success was for the spacecraft to complete two whole surveys of the sky. In the end, Planck worked perfectly in completing not two, but five whole-sky surveys with both instruments.

The Low Frequency Instrument will continue surveying the sky for a large part of 2012, providing data to improve the quality of the final results. The first results on the Big Bang and very early universe will not come for another year.

Read the full European Space Agency news release at http://www.esa.int/SPECIALS/Planck/SEMXWNMXDXG_0.html .

Planck is a European Space Agency mission, with significant participation from NASA. NASA's Planck Project Office is based at JPL. JPL contributed mission-enabling technology for both of Planck's science instruments. European, Canadian and U.S. Planck scientists will work together to analyze the Planck data. More information is online at http://www.nasa.gov/planck and http://www.esa.int/planck.

رخساره روشنی
01-24-2012, 08:43 PM
Big sunspot 1402 erupted on Jan. 23rd, producing a strong M9-class solar flare and a fast-moving coronal mass ejection (CME). Analysts at the Goddard Space Weather Lab say the CME should reach Earth on Jan. 24th at 14:18 UT (+/- 7 hr) and Mars a little more than a day later. Strong geomagnetic storms are possible when the cloud reaches Earth. Our magnetic field is still reverberating from a CME impact on Jan. 22nd, so another blow could spark impressive auroras at high latitudes. Sky watchers in northern Europe, Canada, Alaska, and northern-tier US states such as the Dakotas, Minnesota and Wisconsin should be alert for Northern Lights.
http://www.spaceweather.com/images2012/23jan12/m9.jpg

lllll l lll lll l l ll
02-03-2012, 11:25 AM
2nd Optical Data Reduction Workshop

Institute for Studies in Theoretical Physics and Mathematics
School of Astronomy and Astrophysics
18th – 20th Bahman 1390
7th – 9th February 2012
Tehran, IRAN

Application Deadline
11th Bahman 1390
31st January 2012


Scientific and Organizing Committee

Ehsan Kourkchi (IPM)
Farhang Habibi (IPM)
Alireza Molaeinejad (IPM)
Saeed Tavassoli (IPM)
Hanieh Kiaee (IPM)
Anoushiravan Rouzrokh (IPM)


Program & Topics

Imaging and Photometry
An introduction to Astronomical
Imaging and Data Reduction

Methods and Tools
1- IRAF data reduction facilities
2- SExtractor (Source extraction and
catalog production)
3- Data Analysis

HERE (http://www.astro.ipm.ir/odrw2/ODRW2_Poster.pdf)

Astronomy
02-03-2012, 11:31 AM
Hubble Zooms in on a Magnified Galaxy

Thanks to the presence of a natural "zoom lens" in space, NASA's Hubble Space Telescope got a uniquely close-up look at the brightest "magnified" galaxy yet discovered.
This observation provides a unique opportunity to study the physical properties of a galaxy vigorously forming stars when the universe was only one-third its present age.
A so-called gravitational lens is produced when space is warped by a massive foreground object, whether it is the Sun, a black hole, or an entire cluster of galaxies. The light from more-distant background objects is distorted, brightened, and magnified as it passes through this gravitationally disturbed region.

[/URL]http://imgsrc.hubblesite.org/hu/db/images/hs-2012-08-a-web_print.jpg (http://imgsrc.hubblesite.org/hu/db/images/hs-2012-08-a-web_print.jpg)

A team of astronomers led by Jane Rigby of NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md., aimed Hubble at one of the most striking examples of gravitational lensing, a nearly 90-degree arc of light in the galaxy cluster RCS2 032727-132623. Hubble's view of the distant background galaxy is significantly more detailed than could ever be achieved without the help of the gravitational lens.
The results have been accepted for publication in The Astrophysical Journal, in a paper led by Keren Sharon of the Kavli Institute for Cosmological Physics at the University of Chicago. Professor Michael Gladders and graduate student Eva Wuyts of the University of Chicago were also key team members.
The presence of the lens helps show how galaxies evolved from 10 billion years ago to today. While nearby galaxies are fully mature and are at the tail end of their star-formation histories, distant galaxies tell us about the universe's formative years. The light from those early events is just now arriving at Earth. Very distant galaxies are not only faint but also appear small on the sky. Astronomers would like to see how star formation progressed deep within these galaxies. Such details would be beyond the reach of Hubble's vision were it not for the magnification made possible by gravity in the intervening lens region.
In 2006 a team of astronomers using the Very Large Telescope in Chile measured the arc's distance and calculated that the galaxy appears more than three times brighter than previously discovered lensed galaxies. In 2011 astronomers used Hubble to image and analyze the lensed galaxy with the observatory's Wide Field Camera 3.
The distorted image of the galaxy is repeated several times in the foreground lensing cluster, as is typical of gravitational lenses. The challenge for astronomers was to reconstruct what the galaxy really looked like, were it not distorted by the cluster's funhouse-mirror effect.
Hubble's sharp vision allowed astronomers to remove the distortions and reconstruct the galaxy image as it would normally look. The reconstruction revealed regions of star formation glowing like bright Christmas tree bulbs. These are much brighter than any star-formation region in our Milky Way galaxy.
Through spectroscopy, the spreading out of light into its constituent colors, the team plans to analyze these star-forming regions from the inside out to better understand why they are forming so many stars.

[url]www.Hubblesite.org

رخساره روشنی
02-08-2012, 10:38 PM
Catching up on my blog reading today, I turned to "Cosmic Log," science writer Alan Boyle's must-read column on msnbc.com. Today's entry is titled "Stephen Hawking's curios explained (http://cosmiclog.msnbc.msn.com/_news/2012/01/20/10201173-stephen-hawkings-curios-explained)." To celebrate Hawking's 70th birthday, the Science Museum in London is displaying the keepsakes he displays in his office and Alan reported on some of the individual objects and what they mean to Hawking.


Scrolling down the page, I stopped at the third still image when I noticed a glass model of the planet Saturn that looked awfully familiar.


"Donna!" I yelled across the room to Donna Stevens, the keeper of all things artistic at The Planetary Society. "Look at this! Is it what I think it is?"


"OMG! It's our Cosmos Award!" Donna was excited. "I'll have to tell the artists who made it." And she ran to her computer to send them an e-mail.


"Bill, come here!" I yelled again, this time to Bill Nye, who sits in the office next to mine. "You have to see this."


"Look at that," Bill said, bending over my computer screen. "I think I've seen that planet somewhere before. Like, when we presented the Cosmos Award to Stephen in Cambridge. It was almost two years ago."


Mat Kaplan, our Media Producer, looked over Bill's shoulder at the image on my computer screen. A quiet sort of person, Mat simply said, "Wow!"


The glass model of Saturn represents the Cosmos Award for Public Presentation of Science, given by The Planetary Society to those who best exemplify the standards set by the Society's co-founder, Carl Sagan, and his landmark television series, "Cosmos." In honor of his many engagingly written science books and imaginative television programs, the 2010 Cosmos Award went to Stephen Hawking



http://planetary.org/image/cosmos_hawking.jpg (http://planetary.org/image/cosmos_hawking.jpg).




10 Cosmos Award Ceremony


Bijal Thakore, Bill Nye, Jim Bell, Dan Geraci, Ann Druyan, Neil deGrasse Tyson, and Louis Friedman with Stephen Hawking and the Cosmos Award

. Credit: The Planetary Society
source : planetary.org/

Astronomy
02-16-2012, 04:27 PM
Astronomers Watch Delayed Broadcast of a Powerful Stellar Eruption
Astronomers are watching a delayed broadcast of a spectacular outburst from the unstable, behemoth double-star system Eta Carinae, an event initially seen on Earth nearly 170 years ago.
Dubbed the "Great Eruption," the outburst first caught the attention of sky watchers in 1837 and was observed through 1858. But astronomers didn't have sophisticated science instruments to accurately record the star system's petulant activity.



http://imgsrc.hubblesite.org/hu/db/images/hs-2012-12-f-web_print.jpg (http://imgsrc.hubblesite.org/hu/db/images/hs-2012-12-f-web_print.jpg)




Luckily for today's astronomers, some of the light from the eruption took an indirect path to Earth and is just arriving now, providing an opportunity to analyze the outburst in detail. The wayward light was heading in a different direction, away from our planet, when it bounced off dust clouds lingering far from the turbulent stars and was rerouted to Earth, an effect called a "light echo." Because of its longer path, the light reached Earth 170 years later than the light that arrived directly.
The observations of Eta Carinae's light echo are providing new insight into the behavior of powerful massive stars on the brink of detonation. The views of the nearby erupting star reveal some unexpected results, which will force astronomers to modify physical models of the outburst.
"When the eruption was seen on Earth 170 years ago, there were no cameras capable of recording the event," explained the study's leader, Armin Rest of the Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore, Md. "Everything astronomers have known to date about Eta Carinae's outburst is from eyewitness accounts. Modern observations with science instruments were made years after the eruption actually happened. It's as if nature has left behind a surveillance tape of the event, which we are now just beginning to watch. We can trace it year by year to see how the outburst changed."
The team's paper will appear Feb. 16 in a letter to the journal Nature.
Located 7,500 light-years from Earth, Eta Carinae is one of the largest and brightest star systems in our Milky Way galaxy. Although the chaotic duo is known for its petulant outbursts, the Great Eruption was the biggest ever observed. During the 20-year episode, Eta Carinae shed some 20 solar masses and became the second brightest star in the sky. Some of the outflow formed the system's twin giant lobes. Before the epic event, the stellar pair was 140 times heftier than our Sun.
Because Eta Carinae is relatively nearby, astronomers have used a variety of telescopes, including the Hubble Space Telescope, to document its escapades. The team's study involved a mix of visible-light and spectroscopic observations from ground-based telescopes.
The observations mark the first time astronomers have used spectroscopy to analyze a light echo from a star undergoing powerful recurring eruptions, though they have measured this unique phenomenon around exploding stars called supernovae. Spectroscopy captures a star's "fingerprints," providing details about its behavior, including the temperature and speed of the ejected material.
The delayed broadcast is giving astronomers a unique look at the outburst and turning up some surprises. The turbulent star system does not behave like other stars of its class. Eta Carinae is a member of a stellar class called Luminous Blue Variables, large, extremely bright stars that are prone to periodic outbursts. The temperature of the outflow from Eta Carinae's central region, for example, is about 8,500 degrees Fahrenheit (5,000 Kelvin), which is much cooler than that of other erupting stars. "This star really seems to be an oddball," Rest said. "Now we have to go back to the models and see what has to change to actually produce what we are measuring."
Rest's team first spotted the light echo while comparing visible-light observations he took of the stellar duo in 2010 and 2011 with the U.S. National Optical Astronomy Observatory's Blanco 4-meter telescope at the Cerro Tololo Inter-American Observatory (CTIO) in Chile. He obtained another set of CTIO observations taken in 2003 by astronomer Nathan Smith of the University of Arizona in Tucson, which helped him piece together the whole 20-year outburst.
The images revealed light that seemed to dart through and illuminate a canyon of dust surrounding the doomed star system. "I was jumping up and down when I saw the light echo," said Rest, who has studied light echoes from powerful supernova blasts. "I didn't expect to see Eta Carinae's light echo because the eruption was so much fainter than a supernova explosion. We knew it probably wasn't material moving through space. To see something this close move across space would take decades of observations. We, however, saw the movement over a year's time. That's why we thought it was probably a light echo."
Although the light in the images appears to move over time, it's really an optical illusion. Each flash of light is reaching Earth at a different time, like a person's voice echoing off the walls of a canyon.
The team followed up its study with spectroscopic observations, using the Carnegie Institution of Washington's Magellan and du Pont telescopes at Las Campanas Observatory in Chile. That study helped the astronomers decode the light, revealing the outflow's speed and temperature. The observations showed that ejected material was moving at roughly 445,000 miles an hour (more than 700,000 kilometers an hour), which matches predictions.
Rest's group monitored changes in the intensity of the light echo using the Las Cumbres Observatory Global Telescope Network's Faulkes Telescope South in Siding Spring, Australia. The team then compared those measurements with a plot astronomers in the 1800s made of the light brightening and dimming over the course of the 20-year eruption. The new measurements matched the signature of the 1843 peak in brightness.
The team will continue to follow Eta Carinae because light from the outburst is still streaming to Earth. "We should see brightening again in six months from another increase in light that was seen in 1844," Rest said. "We hope to capture light from the outburst coming from different directions so that we can get a complete picture of the eruption."
Rest's team consists of J.L. Prieto, Carnegie Observatories, Pasadena, Calif.; N.R. Walborn and H.E. Bond, Space Telescope Science Institute, Baltimore, Md.; N. Smith, Steward Observatory, University of Arizona, Tucson; F.B. Bianco and D.A. Howell, Las Cumbres Observatory Global Telescope Network, Goleta, Calif., and University of California, Santa Barbara; R. Chornock, R.J. Foley, and W. Fong, Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, Cambridge, Mass.; D.L. Welch and B. Sinnott, McMaster University, Hamilton, Ontario; M.E. Huber, Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, Md.; R.C. Smith, Cerro Tololo Inter-American Observatory, National Optical Astronomy Observatory, La Serena, Chile; I. Toledo, Atacama Large Millimeter Array (ALMA), Chile; D. Minniti, Pontifica Universidad Catolica, Santiago, Chile; and K. Mandel, Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, Cambridge, Mass., and Imperial College London, U.K.


source: www.hubblesite.org (http://www.hubblesite.org)

Astronomy
02-18-2012, 07:35 AM
Astronomers using NASA's Hubble Space Telescope may have found evidence for a cluster of young, blue stars encircling one of the first intermediate-mass black holes ever discovered. Astronomers believe the black hole may once have been at the core of a now-disintegrated unseen dwarf galaxy. The discovery of the black hole and the possible star cluster has important implications for understanding the evolution of supermassive black holes and galaxies.

Astronomers know how massive stars collapse to form black holes but it is not clear how supermassive black holes, which weigh billions of times the mass of our Sun, form in the cores of galaxies. One idea is that supermassive black holes may build up through the merger of smaller black holes.


http://imgsrc.hubblesite.org/hu/db/images/hs-2012-11-c-web_print.jpg




Sean Farrell of the Sydney Institute for Astronomy in Australia discovered a middleweight black hole in 2009 using the European Space Agency's XMM-Newton X-ray space telescope. Known as HLX-1 (Hyper-Luminous X-ray source 1), the black hole has an estimated weight of about 20,000 solar masses. It lies towards the edge of the galaxy ESO 243-49, 290 million light-years from Earth.

Farrell then observed HLX-1 simultaneously with NASA's Swift observatory in X-ray and Hubble in near-infrared, optical, and ultraviolet wavelengths. The intensity and the color of the light may indicate the presence of a young, massive cluster of blue stars, 250 light-years across, encircling the black hole. Hubble can't resolve the stars individually because the suspected cluster is too far away. The brightness and color is consistent with other clusters of stars seen in other galaxies, but some of the light may be coming from the gaseous disk around the black hole.

"Before this latest discovery we suspected that intermediate-mass black holes could exist, but now we understand where they may have come from," Farrell said. "The fact that there seems to be a very young cluster of stars indicates that the intermediate-mass black hole may have originated as the central black hole in a very-low-mass dwarf galaxy. The dwarf galaxy might then have been swallowed by the more massive galaxy, just as happens in our Milky Way."

From the signature of the X-rays, Farrell's team knew there would be some blue light emitted from the high temperature of the hot gas in the disk swirling around the black hole. They couldn't account for the red light coming from the disk. It would have to be produced by a much cooler gas, and they concluded this would most likely come from stars. The next step was to build a model that added the glow from a population of stars. These models favor the presence of a young massive cluster of stars encircling the black hole, but this interpretation is not unique, so more observations are needed. In particular, the studies led by Roberto Soria of the Australian International Centre for Radio Astronomy Research, using data from Hubble and the ground-based Very Large Telescope, show variations in the brightness of the light that a star cluster couldn't cause. This indicates that irradiation of the disk itself might be the dominant source of visible light, rather than a massive star cluster.

"What we can definitely say with our Hubble data is that we require both emission from an accretion disk and emission from a stellar population to explain the colors we see," said Farrell.

Such young clusters of stars are commonly found inside galaxies like the host galaxy, but not outside the flattened starry disk, as found with HLX-1. One possible scenario is that the HLX-1 black hole was the central black hole in a dwarf galaxy. The larger host galaxy may then have captured the dwarf. In this conjecture, most of the dwarf's stars would have been stripped away through the collision between the galaxies. At the same time, new young stars would have formed in the encounter. The interaction that compressed the gas around the black hole would then have also triggered star formation.

Farrell theorizes that the possible star cluster may be less than 200 million years old. This means that the bulk of the stars formed following the dwarf's collision with the larger galaxy. The age of the stars tells how long ago the two galaxies crashed into each other.

Farrell proposed for more observations this year. The new findings are published in the February 15 issue of The Astrophysical Journal. Soria and his colleagues have published their alternative conclusions in the January 17 online issue of the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society.


source: www.hubblesite.org

stargazer
02-18-2012, 08:25 AM
Why ancient star clusters are all the same size

15 February 2012 by Stephen Battersby

3450

Video:
http://bcove.me/n3fyatd5

Why do the universe's oldest star clusters tend to be roughly the same size? New simulations suggest it's because galaxy mergers destroyed the smaller ones.

Globular star clusters are ancient, spherical blobs of stars. Most are a few hundred thousand times the mass of our sun. The scarcity of much bigger clusters is no surprise, as they would form more rarely – but why are there so few small ones?

Using computer modelling, Diederik Kruijssen of the Max Planck Institute for Astrophysics in Garching, Germany, and his colleagues simulated the merger of two small galaxies. This process is thought to have been especially common in the early universe, when small structures were snowballing into larger ones.

The collision compressed gas into dense knots, sparking star formation and creating many new globular clusters. At the same time it seeded destruction, as the gravity of these knots disrupted other clusters – both existing and new – passing nearby. Larger clusters survived, bound tightly by their own strong gravity, but the smaller ones were ripped apart.

All large galaxies are thought to have formed in such mergers, so this might be why globular clusters everywhere fall into a narrow size range, says Kruijssen.

From: Newscientist

Astronomy
02-22-2012, 01:41 PM
NASA's Hubble Reveals a New Class of Extrasolar Planet



[/URL][URL="http://imgsrc.hubblesite.org/hu/db/images/hs-2012-13-a-web_print.jpg"]http://imgsrc.hubblesite.org/hu/db/images/hs-2012-13-a-web_print.jpg (http://imgsrc.hubblesite.org/hu/db/images/hs-2012-13-a-web_print.jpg)

Observations by NASA's Hubble Space Telescope have come up with a new class of planet, a waterworld enshrouded by a thick, steamy atmosphere. It's smaller than Uranus but larger than Earth.

Zachory Berta of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics (CfA) and colleagues made the observations of the planet GJ1214b.

"GJ1214b is like no planet we know of," Berta said. "A huge fraction of its mass is made up of water."

