Showing posts with label Universe. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Universe. Show all posts

Discovery Towed to its Hangar

One of NASA's 747 Shuttle Carrier Aircraft touches down Monday at Kennedy Space Center in Florida
Space shuttle Discovery was hoisted off of the 747 Shuttle Carrier Aircraft that brought it from California and is inside Orbiter Processing Facility 3 at NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida. Technicians will begin servicing the shuttle from its just-completed STS-128 mission. The work includes removing the Leonardo supply module from Discovery's payload bay. The module carried new experiments and other equipment to the International Space Station and returned with some completed research items. The cargo bay also contains a depleted ammonia tank space walkers removed from the station, along with experiments that were mounted on the outside of the Columbus laboratory module.

Preparations are also under way in the Vehicle Assembly Building for the November launch of Atlantis on the STS-129 mission. The external tank for Atlantis was connected yesterday to the twin solid rocket boosters.

Teams Given "Go" For Ferry Flight, But No Friday Departure

Space shuttle Discovery
Following this afternoon’s Ferry Flight Readiness Review meeting at NASA’s Dryden Research Center, shuttle managers are giving a “go” for space shuttle Discovery’s ferry flight from Edwards Air Force Base in California to Kennedy Space Center in Florida. But because of a complex weather pattern across the southeastern United States, managers decided not to begin the cross-country trek Friday.

Forecasters are tracking a slow moving low pressure system over northeast Texas that has been influencing weather across the southeast.

Shuttle teams expect to have Discovery and its modified 747 aircraft ready for the piggyback flight by mid-to-late Friday morning. Then they plan to meet at 2 p.m. EDT to review departure preparations, the latest weather forecasts and determine the best route and timing to get Discovery back to Kennedy.

A major milestone of attaching the tail cone over Discovery's engines was completed Thursday. Overnight, teams plan to lift Discovery and attach it to the top of the 747.

Discovery landed at Edwards Sept. 11, ending its STS-128 mission to the International Space Station.

Discovery's Ferry Flight Targeted to Begin Friday

Shuttle teams at Edwards Air Force Base in California are targeting a mid-to-late morning Pacific time departure Friday, Sept. 18 to start space shuttle Discovery's cross-country ferry flight to NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida. The exact departure time depends on all work being complete and local weather conditions.

The major milestone of attaching the tail cone over Discovery's engines is complete. Overnight, teams plan to lift Discovery and attach it to the top of a modified 747 aircraft by a little after sunrise tomorrow morning. That would put the team in the position to have the piggybacked shuttle and its support "pathfinder" aircraft leave Edwards by late morning before temperatures exceed the takeoff threshold of 85 degrees Fahrenheit. Hot and dry conditions can create air-density issues for the very heavy 747 taking off.

Depending on the weather in route, Discovery is planned to arrive back at Kennedy's Shuttle Landing Facility on Saturday.

Masten Space Systems Attempts to Qualify For Lunar Lander Challenge

Masten Space Systems reviews
Masten Space Systems unsuccessfully attempted a Level 1 flight on Sept. 16 as part of the Centennial Challenges - Lunar Lander Challenge at the company’s test facility at California’s Mojave Air and Space Port.

In order to qualify for Level 1 prize money, a rocket vehicle must lift off from one concrete pad, ascend to approximately 50 meters, travel horizontally, and land on a second pad. After refueling at that pad, the vehicle must repeat the flight back to a landing on the original pad within two and half hours. The vehicle must remain aloft for at least 90 seconds on both flights.

Masten’s rocket vehicle completed a near-perfect flight of 93 seconds duration from one launch pad to another with an accurate landing. However, the vehicle was unable to complete the round trip because of engine damage. The engine problem did not appear to affect the performance of the first flight, but the team decided to not risk another flight with a degraded engine.

After several years of development by the Masten team, this was the team’s first flight attempt in the Lunar Lander Challenge. They conducted the first free-flight test of their vehicle a day earlier on Sept. 15. This attempt was for the Level 1 second prize of $150,000. Armadillo Aerospace claimed the Level 1 first prize in 2008.

Masten Space Systems already has registered for two more flight attempts on Oct. 7-8 and Oct. 28-29. The company plans to try again for the Level 1 prize, as well as the more demanding Level 2 prize. In addition to Armadillo Aerospace, which qualified for the Level 2 prize on Sept. 12, two other lunar lander teams will be vying for NASA prize money during the next six weeks.

"With as many as four teams competing this year, we may see a wide-open race for all of the remaining lunar lander prize money," said NASA’s Centennial Challenge program manager, Andrew Petro. "NASA and the commercial space industry benefit from the diversity of technical solutions that these teams devise and demonstrate."

The Lunar Lander Challenge competition is managed for NASA by the X Prize Foundation under a Space Act Agreement. NASA provides all of the prize funds. The Northrop Grumman Corporation is a commercial sponsor for the challenge, providing operating funds to the X Prize Foundation.

