11-05-2012 14:29 Activities for new Expedition 31 crewmembers, Soyuz Commander Gennady Padalka, NASA Flight Engineer Joe Acaba and Flight Engineer Sergei Revin include a pre-launch fit check in a Soyuz capsule at the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan, the raising of flags outside the Cosmonaut Hotel crew quarters and launch to the orbiting laboratory to meet up with NASA Astronaut Don Pettit, Cosmonaut Oleg Kononenko and Andre Kuipers of the European Space Agency. Also, SpaceX continues its preparations for the planned May 19 launch of the Falcon 9 rocket and unmanned Dragon spacecraft to the International Space Station, new findings about the asteroid Vesta by NASA's DAWN spacecraft and more!

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Latest Update on New Space Station Crew on This Week @NASA - Video

11-05-2012 14:32 Daphne Dador joined NASA as a Legislative Affairs Specialist at the Office of Legislative & Intergovernmental Affairs (OLIA) at NASA Headquarters in Washington, DC, in September 2010. OLIA's mission is to provide executive leadership, direction, and coordination of all communications and relationships related to legislative issues between NASA and the US Congress, state and local government, and space-related associations and citizen's groups. As an active member of the space community, Daphne has volunteered with a variety of national and international space-related organizations such as Women in Aerospace, the American Institute for Aeronautics and Astronautics, the International Space University-DC-Alumni Group, the Space Generation Congress, and Yuri's Night. In 2004, she founded the George Washington University Space Society. Committed to representing the space community and its needs Daphne hopes to inspire the next generation of space professionals. She is a native northern Californian and a second-generation Filipino-American.

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NASA Asian-American History Month Profile -- Daphne Dador - Video

A NASA image released Friday shows a glimpse of a universe with an active black hole, the focus of a recent discovery much of which was made in Baltimore.

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NASA image shows galaxy with active black hole

ScienceDaily (May 12, 2012) Its construction now complete, the science instrument that is the heart of NASA's Orbiting Carbon Observatory-2 (OCO-2) spacecraft -- NASA's first mission dedicated to studying atmospheric carbon dioxide -- has left its nest at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif., and has arrived at its integration and test site in Gilbert, Ariz.

A truck carrying the OCO-2 instrument left JPL before dawn on Tuesday, May 9, to begin the trek to Orbital Science Corporation's Satellite Manufacturing Facility in Gilbert, southeast of Phoenix, where it arrived that afternoon. The instrument will be unpacked, inspected and tested. Later this month, it will be integrated with the Orbital-built OCO-2 spacecraft bus, which arrived in Gilbert on April 30.

Once technicians ensure the spacecraft is clean of any contaminants, the observatory's integration and test campaign will kick off. That campaign will be conducted in two parts, with the first part scheduled for completion in October. The observatory will then be stored in Gilbert for about nine months while the launch vehicle is prepared. The integration and test campaign will then resume, with completion scheduled for spring 2014. OCO-2 will then be shipped to Vandenberg Air Force Base, Calif., in preparation for a launch as early as the summer of 2014.

"The OCO-2 instrument looks great, and its delivery to Orbital's Gilbert, Ariz., facility is a big step forward in successfully launching and operating the mission in space," said Ralph Basilio, OCO-2 project manager at JPL.

OCO-2 is the latest mission in NASA's study of the global carbon cycle. Carbon dioxide is the most significant human-produced greenhouse gas and the principal human-produced driver of climate change. The original OCO mission was lost shortly after launch on Feb. 24, 2009, when the Taurus XL launch vehicle carrying it malfunctioned and failed to reach orbit.

The experimental OCO-2 mission, which is part of NASA's Earth System Science Pathfinder Program, will uniformly sample the atmosphere above Earth's land and ocean, collecting more than half a million measurements of carbon dioxide concentration over Earth's sunlit hemisphere every day for at least two years. It will do so with the accuracy, resolution and coverage needed to provide the first complete picture of the regional-scale geographic distribution and seasonal variations of both human and natural sources of carbon dioxide emissions and their sinks-the places where carbon dioxide is removed from the atmosphere and stored.

Scientists will use OCO-2 mission data to improve global carbon cycle models, better characterize the processes responsible for adding and removing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, and make more accurate predictions of global climate change.

The mission provides a key new measurement that can be combined with other ground and aircraft measurements and satellite data to answer important questions about the processes that regulate atmospheric carbon dioxide and its role in the carbon cycle and climate. This information could help policymakers and business leaders make better decisions to ensure climate stability and retain our quality of life. The mission will also serve as a pathfinder for future long-term satellite missions to monitor carbon dioxide.