The ground-based MEarth Project, led by CfA's David Charbonneau, discovered GJ1214b in 2009. This super-Earth is about 2.7 times Earth's diameter and weighs almost seven times as much. It orbits a red-dwarf star every 38 hours at a distance of 1.3 million miles, giving it an estimated temperature of 450 degrees Fahrenheit.


More Information (http://hubblesite.org/newscenter/archive/releases/2012/13/full/)

Astronomy
02-28-2012, 03:32 PM
Ultra-fast Outflows Help Monster Black Holes Shape Their Galaxies


A curious correlation between the mass of a galaxy's central black hole and the velocity of stars in a vast, roughly spherical structure known as its bulge has puzzled astronomers for years. An international team led by Francesco Tombesi at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md., now has identified a new type of black-hole-driven outflow that appears to be both powerful enough and common enough to explain this link.

Most big galaxies contain a central black hole weighing millions of times the sun's mass, but galaxies hosting more massive black holes also possess bulges that contain, on average, faster-moving stars. This link suggested some sort of feedback mechanism between a galaxy's black hole and its star-formation processes. Yet there was no adequate explanation for how a monster black hole's activity, which strongly affects a region several times larger than our solar system, could influence a galaxy's bulge, which encompasses regions roughly a million times larger.

"This was a real conundrum. Everything was pointing to supermassive black holes as somehow driving this connection, but only now are we beginning to understand how they do it," Tombesi said.
http://www.nasa.gov/images/content/626214main1_XMM-Newton_Outflows_A_673.jpg

More Information (http://www.nasa.gov/topics/universe/features/fast-outflow.html)

From: www.NASA.gov

Astronomy
03-03-2012, 02:14 AM
Dark Matter Core Defies Explanation in Hubble Image


Astronomers observed what appeared to be a clump of dark matter left behind during a bizarre wreck between massive clusters of galaxies. The dark matter collected into a "dark core" containing far fewer galaxies than would be expected if the dark matter and galaxies hung together. Most of the galaxies apparently have sailed far away from the collision. This result could present a challenge to basic theories of dark matter, which predict that galaxies should be anchored to the invisible substance, even during the shock of a collision.
http://imgsrc.hubblesite.org/hu/db/images/hs-2012-10-a-web_print.jpg

The initial observations, made in 2007, were so unusual that astronomers shrugged them off as unreal, due to poor data. However, new results obtained in 2008 from NASA's Hubble Space Telescope confirm that dark matter and galaxies parted ways in the gigantic merging galaxy cluster called Abell 520, located 2.4 billion light-years away. Now, astronomers are left with the challenge of trying to explain dark matter's seemingly oddball behavior in this cluster.


More Information (http://hubblesite.org/newscenter/archive/releases/2012/10/full/)


From: www.hubblesite.org

گلناز
03-14-2012, 04:15 PM
NASA's Robotic Refueling Mission (RRM) experiment aboard the International Space Station has demonstrated remotely controlled robots and specialized tools can perform precise satellite-servicing tasks in space. The project marks a milestone in the use of the space station as a technology test bed.

"We and our partners are making important technological breakthroughs," NASA Administrator Charles Bolden said. "As we move ahead toward reaching our exploration goals, we will realize even more benefits from humans and robots working together in space."

The Canadian Space Agency's (CSA) robotic handyman, Dextre, successfully completed the tasks March 7-9 on the space station's external RRM module, designed to demonstrate the tools, technologies and techniques needed to robotically refuel and repair satellites.



On March 7, 2012, the Robotic Refueling Mission team got its first chance to put its payload to the test in orbit. For the next three days, the teams at NASA Goddard's Robotic Lab and Satellite Servicing Center worked with Johnson Space Center robotic operators and carefully moved the International Space Station's robotic arm to manipulate tools on RRM. (Video Credit: NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center)


"The Hubble servicing missions taught us the importance and value of getting innovative, cutting-edge technologies to orbit quickly to deliver great results," said Frank Cepollina, a veteran leader of five Hubble Space Telescope servicing missions (http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/hubble/servicing/) and associate director of the Satellite Servicing Capabilities Office (SSCO) at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md. "The impact of the space station as a useful technology test bed cannot be overstated. Fresh satellite-servicing technologies will be demonstrated in a real space environment within months instead of years. This is huge. It represents real progress in space technology advancement."

Before a satellite leaves the ground, technicians fill its fuel tank through a valve that is sealed, covered and designed never to be accessed again. The RRM experiment demonstrates a remote-controlled robot can remove these barriers and refuel such satellites in space.

http://www.nasa.gov/images/content/628410main_rrm_226.jpg
The Robotic Refueling Mission (RRM) module on the International Space Station before it was installed on its permanent platform. RRM will demonstrate robotic servicing technology and lay the foundation for future missions. (Image credit: NASA)
› View larger image (http://www.nasa.gov/images/content/628411main_rrm_XL.jpg)

http://www.nasa.gov/images/content/628441main_spacewalk_226.jpg
On July 12, 2011, spacewalking astronauts Mike Fossum and Ron Garan successfully transferred the Robotic Refueling Mission module from the Atlantis shuttle cargo bay to a temporary platform on the International Space Station's Dextre robot. (Image credit: NASA)
› View larger image (http://www.nasa.gov/images/content/628443main_spacewalk_XL.jpg)
Dextre successfully retrieved and inspected RRM tools, released safety launch locks on tool adapters, and used an RRM tool to cut extremely thin satellite lock wire. These operations represent the first use of RRM tools in orbit and Dextre's first participation in a research and development project.

RRM was developed by SSCO and is a joint effort between NASA and CSA. During the next two years, RRM and Dextre will conduct several servicing tasks using RRM tools on satellite parts and interfaces inside and covering the cube-shaped RRM module.

NASA expects the RRM results to reduce the risks associated with satellite servicing. It will encourage future robotic servicing missions by laying the foundation for them. Such future missions could include the repair, refueling and repositioning of orbiting satellites.

"We are especially grateful to CSA for their collaboration on this venture," Cepollina said. "CSA has played a pivotal role in the development of space robotics, from the early days of the space shuttle to the work they are doing with Dextre on space station."

During the three-day RRM Gas Fittings Removal task, the 12-foot (3.7-meter) Dextre performed the most intricate task ever attempted by a space robot: cutting two separate "lock wires" 20 thousandths of an inch (0.5 millimeters) in diameter using the RRM Wire Cutter Tool (WCT). Deftly maneuvered by ground-based mission operators and Dextre, the WCT smoothly slid its hook under the individual wires and severed them with only a few millimeters of clearance. This wire-cutting activity is a prerequisite to removing and servicing various satellite parts during any future in-orbit missions.

RRM operations are scheduled to resume in May 2012 with the completion of the gas fittings removal task. The RRM Refueling task is scheduled for later this summer. NASA and CSA will present RRM results at the Second International Workshop on on-Orbit Servicing, hosted by Goddard May 30-31, 2012.

Dextre and RRM are an example of how robots are changing operations in space. Another is Robonaut 2, or R2, a project of NASA and General Motors. R2, the first human-like robot, was launched into space in 2011 and is a permanent resident of the International Space Station.

For more information about RRM or the On-Orbit Servicing Workshop, visit:

http://ssco.gsfc.nasa.gov (http://ssco.gsfc.nasa.gov/)

گلناز
03-14-2012, 04:17 PM
http://www.nasa.gov/images/content/629723main_Boeing_PrattWhitney_LAE_Test_1_226.jpg Image above: Pratt & Whitney Rocketdyne hot-fires a launch abort engine for Boeing, which is developing its CST-100 spacecraft for NASA's Commercial Crew Program.
Image credit: Pratt & Whitney Rocketdyne
› Larger image (http://www.nasa.gov/images/content/629722main_Boeing_PrattWhitney_LAE_Test_1.jpg)

http://www.nasa.gov/images/content/629728main_Boeing_PrattWhitney_LAE_Test_3_226.jpg Image above: Pratt & Whitney Rocketdyne hot-fires a launch abort engine for Boeing, which is developing its CST-100 spacecraft for NASA's Commercial Crew Program.
Image credit: Pratt & Whitney Rocketdyne
› Larger image (http://www.nasa.gov/images/content/629726main_Boeing_PrattWhitney_LAE_Test_3.jpg)

http://www.nasa.gov/images/content/629725main_Boeing_PrattWhitney_LAE_Test_2_226.jpg Image above: Pratt & Whitney Rocketdyne hot-fires a launch abort engine for Boeing, which is developing its CST-100 spacecraft for NASA's Commercial Crew Program.
Image credit: Pratt & Whitney Rocketdyne
› Larger image (http://www.nasa.gov/images/content/629724main_Boeing_PrattWhitney_LAE_Test_2.jpg)

Pratt & Whitney Rocketdyne, which is supporting The Boeing Company during the development of its CST-100 spacecraft in NASA's Commercial Crew Development Round 2 (CCDev2), completed mission-duration hot-fire tests on a launch abort engine on Friday, March 9. The demonstration in Canoga Park, Calif., is one of many milestones Boeing is meeting for its funded Space Act Agreement during CCDev2.

"Boeing and its contractor, Pratt & Whitney Rocketdyne, continue to make good progress on milestones supporting the development of their commercial crew transportation capabilities," said Ed Mango, Commercial Crew Program program manager. "The eventual availability of these capabilities from a U.S. domestic provider will enhance U.S. competitiveness and open new markets for the U.S. aerospace industry."

Boeing's Crew Space Transportation system is a reusable, capsule-shaped spacecraft designed to take up to seven people, or a combination of people and cargo, to low Earth orbit, including the International Space Station. Its service module and integrated launch abort propulsion system are designed to push the crew capsule to safety if an abort becomes necessary during launch or ascent. If an abort is not necessary, the system's propellant could be used for other portions of a mission, including re-boosting the orbit of the space station.

"We achieved full thrust on the 40,000-pound thrust-class engine while validating key operating conditions during engine start-up and shut down," said Terry Lorier, Pratt and Whitney Rocketdyne's Commercial Crew Development program manager, who supports Boeing's program.

Under its fixed-price contract with Boeing, Pratt and Whitney Rocketdyne is combining its Attitude Control Propulsion System thrusters from heritage spaceflight programs, Bantam abort engine design and storable propellant engineering capabilities.

"The tests provided key thermal and analytical data," Lorier said. "We are well on our way to providing an important propulsion system for safe, reliable human spaceflight."

All of NASA's industry partners under CCDev2 continue to meet their established milestones in developing commercial crew transportation capabilities.

For more information about NASA's Commercial Crew Program and CCDev2, visit:

http://www.nasa.gov/commercialcrew (http://www.nasa.gov/commercialcrew)

گلناز
03-14-2012, 04:19 PM
On March 13, 2012, the sun erupted with an M7.9-class flare that peaked at 1:41 p.m. EDT. This flare was from the same active region, No. 1429, that has been producing flares and coronal mass ejections all week. That region has been moving across the face of the sun since March 2, and will soon rotate out of Earth view.

http://www.nasa.gov/images/content/629707main1_20120313_172959_4096_0131-673.jpg (http://www.nasa.gov/images/content/629710main_20120313_172959_4096_0131.jpg)
NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO) captured this image of an M7.9 class flare on March 13, 2012 at 1:29 p.m. EDT. It is shown here in the 131 Angstrom wavelength, a wavelength particularly good for seeing solar flares and a wavelength that is typically colorized in teal. (Image credit: NASA/SDO)
› Larger image (http://www.nasa.gov/images/content/629710main_20120313_172959_4096_0131.jpg)






What is a solar flare? What is a coronal mass ejection?

For answers to these and other space weather questions, please visit the Spaceweather Frequently Asked Questions (http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/sunearth/spaceweather/index.html) page.

Astronomy
03-15-2012, 07:24 PM
Astronomers Using NASA's Hubble Discover Quasars Acting as Gravitational Lenses


Astronomers using NASA's Hubble Space Telescope have found several examples of galaxies containing quasars, which act as gravitational lenses, amplifying and distorting images of galaxies aligned behind them.


http://imgsrc.hubblesite.org/hu/db/images/hs-2012-14-e-web_print.jpg



Quasars are among the brightest objects in the universe, far outshining the total starlight of their host galaxies. Quasars are powered by supermassive black holes. To find these rare cases of galaxy-quasar combinations acting as lenses, a team of astronomers selected 23,000 quasar spectra in the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS). They looked for the spectral imprint of galaxies at much greater distances that happened to align with foreground galaxies. Once candidates were identified, Hubble's sharp view was used to look for gravitational arcs and rings (indicated by the arrows in these three Hubble photos) that would be produced by gravitational lensing.


Fast Facts: http://hubblesite.org/newscenter/archive/releases/2012/14/fastfacts/


Release Images: http://hubblesite.org/newscenter/archive/releases/2012/14/image/


Related Links: http://hubblesite.org/newscenter/archive/releases/2012/14/related/


From: http://hubblesite.org/

رخساره روشنی
03-15-2012, 08:53 PM
In honor of 1,000 days in orbit, the NASA Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO) team at NASA Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt Md. has released two new videos.

One video takes viewers through the moon's evolutionary history, and reveals how it came to appear the way it does today. Another video gives viewers a guided tour of prominent locations on the moon's surface, compiled by the spacecraft's observations of the moon.


http://i.huffpost.com/gen/534116/thumbs/s-MOON-EVOLUTION-large.jpg


"Evolution of the Moon" explains why the moon did not always look like it does now. The moon likely started as a giant ball of magma formed from the remains of a collision by a Mars sized object with the Earth about four and a half billion years ago. After the magma cooled, the moon's crust formed. Then between 4.5 and 4.3 billion years ago, a giant object hit near the moon's South Pole, forming the South Pole-Aitken Basin, one of the two largest proven impact basins in the solar system. This marked the beginning of collisions that would cause large scale changes to the moon's surface, such as the formation of large basins.

Because the moon had not entirely cooled on the inside, magma began to seep through cracks caused by impacts. Around one billion years ago, it's thought that volcanic activity ended on the near side of the moon as the last of the large impacts made their mark on the surface. The moon continued to be battered by smaller impacts. Some of the best-known impacts from this period include the Tycho, Copernicus, and Aristarchus craters. So, while the moon today may seem to be an unchanging world, its appearance is the result of billions of years of violent activity.

The two-and-a-half minute video is available for viewing and downloading at: http://svs.gsfc.nasa.gov/goto?10930

for see movie of this tour go to this link I suggest that see them they wonderfull :
http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/LRO/news/vid-tour.html

آریا برزن
03-26-2012, 12:34 PM
CELESTIAL TRIANGLE


http://spaceweather.com/submissions/pics/c/CROISIER-Alexandre-IMG_0694-2_1332719185.jpg


They're at it again. Venus, Jupiter and the crescent Moon are in conjunction, forming a bright triangle in the sunset sky. On Sunday evening, March 25th, Alexandre Croisier photographed the trio from the Pointe of Dinan in Brittany, France:
"They are easy to see with the naked eye," says Croisier, "and they look great through a telescope, too."

The triangle will appear again on Monday evening, March 26th, although the vertices will be shifted as the Moon glides from Jupiter to Venus. Observing tip: Look before the sky fades completely black. Bright planets are extra-beautiful when they are framed by twilight blue

Source : http://spaceweather.com/


http://spaceweather.com/submissions/pics/c/CROISIER-Alexandre-IMG_0713-2_1332719185.jpg

Emil Sola
04-17-2012, 08:20 PM
Hubble's panoramic view of a turbulent star-making region

30 Doradus is the brightest star-forming region in our galactic neighborhood and home to the most massive stars ever seen. The nebula resides 170,000 light-years away in the Large Magellanic Cloud, a small, satellite galaxy of our Milky Way. No known star-forming region in our galaxy is as large or as prolific as 30 Doradus. The image comprises one of the largest mosaics ever assembled from Hubble photos and includes observations taken by Hubble's Wide Field Camera 3 and Advanced Camera for Surveys, combined with observations from the European Southern Observatory's MPG/ESO 2.2-metre telescope which trace the location of glowing hydrogen and oxygen. The image is being released to celebrate Hubble's 22nd anniversary. Credit: NASA, ESA, ESO, D. Lennon and E. Sabbi (ESA/STScI), J. Anderson, S.E. de Mink, R. van der Marel, T. Sohn, and N. Walborn (STScI), L. Bedin (INAF, Padua), C. Evans (STFC), H. Sana (Amsterdam), N. Langer (Bonn), P. Crowther (Sheffield), A. Herrero (IAC, Tenerife), N. Bastian (USM, Munich), and E. Bressert (ESO)


30 Doradus is the brightest star-forming region in our galactic neighbourhood and home to the most massive stars ever seen. The nebula resides 170 000 light-years away in the Large Magellanic Clouds, a small, satellite galaxy of our Milky Way. No known star-forming region in our galaxy is as large or as prolific as 30 Doradus.
The image comprises one of the largest mosaics ever assembled from Hubble photos and consists of observations taken by Hubble's Wide Field camera 3 and Advanced Camera for Surveys, combined with observations from the European Southern Observatory's MPG/ESO 2.2-metre telescope that trace the location of glowing hydrogen and oxygen.
The image is being released to celebrate Hubble's 22nd anniversary.
The stars in this image add up to a total mass millions of times bigger than that of our Sun. The image is roughly 650 light-years across and contains some rambunctious stars, from one of the fastest rotating stars to the speediest and most massive runaway star.
The nebula is close enough to Earth that Hubble can resolve individual stars, giving astronomers important information about the stars' birth and evolution. Many small galaxies have more spectacular starbursts, but the Large Magellanic Cloud's 30 Doradus is one of the only star-forming regions that astronomers can study in detail. The star-birthing frenzy in 30 Doradus may be partly fueled by its close proximity to its companion galaxy , the small Magellanic clouds.
The image reveals the stages of star birth, from embryonic stars a few thousand years old still wrapped in dark cocoons of dust and gas to behemoths that die young in supernova explosions. 30 Doradus is a star-forming factory, churning out stars at a furious pace over millions of years. The Hubble image shows star clusters of various ages, from about 2 million to about 25 million years old.

The region's sparkling centerpiece is a giant, young star cluster named NGC 2070, only 2 million to 3 million years old. Its stellar inhabitants number roughly 500 000. The cluster is a hotbed for young, massive stars. Its dense core, known as RMC 136, is packed with some of the heftiest stars found in the nearby Universe, weighing more than 100 times the mass of our Sun.
The massive stars are carving deep cavities in the surrounding material by unleashing a torrent of ultraviolet light, which is etching away the enveloping hydrogen gas cloud in which the stars were born. The image reveals a fantasy landscape of pillars, ridges, and valleys. Besides sculpting the gaseous terrain, the brilliant stars also may be triggering a successive generation of offspring.
When the radiation hits dense walls of gas, it creates shocks, which may be generating a new wave of star birth.
The colours come from the glowing hot gas that dominates regions of the image. Red signifies hydrogen gas and blue, oxygen.
The image was made from 30 separate fields, 15 from each camera. Hubble made the observations in October 2011. Both cameras were making observations at the same time.

Emil Sola
04-17-2012, 08:24 PM
Some stars capture rogue planets

New research suggests that billions of stars in our galaxy have captured rogue planets that once roamed interstellar space. The nomad worlds, which were kicked out of the star systems in which they formed, occasionally find a new home with a different sun. This finding could explain the existence of some planets that orbit surprisingly far from their stars, and even the existence of a double-planet system.