The Lunar Lander Challenge is one of six current Centennial Challenges managed by NASA’s Innovative Partnership Program. The Regolith Excavation Challenge will be held Oct. 17-18 at NASA’s Ames Research Center at Moffett Field, Calif. The Power Beaming and Astronaut Glove Challenges are planned for 2009, but details have not been finalized. The Green Flight Challenge for super-efficient aircraft will conclude in July 2011 in Santa Rosa, California.

Two remaining Lunar Lander Challenge attempts are scheduled to 2009:

- Masten Space Systems at Mojave, Calif.: Oct. 7-8, and Oct. 28-29.
- Unreasonable Rocket at Cantil, Calif.: Oct. 30-31

One additional application is currently under review.

Learning How Materials Work in Space to Make Them Better on Earth

Materials Science Research Rack
What's about the size of a large refrigerator, weighs a ton and may help pave the way for new and improved metals or glasses here on Earth?

It's the Materials Science Research Rack -- a new laboratory on board the International Space Station.

This facility will allow researchers to study a variety of materials -- including metals, alloys, semiconductors, ceramics, and glasses to see how the materials form, and learn how to control their properties. The results from experiments conducted in the facility could lead to the development of materials with improved properties on Earth.

Materials science research is a multidisciplinary endeavor studying the relationships between the processing conditions and properties of materials. The research rack -- measuring 6 feet high, 3.5 feet wide and 40 inches deep -- will provide a powerful, multi-user materials science laboratory in a microgravity, or near weightless, environment. Researchers can benefit from studying materials in space because they can isolate the fundamental heat and mass transfer processes involved that are frequently masked by gravity on the ground.

The research rack will provide hardware to control the thermal, environmental and vacuum conditions of experiments; monitor experiments with video; and supply power and data handling for specific experiment instrumentation.

"Materials science is an integral part of our everyday life," said Sandor Lehoczky, project scientist for the rack at NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Ala. "The goal of materials processing in space is to develop a better understanding of how processing affects materials properties without the complication of gravity causing density effects on the processes. With this knowledge, reliable predictions can be made about the conditions required on Earth to achieve improved materials."

The Materials Science Research Rack is an automated facility with two different furnace inserts in which sample cartridges will be processed to temperatures up to 2,500 degrees Fahrenheit. Initially, 13 sample cartridge assemblies will be processed, each containing mixtures of metal alloys. The cartridges are placed -- one at a time -- inside the furnace insert for processing. Once a cartridge is in place, the experiment can be run by automatic command or conducted via telemetry commands from the ground. Processed samples will be returned to Earth for evaluation and comparison of their properties to samples similarly processed on the ground.

The research rack was launched to the space station aboard space shuttle Discovery on August 28. It was installed in the U.S. Destiny Laboratory Sept. 2. The development of the rack was a cooperative effort between NASA and the European Space Agency. The rack accommodates the European Space Agency’s Materials Science Laboratory -- designed to provide controlled, materials processing conditions and advanced diagnostics. The Materials Science Laboratory has the capability to handle different furnace inserts. Metallurgical research will be conducted in the laboratory to gain a better understanding of industrial metallurgical processes, such as casting, welding and other advanced melting processes.

Planck Snaps its First Images of Ancient Cosmic Light

Planck
The Planck mission has captured its first rough images of the sky, demonstrating the observatory is working and ready to measure light from the dawn of time. Planck – a European Space Agency mission with significant NASA participation – will survey the entire sky to learn more about the history and evolution of our universe.

The space telescope started surveying the sky regularly on Aug. 13 from its vantage point far from Earth. Planck is in orbit around the second Lagrange point of our Earth-sun system, a relatively stable spot located 1.5 million kilometers (930,000 miles) away from Earth.

"We are beginning to observe ancient light that has traveled more than 13 billion years to reach us," said Charles Lawrence, the NASA project scientist for the mission at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif. "It's tremendously exciting to see these very first data from Planck. They show that all systems are working well and give a preview of the all-sky images to come."

Following launch on May 14, the satellite's subsystems were checked out in parallel with the cool-down of its instruments' detectors. The detectors are looking for temperature variations in the cosmic microwave background, which consists of microwaves from the early universe. The temperature variations are a million times smaller than one degree. To achieve this precision, Planck's detectors have been cooled to extremely low temperatures, some of them very close to the lowest temperature theoretically attainable.

Instrument commissioning, optimization and initial calibration were completed by the second week of August.

During the "first-light" survey, which took place from Aug. 13 to 27, Planck surveyed the sky continuously. It was carried out to verify the stability of the instruments and the ability to calibrate them over long periods to the exquisite accuracy needed. The survey yielded maps of a strip of the sky, one for each of Planck's nine frequencies. Preliminary analysis indicates that the quality of the data is excellent.

Routine operations will now continue for at least 15 months without a break. In this time, Planck will be able to gather data for two full independent all-sky maps. To fully exploit the high sensitivity of Planck, the data will require a great deal of delicate calibrations and careful analysis. The mission promises to contain a treasure trove of data that will keep cosmologists and astrophysicists busy for decades to come.

