19-07-2012 09:01 A crucial, and often underappreciated, facet of science lies in deciding how to turn the raw numbers of data into useful, understandable information -- often through graphs and images. Such visualization techniques are needed for everything from making a map of planetary orbits based on nightly measurements of where they are in the sky to colorizing normally invisible light such as X-rays to produce "images" of the sun. More information, of course, requires more complex visualizations and occasionally such images are not just informative, but beautiful too. Such is the case with a new technique created by Nicholeen Viall, a solar scientist atNASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md. She creates images of the sun reminiscent of Van Gogh, with broad strokes of bright color splashed across a yellow background. But it's science, not art. The color of each pixel contains a wealth of information about the 12-hour history of cooling and heating at that particular spot on the sun. That heat history holds clues to the mechanisms that drive the temperature and movements of the sun's atmosphere, or corona. To look at the corona from a fresh perspective, Viall created a new kind of picture, making use of the high resolution provided by NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO). SDO's Atmospheric Imaging Assembly (AIA) provides images of the sun in 10 different wavelengths, each approximately corresponding to a single temperature of material. Therefore, when one looks at the ...

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NASA | Van Gogh Sun - Video

When NASA's newest rover, Curiosity, reaches Mars in about three weeks, it will not be the first to set its wheels on the Red Planet, but it will be the largest and most advanced robotic explorer that has ever been sent to our planetary neighbor.

The Curiosity rover, also called the Mars Science Laboratory, was launched in late November 2011, and is expected to land on Mars on the night of Aug. 5 PDT (early Aug. 6 EDT). The $2.5 billion rover will touch down at Gale Crater, and is designed to search for clues that Mars could be now, or in the ancient past, a habitable planet for microbial life.

NASA first set its sights on landing on the Red Planet in the 1970s. The agency achieved its first Mars landing in 1976 with the Viking 1 lander. Since then, the agency has had six spacecraft successfully touch down on the Martian surface. But with the impending arrival of Curiosity, NASA will showcase the most sophisticated Martian rover yet.

"The Curiosity landing is the hardest NASA robotic mission ever attempted in the history of exploration of Mars, or any of our robot exploration," John Grunsfeld, associate administrator for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, said in a news briefing Monday (July 16) at the agency's headquarters in Washington, D.C.

Bigger and better

For starters, the way Curiosity will lower itself to the surface of Mars in less than 20 days is unprecedented. The rover will use a new and complex sky crane system to slow its descent.

According to Doug McCuistion, director of the Mars Exploration Program at NASA Headquarters, Curiosity's landing "could arguably be the most important event most significant event in the history of planetary exploration." [How Curiosity's Nail-Biting Landing Works (Pictures)]

Previous Mars rovers, such as the twin Spirit and Opportunity rovers (collectively known as the Mars Exploration Rovers), used airbags to cushion their landing. Spirit and Opportunity arrived at the Red Planet about three weeks apart in January 2004. Each rover weighs about 384 pounds (174 kilograms), but since Curiosity tips the scales at 1 ton, it was deemed too heavy and too large for an airbag-assisted landing.

"The mass of Spirit and Opportunity was just about at the limit for what that airbag design could handle," McCuistion said.

Spirit and Opportunity were designed for three-month missions on Mars, but both far outlived their warranties. After getting stuck in Martian sand and losing contact with Earth, Spirit was officially declared dead in May 2011. But, Opportunity is still alive and well, and is currently exploring a massive crater, called Endeavour. Since it landed on the Red Planet, Opportunity has logged an impressive 21.4 miles (34.4 km).

