RC A10 scrapes runway at NASA
My Banana Hobby A10 flying on the NASA Ames runway. got a little too low.

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RC A10 scrapes runway at NASA - Video

The Associated Press Published Monday, Jan. 21, 2013 8:23AM EST

LOS ANGELES -- Opportunity, NASA's other Mars rover, has tooled around the red planet for so long it's easy to forget it's still alive.

Some 8,000 kilometres away from the limelight surrounding Curiosity's every move, Opportunity this week quietly embarks on its tenth year of exploration -- a sweet milestone since it was only tasked to work for three months.

"Opportunity is still going. Go figure," said mission deputy principal investigator Ray Arvidson of Washington University in St. Louis.

True, it's not as snazzy as Curiosity, the most high-tech interplanetary rover ever designed. It awed the world with its landing near the Martian equator five months ago.

After so many years crater-hopping, Opportunity is showing its age: It has an arthritic joint in its robotic arm and it drives mostly backward due to a balky front wheel -- more annoyances than show-stoppers.

For the past several months, it has been parked on a clay-rich hill along the western rim of Endeavour Crater that's unlike any scenery it encountered before. It plans to wrap up at its current spot in the next several months and then drive south where the terrain looks even riper for discoveries.

Long before Curiosity became everybody's favorite rover, Opportunity was the darling.

The six-wheel, solar-powered rover parachuted to Eagle Crater in Mars' southern hemisphere on Jan. 24, 2004, weeks after its twin Spirit landed on the opposite side of the planet.

During the first three months, there were frequent updates about the twin rovers' antics. The world, it seemed, followed every trail, every rock touched and even kept up with Spirit's health scare that it eventually recovered from.

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NASA's older Mars rover begins 10th year of exploration

High art recently met high tech as NASAs Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO) received an image of the Mona Lisa via laser. Traveling about 240,000 miles (386,000 km), the image was sent to the probe in lunar orbit using a laser beamed from NASAs Next Generation Satellite Laser Ranging (NGSLR) station at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland as a demonstration of lasers as a deep-space communications tool.

Painted by Leonardo da Vinci between 1503 and 1519, the Mona Lisa is one of the most famous images in the world. The enigmatic portrait has been reproduced and parodied countless times over the centuries, so it was a logical choice for the demonstration. It was received by the Lunar Orbiter Laser Altimeter (LOLA) aboard the LRO, which was launched June 18, 2009. The LOLA uses lasers to map the topography of the Moon as the LRO travels in a polar orbit at an altitude of 50 kilometers (31 miles) above the lunar surface.

Artist's concept of the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (Image: NASA)

The LOLA routinely receives laser signals from Earth as NASA tracks its position, and its the only satellite outside of Earth orbit to be tracked this way. For the demonstration, the image of the Mona Lisa was broken into an array of 152 pixels by 200 pixels. These were converted into shades of gray by assigning each a number from zero to 4,095. The laser was fired in pulses with the length of each pulse corresponding to one of the 4,096 numbers, at a rate of 300 bits per second. These were received by the LOLA and reconstructed based on the timing of the pulses.

Once completed, the image was then re-transmitted to Earth by radio telemetry. Turbulence in the Earths atmosphere degraded some of the information, resulting in a spotty version of the famous painting, but the team applied Reed-Solomon coding, which is an error-correction algorithm commonly used in CDs and DVDs, to correct it.

Image as sent through the Earth's atmosphere and after applying the Reed-Solomon error correction (Image: Xiaoli Sun, NASA Goddard)

"This is the first time anyone has achieved one-way laser communication at planetary distances," said LOLA's principal investigator, David Smith of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. "In the near future, this type of simple laser communication might serve as a backup for the radio communication that satellites use. In the more distant future, it may allow communication at higher data rates than present radio links can provide."

This demonstration is only the first step in a more ambitious program. According to the LRO deputy project scientist, Richard Vondrak, "This pathfinding achievement sets the stage for the Lunar Laser Communications Demonstration (LLCD), a high data rate laser-communication demonstrations that will be a central feature of NASA's next moon mission, the Lunar Atmosphere and Dust Environment Explorer (LADEE)."

After LLCD, NASA plans the Laser Communications Relay Demonstration (LCRD), which will be NASA's first long-duration optical communications mission with the aim of developing the system for deep space communications.

The video below outlines the laser transmission operation.

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NASA sends Mona Lisa to the Moon

Scientists with NASA's planet-hunting Kepler spacecraft have revamped the mission's online archive of alien worlds, opening up the database for the entire world to see.

Researchers are now posting all exoplanet sightings by the Kepler observatory into a single, comprehensive website called the "NASA Exoplanet Archive." Instead of going through the long planet confirmation process before making data publicly available, since December of last year, scientists have started shoveling out all the data Kepler collects into a comprehensive list.