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, U.S. and NASA Planck scientists will work together to analyze the Planck data.

The Return of Buzz Lightyear


Disney's space ranger Buzz Lightyear returned from space on Sept. 11, aboard space shuttle Discovery's STS-128 mission after 15 months aboard the International Space Station. His time on the orbiting laboratory will celebrated in a ticker-tape parade together with his space station crewmates and former Apollo 11 moonwalker Buzz Aldrin on Oct. 2, at Walt Disney World in Florida.

While on the space station, Buzz supported NASA's education outreach program-- STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics)--by creating a series of fun educational online outreach programs. Following his return, Disney is partnering with NASA to create a new online educational game and an online mission patch competition for school kids across America. NASA will fly the winning patch in space. In addition, NASA plans to announce on Oct. 2, 2009, the details of a new exciting educational competition that will give students the opportunity to design an experiment for the astronauts on the space station.

NASA Satellite Data Show Progress of 2009 Antarctic Ozone Hole

Antarctic Ozone Hole
The annual ozone hole has started developing over the South Pole, and it appears that it will be comparable to ozone depletions over the past decade. This composite image from September 10 depicts ozone concentrations in Dobson units, with purple and blues depicting severe deficits of ozone.

"We have observed the ozone hole again in 2009, and it appears to be pretty average so far," said ozone researcher Paul Newman of NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md. "However, we won't know for another four weeks how this year's ozone hole will fully develop."

September 16 marks the International Day for the Protection of the Ozone Layer, declared by the United Nations to commemorate the date when the Montreal Protocol was signed to ban use of ozone depleting chemicals such as chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs).

Scientists are tracking the size and depth of the ozone hole with observations from the Ozone Monitoring Instrument on NASA's Aura spacecraft, the Global Ozone Monitoring Experiment on the European Space Agency's ERS-2 spacecraft, and the Solar Backscatter Ultraviolet instrument on the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's NOAA-16 satellite.

The depth and area of the ozone hole are governed by the amount of chlorine and bromine in the Antarctic stratosphere. Over the southern winter, polar stratospheric clouds (PSCs) form in the extreme cold of the atmosphere, and chlorine gases react on the cloud particles to release chlorine into a form that can easily destroy ozone. When the sun rises in August after months of seasonal polar darkness, the sunlight heats the clouds and catalyzes the chemical reactions that deplete the ozone layer. The ozone hole begins to grow in August and reaches its largest area in late September to early October.

Recent observations and several studies have shown that the size of the annual ozone hole has stabilized and the level of ozone-depleting substances has decreased by 4 percent since 2001. But since chlorine and bromine compounds have long lifetimes in the atmosphere, a recovery of atmospheric ozone is not likely to be noticeable until 2020 or later.

Kepler and the Search for Life in Our Galaxy

Jupiter-sized planet passing in front of its parent star
There are so many stars in our galaxy that even if planets with complex life (animals and plants) are rare – say one for every billion stars – there could still be dozens here in the Milky Way. But we are just beginning to learn about worlds beyond our solar system, called exoplanets, so we really don't have a good idea of what the chances are for advanced life. That's where NASA's Kepler mission comes in.

Currently, we have only one example of complex life –- our own. So we have to use conditions that give rise to this kind of life when we go looking for it elsewhere in the Universe. Essential ingredients in the recipe for life as we know it include liquid water; an energy source, such as sunlight or chemicals from volcanic activity; and a supply of raw materials in the form of critical elements like carbon, oxygen, hydrogen, and nitrogen, to name just a few. The most likely places where all the ingredients will be present are rocky planets, like Earth, that are within the habitable zone of their parent stars.

The habitable zone is where the temperature is just right for liquid water to exist on the surface of an exoplanet. If the planet is too close to its star, it will be too hot, and you'll end up with a world like Venus, where the oceans have boiled away. Too far away, however, and you get something like Mars, where most, if not all, of the water on the surface is frozen.

The Kepler mission seeks to detect Earth-like, i.e., rocky planets in our galaxy within the habitable zone of their parent stars, by looking for planetary transit events. These are situations where the planet passes in front of its star as seen from our point of view, slightly dimming the star's brightness. Since planetary transit events are fleeting, and it is unknown how common they may be, Kepler will continuously observe some 100,000 sun-like stars (in about 100 square degrees of the sky in the Cygnus region) for four years.

Observing planetary transits is challenging, because the brightness changes are exceedingly small. For example, Earth is about one-hundredth the diameter of the sun, so from an alien point of view, when Earth passes in front of the sun, it obscures only a tiny area on the solar disk -- just one ten-thousandth. An alien watching Earth transit the sun would see our star's brightness drop by just one part in ten thousand. We expect similar faint eclipses when searching for Earth-like planets around sun-like stars. To detect such tiny changes in brightness, Kepler will be able to observe a brightness change as small as one part in one hundred thousand.