"Stars trade planets just like baseball teams trade players," said Hagai Perets of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics.
The study, co-authored by Perets and Thijs Kouwenhoven of Peking University, China, will appear in the April 20th issue of The Astrophysical Journal.
To reach their conclusion, Perets and Kouwenhoven simulated young star clusters containing free-floating planets. They found that if the number of rogue planets equaled the number of stars, then 3 to 6 percent of the stars would grab a planet over time. The more massive a star, the more likely it is to snag a planet drifting by.
They studied young star clusters because capture is more likely when stars and free-floating planets are crowded together in a small space. Over time, the clusters disperse due to close interactions between their star, so any planet-star encounters have to happen early in the cluster's history.
Rogue planets are a natural consequence of star formation. Newborn star systems often contain multiple planets. If two planets interact, one can be ejected and become an interstellar traveler. If it later encounters a different star moving in the same direction at the same speed, it can hitch a ride.
A captured planet tends to end up hundreds or thousands of times farther from its star than Earth is from the Sun. It's also likely to have a orbit that's tilted relative to any native planets, and may even revolve around its star backward.
Astronomers haven't detected any clear-cut cases of captured planets yet. Imposters can be difficult to rule out. Gravitational interactions within a planetary system can throw a planet into a wide, tilted orbit that mimics the signature of a captured world.
Finding a planet in a distant orbit around a low-mass star would be a good sign of capture, because the star's disk wouldn't have had enough material to form the planet so far out.
The best evidence to date in support of planetary capture comes from the European Southern Observatory, which announced in 2006 the discovery of two planets (weighing 14 and 7 times Jupiter) orbiting each other without a star.
"The rogue double-planet system is the closest thing we have to a 'smoking gun' right now," said Perets. "To get more proof, we'll have to build up statistics by studying a lot of planetary systems."
Could our solar system harbor an alien world far beyond Pluto? Astronomers have looked, and haven't found anything yet.
"There's no evidence that the Sun captured a planet," said Perets. "We can rule out large planets. But there's a non-zero chance that a small world might lurk on the fringes of our solar system."

Emil Sola
04-17-2012, 08:26 PM
Space shuttle Discovery salutes nation's capital

The space shuttle Discovery soared over the Washington Monument, the White House and the Capitol in a high-flying salute to the nation's capital Tuesday.


The world's most traveled spaceship, hitching a ride on top a Boeing 747 jet, took a couple of leisurely spins at an easy-to-spot 1,500 feet around Washington after a flight from Cape Canaveral, Fla.
Thousands packed the National Mall to watch the pair swoop by.
"Look at that - that thing is mammoth," said Terri Jacobsen of Bethesda, Md. She brought her 12-year-old home-schooled son to the mall to watch the flyover
The shuttle-jet combo was set to land at Dulles International Airport. On Thursday, it will be towed to its permanent installation at the Smithsonian's annex in northern Virginia.
Discovery departed Florida's Kennedy space center at daybreak. Nearly 2,000 people - former shuttle workers, VIPs, tourists and journalists - gathered along the old shuttle landing strip to see Discovery off. A cheer went up as the plane taxied down the runway and soared into a clear sky.

Astronomy
04-18-2012, 01:45 PM
Hubble's 22nd Anniversary Image Shows Turbulent Star-making Region

http://imgsrc.hubblesite.org/hu/db/images/hs-2012-01-a-web.jpg



Several million young stars are vying for attention in this NASA Hubble Space Telescope image of a raucous stellar breeding ground in 30 Doradus, located in the heart of the Tarantula Nebula.
30 Doradus is the brightest star-forming region visible in a neighboring galaxy and home to the most massive stars ever seen. The nebula resides 170,000 light-years away in the Large Magellanic Cloud, a small, satellite galaxy of our Milky Way. No known star-forming region that is inside our Milky Way is as large or as prolific as 30 Doradus.
The image comprises one of the largest mosaics ever assembled from Hubble photos and includes observations taken by Hubble's Wide Field Camera 3 and Advanced Camera for Surveys. Hubble made the observations in October 2011. NASA and the Space Telescope Science Institute are releasing the image to celebrate Hubble's 22nd anniversary.



More Informations (http://hubblesite.org/newscenter/archive/releases/2012/01/)


From
(http://hubblesite.org)

Astronomy
04-20-2012, 09:42 AM
Hubble Spots Aurorae on the Planet Uranus

http://imgsrc.hubblesite.org/hu/db/images/hs-2012-21-a-web.jpg

These are among the first clear images, taken from the distance of Earth, to show aurorae on the planet Uranus. This composite image combines 2011 Hubble observations of the aurorae in visible and ultraviolet light, 1986 Voyager 2 photos of the cyan disk of Uranus as seen in visible light, and 2011 Gemini Observatory observations of the faint ring system as seen in infrared light.

For more information, visit http://www.agu.org/news/press/pr_archives/2012/2012-19.shtml

From: http://hubblesite.org/

رخساره روشنی
04-20-2012, 04:13 PM
NASA Mission Wants Amateur Astronomers to Target Asteroids
A new NASA outreach project will enlist the help of amateur astronomers to discover near-Earth objects (NEOs) and study their characteristics. NEOs are asteroids with orbits that occasionally bring them close to the Earth.

Starting today, a new citizen science project called "Target Asteroids!" will support NASA's Origins Spectral Interpretation Resource Identification Security - Regolith Explorer (OSIRIS-REx) mission objectives to improve basic scientific understanding of NEOs. OSIRIS-Rex is scheduled for launch in 2016 and will study material from an asteroid.


http://www.nasa.gov/centers/jpl/images/content/91882main_craft1-browse.jpg

Amateur astronomers will help better characterize the population of NEOs, including their position, motion, rotation and changes in the intensity of light they emit. Professional astronomers will use this information to refine theoretical models of asteroids, improving their understanding about asteroids similar to the one OSIRIS-Rex will encounter in 2019, designated 1999 RQ36.
for read more go to this link:http://www.nasa.gov/topics/solarsystem/features/osiris-rex-update.html

COLDFIRE
05-09-2012, 09:21 PM
North star loses mass but still shines bright

http://www.earthmagazine.org/sites/earthmagazine.org/files/styles/article_size/public/1335382617/Polaris_3.png (http://www.earthmagazine.org/sites/earthmagazine.org/files/styles/article_size/public/1335382617/Polaris_3.png)


This sequence of images taken by the Hubble Space Telescope shows that the North Star, Polaris, is a triple star system. New research also confirms the main North Star is a Cepheid variable.



Credit:
NASA, ESA, N. Evans (Harvard-Smithsonian CfA), and H. Bond (STScI)








The North Star, the Pole Star, the Guiding Star, Polaris: Its many names reflect the many centuries humans have gazed northward to it for guidance. Because Earth’s North Pole is aligned with Polaris’ position in the sky, the star appears motionless, providing a steadfast beacon for early sailors and adventurers alike. But the star itself is far from motionless. In fact, Polaris is a specific type of star known as a Cepheid variable, which pulsates, varying in size and luminosity over a period of days and, according to recent observations, also ejects large amounts of mass into space. Now, combining 170 years worth of observational data on Polaris’ pulsation rates with state-of-the-art stellar evolution models, a team of scientists suggests that Polaris is losing mass at a significant rate. But this does not mean Polaris will vanish from the night sky anytime soon.
When Polaris was first suspected as a variable star in the mid-19th century, its pulsation period was shorter than it is today. Each year, the star’s time between pulses has lengthened by an average of eight seconds, and it’s this change in period that got Hilding Neilson of Argelander Institute for Astronomy (http://www.astro.uni-bonn.de/en/home/)at University of Bonn in Germany and his colleagues thinking about the inherent relationship between the rate of period change and mass loss.
“The question is, ‘What drives enhanced mass loss [in Cepheid variables]?’” Neilson says. “There are ideas that the Cepheid pulsation itself will generate waves in the interior and as those waves move outward, they turn into shocks. And those shocks help drive enhanced mass loss.”
Although it is unknown whether this process takes placea on Polaris, Neilson and his colleagues have measured the rate of mass loss. Polaris has been the subject of study for many years, so its parameters, such as distance from Earth, stellar radius and temperature, are known to within a small percentage of error, Neilson says.
Neilson and colleagues input these parameters, along with many others, into computer models to predict the rate that Polaris’ pulsation period is changing. When they compared their rates with those from observations over the past 170 years, they found a discrepancy. Basically, the theory disagreed with the observations.
However, when the researchers tweaked Polaris’ rate of mass loss, they found they could fix the discrepancy. If Polaris were ejecting mass equal to approximately the mass of Earth each year, then the predictions of Polaris’ rate of period change closely resembled the observational data, the team reported in the Astrophysical Journal Letters.
Although Neilson and his colleagues attribute the model discrepancy in the rate of period change between observational data and theoretical modeling to mass loss, some scientists say it may not be the only answer.“They get this result that the period change is doing a particular thing and they give one particular explanation, but it’s probably not the only explanation,” says Pauline Barmby, of Western University (http://www.uwo.ca/) in Ontario, Canada, who was not involved with the study. For example, Barmby says, another possible explanation — put forth by Richard B. Strothers of the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies (http://www.giss.nasa.gov/) in a 2009 paper in the Astrophysical Journal — could be that a slow change in the star’s magnetic field is affecting convection and hence periodicity.
Still, even if the debate cannot be rectified, Barmby says, there are several advantages to studying mass loss in Cepheid variables. First, Cepheid variables represent a short phase in certain stars’ lifetimes (lasting about 10 million years) when the star is no longer a main-sequence star like our sun, nor is it a red giant or supergiant — the next evolutionary step initiated by helium burning in a star’s core. During this stage of stellar evolution, stars expand and contract, and the physics behind these pulses is considered to be well understood. So Cepheid variables provide a diagnostic for the structure of stars as they evolve off of the main sequence, which can improve stellar evolution modeling.
Second, knowing their period allows for fairly accurate distance measurements, which are important in cosmology. Measuring the distance to Cepheids in other galaxies is a way for cosmologists to determine how fast the universe is expanding, Neilson says. Therefore, determining the mass loss rate of Cepheid variables is important because it can affect the stars’ luminosity and hence distance calibrations, he adds.
“If you can understand Cepheids better from a theoretical point of view,” Barmby says, “that might help make calibration more solid for using them for finding distance, which would have quite a wide impact on astronomy in general.”
source:
http://www.earthmagazine.org/article/north-star-loses-mass-still-shines-bright

COLDFIRE
05-11-2012, 11:45 AM
[/URL]http://i.space.com/images/i/16834/iFF/pleiades-image-envisat.jpg?1334955511 (http://i.space.com/images/i/16834/iFF/pleiades-image-envisat.jpg?1334955511) On 15 April, the French space agency CNES rotated the Pleiades Earth observation satellite to capture this image of Envisat. At a distance of about 100 km, Envisat’s main body, solar panel and radar antenna were visible.
CREDIT: CNES
View full size image
The European Space Agency declared the death of its massive Earth-observing satellite Envisat today (May 9) after a month of mysterious silence from the school bus-size spacecraft.
Envisat (http://www.space.com/15369-mysteriously-silent-envisat-satellite-space-photos.html) is the world's largest Earth-watching satellite for civilian use, with ESA officials touting its 10th anniversary in space earlier this year. The $2.9 billion satellite was originally designed to snap high-resolution photos of Earth for five years, but managed to last 10 years during its successful mission.
The troubles for Envisat began April 8, when the satellite abruptly stopped communicating with ground stations. Repeated attempts to restore contact failed week after week, with ESA officials calling off the recovery efforts today.
"Despite continuous commands sent from a widespread network of ground stations, there has been no reaction yet from the satellite," ESA officials explained in a statement.


http://i.space.com/images/i/5504/i02/space-satellite-debris-threat-100726-02.jpg?1292270968 (http://i.space.com/images/i/5504/i02/space-satellite-debris-threat-100726-02.jpg?1292270968)
An artist's illustration of the Envisat satellite in orbit.
CREDIT: ESA


There are several possible explanations for Envisat's unexpected demise.
The failure of a power regulator may be blocking the satellite's telemetry and telecommand systems, ESA officials said. There may have also been a short circuit on board that plunged Envisat into a protective "safe mode," then a second malfunction that left the satellite in an unknown state, incapable of receiving commands from Earth, they added. [Photos: Envisat Satellite & Earth Views (http://www.space.com/15326-earth-space-photos-envisat-satellite.html)]
"Although chances of recovering Envisat are extremely low, the investigation team will continue attempts to re-establish contact while considering failure scenarios for the next two months."
According to ground-based radar images of Envisat and photos of the craft from France's Pleiades Earth-observing satellite (which was called in during recovery efforts), the solar array on Envisat is properly deployed, officials have said.

Envisat is by all accounts a huge satellite. It is about 30 feet long (9 meters) and 16 feet wide (5 m). The spacecraft weighs 17,600 pounds (8,000 kilograms) and has a huge sail-like solar array that is 16 feet wide (5 m) and 46 feet long (14 m).
In 2010, space debris experts said that the satellite's immense size will make Envisat a major space junk risk (http://www.space.com/8829-huge-satellite-poses-150-year-threat-space-debris.html) for up to 150 years.
ESA launched the Envisat mission in 2001 to study the Earth from space (http://www.livescience.com/16148-science-satellites-gallery.html) in extreme detail. The satellite carries 10 sensors to study Earth's oceans, land, ice caps and atmosphere and has been a vital resource for about 2,500 scientific studies of our home planet.
[URL="http://i.space.com/images/i/17303/i02/final-envisat-image.jpg?1336575074"]http://i.space.com/images/i/17303/i02/final-envisat-image.jpg?1336575074 (http://i.space.com/images/i/17303/i02/final-envisat-image.jpg?1336575074)
Envisat’s Advanced Synthetic Aperture Radar (ASAR) captured this image on April 8, 2012 at 11:09 GMT. The image was transmitted in X-band to the Santa Maria station in the Azores, Portugal, operated by Edisoft. It shows Spain’s Canary Islands. It is the last Envisat data transmitted via X-band before the communication anomaly.
CREDIT: ESA/EdisoftView



The satellite has mapped the gradual decline of Arctic sea ice and tracked the regular opening of polar shipping routes in the summer months, in addition to its other discoveries, ESA officials said.
"The outstanding performance of Envisat over the last decade led many to believe that it would be active for years to come, at least until the launch of the follow-on Sentinel missions," ESA officials wrote. "However, Envisat had already operated for double its planned lifetime, making it well overdue for retirement."
The first launch of the new Sentinel Earth-observation satellites is slated for 2013.
source: space.com

COLDFIRE
05-11-2012, 11:58 AM
Huge Asteroid Vesta Actually an Ancient Protoplanet


by Mike Wall, SPACE.com Senior Writer
Date: 10 May 2012 Time: 02:00 PM ET


http://www.space.com/15630-asteroid-vesta-protoplanet-dawn-spacecraft.html (http://www.space.com/15630-asteroid-vesta-protoplanet-dawn-spacecraft.html)
http://i.space.com/images/i/17346/iFF/protoplanet-vesta-global-view.jpg?1336666028 (http://i.space.com/images/i/17346/iFF/protoplanet-vesta-global-view.jpg?1336666028) Global, colorized and hill-shaded digital terrain model of the ancient protoplanet Vesta, based on data gathered by NASA's Dawn spacecraft.
CREDIT: Science/AAAS
View full size image
This story was updated at 3:15 p.m. EDT.
New observations from a NASA spacecraft show that the huge asteroid Vesta is a battered protoplanet left over from the solar system's early days, with a unique mix of characteristics unknown from any other space rock.
Scientists had thought that Vesta, the second-largest body in the main asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter, probably started down a planet-forming path shortly after the solar system's birth. Data gathered by NASA's Dawn probe (http://www.space.com/12279-nasa-dawn-asteroid-mission-works-infographic.html) have now confirmed that suspicion, researchers announced in a raft of studies that came out today (May 10) in the journal Science.
"We now know that Vesta (http://www.space.com/12097-vesta-asteroid-facts-solar-system.html) is the only intact, layered planetary building block surviving from the very earliest days of the solar system," Dawn deputy principal investigator Carol Raymond, of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif., told reporters today.