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NASA's Newest Mars Rover Is Biggest and Best Yet

Synopsis/Solicitation Combo - Jul 19, 2012 General Information Solicitation Number: NNK12LZS0001R Posted Date: Jul 19, 2012 FedBizOpps Posted Date: Jul 19, 2012 Recovery and Reinvestment Act Action: No Original Response Date: Aug 20, 2012 Current Response Date: Aug 20, 2012 Classification Code: A -- Research and Development NAICS Code: 336414 Set-Aside Code: Total Small Business

Contracting Office Address

NASA/John F. Kennedy Space Center, Procurement, Kennedy Space Center, FL 32899

Description

NASA/KSC has a requirement for a CubeSat Nano Launcher Deployer System Design in accordance with attached Statement of Work.

This notice is a combined synopsis/solicitation for commercial items prepared in accordance with the format in FAR Subpart 12.6, as supplemented with additional information included in this notice. This announcement constitutes the only solicitation, which is issued as a Request for Quotation (RFQ); quotes are being requested and a written solicitation will not be issued.

Offers for the items(s) described above are due by August 20, 2012 at 10:00AM ET to NASA/Kennedy Space Center, Procurement, Attn: Jennifer Dorsey, OP-LS, KSC, FL 32899 or Jennifer.L.Dorsey@nasa.gov and must include solicitation number, proposed delivery schedule, discount/payment terms, warranty duration (if applicable), taxpayer identification number (TIN), identification of any special commercial terms, and be signed by an authorized company representative.

Offerors are required to use the On-Line RFQ system to submit their quote. The On-line RFQ system is linked above or it may be accessed at http://prod.nais.nasa.gov/cgi-bin/eps/bizops.cgi?gr=C&pin= . The information required by FAR Subpart 12.6 is included in the on-line RFQ. Oral communications are not acceptable in response to this notice. All responsible sources may submit an offer which shall be considered by the agency.

All offers shall be valid for 60 days.

This procurement is a total small business set-aside. The NAICS Code and the small business size standard for this procurement are ------336414, 1,000 employees respectively. The offeror shall state in their offer their size status for this procurement.

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NASA KSC Solicitation: Cubesat Nano Launcher Deployer System

Budget cuts have forced NASA to drastically scale back its planetary science missions. But the space agency still has hopes for a future mission that will collect samples of Martian soil and bring them to Earth.

Despite NASA's tough budget situation, the 1-ton rover streaking toward an Aug. 5 landing on Mars is unlikely to be the space agency's last big, ambitious Red Planet mission.

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Funding cuts have forced NASA to shelve plans for future multibillion-dollar "flagship" planetary missions beyond the $2.5 billionCuriosity rover, which will investigate Mars' potential to host past or present microbial life after it touches down three weeks from now. For the time being, the space agency is looking for ways to explore the Red Planet on the cheap.

But over the long haul, NASA still has its sights set on a particularly alluring flagship a sample-return effort that would bring pieces ofMarsback to Earth for study.

"The scientific goal and for human exploration as well of a Mars sample-return is still the highest priority in the long term," John Grunsfeld, NASA's associate administrator for science, said in April. [7 Biggest Mysteries of Mars]

President Barack Obama's federal budget request for 2013, which was unveiled in February, keeps NASA's overall budget flat, at $17.7 billion.

But the requestcuts NASA's planetary science fundingfrom $1.5 billion to $1.2 billion, with further reductions expected in coming years. The space agency's Mars program gets hit particularly hard, with funding dropping from $587 million this year to $360 million in 2013, then falling to just $189 million in 2015.

As a result, NASA is scaling back and reformulating its Red Planet exploration strategy. The space agency has put together a committee called the Mars Program Planning Group, which is assessing possiblefuture missions to Mars.

Read more:

Will Curiosity be NASA's last Mars rover?

A NASA spacecraft orbiting Saturn has captured an amazing view of lightning in broad daylight on the ringed planet.

The Cassini orbiter captured the daytime lightning on Saturn as bright blue spots inside a giant storm that raged on the planet last year. NASA unveiled the new Saturn lightning photos Wednesday (July 18), adding that the images came as a big surprise.