Other challenges for Kepler are brightness changes that arise from a natural variation within the star itself, rather than from a transiting planet. If a brightness change repeats at regular intervals, it's more likely to be from an exoplanet, since its orbit will make it transit at the same periods. Scientists with the mission will need to see the same change at least twice before it's considered a possible exoplanet. Since the mission has a limited time to make its observations, if a transit takes more than a year to repeat, it will be difficult to confirm as an exoplanet.

We can analyze a planetary transit event to discover basic characteristics of the planet. A large planet will block more starlight than a small one, so the size of the planet can be estimated by how much the star dims during the transit. A planet close to its star zips around it faster than one farther away, so the time between transits will give us an approximate distance of the planet from its star.

The planet will also tug at the star with its gravity. Much as the siren of a speeding ambulance changes pitch as it passes by – higher when it's moving closer, and lower when it's moving away -- this gravitational pull will cause the colors (spectrum) of the star's light to shift slightly – more blue if the star is moving toward us, more red if the star is moving away. Astronomers can observe this color shift with instruments that separate the star's light into its component colors, called its spectrum. By observing the amount of color shift in the star's spectrum, astronomers can get the mass of the planet relative to its parent star – more massive planets have a greater pull and will cause a larger color shift.

Most exoplanet detections so far have been made using this spectral shift. Such detections, however, tend to favor massive planets (about Jupiter’s size or larger). With current technology, it's extremely difficult to detect Earth-sized planets using this technique.

Kepler will also be used to make discoveries about the stars themselves. There are many stars that are binaries (double stars). These binaries may exhibit eclipses. The Kepler mission data analysis program has a pipeline data processing that can discriminate the eclipsing binaries among the stars observed and will be analyzed accordingly. Binary stars, including cataclysmic variables (e.g., exploding stars such as novae) and intrinsic variable stars, including pulsating variables, that are observed with the Kepler satellite will present unprecedented opportunities to further astrophysical research.

The Kepler observatory was placed in an Earth-following orbit March 6, 2009. This mission has been conceived by William Borucki and Dave Koch of NASA Ames Research Center, Moffett Field, Calif., and developed at NASA Ames.

Kepler is a NASA Discovery mission. NASA Ames is the home organization of the science principal investigator, and is responsible for the ground system development, mission operations and science data analysis. NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif. manages the Kepler mission development. Ball Aerospace & Technologies Corp. of Boulder, Colo., is responsible for developing the Kepler flight system and supporting mission operations.

Asteroid Juno Grabs the Spotlight

The asteroid Juno
Toward the end of September, the sun will turn a spotlight on the asteroid Juno, giving that bulky lump of rock a rare featured cameo in the night sky. Those who get out to a dark, unpolluted sky will be able to spot the asteroid's silvery glint near the planet Uranus with a pair of binoculars.

"It can usually be seen by a good amateur telescope, but the guy on the street doesn't usually get a chance to observe it," said Don Yeomans, manager of NASA's Near Earth Object Program Office at JPL. "This is going to be as bright as it gets until 2018."

Juno, one of the first asteroids discovered, is thought to be the parent of many of the meteorites that rain on Earth. The asteroid is composed mostly of hardy silicate rock, which is tough enough that fragments broken off by collisions can often survive a trip through Earth's atmosphere.

Though pockmarked by bang-ups with other asteroids, Juno is large; in fact, it is the tenth largest asteroid. It measures about 234 kilometers (145 miles) in diameter, or about one-fifteenth the diameter of the moon.

The asteroid, which orbits the sun on a track between Mars and Jupiter, will be at its brightest on Sept. 21, when it is zooming around the sun at about 22 kilometers per second (49,000 miles per hour). At that time, its apparent magnitude will be 7.6, which is about two-and- a-half times brighter than normal. The extra brightness will come from its position in a direct line with the sun and its proximity to Earth. (The asteroid will still be about 180 million kilometers [112 million miles] away, so there is no danger it will fall towards Earth.)

Skywatchers with telescopes can probably see Juno from now until the end of the year, but it is most visible to binoculars in late September. On or before Sept. 21, look for Juno near midnight a few degrees east of the brighter glow of Uranus and in the constellation Pisces. It will look like a gray dot in the sky, and each night at the end of September, it will appear slightly more southwest of its location the night before. By Sept. 25, it will be closer to the constellation Aquarius and best seen before midnight.

On the Tarmac


Technicians clad in protective suits check for any hazardous gases emanating from space shuttle Discovery moments after it rolled to a stop on the main runway at Edwards Air Force Base on Sept. 11. The checks are required before the crews move in for recovery operations.

NASA Ames Hosts White House CIO

Nebula server center at NASA’s Ames Research Center
Vivek Kundra, the federal chief information officer, announced a new government cloud computing initiative at NASA’s Ames Research Center, Moffett Field, Calif., on Sept. 15, 2009. Kundra unveiled the new Apps.gov platform, an online storefront for federal agencies to browse and purchase cloud-based information technology (IT) services and predicted it would significantly lower government costs and increase innovation.

"This technology supports every mission our government performs— from defending our borders to protecting the environment," Kundra said. "IT is essential for the government to do its work, and it is essential that we have access to the latest and most innovative technologies."