The other objects like Vesta, researchers added, were probably incorporated into full-fledged planets or destroyed by collisions long ago. [Photos: Asteroid Vesta by Dawn Probe (http://www.space.com/11540-photos-asteroid-vesta-nasa-dawn.html)]
Some surprises

"Those studying meteorites that have fallen to Earth, many from Vesta, had produced a theory on the evolution of the solar system and what Vesta should be made of," said Dawn principal investigator Chris Russell of UCLA, lead author of one of the six new Science papers.
"They were very, very right," Russell told SPACE.com via email. "This is good, because we can now use that model to understand more about the solar system."
But Dawn has also delivered some surprising new results. The gigantic Rheasilvia basin at Vesta's south pole, for example, apparently was created by a massive impact just 1 billion years ago or so — long after the solar system's collision-filled "shooting gallery" stage is thought to have ended.
"An age of about 1 billion years for Rheasilvia is unexpectedly young," Simone Marchi of the Southwest Research Institute in Boulder, Colo., lead author of another of the new papers, said in a statement. "This result has important implications for our understanding of the evolution of Vesta, its asteroid (http://www.space.com/51-asteroids-formation-discovery-and-exploration.html) family and the inner main asteroid belt in general."
"We have just started exploring Vesta’s secrets (http://www.space.com/15492-giant-asteroid-vesta-gravity-lumpy-video.html), and I’m sure other intriguing results will come along shortly," Marchi added.
http://i.space.com/images/i/11058/i02/PIA14316-1000.jpg?1311092607 (http://i.space.com/images/i/11058/i02/PIA14316-1000.jpg?1311092607)
Comparative imagery of nine asteroids. With a diameter of about 330 miles (530 kilometers), Vesta dwarfs all of these small bodies. Many scientists think it's a protoplanet left over from the solar system's first few million years.
CREDIT: NASA/JPL-Caltech/JAXA/ESA View full size image



The protoplanet Vesta

With a diameter of about 330 miles (530 kilometers), Vesta is roughly as wide as the U.S. state of Arizona. In the main asteroid belt, only the dwarf planet (http://www.space.com/12694-dwarf-planets-solar-system-tour-countdown.html) Ceres is bigger.
The $466 million Dawn spacecraft arrived at the huge asteroid in July 2011 to help unlock its many secrets. One of the probe's main missions, researchers said, is to determine if Vesta is indeed a long-surviving protoplanet — a body left over from the solar system's first few million years, many of which later coalesced to form rocky planets such as Earth and Mars (http://www.space.com/47-mars-the-red-planet-fourth-planet-from-the-sun.html).
Scientists got this idea mainly by examining fallen howardite-eucrite-diogenite (or HED) meteorites, which are thought to come from Vesta. The new Dawn results strongly support the protoplanet notion — by confirming that Vesta is indeed the HED meteorites' parent body, for starters.
Moreover, the huge asteroid isn't just some chunk of uniform rock. Rather, it's now known to be a differentiated object with an iron core about 137 miles (220 km) wide. That's big enough, perhaps, to have once sustained a dynamo like the one that generates Earth's magnetic field, researchers said.
The team figured out the dimensions of Vesta's core in part by carefully tracking Dawn's movements through space, then using this information to calculate Vesta's mass, density and gravitational pull with unprecedented precision. [Video: Vesta Flyover in 3D (http://www.space.com/13787-asteroid-vesta-fly-3d.html)]
Other Dawn data also back Vesta's protoplanet status. For instance, its surface composition implies a complex geological history that's more similar to that of terrestrial planets than other asteroids, researchers said. And Vesta boasts color variations unlike anything seen on an asteroid before, further suggesting that the massive object is something special.
"We now know that Vesta is large enough to have had its own internal geologic evolution and is not just a battered lump of rock," said Paul Schenk of the Lunar and Planetary Institute in Houston, lead author of another of the new studies.
http://i.space.com/images/i/17349/i02/protoplanet-vesta-rheasilvia-crater.jpg?1336666456 (http://i.space.com/images/i/17349/i02/protoplanet-vesta-rheasilvia-crater.jpg?1336666456)
Cross sections of the central peak of Vesta's huge Rheasilvia impact basin, which measures 314 miles across. (A) shows color-contoured topography, while (B) is an orthorectified image mosaic.
CREDIT: Science/AAASView full size image



Two gigantic (and recent) impacts

Vesta's surface is pocked with craters from countless collisions over the eons. Dawn's observations have allowed scientists to reconstruct the protoplanet's impact history by counting these craters, and noting how many impact features overlie others.
Researchers found a huge difference between Vesta's northern and southern halves. The northern part retains a record of some of the asteroid's earliest impacts, while the south was "reset" by two enormous collisions far more recently.
One of these smashups occurred about 2 billion years ago, creating a 249-mile-wide (400-km) basin called Veneneia. But Veneneia was mostly obliterated about 1 billion years ago by another impact, which created the 314-mile (505-km) Rheasilvia crater.
"This basin erased at least half the surface and messed up a lot of the rest of it," Schenk told SPACE.com via email.
The Rheasilvia impact also created strange circular troughs around Vesta's equator and raised a central peak more than twice as high as Mount Everest, Russell said. And it excavated approximately 250,000 cubic miles (1.04 million cubic km) of material, much of which was blasted into space.
"Two hundred and fifty thousand cubic miles is enough to fill the Grand Canyon about a thousand times over," said David O'Brien, a Dawn scientist based at the Planetary Science Institute in Tucson, Ariz. "So this is a very large volume of material."
Both giant craters were likely caused by asteroids between 25 and 36 miles (40 to 60 km) wide, Schenk said. And both impacts seem to have occurred surprisingly late, several billion years after the presumed end of the so-called Late Heavy Bombardment (http://www.space.com/15424-asteroids-battered-earth-collisions.html) that blasted many craters into Earth's moon and other solar system bodies.

More discoveries to come

The new results are based on data that Dawn gathered during the early stages of its stay at Vesta. The spacecraft will continue studying the protoplanet until Aug. 26, so we should expect more discoveries from the mission, researchers said.
"We have not yet reported on the high-resolution measurements made at low altitudes," Russell said. "We will be searching for water, just like there have been water searches on the moon (http://www.space.com/15094-moon-water-ice-space-fuel.html)."
Further, Vesta's far northern reaches have been in shadow thus far, so Dawn has been unable to study large chunks of the protoplanet. But that will change before too long.
"Sunlight is moving northward on Vesta, and we will soon see the north pole regions," Russell said. "What could be there to complement what we see in the south?"
When Dawn finishes up at Vesta, it will start the long trek to the dwarf planet Ceres, which is roughly as wide as Texas. The probe is scheduled to reach the "queen of the asteroid belt" in February 2015 and embark upon a whole new round of discoveries.
"We expect that Ceres is a much wetter world" than Vesta, Russell said. But, he added, "we have no meteorites to help us here. Everything will be a surprise."

COLDFIRE
05-11-2012, 12:00 PM
Giant Asteroid Vesta's Planetary Chances Killed by Jupiter


by Mike Wall, SPACE.com Senior Writer
Date: 10 May 2012 Time: 05:41 PM ET




http://i.space.com/images/i/11295/iFF/vesta.jpg?1312216987 (http://i.space.com/images/i/11295/iFF/vesta.jpg?1312216987)

NASA's Dawn spacecraft obtained this image of the giant asteroid Vesta with its framing camera on July 24, 2011.
CREDIT: NASA/JPL-Caltech/ UCLA/MPS/DLR/PSI
View full size image
Big, bad Jupiter likely squashed any chance the giant asteroid Vesta may have had of growing into a full-fledged planet long ago, researchers say.
Scientists analyzing observations from NASA's Dawn spacecraft announced today (May 10) that the enormous asteroid Vesta is actually an ancient protoplanet (http://www.space.com/15630-asteroid-vesta-protoplanet-dawn-spacecraft.html), a planetary building block left over from the solar system's earliest days.
Many other Vesta-like objects (http://www.space.com/13902-vesta-asteroid-dwarf-planet.html) were incorporated into rocky worlds such as Earth, but Vesta's development along this path was halted.
Vesta's stunted growth is chiefly a product of its location, researchers said. The protoplanets that glommed together to form Mercury, Earth, Mars and Venus did so in the inner solar system, relatively far from the disruptive gravitational influence of a giant planet.


The 330-mile-wide (530-kilometer) Vesta (http://www.space.com/12097-vesta-asteroid-facts-solar-system.html), on the other hand, grew up in the main asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter. And the solar system's largest planet made it tough for Vesta to hook up with others of its kind.
"In the asteroid belt, Jupiter basically stirred things up so much that they weren't able to easily accrete with one another," Dawn scientist David O'Brien, of the Planetary Science Institute in Tucson, Ariz., told reporters today.
"The velocities in the asteroid belt were really high, and the higher the velocity is, the harder it is for things to merge together under their own gravity," O'Brien added.

Those high velocities also set the stage for some incredibly violent collisions, which probably destroyed a fair number of Vesta-like bodies. Vesta itself was battered and bloodied by some huge impacts; one crater near its south pole is 314 miles (505 km) wide, and another underneath that one measures 250 miles (400 km) across.
So while Vesta — the second-largest denizen of the asteroid belt — was doomed to a life of solitude, it has had the toughness and luck to stick around for the last 4.5 billion years. And scientists are thankful that it did.
"Vesta is special, because it survived the intense collisional environment of the main asteroid belt for billions of years, allowing us to interrogate a key witness to the events at the very beginning of the solar system," said Dawn deputy principal investigator Carol Raymond, of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif.
"We believe Vesta is the only intact member of a family of similar bodies that have since perished," she added.

COLDFIRE
05-13-2012, 01:58 PM
Endeavour Unplugged: NASA Powers Down its Last Space Shuttle



by Robert Z. Pearlman, collectSPACE.com Editor
Date: 11 May 2012 Time: 02:02 PM ET
http://www.space.com/15650-space-shuttle-endeavour-unplugged.html (http://www.space.com/15650-space-shuttle-endeavour-unplugged.html)
http://i.space.com/images/i/17391/iFF/shuttle-endeavour-flight-deck.jpg?1336759261 (http://i.space.com/images/i/17391/iFF/shuttle-endeavour-flight-deck.jpg?1336759261)
A last look at a fully lit space shuttle. NASA shut down space shuttle Endeavour for the final
time on May 11, 2012, but not before giving collectSPACE.com the chance to photograph the retired spacecraft's powered-on flight deck.
CREDIT: collectSPACE.com (http://collectspace.com/shuttles/)/Robert Pearlman

NASA pulled the plug on its last powered space shuttle today (May 11), 20 years after it flew its first mission.
Space shuttle technicians working inside Orbiter Processing Facility-2 (OPF-2) at NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida powered down Endeavour (http://www.collectspace.com/news/news-051112a.html), the youngest of the retired fleet's orbiters, at 9:58 a.m. EDT (1358 GMT) as they moved forward with preparations for the winged spacecraft's museum display.
This September, NASA will mount Endeavour on top of a modified Boeing 747 carrier aircraft (http://www.space.com/15259-space-shuttle-retirement-move-photos.html) and ferry it to Los Angeles for its exhibit at the California Science Center.
more information and source at http://www.space.com/15650-space-shuttle-endeavour-unplugged.html

Astronomy
05-30-2012, 11:03 PM
Stellar Archaeology Traces Milky Way's History

http://imgsrc.hubblesite.org/hu/db/images/hs-2012-25-a-web_print.jpg (http://imgsrc.hubblesite.org/hu/db/images/hs-2012-25-a-web_print.jpg)

Unfortunately, stars don't have birth certificates. So, astronomers have a tough time figuring out their ages. Knowing a star's age is critical for understanding how our Milky Way galaxy built itself up over billions of years from smaller galaxies. But Jason Kalirai of the Space Telescope Science Institute and The Johns Hopkins University's Center for Astrophysical Sciences, both in Baltimore, Md., has found the next best thing to a star's birth certificate. Using a new technique, Kalirai probed the burned-out relics of Sun-like stars, called white dwarfs, in the inner region of our Milky Way galaxy's halo. The halo is a spherical cloud of stars surrounding our galaxy's disk. Those stars, his study reveals, are 11.5 billion years old, younger than the first generation of Milky Way stars. They formed more than 2 billion years after the birth of the universe 13.7 billion years ago. Previous age estimates, based on analyzing normal stars in the inner halo, ranged from 10 billion to 14 billion years. Kalirai's study reinforces the emerging view that our galaxy's halo is composed of a layer-cake structure that formed in stages over billions of years.

More Information (http://hubblesite.org/newscenter/archive/releases/2012/25/text/)

Source (http://hubblesite.org)

رخساره روشنی
05-31-2012, 08:13 PM
Web Chat: Hubble and Andromeda Galaxy: Astronomers Predict Next Cosmic Event


On Thursday, May 31, at 3:00 p.m. EDT NASA will host an informal discussion for the general public with astronomers about new Hubble Space Telescope observations that allow them to predict with certainty the next major cosmic event to affect our entire galaxy, sun, and solar system.

It has been known for a long time that the Andromeda galaxy is approaching us. Because of uncertainties in Andromeda's motion, it has not been possible to determine whether the Milky Way will have a head-on collision or glancing blow with the neighboring galaxy billions of years in the future. Hubble's precise observations will settle this question.
I think This chat for our time its about 3 hour later is started



http://www.progressivenewsdaily.com/wp-content/uploads/images/hubbletelescope.jpg


The web chat panel members are:
Roeland van der Marel, astronomer, Space Telescope Science Institute, Baltimore
Sangmo Tony Sohn, astronomer, Space Telescope Science Institute, Baltimore
Gurtina Besla, astronomer, Columbia University, New York
Rosemary Wyse, professor, Physics and Astronomy, Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore
source : www.nasa.gove

gissoo
06-01-2012, 12:40 AM
It seems,this topic is a place to put the news and talk about them ,as Mr sadeghian told before. Tonight I recognize that you just copy the news and put them here!I wonder how useful it could be

stargazer
06-01-2012, 12:57 PM
It seems,this topic is a place to put the news and talk about them ,as Mr sadeghian told before. Tonight I recognize that you just copy the news and put them here!I wonder how useful it could be




Yes dear gissoo, you're right & I really agree with you

Yes it's not according to this topic's goal & somehow just informing others from some news (the same as our farsi topic of astronomical news which members just copying news from somewhere else in it).The main goal of these topics is disscussing about news & specially learn new things from them

I hope we can reach to this topic's main aim with help of you & other friends

Thank you so much for your good comment & words :)

رخساره روشنی
06-13-2012, 09:55 AM
The Launch Readiness Review for the Pegasus XL rocket set to carry NASA's NuSTAR spacecraft was held on June 11, concluding with a "go" for launch on June 13 during a four-hour window that begins at 11:30 a.m. EDT. The review determined that there were no remaining open issues or concerns, and all action items were closed. Weather presents between a five and ten percent chance of violating the criteria due to of a slight chance of rain showers in the drop box area.


http://www.nasa.gov/images/content/615099main_pegasus-43_946-710.jpg

A launch countdown dress rehearsal was conducted on June 9, providing an opportunity for the launch team to work a combination of both simulated and actual problems. The team is scheduled to be off today to allow for sufficient rest before the countdown begins. On Wednesday, Orbital Sciences' L-1011 aircraft that will carry the Pegasus is scheduled to taxi out to the end of the runway at approximately 70 minutes before launch, and take off from Kwajalein Atoll ten minutes later. The drop location for the Pegasus is 117 nautical miles south of Kwajalein, at an altitude of 39,000 feet over the Pacific Ocean. This location is 6.75 degrees above the equator. Spacecraft separation occurs 13 minutes, 14 seconds after deployment from the L-1011.

Launch coverage begins at 10 a.m. EDT.


http://www.nasa.gov/images/content/626827main_2012-02-19-1600_946-710.jpg

The NuSTAR Countdown Clock is on nasa.gov and you can see it online
http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/nustar/main/index.html

رخساره روشنی
06-18-2012, 11:11 AM
http://www.nasa.gov/images/content/660265main_AG5-20120615-full.jpg

WASHINGTON -- Researchers anticipate that asteroid 2011 AG5, discovered in January 2011, will fly safely past and not impact Earth in 2040.
Observations to date indicate there is a slight chance that AG5 could impact Earth in 2040. Attendees expressed confidence that in the next four years, analysis of space and ground-based observations will show the likelihood of 2011 AG5 missing Earth to be greater than 99 percent.

Measuring approximately 460 feet (140 meters) in size, the space rock was discovered by the NASA-supported Catalina Sky Survey operated by the University of Arizona in Tucson. Several observatories monitored 2011 AG5 for nine months before it moved too far away and grew too faint to see.

"While there is general consensus there is only a very small chance that we could be dealing with a real impact scenario for this object, we will still be watchful and ready to take further action if additional observations indicate it is warranted," said Lindley Johnson, program executive for the Near-Earth Object (NEO) Observation Program at NASA Headquarters in Washington.
For More Information go to this link :http://www.nasa.gov/images/content/660265main_AG5-20120615-full.jpg

رخساره روشنی
06-19-2012, 05:37 PM
On June 16, 2012 at 4:55 AM EDT, the combined effects of two coronal mass ejections from AR 1504, passed NASA's Advanced Composition Explorer (ACE) spacecraft on the way toward Earth's protective magnetic bubble, the magnetosphere. ACE is approximately 900,000 miles from Earth and can detect such incoming shocks about 30-45 minutes before they hit the magnetosphere.

Simulations performed at NASA Goddard's Space Weather Center indicate that the disturbance strongly compressed the magnetopause, ultimately to a minimum of approximately 24,000 miles from Earth's surface at 6:28 PM EDT. This is an altitude some 2,000 miles lower than spacecraft in geosynchronous orbit.

The changing shape of Earth's magnetopause also influenced the aurora, causing bright aurora to be seen at lower latitudes than normal, as low as Iowa, Nebraska, and Maryland.


http://www.nasa.gov/images/content/660052main_20120614_141623-zoom_full.jpg

http://www.nasa.gov/images/content/660561main_MarkoKorosec-BadlandsSD.jpg


for see movie of Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO) click on this link : http://www.nasa.gov/images/content/660561main_MarkoKorosec-BadlandsSD.jpg

Saeed Jafari
06-20-2012, 04:43 PM
Data From NASA's Voyager 1 Point to Interstellar Future
06.14.12


http://www.nasa.gov/images/content/559392main_pia13892Label-43_226-170.jpg (http://www.nasa.gov/images/content/559392main_pia13892Label-43_226-170.jpg)This artist's concept shows NASA's two Voyager spacecraft exploring a turbulent region of space known as the heliosheath, the outer shell of the bubble of charged particles around our sun. Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech
› Full image and caption (http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/voyager/multimedia/pia13892Label.html)

http://www.nasa.gov/images/content/540352main1_voyager20110427-226.jpg (http://www.nasa.gov/images/content/540352main1_voyager20110427-226.jpg) Artist concept of NASA's Voyager spacecraft. Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech
› Larger view (http://www.nasa.gov/images/content/540354main_voyager20110427-full.jpg) Data from NASA's Voyager 1 spacecraft indicate that the venerable deep-space explorer has encountered a region in space where the intensity of charged particles from beyond our solar system has markedly increased. Voyager scientists looking at this rapid rise draw closer to an inevitable but historic conclusion – that humanity's first emissary to interstellar space is on the edge of our solar system.

"The laws of physics say that someday Voyager will become the first human-made object to enter interstellar space, but we still do not know exactly when that someday will be," said Ed Stone, Voyager project scientist at the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena. "The latest data indicate that we are clearly in a new region where things are changing more quickly. It is very exciting. We are approaching the solar system's frontier."

The data making the 16-hour-38 minute, 11.1-billion-mile (17.8-billion-kilometer), journey from Voyager 1 to antennas of NASA's Deep Space Network on Earth detail the number of charged particles measured by the two High Energy telescopes aboard the 34-year-old spacecraft. These energetic particles were generated when stars in our cosmic neighborhood went supernova.

"From January 2009 to January 2012, there had been a gradual increase of about 25 percent in the amount of galactic cosmic rays Voyager was encountering," said Stone. "More recently, we have seen very rapid escalation in that part of the energy spectrum. Beginning on May 7, the cosmic ray hits have increased five percent in a week and nine percent in a month."

This marked increase is one of a triad of data sets which need to make significant swings of the needle to indicate a new era in space exploration. The second important measure from the spacecraft's two telescopes is the intensity of energetic particles generated inside the heliosphere, the bubble of charged particles the sun blows around itself. While there has been a slow decline in the measurements of these energetic particles, they have not dropped off precipitously, which could be expected when Voyager breaks through the solar boundary.

The final data set that Voyager scientists believe will reveal a major change is the measurement in the direction of the magnetic field lines surrounding the spacecraft. While Voyager is still within the heliosphere, these field lines run east-west. When it passes into interstellar space, the team expects Voyager will find that the magnetic field lines orient in a more north-south direction. Such analysis will take weeks, and the Voyager team is currently crunching the numbers of its latest data set.

"When the Voyagers launched in 1977, the space age was all of 20 years old," said Stone. "Many of us on the team dreamed of reaching interstellar space, but we really had no way of knowing how long a journey it would be -- or if these two vehicles that we invested so much time and energy in would operate long enough to reach it.”

Launched in 1977, Voyager 1 and 2 are in good health. Voyager 2 is more than 9.1 billion miles (14.7 billion kilometers) away from the sun. Both are operating as part of the Voyager Interstellar Mission, an extended mission to explore the solar system outside the neighborhood of the outer planets and beyond. NASA's Voyagers are the two most distant active representatives of humanity and its desire to explore.

The Voyager spacecraft were built by NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif., which continues to operate both. JPL is a division of the California Institute of Technology. The Voyager missions are a part of the NASA Heliophysics System Observatory, sponsored by the Heliophysics Division of the Science Mission Directorate in Washington.

