NASA and The Nature Conservancy have joined forces to support the ability to measure precipitation on a global scale while also understanding migratory bird habitats on the Eastern Shore of Virginia.

The organizations have signed a Space Act Agreement that will provide a location to support NASA's Precipitation Science programs, in particular the NASA-JAXA Global Precipitation Measurement mission. As a byproduct of this research, data also will be collected that can be used by Nature Conservancy-affiliated researchers to study migratory birds on Virginia's Eastern Shore.

Through the agreement, The Conservancy is providing access to NASA at the Virginia Coast Reserve near Oyster, Va., to place the NASA Polarimetric (NPOL) weather radar, rain gauges and other instruments that will support ground validation of the Global Precipitation Measurement (GPM) mission. In return, NASA will, on request and a non-interference basis, support migratory bird studies by The Nature Conservancy using the NPOL radar.

The GPM mission is an international network of satellites that will provide the next generation of global space-based observations of rain and snow. The GPM Core Observatory is scheduled for launch in 2014. These GPM measurements of precipitation will advance our understanding of the global water cycle, ability to predict flooding and improve forecasting of weather.

"The NPOL radar and NASA rain gauge facilities being deployed in and around Oyster and the Delmarva Peninsula will support the GPM mission by providing accurate, high resolution measurements of rainfall- a process referred to as "ground validation"' said Walt Petersen, GPM ground validation scientist at the Wallops Flight Facility in Virginia.

He said, "At the Nature Conservancy site, ground validation is used to assess measurement accuracy of the GPM satellite instruments through a more complete understanding of rainfall characteristics and the physical processes associated with rainfall production."

Barry Truitt, a scientist with The Nature Conservancy, said "This five-year collaborative project with NASA will help The Conservancy and our partners further identify what habitats migratory birds are utilizing for fall stopovers along the lower Delmarva Peninsula and the conservation status of these lands. This agreement builds on the Conservancy's forty plus years of research, restoration, and protection on the Eastern Shore of Virginia."

To provide the necessary rainfall measurements for GPM ground validation a combination of radar and rain gauge measurements is needed. NASA is stationing approximately 50 rain gauges in an area of approximately 10 square miles near Oyster. This very concentrated network of gauges will serve as a reference for validating rain estimates made using the advanced capabilities of the NPOL radar.

The Conservancy is collaborating with professors Jeff Buler of the University of Delaware and Eric Walters of Old Dominion University on using the NPOL radar and its data stream for migratory bird studies on the southern end of the Delmarva Peninsula.

Buler is a radar ecologist who has mapped the distributions of birds during migratory stopover by observing their locations when they take flight in the evenings using the national network of NEXRAD weather surveillance radars. NPOL is a unique surveillance radar that will collect datasets offering improved bird identification and observation capabilities. The NPOL will be located in a region where NEXRAD radars do not already observe migrating birds.

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NASA And Nature Conservancy Agreement Supports Precipitation And Migratory Bird Research

NASA is canceling all work on a new space telescope designed to seek out black holes and other cosmic mysteries through X-ray light due to soaring development costs, the space agency announced Thursday.

The mission, called Gravity and Extreme Magnetism Small Explorer (GEMS), was running significantly over budget, said Paul Hertz, director of NASA's Astrophysics Division, during a phone call to reporters Thursday.

"The GEMS project was initiated under a very well-defined cost cap," Hertz said. "As they approached their confirmation review, it was clear they would not be able to complete it within their cost cap. NASA made the very difficult decision not to confirm GEMS into the implementation phase."

The mission team had almost completed the design stage of the project and was nearing the point where hardware for the mission would begin to be built. No working instruments were yet constructed, Hertz said. [ NASA's 2013 Budget: What Will It Buy? ]

The project was selected as a "small explorer"-class mission, with a firm cost limit of $105 million, not including the price of launching the spacecraft. NASA recently commissioned an independent review of GEMS' budget, and found that the ultimate price tag for the spacecraft was likely to be 20 to 30 percent over budget.

Because of the cost overrun, NASA decided to pull the plug on GEMS last month. On Tuesday, the GEMS team, led by principal investigator Jean Swank of the agency's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md., appealed the decision and submitted documents to show they had identified new areas of cost savings.

However, NASA was not swayed.

The space agency will now have to pay an estimated $13 million in close-out costs to cancel the mission, including contract cancelation fees to Orbital Sciences Corp. and other companies that were hired to built the spacecraft.

GEMS was to use three telescopes to capture the bent X-ray light from extremely dense objects such as black holes, neutron stars and stellar remnants. The mission would have launched no earlier than 2014 and lasted two years.

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Read more here:

NASA scraps space telescope over high costs

NASA is canceling all work on a new space telescope designed to seek out black holes and other cosmic mysteries through X-ray light due to soaring development costs, the space agency announced Thursday.

The mission, called Gravity and Extreme Magnetism Small Explorer (GEMS), was running significantly over budget, said Paul Hertz, director of NASA's Astrophysics Division, during a phone call to reporters Thursday.

"The GEMS project was initiated under a very well-defined cost cap," Hertz said. "As they approached their confirmation review, it was clear they would not be able to complete it within their cost cap. NASA made the very difficult decision not to confirm GEMS into the implementation phase."

The mission team had almost completed the design stage of the project and was nearing the point where hardware for the mission would begin to be built. No working instruments were yet constructed, Hertz said. [ NASA's 2013 Budget: What Will It Buy? ]

The project was selected as a "small explorer"-class mission, with a firm cost limit of $105 million, not including the price of launching the spacecraft. NASA recently commissioned an independent review of GEMS' budget, and found that the ultimate price tag for the spacecraft was likely to be 20 to 30 percent over budget.