Snapshots From Space Cultivate Fans Among Midwest Farmers

Noreen Thomas' organic farm
Noreen Thomas’ farm looks like a patchwork quilt. Fields change hue with the season and with the alternating plots of organic wheat, soybeans, corn, alfalfa, flax, or hay.

Thomas enjoys this view from hundreds of miles above Earth’s surface -- not just for the beauty, but the utility. She is among a growing group of Midwest farmers who rely on satellite imagery from Landsat to maximize their harvest and minimize damage to their fields. It's become another crucial tool like their tractors and sprinklers.

“Our farm is unconventional – we grow food and breed animals using all-natural approaches,” said Thomas of her certified organic farm in Moorhead, Minnesota, where they also grow heirloom tomatoes, lettuce, squash, and peas. “So we’re happy to use unconventional methods to solve problems and keep our crops healthy.”

For $25 and an hour’s drive to the Grand Forks campus of the University of North Dakota (UND), Noreen and Lee Thomas took a one-day class on how to download and interpret satellite images, like those provided by NASA and the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS).

Downloading the latest images takes mere minutes on the Digital Northern Great Plains system, a free Web-based tool developed by NASA-funded researchers in the Upper Midwest Aerospace Consortium. Thomas punches in GPS coordinates of the area she’d like to see, and moments later she has a bumper crop of information and images.

To the untrained eye, the false-color images appear a hodge-podge of colors without any apparent purpose. But Thomas is now trained to see yellows where crops are infested, shades of red indicating crop health, black where flooding occurs, and brown where unwanted pesticides land on her chemical-free crops.

The images help the Thomases root out problems caused by Canadian thistle and other weeds. They help confirm that their crops are growing at least 10 feet from the borders of a neighboring farm – required to maintain organic certification. They can also spot the telltale signs of bottlenecking in the fields -- where flooding is over-saturating crops -- and monitor the impact of hail storms.

“We’d have to walk our entire 1,200 hundred-plus acres on a regular basis to see the same things we can see by just downloading satellite images,” said Thomas, who recently began providing her farm’s coordinates to her buyers in Japan. “There’s no more ideal way I know to show how healthy our crops are to someone thousands of miles away.”

Crops are not the only beneficiaries of snapshots from space. Just as remote imagery informs Thomas when it’s best to rotate crops, she can also determine when her cows need a new pasture. When the large herd of cows chews its way through the landscape, satellite images show where the cows may be overgrazing.

Though Thomas believes she is the lone satellite ranger in her town, she’s certainly not alone among farmers in general. According to George Seielstad, recently retired director of the UND Center for People and the Environment and founder of the consortium, more than 600 farmers in the region are now devotees of satellite data as an aid to farming.

Thomas has also become a resource to her community because of her unique ability to analyze satellite images. “We’ve been called by a couple of townships to pull satellite images to verify flooding so they can apply for aid from the Federal Emergency Management Agency," she said. "There are any number of ways these pictures have been helping farming communities like ours, and community is what farming is built on.”

The X-15, the Pilot and the Space Shuttle

The X-15 research aircraft
Fifty years ago in 1959, test pilot Scott Crossfield threw the switch to ignite the twin XLR-11 engines of his North American Aviation X-15 rocket plane and begin the storied test program's first powered flight.

It was a real kick in the pants.

"The drop from the B-52 carrier aircraft was pretty abrupt, and then when you lit that rocket a second or two later you definitely felt it,” said Joe Engle, another X-15 test pilot and member of the same exclusive fraternity of flyboys that included Crossfield and the eventual first man on the moon, Neil Armstrong. All took the X-15 to speeds and altitudes that extended the frontiers of flight.

The X-15 was a research scientist's dream. The experimental, rocket-boosted aircraft flew 199 flights with 12 different pilots at the controls from 1959 through 1968. It captured vital data on the effects of hypersonic flight on man and machine that proved invaluable to the nation's aeronautics researchers, including NASA and developers of the space shuttle.

"That first powered flight was a real milestone in a program that we still benefit from today," said Engle.

Engle knows what he’s talking about.

The Kansas native flew the X-15 for the U.S. Air Force 16 times from 1963 to 1965 and went on to command two missions of NASA's space shuttle.

Still an active pilot, the retired major general fondly recalled what it was like to fly the X-15 and how lessons learned then made possible the space shuttle program years later.

"It was a very busy airplane to fly, but it also was a beautiful airplane to fly; a very, very good solid flying vehicle. Particularly when you were subsonic, in the landing pattern— even at the lower supersonic speeds," Engle said.

Three times Engle flew an X-15 higher than 50 miles, officially qualifying him for Air Force astronaut wings and providing him a brief moment for sightseeing at the edge of space.

"I didn't really have time to soak up the view in the X-15 like I did later when I flew the space shuttle," Engle said.

"You could glance out and see the blackness of space above and the extremely bright Earth below. The horizon had the same bands of color you see from the shuttle, with black on top, then purple to deep indigo, then blues and whites.