More information about Voyager is available at: http://www.nasa.gov/voyager and http://voyager.jpl.nasa.gov

stargazer
06-27-2012, 06:21 AM
Readying Orion for Flight

by Roger Weiss

4402

Image Credit: NASA/Eric Bordelon

www.nasa.gov/multimedia/imagegallery/image_feature_2290.html (http://www.nasa.gov/multimedia/imagegallery/image_feature_2290.html)



The NASA team at the Michoud Assembly Facility in New Orleans has completed the final weld on the first space-bound Orion capsule. The Exploration Flight Test 1 (EFT-1) Orion will be shipped to the Kennedy Space Center for final assembly and checkout operations.The EFT-1 fli...ght will take Orion to an altitude of more than 3,600 miles, more than 15 times farther away from Earth than the International Space Station. Orion will return home at a speed of 25,000 miles, almost 5,000 miles per hour faster than any human spacecraft. It will mimic the return conditions that astronauts experience as they come home from voyages beyond low Earth orbit. As Orion reenters the atmosphere, it will endure temperatures up to 4,000 degrees F., higher than any human spacecraft since astronauts returned from the moon

رخساره روشنی
06-28-2012, 03:04 PM
NASA Observes Fire

NASA satellites continue to provide coverage of the smoke and heat signatures generated from wildfires raging in the western United States. The Waldo Canyon Fire is threatening populated areas, and is located near Colorado Springs, Colo.


http://www.nasa.gov/images/content/663317main2_Boulder.2012178.jpg

The MODIS instrument on NASA’s Aqua satellite captured an image of the fire on June 26, 2012. Thick smoke, partially obscured by clouds, is visible blowing toward the northeast. The red outlines indicate hotspots where MODIS detected unusually warm surface temperatures associated with fires.


http://www.nasa.gov/images/content/663319main_Waldo-1.jpg


This photo was taken from Garden of the Gods, looking North towards Glen Eyrie, Colorado and the ridges just west of Colorado Springs. There are neighborhoods on the east slopes of the ridge climbing up pretty high, which are the homes that were in the path of the fire yesterday, June 27, 2012. (Credit: Don Savage Photography, used with permission)
for see the more photo and the clip of this smoke click here : http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/fires/main/waldo-fire.html

Saeed Jafari
07-02-2012, 05:56 PM
06.28.12 Cassini Finds Likely Subsurface Ocean on Saturn Moon




http://www.nasa.gov/images/content/663679main_pia15607-673.jpg (http://www.nasa.gov/images/content/663679main_pia15607-673.jpg)



This artist's concept shows a possible scenario for the internal structure of Titan, as suggested by data from NASA's Cassini spacecraft. Image credit: A. Tavani › Full image and caption (http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/cassini/multimedia/pia15607.html) › Related animation (http://www.nasa.gov/multimedia/videogallery/index.html?media_id=147413591)
PASADENA, Calif. -- Data from NASA's Cassini spacecraft have revealed Saturn's moon Titan likely harbors a layer of liquid water under its ice shell.
Researchers saw a large amount of squeezing and stretching as the moon orbited Saturn. They deduced that if Titan were composed entirely of stiff rock, the gravitational attraction of Saturn would cause bulges, or solid "tides," on the moon only 3 feet (1 meter) in height. Spacecraft data show Saturn creates solid tides approximately 30 feet (10 meters) in height, which suggests Titan is not made entirely of solid rocky material. The finding appears in today's edition of the journal Science.
"Cassini's detection of large tides on Titan leads to the almost inescapable conclusion that there is a hidden ocean at depth," said Luciano Iess, the paper's lead author and a Cassini team member at the Sapienza University of Rome, Italy. "The search for water is an important goal in solar system exploration, and now we've spotted another place where it is abundant."
Titan takes only 16 days to orbit Saturn, and scientists were able to study the moon's shape at different parts of its orbit. Because Titan is not spherical, but slightly elongated like a football, its long axis grew when it was closer to Saturn. Eight days later, when Titan was farther from Saturn, it became less elongated and more nearly round. Cassini measured the gravitational effect of that squeeze and pull.
Scientists were not sure Cassini would be able to detect the bulges caused by Saturn's pull on Titan. By studying six close flybys of Titan from Feb. 27, 2006, to Feb. 18, 2011, researchers were able to determine the moon's internal structure by measuring variations in the gravitational pull of Titan using data returned to NASA's Deep Space Network (DSN).
"We were making ultrasensitive measurements, and thankfully Cassini and the DSN were able to maintain a very stable link," said Sami Asmar, a Cassini team member at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif. "The tides on Titan pulled up by Saturn aren't huge compared to the pull the biggest planet, Jupiter, has on some of its moons. But, short of being able to drill on Titan's surface, the gravity measurements provide the best data we have of Titan's internal structure."
An ocean layer does not have to be huge or deep to create these tides. A liquid layer between the external, deformable shell and a solid mantle would enable Titan to bulge and compress as it orbits Saturn. Because Titan's surface is mostly made of water ice, which is abundant in moons of the outer solar system, scientists infer Titan's ocean is likely mostly liquid water.
On Earth, tides result from the gravitational attraction of the moon and sun pulling on our surface oceans. In the open oceans, those can be as high as two feet (60 centimeters). While water is easier to move, the gravitational pulling by the sun and moon also causes Earth's crust to bulge in solid tides of about 20 inches (50 centimeters).
The presence of a subsurface layer of liquid water at Titan is not itself an indicator for life. Scientists think life is more likely to arise when liquid water is in contact with rock, and these measurements cannot tell whether the ocean bottom is made up of rock or ice. The results have a bigger implication for the mystery of methane replenishment on Titan.
"The presence of a liquid water layer in Titan is important because we want to understand how methane is stored in Titan's interior and how it may outgas to the surface," said Jonathan Lunine, a Cassini team member at Cornell University, Ithaca, N.Y. "This is important because everything that is unique about Titan derives from the presence of abundant methane, yet the methane in the atmosphere is unstable and will be destroyed on geologically short timescales."
A liquid water ocean, "salted" with ammonia, could produce buoyant ammonia-water liquids that bubble up through the crust and liberate methane from the ice. Such an ocean could serve also as a deep reservoir for storing methane.
The Cassini-Huygens mission is a cooperative project of NASA, the European Space Agency and the Italian Space Agency. The mission is managed by JPL for NASA's Science Mission Directorate in Washington. DSN, also managed by JPL, is an international network of antennas that supports interplanetary spacecraft missions and radio and radar astronomy observations for the exploration of the solar system and the universe. The network also supports selected Earth-orbiting missions. Cassini's radio science team is based at Wellesley College in Massachusetts. JPL is a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena.
For more information about the mission, visit: http://www.nasa.gov/cassini and http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov .

Saeed Jafari
07-03-2012, 03:34 PM
Hubble, Swift Detect First-Ever Changes in an Exoplanet Atmosphere
06.28.12



An international team of astronomers using data from NASA's Hubble Space Telescope has made an unparalleled observation, detecting significant changes in the atmosphere of a planet located beyond our solar system




.The scientists conclude the atmospheric variations occurred in response to a powerful eruption on the planet's host star, an event observed by NASA's Swift satellite






[/URL]http://www.nasa.gov/images/content/663556main1_Evaporating_Exoplanet_Beauty_Small-673.jpg (http://www.nasa.gov/images/content/663556main1_Evaporating_Exoplanet_Beauty_Small-673.jpg)


This artist's rendering illustrates the evaporation of HD 189733b's atmosphere in response to a powerful eruption from its host star. NASA's Hubble Space Telescope detected the escaping gases and NASA's Swift satellite caught the stellar flare. Credit: NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center


[URL]http://www.nasa.gov/topics/universe/features/exoplanet-atmosphere.html

yperseusy
07-04-2012, 01:06 PM
Geneva, 4 July 2012. At a seminar held at CERN1 today as a curtain raiser to the year’s major particle physics conference, ICHEP2012 in Melbourne, the ATLAS and CMS experiments presented their latest preliminary results in the search for the long sought Higgs particle. Both experiments observe a new particle in the mass region around 125-126 GeV.

“We observe in our data clear signs of a new particle, at the level of 5 sigma, in the mass region around 126 GeV. The outstanding performance of the LHC and ATLAS and the huge efforts of many people have brought us to this exciting stage,” said ATLAS experiment spokesperson Fabiola Gianotti, “but a little more time is needed to prepare these results for publication.”

"The results are preliminary but the 5 sigma signal at around 125 GeV we’re seeing is dramatic. This is indeed a new particle. We know it must be a boson and it’s the heaviest boson ever found,” said CMS experiment spokesperson Joe Incandela. “The implications are very significant and it is precisely for this reason that we must be extremely diligent in all of our studies and cross-checks."

“It’s hard not to get excited by these results,” said CERN Research Director Sergio Bertolucci. “ We stated last year that in 2012 we would either find a new Higgs-like particle or exclude the existence of the Standard Model Higgs. With all the necessary caution, it looks to me that we are at a branching point: the observation of this new particle indicates the path for the future towards a more detailed understanding of what we’re seeing in the data.”

The results presented today are labelled preliminary. They are based on data collected in 2011 and 2012, with the 2012 data still under analysis. Publication of the analyses shown today is expected around the end of July. A more complete picture of today’s observations will emerge later this year after the LHC provides the experiments with more data.

The next step will be to determine the precise nature of the particle and its significance for our understanding of the universe. Are its properties as expected for the long-sought Higgs boson, the final missing ingredient in the Standard Model of particle physics? Or is it something more exotic? The Standard Model describes the fundamental particles from which we, and every visible thing in the universe, are made, and the forces acting between them. All the matter that we can see, however, appears to be no more than about 4% of the total. A more exotic version of the Higgs particle could be a bridge to understanding the 96% of the universe that remains obscure.

“We have reached a milestone in our understanding of nature,” said CERN Director General Rolf Heuer. “The discovery of a particle consistent with the Higgs boson opens the way to more detailed studies, requiring larger statistics, which will pin down the new particle’s properties, and is likely to shed light on other mysteries of our universe.”

Positive identification of the new particle’s characteristics will take considerable time and data. But whatever form the Higgs particle takes, our knowledge of the fundamental structure of matter is about to take a major step forward.

Astronomy
07-12-2012, 02:17 PM
A team of astronomers using NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope is reporting the discovery of another moon orbiting the icy dwarf planet Pluto.

The moon is estimated to be irregular in shape and 6 to 15 miles across. It is in a 58,000-mile-diameter circular orbit around Pluto that is assumed to be co-planar with the other satellites in the system.
[/URL][URL="http://www.nasa.gov/images/content/666714main1_pluto-5th-moon-673.jpg"]http://www.nasa.gov/images/content/666714main1_pluto-5th-moon-673.jpg (http://www.nasa.gov/images/content/666714main1_pluto-5th-moon-673.jpg)

This image, taken by NASA's Hubble Space Telescope, shows five moons orbiting the distant, icy dwarf planet Pluto. The green circle marks the newly discovered moon, designated P5, as photographed by Hubble's Wide Field Camera 3 on July 7. The observations will help scientists in their planning for the July 2015 flyby of Pluto by NASA's New Horizons spacecraft. P4 was uncovered in Hubble imagery in 2011 (http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/hubble/science/pluto-moon.html). (Credit: NASA; ESA; M. Showalter, SETI Institute)

More Inforamtion (http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/hubble/science/new-pluto-moon.html)

From: www.NASA.gov (http://www.NASA.gov)

رخساره روشنی
07-15-2012, 10:07 PM
New Expedition 32 Trio Launches

http://i.space.com/images/i/19484/iFF/soyuz-rocket-amazing-liftoff-2-expedition32.jpg?1342322757
http://www.nasa.gov/images/content/489334main_exp32_071412_med.jpg



The launch and docking of Expedition 32 coincides with the 37th anniversary of the Apollo-Soyuz Test Project, the first docking of an American spacecraft with a Russian spacecraft. An Apollo spacecraft from Kennedy Space Center and a Soyuz 7K-TM vehicle from Baikonur Cosmodrome launched on July 15, 1975, then docked two days later.


for read more and see the vedio of this news please click on this link : http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/station/living/index.html

stargazer
07-16-2012, 10:30 AM
Spectacular Views: The Moon Occults Jupiter

by Nancy Atkinson on July 16, 2012

http://www.universetoday.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/07/occulation-1-580x521.jpg (http://www.universetoday.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/07/occulation-1-580x521.jpg)
Caption: July 15 2012 occultation, taken with Canon 550D on Newton 200/1200 mounted on NEQ6Pro. Credit: Andrei Juravle (http://www.flickr.com/photos/keppler/)


Astrophotographers in Northern Africa, Europe and the Middle East were treated to a beautiful sight in the early morning hours of July 15, 2012. A lunar occultation of Jupiter took place just before dawn, as the waning crescent Moon slid in front of the planet Jupiter. Venus was hanging around nearby, too. Several astrophotographers were able to capture the event, and some got a bonus look at Jupiter’s Galilean moons, as well! Above is a lovely image by Andrei Juravle.
More below!



[/URL]http://www.universetoday.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/07/moon_venus_jupiter_15-legault.jpg (http://legault.perso.sfr.fr/120715_moon_venus_jupiter_15.jpg)

Caption: The Moon, Venus and Jupiter. Credit Thierry Legault.


Astrophotographer extraordinaire Thierry Legault (http://legault.perso.sfr.fr/) took this great shot of Venus, Jupiter and the Moon from Saint-Cloud, France with a Canon 5D mark II and 135mm lens. But look closely: the satellites of Jupiter are visible:




http://www.universetoday.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/07/moon_venus_jupiter_crop-legault-580x580.jpg (http://legault.perso.sfr.fr/120715_moon_venus_jupiter_crop.jpg)

Caption: A closer look reveals Jupiter’s moons! Credit: Thierry Legault.


And as always, you should check out Thierry’s website (http://legault.perso.sfr.fr/) for more incredible images.




http://www.universetoday.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/07/dolmabahce2k-580x386.jpg (http://www.universetoday.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/07/dolmabahce2k.jpg)

Caption: Jupiter and the Moon hover over Dolmabahce Mosque in Ankara, Turkey. Credit: Rasid Tugral.



http://www.universetoday.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/07/clouds-moon-jupiter.jpg (http://www.flickr.com/photos/47290344@N06/7578263248/in/pool-universetoday)

Caption: Clouds nearly covered the view in Mombaroccio, Marche, Italy. Credit: Niki Giada.



http://www.universetoday.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/07/occultation-series.jpg (http://www.universetoday.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/07/occultation-series.jpg)

Caption: A series of images of the Moon’s occultation of Jupiter as seen in Saida, Lebanon. Credit: astroZ1 on Flickr. (http://www.flickr.com/photos/astroz1/with/7574709310/)

(http://www.flickr.com/photos/astroz1/with/7574709310/)

[URL="http://www.universetoday.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/07/Moon_Jupiter_occultation2-580x458.jpg"]http://www.universetoday.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/07/Moon_Jupiter_occultation2-580x458.jpg (http://www.universetoday.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/07/Moon_Jupiter_occultation2.jpg)

Caption: Occultation of Jupiter by the Moon as seen from Smolyan, Bulgaria. Credit: Zlatan Merakov.


Read more: http://www.universetoday.com/96301/spectacular-views-the-moon-occults-jupiter/#ixzz20lYnA8UY

Saeed Jafari
08-01-2012, 02:41 PM
NuSTAR Mission Status Report


NASA's Nuclear Spectroscopic Telescope Array (NuSTAR) passed its Post-Launch Assessment Review at JPL this week, clearing the way for the mission to enter into its science operations phase in the next month. NuSTAR is currently in the final stages of "Phase C/D," or the design and development phase, which included building and testing the flight hardware, launch and early operations (e.g., spacecraft checkout, mast deployment, instrument commissioning and calibrations). In August, NuSTAR will
enter "Phase E," or the operations phase, meaning that it will primarily gather science data

http://www.nasa.gov/images/content/623987main_pia15265-226.jpg (http://www.nasa.gov/images/content/623987main_pia15265-226.jpg)

Artist's concept of NuSTAR on orbit. NuSTAR has a 10-m (30') mast that deploys after launch to separate the optics modules (right) from the detectors in the focal plane (left) Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech



http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/nustar/news/nustar20120727.html

Saeed Jafari
08-08-2012, 09:52 AM
Curiosity Takes Us Back to Mars




NASA is back on Mars – and getting ready for the next mission to the Red Planet! After an astounding 352 million mile journey and a harrowing landing that demonstrated cutting-edge technology, Curiosity, the largest rover ever sent to another planet, is in place and ready to work. This robotic laboratory will seek answers to one of humanity’s oldest questions as it investigates whether conditions have favored development of microbial life on the Red Planet. The mission is a critical planetary science mission -- and a precursor to sending humans to the Red Planet in the 2030’s, a goal set forth by President Obama




It’s another great leadership moment for our nation and a sign of the continued strength of NASA’s many programs in science, aeronautics and human spaceflight. It’s also important to remember that the $2.5 billion investment made in this project was not spent on Mars, but right here on Earth, supporting more than 7,000 jobs in at least 31 state



http://blogs.nasa.gov/cm/blog/bolden.blog/1035736main_MSL%20landing%201.jpg






http://blogs.nasa.gov/cm/blog/bolden/posts/post_1344232802884.html

گلناز
08-24-2012, 07:15 PM
http://www.nasa.gov/images/content/680498main_drop_test_cropped_946-710.jpg (http://www.nasa.gov/images/content/680498main_drop_test_cropped_946-710.jpg)







Download Image



› Full Size (http://www.nasa.gov/images/content/680501main_drop_test_full_full.jpg)› 1600 x 1200› 1024 x 768› 800 x 600



Orion Spacecraft Water Impact Testing



Water impact test of an 18,000-pound (8,165 kilogram) test version of the Orion spacecraft at NASA's Langley Research Center on Thursday, Aug. 23, 2012.



Swing drop testing began last summer at Langley's Hydro Impact Basin to certify the Orion spacecraft for water landings. In this series of tests, Orion is being dropped vertically into the pool for the first time, which will help fine-tune the way NASA predicts Orion's landing loads.



The Orion spacecraft and the Space Launch System (SLS), NASA’s next crew capsule and heavy-lift rocket, will provide an entirely new capability for human exploration. Designed to be flexible for launching spacecraft for crew and cargo missions, SLS and Orion will expand human presence beyond low Earth orbit and enable new missions of exploration across the solar system.



Image Credit: NASA

گلناز
09-10-2012, 08:30 PM
Galaxy Evolution Explorer Media Telecon: Aug. 15, 2007, 1 p.m. EST (10 a.m. PST)

Astronomers are scheduled to announce new findings about a star unlike any seen before at a media teleconference Wednesday, Aug. 15, at 10 a.m. PST (1 p.m. EST). The findings are from NASA's Galaxy Evolution Explorer.