Because of the cost overrun, NASA decided to pull the plug on GEMS last month. On Tuesday, the GEMS team, led by principal investigator Jean Swank of the agency's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md., appealed the decision and submitted documents to show they had identified new areas of cost savings.

However, NASA was not swayed.

The space agency will now have to pay an estimated $13 million in close-out costs to cancel the mission, including contract cancelation fees to Orbital Sciences Corp. and other companies that were hired to built the spacecraft.

GEMS was to use three telescopes to capture the bent X-ray light from extremely dense objects such as black holes, neutron stars and stellar remnants. The mission would have launched no earlier than 2014 and lasted two years.

More space news from msnbc.com

Read more from the original source:

NASA pulls the plug on X-ray telescope plan

Left: The NASA radar is used to make accurate volumetric measurements of precipitation including rainfall rate, particle size distributions, water contents and precipitation type. Credit: NASA Right: The Summer Tanager winters in Central and South America. Males are entirely red and females (shown here) are primarily a dull yellow. They eat bees and wasps. Credit: Kyle Horton

OYSTER, Va., June 7 (UPI) -- NASA says it is joining with The Nature Conservancy in a study of global rainfall and its effects on migratory bird habitats on the Eastern Shore of Virginia.

The conservancy is providing access to NASA at the Virginia Coast Reserve near Oyster, Va., to place weather radar, rain gauges and other instruments that will support the agency's Global Precipitation Measurement mission.

In return, NASA will support migratory bird studies by The Nature Conservancy using the weather radar, the space agency said Thursday.

The GPM mission is an international network of satellites providing global space-based observations of rain and snow.

Its ground-based radar in Virginia offers a unique surveillance opportunity for improved bird identification and observation, Conservancy officials said.

"This five-year collaborative project with NASA will help the conservancy and our partners further identify what habitats migratory birds are utilizing for fall stopovers along the lower Delmarva Peninsula and the conservation status of these lands," conservancy scientists Barry Truitt said.

"This agreement builds on the conservancy's 40-plus years of research, restoration and protection on the Eastern Shore of Virginia."

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NASA to cooperate in Va. bird study

NASA is canceling work on a new space telescope that was running significantly over budget. The GEMS telescope was intended to study black holes and neutron stars.

NASA is canceling all work on a new space telescope designed to seek out black holes and other cosmic mysteries through X-ray light due to soaring development costs, the space agency announced today (June 7).

The mission, called Gravity and Extreme Magnetism Small Explorer (GEMS), was running significantly over budget, said Paul Hertz, director of NASA's Astrophysics Division, during a phone call to reporters today.

"TheGEMS projectwas initiated under a very well-defined cost cap," Hertz said. "As they approached their confirmation review, it was clear they would not be able to complete it within their cost cap. NASA made the very difficult decision not to confirm GEMS into the implementation phase."

The mission team had almost completed the design stage of the project and was nearing the point where hardware for the mission would begin to be built. No working instruments were yet constructed, Hertz said. [NASA's 2013 Budget: What Will It Buy?]

The project was selected as a "small explorer" class mission, with a firm cost limit of $105 million, not including the price of launching the spacecraft. NASA recently commissioned an independent review of GEMS' budget, and found that the ultimate price tag for the spacecraft was likely to be 20 to 30 percent over budget.

Because of the cost overrun, NASA decided to pull the plug on GEMS last month. On June 5, the GEMS team, led by principal investigator Jean Swank of the agency's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md., appealed the decision and submitted documents to show they had identified new areas of cost savings.

However, NASA was not swayed.

The space agency will now have to pay an estimated $13 million in close-out costs to cancel the mission, including contract cancelation fees toOrbital Sciences Corp. and other companies that were hired to built the spacecraft.

GEMS was to use three telescopes to capture the bent X-ray light from extremely dense objects such as black holes, neutron stars and stellar remnants. The mission would have launched no earlier than 2014 and lasted two years.

Read more here:

Facing rising costs, NASA scraps X-ray space telescope mission (+video)

NASA is canceling work on a new space telescope that was running significantly over budget. The GEMS telescope was intended to study black holes and neutron stars.

NASA is canceling all work on a new space telescope designed to seek out black holes and other cosmic mysteries through X-ray light due to soaring development costs, the space agency announced today (June 7).

The mission, called Gravity and Extreme Magnetism Small Explorer (GEMS), was running significantly over budget, said Paul Hertz, director of NASA's Astrophysics Division, during a phone call to reporters today.

"TheGEMS projectwas initiated under a very well-defined cost cap," Hertz said. "As they approached their confirmation review, it was clear they would not be able to complete it within their cost cap. NASA made the very difficult decision not to confirm GEMS into the implementation phase."

The mission team had almost completed the design stage of the project and was nearing the point where hardware for the mission would begin to be built. No working instruments were yet constructed, Hertz said. [NASA's 2013 Budget: What Will It Buy?]

The project was selected as a "small explorer" class mission, with a firm cost limit of $105 million, not including the price of launching the spacecraft. NASA recently commissioned an independent review of GEMS' budget, and found that the ultimate price tag for the spacecraft was likely to be 20 to 30 percent over budget.

Because of the cost overrun, NASA decided to pull the plug on GEMS last month. On June 5, the GEMS team, led by principal investigator Jean Swank of the agency's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md., appealed the decision and submitted documents to show they had identified new areas of cost savings.

However, NASA was not swayed.

The space agency will now have to pay an estimated $13 million in close-out costs to cancel the mission, including contract cancelation fees toOrbital Sciences Corp. and other companies that were hired to built the spacecraft.

GEMS was to use three telescopes to capture the bent X-ray light from extremely dense objects such as black holes, neutron stars and stellar remnants. The mission would have launched no earlier than 2014 and lasted two years.

Read the original:

Amid rising costs, NASA scraps X-ray space telescope mission (+video)