12-10-2012 09:00 O-type stars are among the most massive and hottest known, pounding their surroundings with intense ultraviolet light and powerful outflows called stellar winds. NASA's Swift and ESA's XMM-Newton X-ray observatories took part in a 2011 campaign to monitor the interaction of two O stars bound together in the same binary system: Cygnus OB2 #9. This video is public domain and can be downloaded at: Like our videos? Subscribe to NASA's Goddard Shorts HD podcast: Or find NASA Goddard Space Flight Center on Facebook: Or find us on Twitter:

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NASA | X-ray Satellites Monitor the Clashing Winds of a Colossal Binary - Video

Iron Man's suit may be the most famous exoskeleton in the world right now, but NASA is giving it some real-life competition with the X1 Robotic Exoskeleton.

It's a wearable robot. Sweet.

The X1 Robotic Exoskeleton looks like a cross between the legs of a Stormtrooper and a Transformer. The suit is a spinoff from NASA's Robonaut 2 humanoid robot project.

The X1 is focused on either helping or hindering a person's legs, depending on its job description. When it's set to inhibit, the X1 resists movement and could be used to help astronauts exercise in space. When it's set to help, it could be used to assist paraplegics and others with lower body injuries with walking.

Four motorized joints and six passive joints give the 57-pound suit a good range of motion. It also gives it some nice Iron Man flavor, minus the propulsion feet.

The X1 is a joint effort from NASA, The Florida Institute for Human and Machine Cognition, and the awesomely named Oceaneering Space Systems.

It's still deep in the research and development phase, but the suit could some day be used both in space and on Earth. I'm also imagining a robotic suit like the one Ripley wears in "Aliens" to move gear and battle nasty creatures. I'm sure this is what NASA had in mind when they started on the X1 project. Somebody is going to have to step up and fight the alien queen.

(Via The Verge)

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NASA exoskeleton suit is half way to Iron Man

Brett Smith for redOrbit.com Your Universe Online

As the Cassini spacecraft hurtles around Saturn along its continuing mission, NASA announced the fifteen-year anniversary of the probes launch this week.

The $3.3-billion mission lifted off the launch pad on October 15, 1997 and has traveled over 3.8 billion miles since flying past Venus twice and Jupiter once en route to entering orbit around the ringed planet in 2004.

The mission has provided a treasure trove of interplanetary data that it has transmitted from the depths of space back to Earth: 444 gigabytes of scientific data and over 300,000 images. The craft carries several instruments, including a radar mapper, an infrared spectrometer, an ultraviolet spectrograph and a cosmic dust analyzer.

Information culled from these instruments has been used in more than 2,500 published journal reports, including descriptions of ice water plumes on Saturns Enceladus, the hydrocarbon-filled lakes of Titan, and a gigantic storm in Saturns atmosphere.

As Cassini conducts the most in-depth survey of a giant planet to date, the spacecraft has been flying the most complex gravity-assisted trajectory ever attempted, said Cassini program manager Robert Mitchell in a statement. Each flyby of Titan, for example, is like threading the eye of the needle. And weve done it 87 times so far, with accuracies generally within about one mile, and all controlled from Earth about one billion miles away.

Mitchell added that 15 years of flight have had their impact on the craft; however Cassini still performs its daily tasks with precision.

Im proud to say Cassini has accomplished all of this every year on-budget, with relatively few health issues, he said. Cassini is entering middle age, with the associated signs of the passage of years, but its doing remarkably well and doesnt require any major surgery.

Cassini performs a series of maneuvers as it hurtles around Saturn. The flight instructions are sent from NASA and take into account the numerous gravitational fields in Cassinis path and its limited fuel supply, 72 pounds of radioactive plutonium.

According to NASA, the 4,700-pound craft still has a long mission ahead as it cruises though middle age. Saturns trip around the sun takes 29.7 Earth years and Cassini will have a front row seat as the gas giants northern hemisphere passes into spring. It will be the first time scientists observe the changing of Saturns seasons from such close range.

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NASA Celebrates Cassini's 15 Year Anniversary

NASA's Commercial Crew Program (CCP) partner Blue Origin has successfully fired the thrust chamber assembly for its new 100,000 pound thrust BE-3 liquid oxygen, liquid hydrogen rocket engine. As part of Blue's Reusable Booster System (RBS), the engines are designed eventually to launch the biconic-shaped Space Vehicle the company is developing.

The test was part of Blue Origin's work supporting its funded Space Act Agreement with NASA during Commercial Crew Development Round 2 (CCDev2). CCDev2 continues to bring spacecraft and launch vehicle designs forward to develop a U.S. commercial crew space transportation capability that ultimately could become available for the government and other customers.

