Space Science

Mustard on the moon?NASA scientists are suggesting that before sending humans back to the moon, we should launch plants there and watch them grow.Dr. Chris McKay, my former astrobiology mentor at NASA, and plant biologist Dr. Robert Ferl of the University of Florida, presented their plan at a meeting of lunar scientists at NASA Ames this week.The idea is simple: Fly a simple plant habitat to the moon. Bring along seeds (you don't have to care for them or feed them on the launch pad or the flight out). Germinate them inside your lunar ...

TOKYO (AP) - NASA needs a replacement for the space shuttle and it's reportedly turning to Japan to help keep supplies flowing to the international space station.Japan's largest daily newspaper reports NASA is in unofficial talks with Japan's space agency to purchase the H-2 Transfer Vehicle, or HTV.The HTV is an unmanned cargo vessel being designed to deliver supplies to the space station. The orbiting facility is currently kept stocked by the space shuttle as well as Russian and European spacecraft.The U.S. has relied on the space s ...

Nasa has developed "toy like" autonomous robots to carry out scientific surveys of treacherous areas of the Arctic and Antarctic.The SnoMotes robots are designed to operate in terrain deemed too dangerous for scientists.The devices can record data including barometric pressure, temperature and relative humidity that will help scientists improve climate models.Ayanna Howard, an associate professor in the School of Electrical and Computer Engineering at the Georgia Institute of Technology in Atlanta, worked with scientists at Pennsylvan ...

A new NASA mission could discover the shape of space that has been distorted by a spinning black hole's crushing gravity, and explore the structure and effects of the formidable magnetic field around magnetars, dead stars with magnetic fields trillions of times stronger than Earth's.Current missions either don't have the resolution to do this, or in the case of magnetic field imaging, simply can't do this because magnetic fields are invisible. The proposed new mission, called Gravity and Extreme Magnetism (GEMS), will use a new techni ...

Google founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin have a love of space, but their latest venture with America's space agency is about breaking ground on Earth. Google has signed a long-term lease to build a major new campus at NASA's Ames Research Center in Mountain View, CalifThe new campus may take up as much as 1.2 million square feet and will house offices, research and development facilities, housing, recreation and even retail. The initial lease price is $3.66 million a year.Construction is slated to start in 2013 and take as long as a ...

Good thing Google's planning to build up to 1.2 million square feet of new office and R&D facilities over at the NASA Ames Research Center in Mountain View, Calif. After all, it's going to need it. Because, according to Sanford C. Bernstein analyst Jeffrey Lindsay, the company will soon be one half of the Internet duopoly.In a report entitled "U.S. Internet: The End of the Beginning," Lindsay argues that Google (GOOG) and Amazon (AMZN) will someday rule the Internet-more than they already do, that is. "We expect two players to continu ...

Report: NASA press office 'mischaracterized' warming in 'inappropriate poltical posturing'NASA's press office "marginalized or mischaracterized" studies on global warming between 2004 and 2006, the agency's own internal watchdog concluded.In a report released Monday, NASA's inspector general office called it "inappropriate political interference" by political appointees in the press office. It said that the agency's top management wasn't part of the censorship, nor were career officials.NASA downplayed the report as old news on a prob ...

A NASA probe sent back never-seen pictures of Mars' north pole Monday after a near perfect landing in the most ambitious mission to date to find life-sustaining minerals on the Red Planet.Pictures from the Phoenix probe provided the first glimpse of the planet's Arctic plains -- a desolate landscape of stony, frozen ground.The images also confirmed that the solar arrays needed for the mission's energy supply had unfolded properly, as the craft's batteries would have run out in about 30 hours. The photos also showed masts for the stere ...

PASADENA, Calif., May 23 (UPI) -- Sunday's planned landing of the Mars Phoenix Lander probe may provide U.S. scientists with evidence of life on Mars, NASA officials say.The Phoenix Lander has been traveling to its mission since last August, joining the highly successful Spirit and Opportunity rover missions, CNN reported Friday."I do not feel confident. But in my heart I'm an optimist, and I think this is going to be a very successful mission," principal investigator Peter Smith said of the mission seeking proof of life.Scientists an ...

As NASA's Phoenix Mars Lander continues toward its planned May 25 landing in the Martian arctic, the space agency will hold the first of a series of mission briefings today to chronicle the spacecraft's red planet arrival.The mission status briefing, essentially an overview of Phoenix's planned entry, descent and landing on Mars, is scheduled to begin at 2:30 p.m. EDT (1830 GMT) today at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif. NASA will broadcast it live on NASA TV, which you can access here.Phoenix is a stationary lander ...