Each of the OCO-2 instrument's three high-resolution spectrometers spreads reflected sunlight into its various colors like a prism, focusing on a different, narrow color range to detect light with the specific colors absorbed by carbon dioxide and molecular oxygen. The amount of light absorbed at these specific colors is proportional to the concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. Scientists will use these data in computer models to quantify global carbon dioxide sources and sinks.

OCO-2 is managed by JPL for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, Washington. Orbital Sciences Corporation, Dulles, Va., built the spacecraft and provides mission operations under JPL's leadership. The California Institute of Technology in Pasadena manages JPL for NASA.

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NASA's new carbon-counting instrument leaves the nest

NASA / JPL-Caltech

An artist's conception shows NASA's Curiosity rover zapping a rock during a sampling operation on Mars. Laser-zapping is not a requirement for the robots entered in a NASA-backed $1.5 million contest.

By Devin Coldewey

Mark June 16 on your calendar, interplanetary robot fans: Thats when autonomous rovers will face off in NASA's $1.5 million Sample Return Robot Challenge at Worcester Polytechnic Institute in Massachusetts.

The challenge, one of several that NASA is sponsoring, was announced back in July 2010 but a purpose-built autonomous robot isn't a simple thing to create, so it has taken nearly two years to collect and vet the entrants.

The challenge, in brief, is to create a compact (1.5 cubic meters, 175 pounds) robot that can navigate varied terrain, find and collect certain items, and return them safely to the base. But it must do this without the use of GPS or any "Earth-based" systems, such as a compass or Internet connection, which naturally would not be available on celestial bodies other than our own. Furthermore, the robot can't use air cooling, ultrasonic rangefinders or a number of other techniques that wouldn't be workable in an airless environment.

There are both private and public teams: Groups from the University of Pennsylvania and the University of Waterloo have both made the final 11, and the rest are start-up companies such as SpacePRIDE from South Carolina and True Vision Robotics from Atascadero, Calif. Six of the teams are based in California, while the rest are scattered around the US and Canada.

The teams' robots will be unmanned and on their own once deployed, but they won't be going in completely blind. As would likely be the case on a real planetary mission, NASA is providing satellite imagery of the area, compete with topographic information and points of interest:

NASA / WPI

Topographic map of the competition's terrain

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NASA rover contest gets set for showdown

SpaceX on Friday confirmed that NASA has greenlighted May 19 as the launch date for the first privately funded cargo mission to the International Space Station following a series of delays.

The launch of a SpaceX Dragon capsule atop a Falcon 9 rocket from Launch Complex 40 at the Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida is scheduled for 4:55 a.m. ET, a SpaceX spokesperson said. NASA Television will start broadcasting the event at 3:30 a.m., she added.

Already months behind schedule, a launch date scheduled for this past Monday was cancelled last week as SpaceX and the U.S. space agency raced to test the Dragon capsule's software systems. If the May 19 launch is again delayed for some reason, a backup plan is to lift off on May 22, a SpaceX spokesperson told PCMag earlier.

"SpaceX and NASA are nearing completion of the software assurance process, and SpaceX is submitting a request to the Cape Canaveral Air Force Station for a May 19 launch target," SpaceX spokeswoman Kirstin Brost Grantham said earlier in the week. "Thus far, no issues have been uncovered during this process, but with a mission of this complexity we want to be extremely diligent."

In what will be the second demonstration launch for SpaceX in NASA's Commercial Orbital Transportation Services (COTS) program. Once in orbit, the automated Dragon capsule, carrying cargo for the orbiting space lab, will berth with the ISS if it passes a systems check.

"The primary objectives for the flight include a flyby of the space station at a distance of approximately 1.5 miles to validate the operation of sensors and flight systems necessary for a safe rendezvous and approach," Brost Grantham said. "The spacecraft also will demonstrate the ability to abort the rendezvous. Once these capabilities are successfully proven, the Dragon will be cleared to berth with the space station."

Fourth Time's the Charm?

The unmanned test flight was originally scheduled for April 30, then pushed back to May 3 before NASA and SpaceX settled on a date a few days later in May. SpaceX, run by PayPal and Tesla Motors co-founder Elon Musk (pictured), plans to conduct manned flights to the ISS by 2015 as part of NASA's Commercial Crew Development (CCDev) program.

After the May 7 date was cancelled, the company's launch plans were constrained because the Russian space agency is scheduled to take three new ISS astronauts to the space station on May 15. Any attempt by SpaceX to send its Dragon capsule to the ISS after this Thursday must wait for the Russian Soyuz spacecraft to safely dock at the space station.

If and when the ISS rendezvous does happen, crew aboard the space station will use the space station's robotic arm to dock the capsule, which will be carrying about 1,150 pounds of cargo for delivery to the orbiting lab. Then the SpaceX Dragon is supposed to take on a 1,455-pound payload to bring back to Earth.