Full Text of Space Act Agreement

"Blue Origin continues to be extremely innovative as it develops a crew-capable vehicle for suborbital and orbital flights," said Ed Mango, CCP manager. "We're thrilled the company's engine test fire was met with success."

The test took place early this month on the E-1 test stand at NASA's Stennis Space Center near Bay St. Louis, Miss. Blue Origin engineers successfully completed the test by powering the thrust chamber to its full power level.

"We are very excited to have demonstrated a new class of high-performance hydrogen engines," said Rob Meyerson, president and program manager of Blue Origin. "Access to the Stennis test facility and its talented operations team was instrumental in conducting full-power testing of this new thrust chamber."

As part of CCDev2, Blue Origin also completed a system requirements review of its spacecraft. During the review, engineers and technical experts representing NASA, the Federal Aviation Administration and the company assessed the spacecraft's ability to meet safety and mission requirements to low-Earth orbit. That review also included results from more than 100 wind tunnel tests of the vehicle's aerodynamic design, stability during flight and cross-range maneuverability.

All of NASA's industry partners, including Blue Origin, continue to meet their established milestones in developing commercial crew transportation capabilities.

While NASA works with U.S. industry partners to develop commercial spaceflight capabilities, the agency also is developing the Orion spacecraft and the Space Launch System (SLS), a crew capsule and heavy-lift rocket to provide an entirely new capability for human exploration. Designed to be flexible for launching spacecraft for crew and cargo missions, SLS and Orion will expand human presence beyond low-Earth orbit and enable new missions of exploration into the solar system.

For more information about NASA's Commercial Crew Program, visit: http://www.nasa.gov/commercialcrew

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NASA Commercial Crew Partner Blue Origin Completes Rocket Engine Thrust Chamber Test

NASA partner United Launch Alliance (ULA) has completed the fifth and final milestone for its Commercial Crew Development Round 2 (CCDev2) agreement with the agency's Commercial Crew Program.

Full text of Space Act Agreement

The Hazard, System Safety and Probabilistic Risk Assessment detailed how ULA's Atlas V rocket launch system hardware would ensure crew safety during launch and ascent.

"The ULA team did an outstanding job outlining how it plans to integrate its launch vehicle with completely different spacecraft designs," said Ed Mango, NASA's Commercial Crew Program manager. "We commend ULA for taking on the challenge of human spaceflight, and we look forward to learning more about their innovative and cost-saving solutions as we continue to move forward in developing a crew transportation capability for America."

During the year-long unfunded partnership, five reviews by technical experts from NASA and ULA assessed the company's design implementation plans, detailed system and sub-system analysis, qualification, certification and flight data.

"This has been a tremendous team effort between NASA, ULA and our commercial crew partners and we have made a great deal of progress toward safe, affordable human spaceflight," said George Sowers, ULA's vice president of human launch services.

As a follow on to CCDev2, NASA recently announced funded partnerships for the agency's Commercial Crew Integrated Capability (CCiCap) initiative. Two of the three recipients, The Boeing Company and Sierra Nevada Corp. (SNC), have selected ULA's Atlas V rocket as their launch vehicle.

"This baseline will be used by both Boeing and SNC as they proceed into the CCiCap phase, providing them with the confidence that the flight-proven Atlas V will be ready to safely, reliably and cost-effectively launch," said Sowers.

With the completion of the CCDev2 milestones, ULA establishes a technical foundation for potentially certifying its Atlas V rocket for crewed missions. It also marks the development of the design criteria for the rocket's emergency detection system, which would allow crew members to escape if something were to go wrong with either the launch vehicle or spacecraft. In addition, ULA established requirements for its dual-engine Centaur configuration and selected the design approaches it would take for accommodating a spacecraft and its crew at the company's launch facility in Florida, Space Launch Complex 41 on Cape Canaveral Air Force Station.

All of NASA's industry partners, including ULA, continue to meet their established milestones in developing commercial crew transportation capabilities.

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NASA and United Launch Alliance Complete Space Act Agreement

The days of big government funding of the space program are gone. At the end of World War II, a new era of competition between the United States and the Soviet Union began. Out of this Cold War came the Space Race. Each side was eager to prove its technological dominance by being the first to put a man on the moon. On July 20, 1969, Apollo 11 successfully placed two astronauts on the moon, giving the United States the edge in the Space Race.

Winning the Space Race wasn't cheap. The year of 1966 marked the largest space expenditure in government history with nearly 4.5% of U.S. government spending committed to NASA. From 1964 to 1967, more than 3% was committed to winning the Space Race.