PARIS, May 21 (UPI) -- The European Space Agency says it is ready to help the U.S. space agency monitor the Phoenix spacecraft's descent and landing on Mars this weekend.The ESA said its Mars Express mission control team has completed major preparations for supporting the entry, descent and landing phases of the U.S. National Aeronautics and Space Administration's Phoenix mission. The ESA's Mars Express orbiting spacecraft will be pointed toward Phoenix's planned entry trajectory and will record signals broadcast from the lander as it ...

NASA has successfully landed five robots on Mars over the past three decades. Its latest spacecraft, Phoenix Mars, will touch down in the Martian arctic region on Sunday. Here's why NASA is going again.Q: How is the Phoenix lander different from the Mars rovers that went up four years ago?A: Phoenix is a lander, which means it will stay in place after touchdown unlike the rovers, which explored. Phoenix will dig down into the soil; the rovers which drilled into surface rocks. Also, Phoenix is half as expensive as the rovers, costing $ ...

MOFFETT FIELD, Calif., May 13 // - The 2007 NASA Government Invention of the Year is a heat shield material slightly more dense than balsa wood that is designed to protect spacecraft during their fiery re-entry into Earth's atmosphere.The Lightweight Ceramic Ablator material (LCA) is a low-density material that weighs one-fifth as much as conventional heat shields, but can withstand temperatures up to 5,000 degrees Fahrenheit, according to project engineers at NASA's Ames Research Center at Moffett Field, Calif. The material has a fou ...

NASA's Phoenix Mars Lander, which launched last August, will finally reach the Red Planet later this month but scientists remain nervous about the extremely complicated mission.Phoenix is scheduled to enter the top of the Martian atmosphere at a speed of nearly 21,000 km/h on May 25.In the ensuing seven minutes, the spacecraft will have to complete a challenging sequence of events to slow down before it lands.At a NASA press conference in Washington Tuesday, Phoenix project manager Barry Goldstein described the landing as "seven minut ...

WASHINGTON, May 12 (UPI) -- The U.S. space agency said it plans to join the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency in conducting research on sonic boom modeling.The National Aeronautics and Space Administration said sonic boom modeling is needed to enable next generation of supersonic aircraft to fly quietly enough over land so they don't significantly disturb the public.Such a vehicle, said NASA, could connect Los Angeles and Tokyo in about two hours, flying at twice the speed of sound -- about 1,540 miles an hour.The two space agencies ...

Cape Town - The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (Nasa) wants the private sector to help develop the next generation of shuttle craft to serve the International Space Station and is providing $500m in "seed" money to kick-start work, said its chief on Sunday."The cost of space transportation even 50 years into space flight is very high. We wish it were lower. It isn't yet," said Nasa administrator Michael Griffin.Griffin is in Cape Town along with other international scientists to attend the launch of the African Institut ...

Scientists at the European Space Agency are using techniques inspired by their experience with outer space to make new and better products here on Earth. Certain compounds and alloys which are not normally viable can be made in different ways once forces such as gravity are removed from the equation. From BBC News:"The near absence of gravity (microgravity) has a profound influence on the way molten metals come together to form intermetallics and 'standard' alloys. With no 'up' and 'down' in the space environment, a melt doesn't rise ...

HOUSTON, May 8 (UPI) -- The U.S. space agency says one of the first tests involving human subjects in support of its return-to-the-moon Orion Project has been completed.For three weeks, 23 volunteers were subjected to tests lasting from a few hours to overnight in a small test chamber at the Johnson Space Center in Houston while scientists measured the amount of carbon dioxide and moisture absorbed by a new system -- the Carbon-dioxide and Moisture Removal Amine Swing-bed, or CAMRAS, system.Officials said the tests, which took place A ...

A group of engineers is studying the possibility of having astronauts land on near-Earth objects, better known as asteroids. Rob Landis, who co-wrote a feasibility study, says people have to prepare for living elsewhere. ...

WASHINGTON -- With the help of the space shuttle program, NASA kicks off a new artifact loan program for museums, planetariums, and other organizations. NASA's new Artifact Loan Opportunities Program will help organizations borrow NASA artifacts for education and outreach purposes.The first artifacts available are main landing gear tires from space shuttles. The space shuttle tires, including some flown on missions, are available to proposing organizations that NASA determines best meet the agency's education and public outreach goals ...