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NASA Greenlights SpaceX ISS Visit for May 19

ScienceDaily (May 12, 2012) NASA's Space Launch System is on track to give America the launch vehicle it will need to send humans deeper into space than ever before, the program's manager said May 8.

Speaking to the National Space Club during a luncheon near NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida, Todd May, SLS program manager, said an uncrewed test flight of the Orion spacecraft in 2014, SLS mission in 2017 and a 10- to 14-day mission with astronauts going to the moon and back in 2021 will leave the nation in a position to explore as far as it wishes.

"By that point, you'll have the capability to go anywhere in the solar system people want to go," May said. May leads a team of engineers and designers at NASA's Marshall Spaceflight Center in Huntsville, Ala. "The ultimate goal is to put human boots on Mars."

Kennedy designers also are at work to make a place for the SLS to be assembled and launched from. Launch Pad 39B has seen significant changes and the Vehicle Assembly Building is undergoing modernizations to host the 36-story-tall SLS. Also, the mobile launcher that will hold the rocket and its servicing connections already has conducted a test at the pad.

A test version of the Orion capsule is inside the Operations and Checkout Building at Kennedy and the spacecraft that will make the first test flight into space is expected in a couple of months. It will undergo final assembly at Kennedy before being mounted atop a Delta IV rocket for a mission without astronauts aboard to test the spacecraft's systems and heat shield.

There's a lot going on," said Scott Colloredo, chief architect of the Ground Systems Development and Operations Program. "Whenever you see hardware moving in the direction of the launch pad, that's always significant."

Many elements of the SLS itself already are in testing, including the engines and solid rocket boosters that will give the rocket about 8 million pounds of thrust at launch, 10 percent more than the Saturn V.

NASA already has an inventory of space shuttle main engines that will be used to power the core stage. "The propulsion elements are in really good shape," May said. "Sixteen space shuttle main engines, that's a good head start."

The SLS also will use solid rocket boosters like the shuttle, but the SLS versions will be five segments instead of four.

The core stage, which will hold the fuel tanks for the main engines, is early in its design but still is on schedule. Like the space shuttle external tanks, the core stage will be built at NASA's Michoud Assembly Facility in Louisiana. The SLS stage is about 15 feet longer than the shuttle's external tank, and it will be shipped to Kennedy on the Pegasus barge, another element shared with the shuttle.

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NASA's Space Launch System carries deep space potential

NASA pulled the plug on its last powered space shuttle today (May 11), 20 years after it flew its first mission.

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Endeavour Unplugged: NASA Powers Down its Last Space Shuttle

NASA pulled the plug on its last powered space shuttle Friday, 20 years after it flew its first mission.

Space shuttle technicians working inside Orbiter Processing Facility-2 (OPF-2) at NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida powered down Endeavour, the youngest of the retired fleet's orbiters, at 9:58 a.m. EDT as they moved forward with preparations for the winged spacecraft's museum display.

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This September, NASA will mount Endeavour on top of a modified Boeing 747 carrier aircraft and ferry it to Los Angeles for its exhibit at the California Science Center.

NASA's youngest shuttle Built after the loss of the Challenger orbiter in 1986, the shuttle Endeavour was largely assembled from spare parts pre-fabricated during the development of its sister ships Discovery and Atlantis. Endeavour's first mission, STS-49, lifted off in May 1992.

NASA retired its shuttle fleet in July 2011, and the remaining orbiters are all headed to museums. While the agency is currently using Russian spacecraft to transport its astronauts to low-Earth orbit, U.S. commercial vehicles are planned to take over this taxi service by 2017. [ NASA's Shuttle Program in Pictures ]

"The whole thing shutting down is a shame," Dan Brandenstein, Endeavour's first commander, told collectSPACE.com just a few hours after he visited his former spaceship last Saturday. "It is good that they are saving them as museum artifacts, but you have three vehicles that are still good flying machines going on a post or in a display case."

Endeavour was the last of NASA's retired shuttle fleet to go permanently dark. Discovery, which was delivered to the Smithsonian in April, was powered down for a final time on Dec. 16, 2011. Atlantis, which is destined for display just down the road from its processing facility at the Kennedy Space Center Visitor Complex, was shut down the following week on Dec. 22.

Endeavour flew its 25th and final mission, STS-134, a year ago this month. The 16-day mission to the International Space Station launched on May 16, 2011.

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NASA unplugs last space shuttle, Endeavour

LOS ANGELES — With NASA facing tight budget constraints, the space agency must strike a balance between devoting funds to keep existing missions and spacecraft operating, while also investing in new technology and innovation for future exploration, an agency official said this week.

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NASA's Budget Woes Require Tough Space Tech Balancing Act