Since the days of the Cold War, government funding of NASA has slowly declined. The 2012 projections call for only 0.5% of spending to go to NASA. Numerous missions were canceled because of the falling budget since the Cold War:

Pluto Kuiper ExpressThe Pluto Kuiper Express was a spacecraft that was planned for launch in 2004. It was slated to arrive at Pluto in 2012. The goal of the mission was to study the Kuiper Belt that sat beyond Neptune. The price tag in 2000 was $350 million. This cost was too steep for Congress to stomach. In 2006, plans to explore Pluto were again impacted when its status as a planet was removed. However, later that year NASA launched a spacecraft that will reach Pluto in 2015.

Mars Telecommunication OrbiterIn 2009, to service its growing population of rovers and other planned science vehicles, NASA was to launch an orbiter to arrive in 2010 called the Mars Telecommunication Orbiter. Its primary duty was to provide a better means of communication between Mars and Earth. Think of it as an upgrade to the planet's Wi-Fi system at a cost of $500 million. This project was canceled in 2005 because NASA shifted priorities. No longer was the anticipated volume of data enough to justify the high cost.

Comet Rendezvous and Asteroid FlybyThis project had big goals. This spacecraft, set to launch in 1995, was going to perform an asteroid flyby, but it had the loftier goal of piggybacking on an asteroid and firing a sensor into its core. The project was canceled in 1992 as a result of congressional funding cuts. Later, NASA realized some of the goals of this mission with its Stardust and Deep Impact missions.

ExoMars MissionThe ExoMars Mission was to be a collaboration between NASA and the European Space Agency that would have landed a mobile scientific platform on Mars. The craft was supposed to then drill deep into the subsurface of Mars and analyze those samples. Scientists know that because of the hostile environment of the planet, proving that life once existed on Mars would require drilling into the planet where erosion hasn't had an effect. The platform was to land on Mars between 2016 and 2018. According to Space.com, the United States will likely tell the ESA that it can no longer provide a launch vehicle for this mission due to budget cuts.

The MoonIn 2003, President George W. Bush laid out a vision to return human beings to the moon by 2020. In 2010, President Obama shifted the vision from landing astronauts on the moon to developing lower-cost vehicles that could act as space taxis. This vision included provisions to incentivize NASA and private companies to develop lower-cost vehicles to reach space. This emphasis came in the wake of the high-dollar space shuttle program that proved to be more costly and less versatile than originally planned.

The Bottom LineThe biggest of NASA's accomplishments and its failures are well known. Who could forget the "one small step for man" event or the Challenger and Columbia disasters? Opponents of the nation's space policy argue that the space program has gone backwards. Michio Kaku, professor of theoretical physics at the City University of New York, argues that NASA's priorities are in desperate need of a new vision.

Priorities are often dictated by money. In a global economy where there is little room for discretionary spending, funding for space exploration has been put on hold around the world.

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5 NASA Missions You Didn't Know Were Canceled

NASA Deputy Administrator Lori Garver, second from left, gets a tour Monday of the progress on the Mars Atmosphere and Volatile Evolution mission at Lockheed Martin Space Systems in Waterton Canyon. The mission is to launch in fall 2013. (Kristin Leigh Painter, The Denver Post)

NASA Deputy Administrator Lori Garver visited Lockheed Martin Space Systems in Jefferson County on Monday for a progress update on the next mission to Mars Mars Atmosphere and Volatile Evolution, a.k.a. MAVEN as well as the heat shield for Orion, the next human-carrying space mission.

"These are two of our prized missions," said Garver, a Colorado College graduate who is NASA's second in command. "(MAVEN) will allow us to continue to 'follow the water.' "

In addition to designing and building the MAVEN spacecraft, Lockheed Martin will operate mission control following its planned November 2013 launch.

Garver and her team suited up and toured the cleanroom where the orbiter is being assembled. Following a briefing by the team, NASA officials found the project to be on schedule and on budget.

MAVEN is what industry insiders call an orbiter, not a lander. The solar-powered spacecraft won't have a dramatic surface landing like Curiosity but will remain in the Red Planet's orbit while studying its atmosphere.

Scientists believe that Mars was possibly once habitable but that the sun stripped away 99 percent of its atmosphere, leaving a cold, dusty environment. MAVEN will be loaded with scientific instruments to measure the compositional change over a two-year period.

Colorado is also home to the mission's principal investigator, Bruce Jakosky, from the University of Colorado at Boulder. Between the university and Lockheed Martin, there are about 175 full-time jobs dedicated to MAVEN in Colorado.

"Those are jobs all the way from high-tech down to undergraduates," said Nick Schnei-der, MAVEN's ultraviolet-spectrometer lead at CU.

With future budgetary fears for NASA swirling, Garver outlined the agency's major priorities at a news conference Monday morning. No. 1, Garver said, is the Space Launch System deep-space missions which Orion falls under.

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NASA deputy administrator Lori Garver tours Lockheed Martin in Denver