+ News release (http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/galex/galex-20070815.html)

Toll free number: 1-800-593-1179 | International toll number: 210-795-9369
Passcode: Galex

An instant replay of the telecon is available 24 hours a day through Aug. 22:
Toll free number: 866-505-9257
International toll number: 203-369-1881

Note to TV reporters: Broadcast quality video file (animation, images and sound bites) to accompany this story are available through the Pathfire distribution service. In the DMG Content Provider Panel, select News, Video News Feeds, VNF Provider B. Select the NASA-JPL tab. Double-click on the Slug to preview the package contents. For other video options, call JPL Media Relations at 818-354-5011.

Participants:+ Bios page (http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/galex/20070815/bios.html)
Christopher Martin, Principal Investigator, NASA's Galaxy Evolution Explorer, California Institute of Technology, Pasadena
Michael Shara, Curator, Department of Astrophysics, American Museum of Natural History, New York City, N.Y.
Mark Seibert, Astronomer, Observatories of the Carnegie Institution of Washington, Pasadena, Calif.


Images

http://www.nasa.gov/images/content/185517main_a-516.jpg
1. Johnny Appleseed of the Cosmos
A new ultraviolet mosaic from NASA's Galaxy Evolution Explorer shows a speeding star named Mira (pronounced my-rah) that is leaving an enormous trail of "seeds" for new solar systems.
+ Full image and caption (http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/galex/20070815/a.html)

http://www.nasa.gov/images/content/185587main_v-516.jpg
2. A Real Shooting Star
This artist's animation illustrates a star flying through our galaxy at supersonic speeds, leaving a 13-light-year-long trail of glowing material in its wake.
Play animation: + Play animation - Lower resolution (Quicktime - 6.5Mb) (http://www.nasa.gov/mov/186071main_V-MiraAnim-Web2.mov)
+ Play animation (Quicktime - 27Mb) (http://www.nasa.gov/mov/185589main_V-MiraAnim-Web.mov)
+ Full image and caption (http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/galex/20070815/v.html)


http://www.nasa.gov/images/content/185609main_d-516.jpg
3. Evolution of Mira's Enormous Tail
This chart illustrates the length (top) and age (bottom) of a long comet-like tail of material trailing behind a speeding star called Mira (pronounced My-rah).
+ Full image and caption (http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/galex/20070815/d.html)


http://www.nasa.gov/images/content/185523main_e-516.jpg
4. Anatomy of a Shooting Star
A close-up view of a star racing through space faster than a speeding bullet can be seen in this image from NASA's Galaxy Evolution Explorer.
+ Full image and caption (http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/galex/20070815/e.html)


http://www.nasa.gov/images/content/185591main_f-516.jpg
5. Supersonic Bullet
A bullet traveling through air at about 1.5 times the speed of sound can be seen in this image.
+ Full image and caption (http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/galex/20070815/f.html)


http://www.nasa.gov/images/content/185877main_g-516.jpg
6. Mira's Tail There All Along
As this composite demonstrates, Mira's tail is only visible in ultraviolet light (top), and does not show up in visible light (bottom).

گلناز
09-13-2012, 02:03 PM
Orion Test Article Vertical Drop (25 ft)

Water impact test of an 18,000-pound (8,165 kilogram) test version of the Orion spacecraft dropped from 25 feet (7.62 meters) at NASA's Langley Research Center on Wednesday, Sept. 12, 2012.

NASA is conducting these vertical drop tests to help fine-tune the way NASA predicts Orion's landing loads.

The Hydro Impact Basin is 115 feet long, 90 feet wide and 20 feet deep (35 x 27 x 6 meters). It is located at the west end of Langley's historic Landing and Impact Research Facility, or Gantry, where Apollo astronauts trained for moon walks.

http://www.nasa.gov/multimedia/videogallery/index.html

Saeed Jafari
09-26-2012, 05:54 PM
Like photographers assembling a portfolio of best shots, astronomers have assembled a new, improved portrait of mankind's deepest-ever view of the universe





[/URL]http://www.nasa.gov/images/content/690957main1_p1237a1-673.jpg (http://www.nasa.gov/images/content/690957main1_p1237a1-673.jpg)


(Credit: NASA; ESA; G. Illingworth, D. Magee, and P. Oesch, University of California, Santa Cruz; R. Bouwens, Leiden University; and the HUDF09 Team)



Called the eXtreme Deep Field, or XDF, the photo was assembled by combining 10 years of NASA Hubble Space Telescope photographs taken of a patch of sky at the center of the original Hubble Ultra Deep Field. The XDF is a small fraction of the angular diameter of the full moon.

The Hubble Ultra Deep Field is an image of a small area of space in the constellation Fornax, created using Hubble Space Telescope data from 2003 and 2004. By collecting faint light over many hours of observation, it revealed thousands of galaxies, both nearby and very distant, making it the deepest image of the universe ever taken at that time.

The new full-color XDF image is even more sensitive, and contains about 5,500 galaxies even within its smaller field of view. The faintest galaxies are one ten-billionth the brightness of what the human eye can see




[URL]http://www.nasa.gov/

yperseusy
10-01-2012, 05:42 PM
Representatives from the science-funding agencies and library communities of 29 countries are meeting at CERN today to launch the Sponsoring Consortium for Open Access Publishing in Particle Physics (SCOAP3) initiative.

At a meeting last week the CERN Finance Committee officially approved the award of contracts for the provision of peer-review, open access and other publication services for the benefit of SCOAP3. The consortium aims to provide unrestricted access to high-energy-physics (HEP) research literature in its final, peer-reviewed form, by sharing the cost of the peer-review service between funding agencies, research institutions, libraries and library consortia, while publishers make electronic versions of their journals open access.

"The Finance Committee's approval is a watershed, with a large exclamation mark!" says CERN librarian Jens Vigen. "After years of design and consensus building, we can now move on to the implementation phase of the project. This is the first time ever that an entire field is concretely moving towards open-access publishing."

The goal of open access is to grant anyone free access to the results of scientific research. But the current model of scientific publishing – where journal access is restricted to paying customers and reuse of material is hindered by copyright restrictions – is at odds with this idea. Traditionally libraries have paid, on behalf of their readers, for access to content. However, the service needed by the community is the peer-review and quality-assurance service, as in the field of high-energy physics community preprints of articles are generally made available online long before they appear in journals. SCOAP3 is putting this service at the centre, remunerating the publishing industry for it, while content will be open access.

"The issue is that people in our field don't tend to read the journals, they read the arXiv," says Vigen. "This said, peer-reviewed journals add an indispensable quality stamp. The new system enshrines the role of the journals in providing the peer-review service rather than repositories of content."

In the SCOAP3 model, HEP funding agencies, research institutions, libraries and library consortia, which today buy journal subscriptions to implicitly support the peer-review service, instead pool their resources explicitly to cover the cost of this service, while publishers make the electronic versions of their journals open access. SCOAP3 partners recover their contributions by redirecting the funds they currently use for journal subscriptions.

With a projected SCOAP3 budget of 36 million Swiss francs over three years, 12 journals from 7 publishers are now on the list for a possible contract for the provision of peer-review, open access and other publication services. Over 6600 articles relevant to the field were published in these journals in 2011; this represents the vast majority of the literature.

"It has taken an amazing team effort to get here, with volunteers from the library community, research institutions and funding agencies working hard together to steer the initiative, alongside constructive discussions with the publishers of the field," says Salvatore Mele, head of Open Access at CERN, who convened the SCOAP3 Steering Committee over a year and a half. "This bodes well for the next crucial steps as SCOAP3 moves forward."

"I think neighbouring fields like nuclear physics and astrophysics might be inspired by this model in some way," says Vigen. "When we initiated the process six years ago, open access publishing was in its infancy – today it has become mainstream. We have entered into an era that will accelerate science."

گلناز
10-10-2012, 11:06 AM
What's Up for October. Ceres, Vesta and two meteor showers.

Hello and welcome. I'm Jane Houston Jones at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California.

You can spot the two brightest objects in the asteroid belt this month and throughout autumn.

You'll find both Ceres and Vesta near Jupiter, among the stars of the constellations Taurus and Gemini. Look to the eastern sky in the late evening this month. You can't miss Jupiter.

These two objects shine at a magnitude of 7 and 8, making them challenging but rewarding objects to find in your telescope.

NASA's Dawn spacecraft completed its orbit of Vesta in August after over a year of investigation. Now Dawn is on its way to Ceres and will arrive in February 2015.

A third asteroid, Pallas, is also visible through telescopes in the southeastern sky this month.

Two meteor showers grace the October skies, too.

The Orionids will peak on the 21st. You'll see more just before midnight, after the moon sets.

The Taurid meteor shower, radiating from the constellation Taurus the bull, doesn't peak until November 10 but is active beginning October 20.

You can tell the difference between the two showers, even though the constellations appear near each other. Taurids are slow, and you might see bright fireballs. The Orionids are fast and mostly faint.

To learn about Dawn and all of NASA's missions, visit www.nasa.gov.

That's all for this month. .

گلناز
10-28-2012, 06:46 PM
http://www.nasa.gov/images/content/700323main2_20121014_003615-BA-670.jpg (http://www.nasa.gov/images/content/700322main_20121014_003615-BA-orig.jpg) Each of these images was captured from a different perspective by one of NASA's Solar Terrestrial Relations Observatory (STEREO) spacecraft on Oct. 14, 2012. The image on the left, STEREO-B, shows a dark vertical line slightly to the upper left of center. Only by looking at the image on the right, captured by STEREO-A from a different direction, is this feature revealed to be a giant prominence of solar material bursting through the sun's atmosphere. Credit: NASA/STEREO
› View larger (http://www.nasa.gov/images/content/700322main_20121014_003615-BA-orig.jpg), › View STEREO B larger (http://www.nasa.gov/images/content/700325main_20121014_003615_Behind.jpg), › View STEREO A larger (http://www.nasa.gov/images/content/700326main_20121014_003615_Ahead.jpg)

On the evening of Oct. 25, 2006, the twin Solar Terrestrial Relations Observatory (STEREO) spacecraft launched into space, destined for fairly simple orbits: both circle the sun like Earth does, STEREO-A traveling in a slightly smaller and therefore faster orbit, STEREO-B traveling in a larger and slower orbit. Those simple orbits, however, result in interesting geometry. As one spacecraft gained an increasing lead over Earth, the other trailed further and further behind. In February of 2011, each STEREO spacecraft was situated on opposite sides of the sun, and on Sept. 1, 2012, the two spacecraft and and the Solar Dynamics Observatory (at Earth) formed an equal-sided triangle, with each observatory providing overlapping views of the entire sun.

http://www.nasa.gov/images/content/700756main1_ST_equidistant_orbit-670.jpg (http://www.nasa.gov/images/content/700755main_ST_equidistant_orbit-orig_full.jpg) › View larger (http://www.nasa.gov/images/content/700755main_ST_equidistant_orbit-orig_full.jpg)
Since its launch in 2006, the STEREO spacecraft have drifted further and further apart to gain different views of the sun. Credit: NASA/GSFC

By providing such unique viewpoints, STEREO has offered scientists the ability to see all sides of the sun simultaneously for the first time in history, augmented with a view from Earth's perspective by NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO). In addition to giving researchers a view of active regions on the sun before they even come over the horizon, combining two views is crucial for three-dimensional observations of the giant filaments that dance off the sun's surface or the massive eruptions of solar material known as coronal mass ejections (CMEs). Examine the images below to see how a feature on the sun can look dramatically different from two perspectives.

http://www.nasa.gov/images/content/700341main1_20121014_003615_flat-670.jpg (http://www.nasa.gov/images/content/700328main_20121014_003615_flat.jpg) › View larger (http://www.nasa.gov/images/content/700328main_20121014_003615_flat.jpg)
This map of the full sun on Oct. 14, 2012, was created by images from, ­ in order from left to right,­ STEREO-A, STEREO-B and SDO. Credit: NASA/STEREO/SDO/GSFC

Saeed Jafari
10-29-2012, 12:25 PM
New Study Brings a Doubted Exoplanet 'Back from the Dead'



A second look at data from NASA's Hubble Space Telescope is reanimating the claim that the nearby star Fomalhaut hosts a massive exoplanet. The study suggests that the planet, named Fomalhaut b, is a rare and possibly unique object that is completely shrouded by dust.

Fomalhaut is the brightest star in the constellation Piscis Austrinus and lies 25 light-years away.



In November 2008, Hubble astronomers announced the exoplanet, named Fomalhaut b, as the first one ever directly imaged in visible light around another star. The object was imaged just inside a vast ring of debris surrounding but offset from the host star. The planet's location and mass -- no more than three times Jupiter's -- seemed just right for its gravity to explain the ring's appearance




Recent studies have claimed that this planetary interpretation is incorrect. Based on the object's apparent motion and the lack of an infrared detection by NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope, they argue that the object is a short-lived dust cloud unrelated to any plane








[/URL]http://www.nasa.gov/images/content/700417main1_fomalhaut_combined_f606_labels-673.jpg (http://www.nasa.gov/images/content/700417main1_fomalhaut_combined_f606_labels-673.jpg)





http://www.nasa.gov/700422main_ESA_Fomalhaut_Exoplanet_Still.png (http://www.nasa.gov/700422main_ESA_Fomalhaut_Exoplanet_Still.png)



[URL]http://www.nasa.gov

رخساره روشنی
11-14-2012, 08:47 PM
Asteroid Belts of Just the Right Size are Friendly to Life


http://www.nasa.gov/images/content/703153main_hs-2012-44-a-full.jpg


Solar systems with life-bearing planets may be rare if they are dependent on the presence of asteroid belts of just the right mass, according to a study by Rebecca Martin, a NASA Sagan Fellow from the University of Colorado in Boulder, and astronomer Mario Livio of the Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore, Md.
They suggest that the size and location of an asteroid belt, shaped by the evolution of the sun's protoplanetary disk and by the gravitational influence of a nearby giant Jupiter-like planet, may determine whether complex life will evolve on an Earth-like planet.

This might sound surprising because asteroids are considered a nuisance due to their potential to impact Earth and trigger mass extinctions. But an emerging view proposes that asteroid collisions with planets may provide a boost to the birth and evolution of complex life.
For read more go this link : http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/hubble/science/right-sized-belts.html

yperseusy
12-09-2012, 07:35 PM
British astronomer and broadcaster Sir Patrick Moore has died, aged 89, his friends and colleagues have said.

He "passed away peacefully at 12:25 this afternoon" at his home in Selsey, West Sussex, they said in a statement.

Sir Patrick presented the BBC programme The Sky At Night for over 50 years, making him the longest-running host of the same television show ever.

He wrote dozens of books on astronomy and his research was used by the US and the Russians in their space programmes.

Described by one of his close friends as "fearlessly eccentric", Sir Patrick was notable for his habit of wearing a monocle on screen and his idiosyncratic style.

Sir Patrick presented the first edition of The Sky at Night on 24 April 1957. He last appeared in an episode broadcast on Monday.

A statement by his friends and staff said: "After a short spell in hospital last week, it was determined that no further treatment would benefit him, and it was his wish to spend his last days in his own home, Farthings, where he today passed on, in the company of close friends and carers and his cat Ptolemy.

"Over the past few years, Patrick, an inspiration to generations of astronomers, fought his way back from many serious spells of illness and continued to work and write at a great rate, but this time his body was too weak to overcome the infection which set in, a few weeks ago

http://news.bbcimg.co.uk/media/images/64660000/jpg/_64660123_uwvxfn8x.jpg

"He was able to perform on his world record-holding TV programme The Sky at Night right up until the most recent episode .

"His executors and close friends plan to fulfil his wishes for a quiet ceremony of interment, but a farewell event is planned for what would have been Patrick's 90th birthday in March 2013."
'Father figure'

Patrick Alfred Caldwell-Moore was born at Pinner, Middlesex on 4 Mar 1923.

Heart problems meant he spent much of his childhood being educated at home and he became an avid reader. His mother gave him a copy of GF Chambers' book, The Story of the Solar System, and this sparked his lifelong passion for astronomy.

When war came he turned down a place at Cambridge and lied about his age to join the RAF, serving as a navigator with Bomber Command and rising to the rank of Flight Lieutenant.

But the war brought him a personal tragedy after his fiancee, Lorna, was killed when an ambulance she was driving was hit by a bomb. He never married.

Sir Patrick, who had a pacemaker fitted in 2006 and received a knighthood in 2001, won a Bafta for services to television and was a honorary fellow of the Royal Society.

He was a member of the UK Independence party and, briefly, the finance minister for the Monster Raving Loony Party, and attracted some controversy for his outspoken views on Europe and immigration.

BBC science correspondent Pallab Ghosh said Sir Patrick's appearance sometimes aroused as much comment as his astronomy: "He was six-foot-three, and was once described as having 'an air of donnish dishevelment', with his raised eyebrow, scarcely-brushed hair and poorly-fitting suits.

"His enthusiasm was unstoppable, and on occasions he would talk at 300 words a minute."

Queen guitarist Brian May, who published a book on astronomy written with Sir Patrick, described him as a "dear friend, and a kind of father figure to me".

He said: "Patrick will be mourned by the many to whom he was a caring uncle, and by all who loved the delightful wit and clarity of his writings, or enjoyed his fearlessly eccentric persona in public life.

"Patrick is irreplaceable. There will never be another Patrick Moore. But we were lucky enough to get one."

'Charming and hospitable'

Television presenter and physicist Professor Brian Cox posted a message on Twitter saying: "Very sad news about Sir Patrick. Helped inspire my love of astronomy. I will miss him!"

And Dr Marek Kakula, public astronomer at Royal Observatory in Greenwich, described him as a "very charming and hospitable man".

"When you came to his home he would always make sure you had enough to eat and drink. He was full of really entertaining and amusing stories.

"There are many many professional astronomers like me who can actually date their interest in astronomy to watching Patrick on TV, so his impact on the world of professional astronomy as well as amateur is hard to overstate."

stargazer
12-09-2012, 07:58 PM
Really?!!!!:OSMILEY:

He was an honorable man especially for astronomers all over the world

Many people (kids, children and adults) who were interested in astronomy, learned many things about this science from him, his writings & books.


he leaved a good trace from himself on all sky lovers' minds & memories, and passed away
:sad:
.......

Just we can say: Thank You Sir Patrick Moore & May Rest in Peace

محمد مهدی عسگری
12-12-2012, 03:30 AM
A giant asteroid will make a flyby of Earth over the next few days, and armchair astronomers can watch the action live on their computers.

The near-Earth asteroid 4179 Toutatis, which is about 3 miles (5 kilometers) wide, will zoom within 4.3 million miles (7 million kilometers) of Earth during its closest approach early Wednesday morning (Dec. 12). That's too far away to pose any impact threat on this pass, but close enough to put on a pretty good show through top-notch telescopes, researchers say.

And some of those scopes will be tracking Toutatis' movements for the benefit of skywatchers around the world. The online Slooh Space Camera and Virtual Telescope Project, for example, will both stream live, free footage of the asteroid from professional-quality observatories.


Slooh will webcast Toutatis views from a scope in the Canary Islands off the west coast of Africa beginning at 3 p.m. EST (2000 GMT) today (Dec. 11). Another show will follow at 10 p.m. EST tonight (0300 GMT Wednesday), with footage from an instrument in Arizona. You can watch them at Slooh's website: http://www.slooh.com.

