Astronomical News

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[گلناز]

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]

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

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[گلناز]

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

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

For more information about NASA and agency programs, visit:





http://www.nasa.gov

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[گلناز]

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/...rors-done.html

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

http://webbtelescope.org/webb_telesc...nd_the_webb/10

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

http://www.jwst.nasa.gov

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[گلناز]

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/anal...challenge.html

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[گلناز]

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

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[گلناز]

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

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[گلناز]

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]

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.

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]

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.

The waxing Moon this month again passes under Virgo with Saturn and Spica.
Sky & Telescope 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