"You were just so terribly busy flying the airplane, keeping everything under control and watching for any deviations. And in many cases, during re-entry flights for example, making sure the airplane was perfectly lined up as you started to enter the atmosphere."

Engle credits the X-15 for laying the foundation for many of the operational techniques of the space shuttle, and for providing designers with confidence that certain design and control concepts for the winged orbiter would work:
  • With similar flying characteristics, the X-15 proved the shuttle could re-enter the atmosphere and glide to a precision landing, in part relying on a maneuver known as Terminal Area Energy Management where speed and altitude are carefully controlled so the vehicle can reach the runway instead of falling short or overflying it.
  • Using technology developed and tested on the X-15, pilots learned how to transition control smoothly from reaction control jets at high altitudes or in space to wing- and tail-mounted control surfaces in the atmosphere closer to the ground.
  • While not a benefit to the space shuttle alone, the X-15 was the first flight test program to make extensive use of simulators to work out certain problems and train pilots before going up—a practice since employed for nearly every flight test program.
  • The X-15 flights proved the usefulness of having chase aircraft follow a test vehicle during its approach to the runway to make sure, as Engle put it: "Everything that is supposed to be up is up, and everything that is supposed to be down is down."
The X-15 was suggested in the early 1950s by Bell Aircraft's Walter Dornberger as a vehicle for exploring the realm of hypersonic flight, which was defined as a speed in excess of Mach 5, or five times the speed of sound. The earliest days of the X-15 program were shaped by the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics, the federal agency which NASA replaced in 1958.

The NACA, Air Force and Navy all had an interest in the program and all provided resources, including pilots. Eventually the Navy stopped supporting the X-15 in order to concentrate on aircraft carrier operations, Engle said.

By the time contracts for the airframe and engine were signed with North American Aviation in 1955 and Reaction Motors in 1956, the program had goals of flying the X-15 to a speed of Mach 6 and an altitude of 225,000 feet.

"It was a pretty aggressive move, a pretty gutsy step. We had reached Mach 1, 2 and even 2.5 in other airplanes. But then we lost a pilot when he crashed in one of those airplanes after reaching Mach 3," Engle said. "So the next step was Mach 6?"

As the prime contractor for the X-15 airframe, North American Aviation was responsible for checking out the vehicle before turning it over to the NACA, Air Force and Navy team so research flights could begin. It was up to the company’s chief test pilot, Scott Crossfield, to take the controls for the initial flights.

Crossfield flew a handful of captive flights with the X-15 slung beneath the wing of a B-52 mother ship. Some were intentional and some were not, as initial attempts for a drop test were aborted. Crossfield and his rocket plane finally were released from the B-52 on June 8, 1959, to make an unpowered glide to the lakebed below at Edwards Air Force Base in California.

With the X-15’s primary rocket engine, the XLR-99, still a few months away from being ready to fly, two of the smaller XLR-11 rockets were installed into the X-15 for Crossfield to use in making the first powered flight on Sept. 17, 1959.

The X-15 worked as anticipated that day, reaching a modest altitude of 52,341 feet, but easily breaking the sound barrier and recording a top speed of Mach 2.11 during the nine-minute flight.

"It was a big step, you bet," Engle said. "It showed that the propulsion unit was compatible with the airframe and that it would work. Crossfield was able to demonstrate the airplane would launch, fly free from the B-52, and that it could go supersonic without picking up any handling problems going through the transonic region."

The X-15 set world records for altitude and speed, but more importantly the research conducted during those test missions provided data that would benefit future operations and investigations related to aeronautics and spaceflight.

"I think they far exceeded what they thought was going to be the design parameters for the X-15 program. They wanted to achieve Mach 6 and they got to Mach 6.7. The design altitude was 225,000 feet and (NASA pilot) Joe Walker got it to 354,200 feet," Engle said.

But reaching those numbers didn't automatically allow the X-15's designers and pilots to declare success, Engle said. The whole process they went through to get to that point is where the lessons were taught and learned, sometimes harshly. In 1967, Air Force pilot Michael Adams was killed in the crash of an X-15.

"You learn so very much during the envelope expansion. Yes, there are some potholes that live within the envelope that you have to learn how to solve or avoid. But it's just as valuable to learn those as it is the lessons that wait for you at the edge of the envelope," Engle said.

Omega Centauri

Omega Centauri
NASA's Hubble Space Telescope snapped this panoramic view of a colorful assortment of 100,000 stars residing in the crowded core of a giant star cluster. This is one of the first images taken by the new Wide Field Camera 3 that was installed aboard Hubble in May 2009 during Servicing Mission 4, which can snap sharp images over a broad range of wavelengths.

Black Hole Pumps Iron

Black Hole Pumps Iron
This composite image of the Hydra A galaxy cluster shows 10-million- degree gas observed by Chandra in blue and jets of radio emission observed by the Very Large Array in pink. Optical data from the Canada- France-Hawaii telescope and the Digitized Sky Survey shows galaxies in the cluster.