Both shows will feature commentary from Slooh president Patrick Paolucci and Astronomy Magazine columnist Bob Berman. [Photos: Asteroids in Deep Space]

"Slooh technical staff will let the public follow this fast-moving asteroid in two different ways. In one view, the background stars will be tracked at their own rate and the asteroid will appear as an obvious streak or a moving time-lapse dot across the starry field," Berman said in a statement.

"In a second view, Toutatis itself will be tracked and held steady as a tiny pointlike object, while Earth's spin makes the background stars whiz by as streaks," Berman added. "Both methods will make the asteroid's speedy orbital motion obvious as it passes us in space."

Meanwhile, the Virtual Telescope Project — which is run by Gianluca Masi of Bellatrix Astronomical Observatory in Italy — will offer its own free webcast Thursday (Dec. 13) at 3 p.m. EST (2000 GMT), complete with commentary from astrophysicists.

You can see that video stream here: http://www.virtualtelescope.eu/webtv/


Asteroid Toutatis was first viewed in 1934, then officially discovered in 1989. It makes one trip around the sun every four years.

The Minor Planet Center in Cambridge, Mass., lists Toutatis as a potentially hazardous object, meaning that it could pose a threat to our planet at some point in the future. The current flyby is no cause for concern, however. At its closest approach, which comes at 1:40 a.m. (0640 GMT) Wednesday, Toutatis will still be 18 times farther away from Earth than the moon is.

Toutatis would cause catastrophic damage if it ever did slam into Earth. In general, scientists think a strike by anything at least 0.6 miles (1 km) wide could have global consequences, most likely by altering the world's climate for many years to come.

For comparison, the asteroid thought to have wiped out the dinosaurs 65 million years ago was an estimated 6 miles (10 km) across.

Follow SPACE.com senior writer Mike Wall on Twitter @michaeldwall or SPACE.com @Spacedotcom. We're also on Facebook and Google+.

Copyright 2012 SPACE.com, a TechMediaNetwork company. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

منبع: Yahoo News

گلناز
12-21-2012, 04:07 PM
http://www.nasa.gov/images/content/715782main_sun_226.jpg Solar storms, like this coronal mass ejection on Aug. 31, 2012, can propel a billion tons of charged particles and radiation into space. Occasionally, these eruptions are directed towards Earth, prompting special protective measures for astronauts aboard the International Space Station, as well as aircraft crew on transpolar flights where risk to exposure is greatest. (NASA SDO)
View video (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hg747t37m80&feature=player_embedded)

http://www.nasa.gov/images/content/715780main_vial_226.jpg Radi-N2 bubble detectors are filled with a gel, inside which are liquid droplets that help quantify neutron radiation inside the International Space Station. (Canadian Space Agency)
View large image (http://www.nasa.gov/images/content/715781main_vial_XL.jpg) Space can be a potentially hazardous environment to live and work in, especially when it comes to radiation. Originating from violent storms on the sun and galactic cosmic rays produced in distant supernovae explosions, this natural radiation can pose a serious health risk for astronauts on long-duration space missions like those on the International Space Station (http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/station/main/index.html).

Like a protective bubble, Earth's atmosphere and magnetosphere shields life on our planet from this never-ending bombardment of high-energy particles. However, in low-Earth orbit where the space station flies, astronauts are regularly exposed to high doses of radiation, including charged particles trapped in Earth's magnetic field, as well as cosmic rays and solar radiation.

To prepare for future missions that may last for months or years, the Canadian Space Agency, or CSA, along with other space agencies around the world, have been stepping up research into radiation biology in recent years, recognizing that it deserves the highest priority.

During CSA astronaut Chris Hadfield's mission to the space station (http://www.asc-csa.gc.ca/eng/missions/expedition34-35/default.asp), he will carry a new set of instruments into orbit to measure one of the most serious types of radiation -- caused by high-energy neutron particles -- and monitor the dose an astronaut absorbs during space flight.

What is Neutron Radiation?

Neutron radiation is considered to be one of the most severe of all types of radiation experienced in space as it can cause biological damage. It represents approximately 30 percent of the total exposure for those aboard the station. In space, neutrons are produced when charged particles collide with physical matter, such as the walls and equipment on the space station. Just like medical X-rays, these high-energy particles can shoot through delicate body tissues, and through long-term exposure, they can damage DNA and potentially cause cataracts, bone marrow damage or even cancer.

It's all in the bubbles -- Bubbles and Radiation Trouble

Radi-N2 is Canada's second generation of neutron radiation monitoring aboard the station and continues on where fellow Canadian astronaut Robert Thirsk and the original Radi-N experiment (http://www.asc-csa.gc.ca/eng/sciences/radi-n.asp) left off in 2009.

A collaborative effort between the CSA and Russia's RSC-Energia and State Research Center of Russia Institute of Biomedical Problems, or IBMP, Russian Academy of Sciences, the Radi-N2 study will have Hadfield and fellow crew member Roman Romanenko measure the neutron radiation levels on the station while onboard the station for Expedition 34/35.

Radi-N2 (http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/station/research/experiments/RaDIN2.html) uses bubble detectors produced by a Canadian company, Bubble Technology Industries (http://www.bubbletech.ca/) of Chalk River, Ontario, designed to focus on detecting neutrons while ignoring other types of radiation. Bubble detectors have been used in space for more than two decades on space shuttle missions and the MIR space station, and have become popular because of their accuracy and convenience.

Eight of these finger-sized instruments are going to be placed by Hadfield and Romanenko around various space station modules. Each detector is filled with a clear polymer gel, inside which are liquid droplets. When a neutron strikes the test tube, a droplet may be vaporized. This creates a visible gas bubble in the polymer. Each bubble, which represents neutron radiation, is then placed within an automatic reader and counted.

Radi-N2 will provide critical information for potential future human missions to the moon, asteroids and eventually Mars.

CSA's support of radiation research will not only lead to major advancements for future human exploration of space but also in our knowledge of the health risks of radiation, such as cancer, neurological damage and degenerative tissue disease.

Saeed Jafari
01-07-2013, 12:19 PM
Billions and Billions of Planets
01.03.2013



[/URL]http://www.nasa.gov/images/content/717258main_pia11824-673.jpg (http://www.nasa.gov/images/content/717258main_pia11824-673.jpg)
This artist's concept shows the Kepler spacecraft. Image credit: NASA/Ames/JPL-Caltech


Look up at the night sky and you'll see stars, sure. But the sky is also filled with planets -- billions and billions of them at least.

That's the conclusion of a new study by astronomers at the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, which provides yet more evidence that planetary systems are the cosmic norm. The team made their estimate while analyzing planets orbiting a star called Kepler-32 -- planets that are representative, they say, of the vast majority of planets in our galaxy and thus serve as a perfect case study for understanding how most of these worlds form.

"There are at least 100 billion planets in the galaxy, just our galaxy," says John Johnson, assistant professor of planetary astronomy at Caltech and coauthor of the study, which was recently accepted for publication in the Astrophysical Journal. "That's mind-boggling."

"It's a staggering number, if you think about it," adds Jonathan Swift, a postdoctoral student at Caltech and lead author of the paper. "Basically, there's one of these planets per star."

One of the fundamental questions regarding the origin of planets is how many of them there are. Like the Caltech group, other teams of astronomers have estimated that there is roughly one planet per star, but this is the first time researchers have made such an estimate by studying M-dwarf systems, the most numerous population of planets known.

The planetary system in question, which was detected by NASA's Kepler space telescope, contains five planets. Two of the planets orbiting Kepler-32 had previously been discovered by other astronomers. The Caltech team confirmed the remaining three, then analyzed the five-planet system and compared it to other systems found by Kepler




[URL]http://www.nasa.gov

گلناز
01-31-2013, 02:10 PM
http://www.nasa.gov/images/content/723550main_pia16683-673.jpg (http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/herschel/multimedia/pia16683.html) This artist's illustration shows a planetary disk (left) that weighs the equivalent of 50 Jupiter-mass planets. Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech › Full image and caption (http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/herschel/multimedia/pia16683.html)



http://www.nasa.gov/images/content/598000main_pia14870-43_226-170.jpg (http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/herschel/multimedia/pia14870.html) This artist's concept illustrates the planet-forming disk around TW Hydrae, located about 175 light-years away in the Hydra, or Sea Serpent, constellation. Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech
› Full image and caption (http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/herschel/multimedia/pia14870.html)



PASADENA, Calif. -- A star thought to have passed the age at which it can form planets may, in fact, be creating new worlds. The disk of material surrounding the surprising star called TW Hydrae may be massive enough to make even more planets than we have in our own solar system.
The findings were made using the European Space Agency's Herschel Space Telescope, a mission in which NASA is a participant.
At roughly 10 million years old and 176 light years away, TW Hydrae is relatively close to Earth by astronomical standards. Its planet-forming disk has been well studied. TW Hydrae is relatively young but, in theory, it is past the age at which giant planets already may have formed.
"We didn't expect to see so much gas around this star," said Edwin Bergin of the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor. Bergin led the new study appearing in the journal Nature. "Typically stars of this age have cleared out their surrounding material, but this star still has enough mass to make the equivalent of 50 Jupiters," Bergin said.
In addition to revealing the peculiar state of the star, the findings also demonstrate a new, more precise method for weighing planet-forming disks. Previous techniques for assessing the mass were indirect and uncertain. The new method can directly probe the gas that typically goes into making planets.
Planets are born out of material swirling around young stars, and the mass of this material is a key factor controlling their formation. Astronomers did not know before the new study whether the disk around TW Hydrae contained enough material to form new planets similar to our own.
"Before, we had to use a proxy to guess the gas quantity in the planet-forming disks," said Paul Goldsmith, the NASA project scientist for Herschel at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif. "This is another example of Herschel's versatility and sensitivity yielding important new results about star and planet formation."
Using Herschel, scientists were able to take a fresh look at the disk with the space telescope to analyze light coming from TW Hydrae and pick out the spectral signature of a gas called hydrogen deuteride. Simple hydrogen molecules are the main gas component of planets, but they emit light at wavelengths too short to be detected by Herschel. Gas molecules containing deuterium, a heavier version of hydrogen, emit light at longer, far-infrared wavelengths that Herschel is equipped to see. This enabled astronomers to measure the levels of hydrogen deuteride and obtain the weight of the disk with the highest precision yet.
"Knowing the mass of a planet-forming disk is crucial to understanding how and when planets take shape around other stars," said Glenn Wahlgren, Herschel program scientist at NASA Headquarters in Washington.
Whether TW Hydrae's large disk will lead to an exotic planetary system with larger and more numerous planets than ours remains to be seen, but the new information helps define the range of possible planet scenarios.
"The new results are another important step in understanding the diversity of planetary systems in our universe," said Bergin. "We are now observing systems with massive Jupiters, super-Earths, and many Neptune-like worlds. By weighing systems at their birth, we gain insight into how our own solar system formed with just one of many possible planetary configurations."
Herschel is a European Space Agency (ESA) cornerstone mission, with science instruments provided by a consortium of European institutes and with important participation by NASA. NASA's Herschel Project Office is based at JPL, which contributed mission-enabling technology for two of Herschel's three science instruments. NASA's Herschel Science Center, part of the Infrared Processing and Analysis Center at the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) in Pasadena, supports the United States astronomical community. Caltech manages JPL for NASA.
More information is online at http://www.herschel.caltech.edu (http://www.herschel.caltech.edu/) , http://www.nasa.gov/herschel and http://www.esa.int/SPECIALS/Herschel .

گلناز
01-31-2013, 02:11 PM
http://www.nasa.gov/images/content/722685main_pia16716-673.jpg (http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/msl/multimedia/pia16716.html) The percussion drill in the turret of tools at the end of the robotic arm of NASA's Mars rover Curiosity has been positioned in contact with the rock surface in this image from the rover's front Hazard-Avoidance Camera (Hazcam). Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech › Full image and caption (http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/msl/multimedia/pia16716.html)



Mission status report

PASADENA, Calif. - NASA's Mars rover Curiosity has placed its drill onto a series of four locations on a Martian rock and pressed down on it with the rover's arm, in preparation for using the drill in coming days.

The rover carried out this "pre-load" testing on Mars yesterday (Jan. 27). The tests enable engineers to check whether the amount of force applied to the hardware matches predictions for what would result from the commanded motions.

The next step is an overnight pre-load test, to gain assurance that the large temperature change from day to night at the rover's location does not add excessively to stress on the arm while it is pressing on the drill. At Curiosity's work site in Gale Crater, air temperature plunges from about 32 degrees Fahrenheit (zero degrees Celsius) in the afternoon to minus 85 degrees Fahrenheit (minus 65 degrees Celsius) overnight. Over this temperature swing, this large rover's arm, chassis and mobility system grow and shrink by about a tenth of an inch (about 2.4 millimeters), a little more than the thickness of a U.S. quarter-dollar coin.

The rover team at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif., sent the rover commands yesterday to begin the overnight pre-load test today (Monday).

"We don't plan on leaving the drill in a rock overnight once we start drilling, but in case that happens, it is important to know what to expect in terms of stress on the hardware," said JPL's Daniel Limonadi, the lead systems engineer for Curiosity's surface sampling and science system. "This test is done at lower pre-load values than we plan to use during drilling, to let us learn about the temperature effects without putting the hardware at risk."

Remaining preparatory steps will take at least the rest of this week. Some of these steps are hardware checks. Others will evaluate characteristics of the rock material at the selected drilling site on a patch of flat, veined rock called "John Klein."

Limonadi said, "We are proceeding with caution in the approach to Curiosity's first drilling. This is challenging. It will be the first time any robot has drilled into a rock to collect a sample on Mars."

An activity called the "drill-on-rock checkout" will use the hammering action of Curiosity's drill briefly, without rotation of the drill bit, for assurance that the back-and-forth percussion mechanism and associated control system are properly tuned for hitting a rock.

A subsequent activity called "mini-drill" is designed to produce a small ring of tailings -- powder resulting from drilling -- on the surface of the rock while penetrating less than eight-tenths of an inch (2 centimeters). This activity will not go deep enough to push rock powder into the drill's sample-gathering chamber. Limonadi said, "The purpose is to see whether the tailings are behaving the way we expect. Do they look like dry powder? That's what we want to confirm."

The rover team's activities this week are affected by the difference between Mars time and Earth time. To compensate for this, the team develops commands based on rover activities from two sols earlier. So, for example, the mini-drill activity cannot occur sooner than two sols after the drill-on-rock checkout.

Each Martian sol lasts about 40 minutes longer than a 24-hour Earth day. By mid-February, the afternoon at Gale Crater, when Curiosity transmits information about results from the sol, will again be falling early enough in the California day for the rover team to plan each sol based on the previous sol's results.

NASA's Mars Science Laboratory Project is using Curiosity to assess whether areas inside Gale Crater ever offered a habitable environment for microbes. JPL, a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, manages the project for NASA's Science Mission Directorate in Washington.

More information about Curiosity is online at http://www.nasa.gov/msl and http://mars.jpl.nasa.gov/msl/ . You can follow the mission on Facebook at: http://www.facebook.com/marscuriosity and on Twitter at: http://www.twitter.com/marscuriosity .

yperseusy
05-10-2013, 01:08 PM
Korea’s Kompsat-2 satellite captured this image over the sand seas of the Namib Desert on 7 January 2012.

The Namib is the oldest desert in the world, stretching over 2000 km along Africa’s southwestern coast from Angola, through Namibia to South Africa. Sand dunes dominate the desert – some reaching over 300 m in height.

The blue and white area is the dry river bed of the Tsauchab – which only sees water following rare rainfall in the Naukluft Mountains to the east. Black dots of vegetation are concentrated close to the river’s main route, while salt deposits appear bright white.

This flattened area ends about 15 km to the east at the Sossusvlei salt and clay pan (not shown).

Running through the river valley, a road connects Sossusvlei to the Sesriem settlement. At the road’s 45th kilometre, seen at the lower-central part of the image, a white path shoots off and ends at a circular parking area at the base of a dune. This is Dune 45, a popular tourist stop on the way to and from Sossusvlei.

The 170 m-high dune is often photographed early in the morning or late in the day when one side is completely in shadow. In this image, there appears to be some shadow on the western side. From this we can deduce that the image was acquired during the late morning.

ESA supports Kompsat as a Third Party Mission, meaning it uses its ground infrastructure and expertise to acquire, process and distribute data to users.

http://www.esa.int/var/esa/storage/images/esa_multimedia/images/2013/04/namib_desert/12654749-1-eng-GB/Namib_Desert_large.jpg

http://www.esa.int

حامد پورخرسندی
05-31-2013, 09:14 AM
Surprise! Earth Passing Asteroid 1998 QE2 Has a Moon


http://www.universetoday.com/102532/surprise-earth-passing-asteroid-1998-qe2-has-a-moon/

e_moases
07-29-2013, 12:00 AM
Many people complain about poor sleep around full moon. Scientists at the University of Basel in Switzerland now report evidence that lunar cycles and human sleep behavior are in fact connected. The results have been published in the journal -Current Biology-.

The research group around Prof. Christian Cajochen of the Psychiatric Hospital of the University of Basel analyzed the sleep of over 30 volunteers in two age groups in the lab. While they were sleeping, the scientists monitored their brain (http://www.news-medical.net/health/The-Human-Brain.aspx) patterns, eye movements and measured their hormone (http://www.news-medical.net/health/What-are-Hormones.aspx) secretions. The findings suggest that even today, despite the comforts of modern life, humans still responds to the geophysical rhythms of the moon.

Short And Poor Sleep

The data show that both the subjective and the objective perception of the quality of sleep changed with the lunar cycles. Around full moon, brain activity in the areas related to deep sleep dropped by 30 percent. People also took five minutes longer to fall asleep and they overall slept for 20 minutes less. The volunteers felt as though their sleep had been poorer during full moon and they showed lower levels of melatonin (http://www.news-medical.net/health/Melatonin-What-is-Melatonin.aspx), a hormone that regulates sleep and wake cycles. -This is the first reliable evidence that lunar rhythm can modulate sleep structure in humans-, Cajochen says.

A Relic From The Past According to the researchers, this circalunar rhythm might be a relic from past times, when the moon was responsible for synchronizing human behavior. This is well known for other animals, especially marine animals, where moon light coordinates reproduction behavior. Today, other influences of modern life, such as electric light, masked the moon's influence on us. However, the study shows that in the controlled environment of the laboratory with a strict study protocol, the moon's hold over us can be made visible and measurable again.

source :http://www.news-medi...p-behavior.aspx (http://www.news-medi...p-behavior.aspx)

Saeed Jafari
07-29-2013, 08:34 AM
NASA's WISE Finds Mysterious Centaurs May Be Comets

[/URL]http://www.nasa.gov/sites/default/files/styles/673xvariable_height/public/neowise20130725-full_1.jpg?itok=nK5oCJLN (http://www.nasa.gov/sites/default/files/styles/673xvariable_height/public/neowise20130725-full_1.jpg?itok=nK5oCJLN)


PASADENA, Calf. -- The true identity of centaurs, the small celestial bodies orbiting the sun between Jupiter and Neptune, is one of the enduring mysteries of astrophysics. Are they asteroids or comets? A new study of observations from NASA's Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer (WISE) finds most centaurs are comets.