"We didn't think we'd see lighting on Saturn's day side only its night side," said Ulyana Dyudina, a Cassini imaging team associate at the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, in a statement. "The fact that Cassini was able to detect the lightning means that it was very intense."

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Cassini spotted the daytime lightning while observing a giant Saturn storm on March 6, 2011. A blue filter on the spacecraft's main camera recorded the lightning flashes, and scientists then exaggerated the blue tint in order to pin down the lightning's location and size, researchers said.

The Saturn lightning in Cassini's new images apparently packs quite a wallop. An analysis of the new images revealed that the energy from the visible lightning flashes alone could have spiked up to 3 billion watts over one second. That makes the daytime Saturn lightning on par with some of the strongest lightning flashes on Earth.

Cassini mission scientists said the lightning on Saturn was spotted across a region 100 miles (160 kilometers) wide where it exited the cloud layer. In all, Cassini spotted eight daytime lightning flashes on Saturn, five in one part of the storm and three in an another, they added.[More Photos of Saturn's Monster Storm]

The lightning-spawning storm on Saturn was not a short-lived tempest. The storm wrapped completely around Saturn at its peak and is the longest-lived storm ever seen on the ringed planet. It began in December 2010 and lasted about 200 days, finally sputtering out in late June 2011.

One mystery that remains is why the daytime Saturn lightning only turned up in Cassini's blue imaging filter. Scientists aren't sure if that means the lightning is actually blue in color, or if it's due to a short exposure time of the camera that helps the camera filter detect the lightning.

"As summer storm season descends upon Earth's northern latitudes, Cassini provides us a great opportunity to see how weather plays out at different places in our solar system," Cassini project scientist Linda Spilker, of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif., said in a statement. "Saturn's atmosphere has been changing over the eight years Cassini has been at Saturn, and we can't wait to see what happens next."

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NASA spies bright-blue 'intense' lightning on Saturn

NASA has unveied the brand new Orion space capsule, which is expected to have its first test launch in spring 2014.

Without a heat shield or wiring, and with only welded metal panels to see, NASA's new spacecraft designed to take astronauts out beyond Earth and into the solar system doesn't look like much yet.

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But to NASA, congressional and space industry leaders, the capsule's olive-green pressure shell is an exciting sight to behold. The capsule, NASA's first space-bound Orion crew module, was unveiled today (July 2) to mark its arrival at NASA's Kennedy Space Center here, the site of the spacecraft's planned 2014 launch on an unmanned test flight.

"Isn't this beautiful," Senator Bill Nelson (D-FL) told an audience of more than 450 Orion team members looking at the spacecraft behind him. "I know there is a lot of people here who can't wait to get their hands and fingers on this hardware.

"We are really proud of it," NASA Deputy Administrator Lori Garver told SPACE.com. "It is going to start looking more like the shape of capsule soon. But to me, it looks like the future."

The Orion capsule, which arrived in Florida from the Michoud Assembly Facility in Louisiana last week, now sits inside Kennedy's Operations and Checkout (O&C) building. It is in here, the same high bay where more than 40 years ago NASA readied similarly-shaped capsules for launches to the moon, that Lockheed Martin engineers and technicians will conduct the final preparations to launch this Orion higher and faster than any capsule since the Apollo moon missions.

"The future is here, now," Kennedy Space Center's director Robert Cabana said. "The vehicle we see here today is not a Powerpoint chart. It is a real spacecraft moving toward a test flight in 2014." [Gallery: Orion Exploration Flight Test-1 Capsule]

Cabana said the Orion's unveiling was aptly timed since it came one day after the 50th anniversary of the Kennedy Space Center, which has been NASA's home port for manned space launches for decades.

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Orion space capsule: NASA gets ready for 2014 test launch

Budget cuts have forced NASA to drastically scale back its planetary science missions. But the space agency still has hopes for a future mission that will collect samples of Martian soil and bring them to Earth.