"When we make that list, right away it goes to the archive," Kepler mission team member Steve Howell told SPACE.com during the 221st American Astronomical Society meeting in Long Beach, Calif., this month. "So the day we know about the list, the archive knows about the list. And then everybody, including us, can work on that list. But that list is dynamic so if we, or a community person, makes an observation and says, 'Hey, I looked at this planet candidate but it's really an eclipsing binary,' then that entry in the archive will be changed."

The archive has information about the size, orbital period and other metrics of any possible planet discovered and investigated by Kepler.[Gallery: A World of Kepler Planets]

"It's all in real time," Howell said. "The sausage-making process is exposed."

Before the new archive was debuted, astronomers were already doing creative work with the data. One created a visually stunning video of every known Kepler planet candidate 2,299 unconfirmed exoplanets at the time orbiting one central point.

The Kepler teams new "open" attitude toward data release is giving everybody, not just members of the scientific community, a chance to do some hands-on scientific research by building their own experiments, Howell said.

A group of high school students has already taken data from groups of planets observed by Kepler and mapped them against a map of known stars looking for a pattern. Howell doesnt think they'll see much, but he's glad that they have the opportunity to get creative.

"The entire world can help us with this Kepler data," Howell said. "I don't see any downside."

Alien Planet Quiz: Are You an Exoplanet Expert?

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NASA's Alien Planet Archive Now Open to the World

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Video caption: Preview of Mars Curiosity Parade Float. Jim Green, Director of the Science Mission Directorate Planetary Systems Division at NASA Headquarters, describes the replica of the Mars Curiosity Rover on the second NASA float in Mondays (Jan 21, 2013) presidential inaugural parade. Parade photos below

Full scale models of NASAs Curiosity Mars rover and the Orion crew capsule are participating in the 2013 Presidential Inaugural Parade on Monday, Jan 21, 2013, in Washington, DC representing NASAs robotic and human spaceflight endeavors.

The fantastically successful Curiosity rover is discovering widespread evidence for the ancient flow of liquid water on Mars.

The Orion multi-purpose capsule will take our astronauts back to the Moon and farther into space than ever.

NASA is the ONLY federal agency asked to be in the inaugural parade and now Curiosity is leading the NASA group with Orion after Curiosity.

Update 530 PM EDT - NASAs 2 floats just passed by a cheering and waving President Obama & VP Biden at the reviewing stand in front of the White House prominently near the front of the parade. See float photos from the parade below

Walking alongside both floats are members of the Curiosity team from NASAs Jet Propulsion Laboratory including Mohawk Guy and several current and former astronauts.

The participating astronauts are Alvin Drew, Serena Aunon, Kate Rubins, Mike Massimino, Lee Morin and Kjell Lindgren, as well as Leland Melvin, NASAs associate administrator for Education, and John Grunsfeld, NASAs associate administrator for Science.

The marching team for Curiosity includes Richard Cook-project manager (from JPL), Bobak Ferdowsi (otherwise known as Mohawk Guy)-flight director (from JPL), Dave Lavery program executive (from NASA Headquarters) , Michael Meyer program Scientist (from NASA Headquarters), Jennifer Trosper-mission manager (from JPL) and Ashwin Vasavada, Deputy Project Scientist (from JPL)

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NASA’s Curiosity and Orion Shine at Presidential Inaugural Parade

LOS ANGELES (AP) Opportunity, NASAs other Mars rover, has tooled around the red planet for so long its easy to forget its still alive.

Some 5,000 miles away from the limelight surrounding Curiositys every move, Opportunity this week quietly embarks on its tenth year of exploration a sweet milestone since it was only tasked to work for three months.

Opportunity is still going. Go figure, said mission deputy principal investigator Ray Arvidson of Washington University in St. Louis.

True, its not as snazzy as Curiosity, the most high-tech interplanetary rover ever designed. It awed the world with its landing near the Martian equator five months ago.

After so many years crater-hopping, Opportunity is showing its age: It has an arthritic joint in its robotic arm and it drives mostly backward due to a balky front wheel more annoyances than show-stoppers.

For the past several months, it has been parked on a clay-rich hill along the western rim of Endeavour Crater thats unlike any scenery it encountered before. It plans to wrap up at its current spot in the next several months and then drive south where the terrain looks even riper for discoveries.

Long before Curiosity became everybodys favorite rover, Opportunity was the darling.

The six-wheel, solar-powered rover parachuted to Eagle Crater in Mars southern hemisphere on Jan. 24, 2004, weeks after its twin Spirit landed on the opposite side of the planet.