Detailed analysis of the Chandra data shows that the gas located along the direction of the radio jets is enhanced in iron and other metals. Scientists think these elements have been produced by Type Ia supernova explosions in the large galaxy at the center of the cluster. A powerful outburst from the supermassive black hole then pushed the material outwards, over distances extending for almost 400,000 light years, extending beyond the region shown in this image. About 10 to 20 percent of the iron in the galaxy has been displaced, requiring a few percent of the total energy produced by the central black hole.

Outbursts from the central, supermassive black hole have not only pushed elements outwards, but have created a series of cavities in the hot gas. As these jets blasted through the galaxy into the surrounding multimillion-degree intergalactic gas, they pushed the hot gas aside to create the cavities. A relatively recent outburst created a pair of cavities visible as dark regions in the Chandra image located around the radio emission. These cavities are so large they would be able to contain the entire Milky Way galaxy, but they are dwarfed by even larger cavities -- too faint to be visible in this image - created by earlier, more powerful outbursts from the black hole. The largest of these cavities is immense, extending for about 670,000 light years.

Swift Makes Best-ever Ultraviolet Portrait of Andromeda Galaxy

Andromeda Galaxy
In a break from its usual task of searching for distant cosmic explosions, NASA's Swift satellite has acquired the highest-resolution view of a neighboring spiral galaxy ever attained in the ultraviolet. The galaxy, known as M31 in the constellation Andromeda, is the largest and closest spiral galaxy to our own.

"Swift reveals about 20,000 ultraviolet sources in M31, especially hot, young stars and dense star clusters," said Stefan Immler, a research scientist on the Swift team at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md. "Of particular importance is that we have covered the galaxy in three ultraviolet filters. That will let us study M31's star-formation processes in much greater detail than previously possible."

M31, also known as the Andromeda Galaxy, is more than 220,000 light-years across and lies 2.5 million light-years away. On a clear, dark night, the galaxy is faintly visible as a misty patch to the naked eye.

Between May 25 and July 26, 2008, Swift's Ultraviolet/Optical Telescope (UVOT) acquired 330 images of M31 at wavelengths of 192.8, 224.6, and 260 nanometers. The images represent a total exposure time of 24 hours.

The task of assembling the resulting 85 gigabytes of images fell to Erin Grand, an undergraduate student at the University of Maryland at College Park who worked with Immler as an intern this summer. "After ten weeks of processing that immense amount of data, I'm extremely proud of this new view of M31," she said.

Several features are immediately apparent in the new mosaic. The first is the striking difference between the galaxy's central bulge and its spiral arms. "The bulge is smoother and redder because it's full of older and cooler stars," Immler explained. "Very few new stars form here because most of the materials needed to make them have been depleted."

Dense clusters of hot, young, blue stars sparkle beyond the central bulge. As in our own galaxy, M31's disk and spiral arms contain most of the gas and dust needed to produce new generations of stars. Star clusters are especially plentiful in an enormous ring about 150,000 light-years across.

What triggers the unusually intense star formation in Andromeda's "ring of fire"? Previous studies have shown that tides raised by the many small satellite galaxies in orbit around M31 help boost the interactions within gas clouds that result in new stars.

In 1885, an exploding star in M31's central bulge became bright enough to see with the naked eye. This was the first supernova ever recorded in any galaxy beyond our own Milky Way. "We expect an average of about one supernova per century in galaxies like M31," Immler said. "Perhaps we won't have to wait too long for another one."

"Swift is surveying nearby galaxies like M31 so astronomers can better understand star- formation conditions and relate them to conditions in the distant galaxies where we see gamma-ray bursts occurring," said Neil Gehrels, the mission's principal investigator at NASA Goddard. Since Swift's November 2005 launch, the satellite has detected more than 400 gamma-ray bursts -- massive, far-off explosions likely associated with the births of black holes.

Swift is managed by NASA Goddard. It was built and is being operated in collaboration with Pennsylvania State University, the Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico, and General Dynamics of Gilbert, Ariz., in the United States. International collaborators include the University of Leicester and Mullard Space Sciences Laboratory in the United Kingdom, Brera Observatory and the Italian Space Agency in Italy, and additional partners in Germany and Japan.

James Webb Space Telescope Begins to Take Shape at Goddard

The James Webb Space Telescope ISIM structure

NASA's James Webb Space Telescope is starting to come together. A major component of the telescope, the Integrated Science Instrument Module structure, recently arrived at NASA Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md. for testing in the Spacecraft Systems Development and Integration Facility.

The Integrated Science Instrument Module, or ISIM, is an important component of the Webb telescope. The ISIM includes the structure, four scientific instruments or cameras, electronics, harnesses, and other components.

The ISIM structure is the "backbone" of the ISIM. It is similar to the chassis of a car. Just as a car chassis provides support for the engine and holds other components, the ISIM Structure supports and holds the four Webb telescope science instruments : the Mid-Infrared Instrument (MIRI), the Near-Infrared Camera (NIRCam), the Near-Infrared Spectrograph (NIRSpec) and the Fine Guidance Sensor (FGS). Each of these instruments were created and assembled by different program partners around the world.