Despite NASA's tough budget situation, the 1-ton rover streaking toward an Aug. 5 landing on Mars is unlikely to be the space agency's last big, ambitious Red Planet mission.

Subscribe Today to the Monitor

Click Here for your FREE 30 DAYS of The Christian Science Monitor Weekly Digital Edition

Funding cuts have forced NASA to shelve plans for future multibillion-dollar "flagship" planetary missions beyond the $2.5 billionCuriosity rover, which will investigate Mars' potential to host past or present microbial life after it touches down three weeks from now. For the time being, the space agency is looking for ways to explore the Red Planet on the cheap.

But over the long haul, NASA still has its sights set on a particularly alluring flagship a sample-return effort that would bring pieces ofMarsback to Earth for study.

"The scientific goal and for human exploration as well of a Mars sample-return is still the highest priority in the long term," John Grunsfeld, NASA's associate administrator for science, said in April. [7 Biggest Mysteries of Mars]

President Barack Obama's federal budget request for 2013, which was unveiled in February, keeps NASA's overall budget flat, at $17.7 billion.

But the requestcuts NASA's planetary science fundingfrom $1.5 billion to $1.2 billion, with further reductions expected in coming years. The space agency's Mars program gets hit particularly hard, with funding dropping from $587 million this year to $360 million in 2013, then falling to just $189 million in 2015.

As a result, NASA is scaling back and reformulating its Red Planet exploration strategy. The space agency has put together a committee called the Mars Program Planning Group, which is assessing possiblefuture missions to Mars.

Read this article:

Will Curiosity be NASA's last Mars rover? (+video)

NASA's Cassini spacecraft orbiting Saturn has spotted intense blue daytime lightning on the ringed planet. Previously lightning had only been detected on Saturn's night side.

A NASA spacecraft orbiting Saturn has captured an amazing view of lightning in broad daylight on the ringed planet.

Subscribe Today to the Monitor

Click Here for your FREE 30 DAYS of The Christian Science Monitor Weekly Digital Edition

The Cassini orbiter captured the daytime lightning on Saturn as bright blue spots inside a giant storm that raged on the planet last year. NASA unveiled the new Saturn lightning photos Wednesday (July 18), adding that the images came as a big surprise.

"We didn't think we'd see lighting on Saturn's day side only its night side," said Ulyana Dyudina, a Cassini imaging team associate at the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, in a statement. "The fact that Cassini was able to detect the lightning means that it was very intense."

Cassini spotted the daytime lightning while observing agiant Saturn storm on March 6, 2011. A blue filter on the spacecraft's main camera recorded the lightning flashes, and scientists then exaggerated the blue tint in order to pin down the lightning's location and size, researchers said. [More Photos of Saturn's Monster Storm]

The Saturn lightning in Cassini's new images apparently packs quite a wallop. An analysis of the new images revealed that the energy from the visible lightning flashes alone could have spiked up to 3 billion watts over one second. That makes the daytime Saturn lightning on par with some of the strongest lightning flashes on Earth.

Cassini mission scientists said the lightning on Saturn was spotted across a region 100 miles (160 kilometers) wide where it exited the cloud layer. In all, Cassini spotted eight daytime lightning flashes on Saturn, five in one part of the storm and three in an another, they added.

The lightning-spawning storm on Saturn was not a short-lived tempest. The storm wrapped completely around Saturn at its peak and is the longest-lived storm ever seen on the ringed planet. It began in December 2010 and lasted about 200 days, finally sputtering out in late June 2011.

Link:

NASA probe spots bizarre lightning storm on Saturn

CAPE CANAVERAL, Florida (Reuters) - NASA hired Space Exploration Technologies to launch an ocean monitoring satellite, a key win for the start-up rocket company that also wants to break into the U.S. military's launch business, NASA officials said on Thursday. The $82 million contract covers launch, payload processing and other services for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's ...

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NASA hires SpaceX for science satellite launch