During the first three months, there were frequent updates about the twin rovers antics. The world, it seemed, followed every trail, every rock touched and even kept up with Spirits health scare that it eventually recovered from.

Opportunity immediately lived up to its name, touching down in an ancient lakebed brimming with minerals that formed in the presence of water, a key ingredient for life. After grinding into rocks and sifting through dirt, Opportunity made one of the enduring finds on Mars: Signs abound of an ancient environment that was warmer and wetter than todays dusty, cold desert state.

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NASA's older Mars rover notches another milestone

NASA's prolific planet-hunting Kepler space telescope has been placed in a precautionary "safe mode" after engineers noticed a problem with the instrument's orientation mechanism.

The Kepler telescope went into safe mode on Jan. 17 for a planned 10 days, during which time the telescope's reaction wheels spinning devices used by the observatory to maintain its position in space will be rested. The move comes after researchers detected an unexpected increase in the amount of torque needed to rotate one of the wheels, mission officials said.

"Resting the wheels provides an opportunity to redistribute internal lubricant, potentially returning the friction to normal levels," Kepler officials wrote in a Jan. 17 mission update.

Kepler will not make any new science observations for its search for alien planets while in safe mode, team members said.

"Once the 10-day rest period ends, the team will recover the spacecraft from this resting safe mode and return to science operations," Kepler officials wrote. "That is expected to take approximately three days. An update will be posted after the wheel rest operation is complete."[Gallery: A World of Kepler Planets]

When the Kepler spacecraft launched in March 2009, it had four functional reaction wheels three for immediate use, plus one spare. The wheels help the telescope keep its precise aim at more than 150,000 target stars, which it monitors for the presence of orbitingexoplanets.

One of the wheels failed last July. Since the spacecraft needs three functioning reaction wheels to work properly, another failure could potentially end the $600 million Kepler mission.

Kepler detects alien planetsby flagging the telltale brightness dips caused when they cross the face of their parent stars from the instrument's perspective. Kepler generally needs to witness three such "transits" to identify a planetary candidate.

The telescope has already spotted more than 2,700 potential planets, including a number in their host stars' habitable zones that range of distances that could support liquid water on a world's surface. To date, just 105 of these candidates have been confirmed, but mission scientists think at least 90 percent should end up being the real deal.

If the three remaining reaction wheels keep spinning normally and Kepler doesn't suffer any other major issues, it could keep scanning its patch of sky for several more years to come. Last year, NASA announced that it had extended the mission through at least 2016.

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NASA's Planet-Hunting Kepler Telescope Stalled by Glitch

With President Barack Obama taking the oath of office to begin his second term today, it kicks off four more years for NASA to pursue its audacious goal of sending astronauts farther into deep space than ever before.

Two major pieces of NASA's deep-space exploration program full-size replicas of the agency's new Orion space capsule and Mars rover Curiosity will make an appearance during Obama's inaugural parade today (Jan. 21).

NASA's "Mohawk Guy" Bobak Ferdowsi, a Curiosity flight director renowned for his hairstyle, will also march in the parade, and has promiseda new hairdo to mark the event. Several NASA astronauts, including Michael Massimino the agency's most followed space man on Twitter (@Astro_Mike) will appear in the parade, too.

In his first term as president, Obama canceled NASA's moon-oriented Constellation program and directed the space agency to pursue a new vision of deep-space exploration, a program that aims to send the firstmanned mission to an asteroid by 2025. By the mid-2030s, the target is Mars.

Obama unveiled the space exploration vision in April 2010 at NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral, Fla. A year later, NASA's space shuttle program already winding down by the time Obama first took office flew its final missions. In 2012, the iconic winged space planes were delivered to museums across the country. [NASA Photos: Obama's 2nd Inauguration]

At the same time, NASA was busy developing a new spacecraft for deep-space exploration, theOrion space capsule, as well as a giant rocket called the Space Launch System to boost the capsule off the planet. The agency is developing another craft, theSpace Exploration Vehicle, designed to make the trip to a near-Earth asteroid or other deep-space destination.

Here's a look at NASA's human spaceflight projects that will be under way during Obama's second term:

Deep space exploration

Construction has already begun on NASA's first Orion space capsule to fly and will continue throughout this year. That prototype is expected to launch unmanned atop an existing Delta 4 Heavy rocket in 2014 for an initial test. A more ambitious unmanned test flight around the moon is planned for 2017, when an Orion capsule will make an unmanned trip around the moon after launching on the first Space Launch System booster.

The first operational flights of the complete Orion and Space Launch System designs are expected by 2021. By that time, Obama's second term will have been over for several years. [Curiosity Rover Rolls In Inauguration Parade (Video)]

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With Obama Inauguration, NASA's Deep-Space Mission Continues