When fully assembled, the ISIM will be the size of a small room with the structure acting as a skeleton supporting all of the instruments. Ray Lundquist, ISIM Systems Engineer, at NASA Goddard, commented that "The ISIM structure is truly a one-of-a-kind item. There is no second ISIM being made."

Before arriving at Goddard, the main ISIM structure – a state of the art, cryogenic-compatible, optical structure was designed by a team of engineers at Goddard, and assembled by Alliant Techsystems (ATK) at its Magna, Utah facility. That's the same facility where the Webb Telescope's Backplane is also being assembled.

Now that the structure has arrived at Goddard, it will undergo rigorous qualification testing to demonstrate its ability to survive the launch and extreme cold of space, and to precisely hold the science instruments in the correct position with respect to the telescope. Once the ISIM structure passes its qualification testing, the process of integrating into it all of the other ISIM Subsystems, including the Science Instruments, will begin.

Each of the four instruments that will be housed in the ISIM is critical to the Webb telescope's mission. The MIRI instrument will provide information on the formation and evolution of galaxies, the physical processes of star and planet formation, and the sources of life-supporting elements in other solar systems. The NIRCam will detect the first galaxies to form in the early universe, map the morphology and colors of galaxies; detect distant supernovae; map dark matter and study stellar populations in nearby galaxies. NIRSpec's microshutter cells can be opened or closed to view or block a portion of the sky which allows the instrument to do spectroscopy on many objects simultaneously, measuring the distances to galaxies and determining their chemical content. The FGS is a broadband guide camera used for both "guide star" acquisition and fine pointing. The FGS also includes the scientific capability of taking images at individual wavelengths of infrared light to study chemical elements in stars and galaxies.

In addition to designing the ISIM structure, NASA Goddard provides other infrastructure subsystems critical for the operation of the instruments, including the ISIM Thermal Control Subsystem; ISIM Control and Data Handling Subsystem; ISIM Remote Services Unit; ISIM Flight Software; ISIM Electronics Compartment, and ISIM Harness Assemblies.

The ISIM itself is very complicated and is broken into three distinct areas:

The first area involves the cryogenic instrument module. This is a critical area, because it keeps the instrument cool. Otherwise, the Webb telescope's heat would interfere with the science instruments’ infrared cameras. So, the module keeps components as cold as -389 degrees Fahrenheit (39 Kelvin). The MIRI instrument is further cooled by a cryocooler refrigerator to -447 degrees Fahrenheit (7 Kelvin).

The second area is the ISIM Electronics Compartment, which provides the mounting surfaces and a thermally-controlled environment for the instrument control electronics.

The third area is the ISIM Command and Data Handling subsystem, which includes ISIM flight Software, and the MIRI cryocooler compressor and control electronics.

NASA Goddard will be assembling and testing the ISIM and its components over the next several years. The integrated ISIM will then be mounted onto the main Webb telescope.

The James Webb Space Telescope is the next-generation premier space observatory, exploring deep space phenomena from distant galaxies to nearby planets and stars. The Webb Telescope will give scientists clues about the formation of the universe and the evolution of our own solar system, from the first light after the Big Bang to the formation of star systems capable of supporting life on planets like Earth. It is expected to launch in 2014. The telescope is a joint project of NASA, the European Space Agency and the Canadian Space Agency.

Saturn's Turbulent 'Storm Alley' Sets Another Record

storm on Saturn
The longest continuously observed thunderstorm in the solar system has been roiling Saturn's atmosphere since mid-January and is still churning now, according to a presentation by a Cassini team scientist at the European Planetary Science Congress in Potsdam, Germany.

A team led by Georg Fischer, a scientist at the Austrian Academy of Sciences has been using Cassini's Radio and Plasma Wave Science instrument to measure the powerful radio waves emitted by Saturn's lightning storms. The radio waves from these storms help scientists study Saturn's ionosphere, the charged layer that surrounds the planet above the cloud tops.

The most recent storm has evolved around the latitude of 35 degrees south, an area nicknamed "storm alley." The previous record for observed storms also came from Saturn, when a different storm thundered for seven-and-a-half months from the end of Nov. 2007 until mid-July 2008.

Checking Tilt of Lightweight Test Rover

Checking Tilt of Lightweight Test Rover
Tests of possible maneuvers for use by NASA's rover Spirit on Mars include use of this lightweight test rover at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif. In this scene from Sept. 8, 2009, rover team member Walter Hoffman is checking for a change in the vehicle's tilt after an arc-backwards maneuver.

This test rover, called the Surface System Testbed Lite, weighs about the same on Earth as Spirit does on Mars. Unlike the primary test rover in use at JPL, called the Surface System Testbed, the lighter model does not carry science instruments or a robotic arm. An object that weighs 10 pounds on Earth weighs just 3.8 pounds on Mars, due to the smaller mass of Mars compared to Earth.

Computer modeling using results from both test rovers and data from Mars is helping the rover team plot a strategy to try getting Spirit out of a patch of soft Martian soil where Spirit has been embedded for more than four months.