London, May 6 : A report in New Scientist has said that a NASA spacecraft set to launch in 2015 will come eight times closer to the Sun than any previous probe, operating within the star's scorching outer atmosphere, or corona.The Solar Probe, which cost about 750 million dollars, will study the birthplace of the solar wind.During its expected seven-year lifetime, Solar Probe will make seven gravity slingshots around Venus, each time getting closer to the Sun. At its closest approach, it will orbit the Sun from within the outer part o ...

NASA is inviting citizens of Earth to add their name to an electronic roll-call destined to travel to the Moon aboard the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO) later this year.All you have to do is enter your details here, and they'll be put into a database for later storage on a chip aboard the LRO.Cathy Peddie, deputy project manager for LRO at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center, enthused: "Everyone who sends their name to the moon, like I'm doing, becomes part of the next wave of lunar explorers. The LRO mission is the first step in N ...

NASA decides to get up close and personal. Things will get hot. Real hot.Though the media has been inundated with coverage on one of Earth's closest planetary neighbors, Mars, for the last few years, thanks in no small part to the durable Mars rovers Spirit and Opportunity, it is certainly not the only local celestial body under observation. Saturn and the Cassini probe have received a bit of coverage as well. Not much has been given, however, to the big fireball that Earth and eight or nine other planets are whirling around.There are ...

Kopin(R) Corp. (NASDAQ: KOPN), the world's leading provider of heterojunction bipolar transistor (HBT) wafers for cellular phones and wireless local area networks, today announced that it has been selected for the award of a $600,000 solar cell development contract from NASA. The contract is the second phase of a Small Business Technology Transfer (STTR) program to develop indium nitride (InN)-based quantum dot solar cell technology. Kopin's partners on this NASA STTR project include groups at Virginia Tech and Magnolia Optical Techno ...

America is going back to the moon and beyond to Mars, and the first step is being built in Maryland where space history is being made.American pride soared when Neil Armstrong stepped on the moon nearly four decades ago. Now, the race is back on to fly from Earth to the moon and eventually to Mars.NASA engineer Craig Tooley works at Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt."Our space program is really about exploring and understanding. Our quest to return human beings to the moon and use the moon as where we can learn to go farther ou ...

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. - NASA's final visit to the Hubble Space Telescope has been delayed at least a month, until the fall, because of extra time needed to build the shuttle fuel tanks needed for the flight and a potential rescue mission.Atlantis and a crew of seven were supposed to fly to Hubble at the end of August, but now won't make the journey until the end of September or early October.Shuttle program manager John Shannon said it's taken more time to incorporate all the post-Columbia design changes to the external fuel tanks than ...

Astronomers are now able to predict when a certain type of star will let loose a powerful eruption.The explosions occur on a neutron star, a city-sized remnant of a giant star that exploded in a supernova long ago and collapsed into a hyperdense ember. It now siphons material from a companion star while the two objects orbit each other every 3.8 hours.The neutron star has incredibly strong gravity, so it sucks in some of the gas from the companion star's atmosphere. The gas spirals onto the neutron star, slowly building up on its surf ...

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fl. (WSAZ) -- After decades of sending rockets into space, a Cape Canaveral launch pad tumbled to the ground over the weekend.It took just seconds for 13 million pounds of steel to crumble after the 200 pounds of strategically placed explosives were detonated.The pad launched rockets and satellites into space for the Air Force's Titan program.The pad will be replaced by a new facility that will be used to launch the Falcon Nine class of rockets currently being developed. ...

BOULDER, Colo., April 28 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- Ball Aerospace & Technologies Corp.'s Carl Weimer will be awarded NASA's Distinguished Public Service Medal during a ceremony May 8, for his work on the Cloud-Aerosol LIDAR and Infrared Pathfinder Satellite Observation (CALIPSO) mission.One of NASA's most prestigious honors, the award is presented to select individuals and groups, both government and non-government, who have made outstanding contributions to NASA. Weimer served as Ball's technical manager for CALIPSO, leading developm ...

For what may be the first time since the inception of the American space program, the Navy is restricting nominations to the astronaut corps. The move comes nearly 50 years after Alan Shepard, a naval aviator, became the first American in space.The cutback, Navy officials say, comes as the service tries to retain the expertise it needs to fulfill its wartime obligations while experiencing an overall decline in its numbers. A message from Vice Adm. J.C. Harvey Jr. last month stated that applications for Navy nominations to the space pr ...

NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory manages the 2001 Mars Odyssey mission for NASA's Office of Space Science, Washington, D.C. The Thermal Emission Imaging System (THEMIS) was developed by Arizona State University, Tempe, in co.oration with Raytheon Santa Barbara Remote Sensing. The THEMIS investigation is led by Dr. Philip Christensen at Arizona State University. Lockheed Martin Astronautics, Denver, is the prime contractor for the Odyssey project, and developed and built the orbiter. Mission operations are conducted jointly from Lockhe ...

Washington, DC) - Today, House Science and Technology Committee's Subcommittee on Space and Aeronautics held an oversight hearing to examine the status of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration's (NASA) International Space Station (ISS) program. Committee Members discussed the challenges facing the program and questioned witnesses regarding how it should be operated, managed, and utilized."While ISS has had a long, and at times controversial and frustrating development path, I am impressed with the progress that has been ma ...

Testimony Before theSubcommittee on Space and AeronauticsCommittee on Science and TechnologyU.S. House of RepresentativesJeffrey P. Sutton, M.D., Ph.D.National Space Biomedical Research InstituteApril 24, 2008Mr. Chairman, Ranking Member and Distinguished Members of the Subcommittee:Thank you for the opportunity to testify on the subject of "NASA's International Space Station Program: Status and Issues." Since 2001, I have had the privilege to serve as the Director of the National Space Biomedical Research Institute (NSBRI), a non-pro ...

NASA Ames Research Center plans to work with M2mi Corp. to develop small satellites to power telecommunications and networks in space. The plan to build "nanosats" will help with the commercialization of space, NASA said."NASA wants to work with companies to develop a new economy in space," NASA Ames Center director S. Pete Worden said in a news announcement Thursday. "M2mi has great technology that fits excellently with our goals, while enhancing the commercial use of NASA-developed technologies."The company will work under a coopera ...

Rising for the moonCREATOR OF THE DALEKS, Stephen Hawking, has called on the world to dedicate a meagre 0.25 per cent of all its financial resources in a push towards setting up settlements on the Moon, Mars, infinity and beyond.The world famous Cambridge University physicist made the comments at a lecture to celebrate NASA's 50th birthday bash in Washington DC. Hawking claimed that it was essential that NASA increase its budget tenfold in order to ensure that in the event that the human race was wiped out on earth, due to nuclear Arm ...

With a long history in space, the agency's systems now host aerospace modeling, simulation, storage, high-speed networking, visualization, and computational services. NASA is marking 25 years in supercomputing at its Ames Research Center.The agency celebrated the anniversary of the NASA Advanced Supercomputing (NAS) Division at an event on Monday. NASA founded the division in 1983, when it was called the Numerical Aerodynamic Simulation program. Now, NAS hosts high performance computing, aerospace modeling, simulation, storage, high-s ...

NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory manages the 2001 Mars Odyssey mission for NASA's Office of Space Science, Washington, D.C. The Thermal Emission Imaging System (THEMIS) was developed by Arizona State University, Tempe, in co.oration with Raytheon Santa Barbara Remote Sensing. The THEMIS investigation is led by Dr. Philip Christensen at Arizona State University. Lockheed Martin Astronautics, Denver, is the prime contractor for the Odyssey project, and developed and built the orbiter. Mission operations are conducted jointly from Lockhe ...

While we think Aero-TV is pretty cool, here is some "competition" that we welcome.Since humans first flew in space, nothing has captivated astronauts more than the view of home out the window of their spacecraft. In honor of Earth Day, April 22, NASA will make those views available to people here on Earth with an event highlightingimagery taken by astronauts and the science behind it.For the first time ever, NASA Television will air a special hour-long broadcast of views of Earth taken in High Definition, or HD, by astronauts on past ...

NASA is exploring the possible designs for lunar bases, intended for an extended stay on the Moon. A NASA official from the Advanced Capabilities Division also said on Friday that they may be inspired by a concept based on the technology of the International Space Station (ISS). Very little official indication about the future of NASA's lunar policy has come to light, so this is interesting news. Although the statement was suitably sketchy, a six-month extended mission to the Moon seems to be most likely. How does this development com ...

Washington, D.C. (April 18, 2008) -- NASA Television is airing a special 60-minute HDTV broadcast of views of the Earth in honor of Earth Day, which is April 22.The broadcast will include high-def video taken by astronauts on past space shuttle and International Space Station missions.The special HD broadcast will air between 6 a.m. and 8 a.m. ET on Friday, April 18, and replay at the same time on Monday, April 21. It will air every hour from 6 a.m. to 8 p.m. on Tuesday, April 22.However, there are no reports of any cable or satellite ...