Until now, astronomers were not certain whether centaurs are asteroids flung out from the inner solar system or comets traveling in toward the sun from afar. Because of their dual nature, they take their name from the creature in Greek mythology whose head and torso are human and legs are those of a horse.


"Just like the mythical creatures, the centaur objects seem to have a double life," said James Bauer of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif. Bauer is lead author of a paper published online July 22 in the Astrophysical Journal. "Our data point to a cometary origin for most of the objects, suggesting they are coming from deeper out in the solar system."


"Cometary origin" means an object likely is made from the same material as a comet, may have been an active comet in the past, and may be active again in the future.



continue


[URL]http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/WISE/news/wise20130725.html

gissoo
08-02-2013, 06:16 AM
Monster Galaxies Lose Their Appetite With Age




Aug. 1, 2013 — Our universe is filled with gobs of galaxies, bound together by gravity into larger families called clusters. Lying at the heart of most clusters is a
monster galaxy thought to grow in size by merging with neighboring galaxies, a process astronomers call galactic cannibalism.

New research from NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope and Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer (WISE) is showing that, contrary to previous theories, these gargantuan galaxies appear to slow their growth over time, feeding less and less off neighboring galaxies.
"We've found that these massive galaxies may have started a diet in the last 5 billion years, and therefore have not gained much weight lately," said Yen-Ting Lin of the Academia Sinica in Taipei, Taiwan, lead author of a study published in the Astrophysical Journal.

The new findings will help researchers understand how galaxy clusters -- among the most massive structures in our universe -- form and evolve.

The findings showed that BCG growth proceeded along rates predicted by theories until 5 billion years ago, or a time when the universe was about 8 billion years old. After that time, it appears the galaxies, for the most part, stopped munching on other galaxies around them.

Another possible explanation is that the surveys are missing large numbers of stars in the more mature clusters. Clusters can be violent environments, where stars are stripped from colliding galaxies and flung into space. If the recent observations are not detecting those stars, it's possible that the enormous galaxies are, in fact, continuing to bulk up.


http://www.sciencedaily.com

گلناز
10-24-2013, 01:26 PM
A spin test to check the balance of the MAVEN spacecraft has been going well and is set to conclude today in the Payload Hazardous Servicing Facility at NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida. The two halves of the United Launch Alliance Atlas V payload fairing were moved into the facility's high bay yesterday, where the spacecraft is undergoing prelaunch activities. Fueling of MAVEN with its control propellant is scheduled for Friday.

Meanwhile, in the Vertical Integration Facility at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station's Space Launch Complex 41, United Launch Alliance is conducting the Combined Systems Test of the Atlas V rocket. This is primarily an electrical test of the vehicle that includes a check of the systems to be activated during the countdown, as well as the vehicle flight events that will take place during the launch.


[/URL]http://www.nasa.gov/sites/default/files/styles/466x248/public/2013-3648.jpg?itok=OWhIPqj9 (http://www.nasa.gov/content/missions/maven/launch/gallery/2013-09-24-01)

http://www.nasa.gov/sites/default/files/styles/466x248/public/2013-3636.jpg?itok=WVbj-4Nv (http://www.nasa.gov/content/missions/maven/launch/gallery/2013-08-23-01)

[URL="http://www.nasa.gov/sites/default/files/styles/466x248/public/2013-3701-m.jpg?itok=h4DWRHeB"]http://www.nasa.gov/sites/default/files/styles/466x248/public/2013-3701-m.jpg?itok=h4DWRHeB (http://www.nasa.gov/content/missions/maven/launch/gallery/2013-10-23-01)



The MAVEN Mission


Date: November 18
Mission: Mars Atmosphere and Volatile EvolutioN (MAVEN)
Launch Vehicle: Atlas V
Launch Site: Cape Canaveral Air Force Station, Fla.
Launch Pad: Space Launch Complex 41

NASA is preparing its next Mars explorer for launch. The Mars Atmosphere and Volatile Evolution, or MAVEN, spacecraft will be the first to study the Red Planet's upper atmosphere. Scientists expect data gathered during the MAVEN mission to help explain how Mars' climate has changed over time due to the loss of atmospheric gases.

A U.S. Air Force C-17 cargo plane delivered the solar-powered spacecraft to NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida on Aug. 2, kicking off the final weeks of prelaunch activities such as hardware installation, testing and fueling. MAVEN is set to launch aboard a United Launch Alliance Atlas V rocket during a 20-day launch period beginning November 18. The one-year mission begins in Sept. 2014, when the spacecraft reaches Mars orbit.

گلناز
10-24-2013, 01:31 PM
http://www.nasa.gov/sites/default/files/cygnus_1.jpg?itok=BabpKsJT


The first Cygnus Spacecraft to visit the International Space Station (ISS), the G. David Low, departed the station at 7:31 AM EST on October 22, 2013. The Cygnus spacecraft is the latest in a long line of cargo vehicles built to resupply the orbital outposts that humanity has positioned in the heavens. Created by Orbital Sciences Corporation of Virginia, it is the second type of vehicle built by a commercial company to visit the ISS.
As the Soviet long-duration space station missions grew in complexity in the late 1970s designers needed a way to supply the outpost with the resources needed for both man and machine. The crewed Soyuz craft of the time could only accommodate two suited Cosmonauts with room for little else. For enhanced operations on the Salyut 6 space station, the Soviets modified the Soyuz vehicle to serve as an automated cargo truck. Designated as “Progress” when first launched in 1978, the new vehicle was designed to replenish on-orbit supplies of oxygen, food, water, and fuel to reboost the station to maintain altitude. The Progress design has been modified a number of times, and is currently in use for the International Space Station. Soviet spacecraft designers had pioneered the cargo vehicle concept in the 1960s with the design of their military space station series known as Almaz. The TKS spacecraft (Transportnyi Korabl’ Snabzheniia, or Transport Supply Spacecraft) had the ability to transport both crew and cargo simultaneously in one craft. Due to delays and cancellation of the Almaz program, the TKS was never used for its intended purpose. However, the TKS did make several successful uncrewed test flights, including three vehicles launched under the Cosmos designation to the Salyut 6 and 7 space stations. The cargo portion of TKS, known as the Functional Cargo Block, also became the basis for future Russian-built space station modules on both Mir and the International Space Station.
The development of the multi-national International Space Station brought about the development of many new cargo vehicles to supply the needs of a large permanent crew. In addition to the planned use of the U.S. Space Shuttle and Russian Progress vehicles, two of the other international partners developed automated cargo vehicles as part of their contribution to the program. The European Space Agency (ESA) developed the Automated Transfer Vehicle (ATV). Carrying over 7,600 kilograms of cargo to the station, it is the largest resupply vehicle to visit a space station. The Japanese Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) developed the H-II Transport Vehicle (HTV), which included an unpressurised section as well as a pressurized cargo section. The HTV can carry 6,000 kilograms of pressurized cargo. Progress, ATV, and HTV do not have the ability to return cargo to Earth. Instead, at the end of their missions they perform the important task of “taking out the trash.” All three vehicles are filled with unneeded materials, and after undocking, are de-orbited and burn up over uninhabited stretches of the Pacific Ocean.
With the retirement of the U.S. Space Shuttle, American resupply flights to the ISS took an 11-month hiatus. The commercial Dragon spacecraft, manufactured by Space Exploration Technologies Corporation (SpaceX) of California, became the first private/commercial vehicle to visit and resupply the ISS during its May 2012 test mission. Since then, SpaceX has completed two dedicated resupply missions with the Dragon vehicle. The Dragon spacecraft also offers another capability that the ISS has not had since the end of the shuttle program, the ability to return significant amounts of materials from space. In addition to the crew, the Soyuz craft can carry only a very limited amount of material back to the planet. However, the Dragon capsule can return significant quantities of material, including experimental samples that need to be kept frozen. Like the HTV, the Dragon also boasts the ability to bring unpressurized cargo to orbit.
The latest new commercial space resupply vehicle, Cygnus, can carry 2,000 kilograms of cargo to the station. A slightly larger version capable of carrying an additional 700 kilograms is in development. Cygnus became the second dedicated service vehicle under NASA’s Commercial Orbital Transportation Services (COTS) project with it’s successful five-week demonstration mission in autumn of 2013. Although not intended specifically as a cargo vehicle, the U.S. Orion Multi-Purpose-Crew-Vehicle will also be able to bring supplies and crewmembers both to the space station and down to Earth when it begins to fly later in the decade. The cargo lifeline needed to supply our human foothold in space continues to become more robust with the addition of new capabilities from both international and commercial partners.
Learn more about the cargo vehicles visiting the International Space Station: http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/station/structure/assembly_elements.html
Joey Vars, Fall 2013 Intern

گلناز
10-24-2013, 01:41 PM
http://www.nasa.gov/sites/default/files/styles/673xvariable_height/public/pia17366_sol-3463-navcam_1.jpg?itok=ms8HBPRB (http://www.nasa.gov/sites/default/files/pia17366_sol-3463-navcam_1.jpg?itok=ms8HBPRB)

PASADENA, Calif. -- NASA's Mars Exploration Rover has begun climbing "Solander Point," the northern tip of the tallest hill it has encountered in the mission's nearly 10 Earth years on Mars.
Guided by mineral mapping from orbit, the rover is exploring outcrops on the northwestern slopes of Solander Point, making its way up the hill much as a field geologist would do. The outcrops are exposed from several feet (about 2 meters) to about 20 feet (6 meters) above the surrounding plains, on slopes as steep as 15 to 20 degrees. The rover may later drive south and ascend farther up the hill, which peaks at about 130 feet (40 meters) above the plains.
"This is our first real Martian mountaineering with Opportunity," said the principal investigator for the rover, Steve Squyres of Cornell University, Ithaca, N.Y. "We expect we will reach some of the oldest rocks we have seen with this rover -- a glimpse back into the ancient past of Mars."
The hill rises southward as a ridge from Solander Point, forming an elevated portion of the western rim of Endeavour Crater. The crater spans 14 miles (22 kilometers) in diameter. The ridge materials were uplifted by the great impact that excavated the crater billions of years ago, reversing the common geological pattern of older materials lying lower than younger ones.
Key targets on the ridge include clay-bearing rocks identified from observations by the Compact Reconnaissance Imaging Spectrometer for Mars, which is on NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter. The observations were specially designed to yield mineral maps with enhanced spatial resolution.
This segment of the crater's rim stands much higher than “Cape York,” a segment to the north that Opportunity investigated for 20 months beginning in mid-2011.
"At Cape York, we found fantastic things," Squyres said. "Gypsum veins, clay-rich terrain, the spherules we call newberries. We know there are even larger exposures of clay-rich materials where we're headed. They might look like what we found at Cape York or they might be completely different."
Opportunity reached Solander Point in August after months of driving from Cape York. Researchers then used the rover to investigate a transition zone around the base of the ridge. The area reveals contact between a sulfate-rich geological formation and an older formation. The sulfate-rich rocks record an ancient environment that was wet, but very acidic. The contact with older rocks may tell researchers about a time when environmental conditions changed.
Opportunity first explored the eastern side of Solander Point, then drove back north and around the point to explore the western side. "We took the time to find the best place to start the ascent," said Opportunity's project manager, John Callas of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif. "Now we've begun that climb."
The rover began the climb on Oct. 8 and has advanced farther uphill with three subsequent drives.
"We're in the right place at the right time, on a north-facing slope," Callas said. In Mars' southern hemisphere, a north-facing slope tilts the rover's solar panels toward the sun during the Martian winter, providing an important boost in available power.
During the most recent of the five winters that Opportunity has worked on Mars, the rover spent several months without driving, safe on a small, north-facing patch of northern Cape York. The area where the rover is now climbing, however, offers a much larger north-facing area, with plenty of energy-safe ground for the rover to remain mobile. Opportunity is currently at a northward tilt of about 17 degrees.
In the coming Martian winter, daily sunshine will reach a minimum in February 2014. The rover team plans a "lily pad" strategy to make use of patches of ground with especially favorable slopes as places to recharge the rover's batteries between drives.
Opportunity landed on Mars on Jan. 25, 2004 (Universal Time and EST; Jan. 24, PST), three weeks after its twin, Spirit. Spirit was the first Martian mountaineer, summiting a 269-foot (82-meter) hill in 2005. Spirit ceased operations in 2010. NASA's newest Mars rover, Curiosity, landed in 2012 and is currently driving toward a 3-mile-high (5-kilometer-high) mountain.
Recent drives by Opportunity and Curiosity have taken the total distance driven by NASA's four Mars rovers (including Sojourner in 1997) past 50 kilometers. The total on Oct. 21 was 31.13 miles (50.10 kilometers), including 23.89 miles (38.45 kilometers) by Opportunity.
JPL, a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, manages the Mars Exploration Rover Project for NASA's Science Mission Directorate. For more about Spirit and Opportunity, visit http://www.nasa.gov/rovers and http://marsrovers.jpl.nasa.gov (http://marsrovers.jpl.nasa.gov/) . You can follow the project on Twitter and on Facebook at: http://twitter.com/MarsRovers and http://www.facebook.com/mars.rovers

گلناز
10-24-2013, 01:44 PM
ISS037-E-011136 (14 Oct. 2013) --- NASA astronaut Karen Nyberg, Expedition 37 flight engineer; Russian cosmonaut Fyodor Yurchikhin (center), commander; and European Space Agency astronaut Luca Parmitano, flight engineer, pose for a photo in the Kibo laboratory of the International Space Station



http://www.nasa.gov/sites/default/files/styles/946xvariable_height/public/iss037e011136.jpg?itok=eR5ht3z1 (http://www.nasa.gov/sites/default/files/styles/946xvariable_height/public/iss037e011136.jpg?itok=eR5ht3z1)

AmirMohsen
05-28-2014, 07:18 AM
4 Sky Events This Week: Comet Challenge, Stellar Trio, and Planet Pairings (http://newswatch.nationalgeographic.com/2014/05/27/4-sky-events-this-week-comet-challenge-stellar-trio-and-planet-pairings/)

http://newswatch.nationalgeographic.com/files/2011/05/andrewfazekas-60x60-58x58.jpgPosted by Andrew Fazekas (http://newswatch.nationalgeographic.com/author/afazekas/) in StarStruck (http://newswatch.nationalgeographic.com/blog/starstruck/) on May 27, 2014
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Share on email (http://newswatch.nationalgeographic.com/2014/05/27/4-sky-events-this-week-comet-challenge-stellar-trio-and-planet-pairings/?utm_source=Facebook&utm_medium=Social&utm_content=link_fb20140527ngnw-spaceevents&utm_campaign=Content&utm_content=sf3078536&utm_medium=spredfast&utm_source=facebook&utm_campaign=National+Geographic&sf3078536=1#)More » (http://newswatch.nationalgeographic.com/2014/05/27/4-sky-events-this-week-comet-challenge-stellar-trio-and-planet-pairings/?utm_source=Facebook&utm_medium=Social&utm_content=link_fb20140527ngnw-spaceevents&utm_campaign=Content&utm_content=sf3078536&utm_medium=spredfast&utm_source=facebook&utm_campaign=National+Geographic&sf3078536=1#)

http://newswatch.nationalgeographic.com/files/2014/05/ison-approach-NASA-600x453.jpg (http://newswatch.nationalgeographic.com/files/2014/05/ison-approach-NASA.jpg)This image of comet ISON was taken in November 2013, when the comet was 97 million miles from Earth. This week comet 209P/LINEAR will come much closer, but it won’t be as bright, because there’s little dust activity on its surface. Courtesy: NASA/MSFC/Aaron KingeryThe parent of the now famous Camelopardalid meteor shower offers sky-watchers a challenge this week. They can also focus in on the Guardian of the Great Bear and watch four classic naked-eye planets swing into view.
Comet Challenge. Now that the much hyped but disappointing Camelopardalid meteor shower (http://www.nasa.gov/content/goddard/nasa-sky-watchers-to-look-for-may-camelopardalids-meteor-shower/#.U4S2cJRdXH8)has come and gone, its parent comet, 209P/LINEAR, makes its closest approach to Earth, starting today, May 27.
Last week it was shining feebly at only 13th magnitude, but predictions point to a quick brightening to 11th magnitude and possibly even 10th magnitude this week. That will make it a worthy target for medium-size telescopes, at least six to eight inches in diameter, under bright suburban skies and for smaller scopes in the dark countryside.
On Thursday the comet will be just five million miles (eight million kilometers) from our planet, about 20 times the distance between Earth and our moon.
Over the course of the week, LINEAR will glide through the low southwestern constellations of Sextans and Hydra, Corvus and Crater, making it an increasingly difficult target for sky-watchers in the Northern Hemisphere. And it will be moving at quite a clip—about half a degree an hour—the same as the width of the full moon.
Check out these detailed finder’s charts (http://www.skyandtelescope.com/astronomy-news/observing-news/catch-a-comet-buzzing-earth/) from Sky & Telescope.
Arcturus Trio. After nightfall on Wednesday, May 29, look south for three of the brightest “stars” in that part of the sky. At the apex of the triangle is the orange star Arcturus, known in mythology as the “guardian of the bear.” It lies in the kite-shaped constellation Boötes, underneath the constellation Ursa Major, or Big Bear.
http://newswatch.nationalgeographic.com/files/2014/05/arcturus-trio-600x503.jpg (http://newswatch.nationalgeographic.com/files/2014/05/arcturus-trio.jpg)This chart shows the southern sky during the late evening in the Northern Hemisphere, where Arcturus and the planets Mars and Saturn dominate the heavens. Credit: SkySafariArcturus is considered the fourth brightest star in the entire night sky. It’s truly a giant, some 20 million miles (32,186,880 kilometers) wide—25 times as wide as our sun. Because it’s 36.7 light-years from Earth, we see Arcturus today as it appeared back in April 1977, the month when the U.S. performed a nuclear test in Nevada, Shimon Peres became acting prime minister of Israel, and New York’s Studio 54 disco opened.
The bottom two “stars” of the triangle formation are in fact the planets Saturn and Mars. (Saturn is also part of the constellation Libra, and Mars is part of Virgo.)
Mercury Revealed. On Friday, May 30, look toward the very low western horizon for a razor-thin crescent moon. The moon will be only 6 degrees to the lower left of the faint planet Mercury, the innermost planet in our solar system. The cosmic pair will be only 10 degrees above the local horizon, about the width of your fist held at arm’s length, so you’ll need a clear line of sight.
http://newswatch.nationalgeographic.com/files/2014/05/may30-2014-600x371.jpg (http://newswatch.nationalgeographic.com/files/2014/05/may30-2014.jpg)The western sky at dusk on May 31, 2014, shows the crescent moon, Jupiter, and a faint Mercury. Credit: SkySafariMoon joins Jupiter. On Saturday, May 31, and Sunday, June 1, the waxing crescent moon will rise higher, taking its place alongside the brilliant planet Jupiter in the afterglow of sunset. Draw an imaginary line from the moon through Jupiter, and the next bright star you will hit, 33 light-years away, is Pollux, one of the of the twin stars in the constellation Gemini, or the Twins.
Happy hunting, everyone.