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NASA Marks Accomplishments In Space And On Our Home Planet In 2014

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In 2014, NASA says it took significant steps on the agencys journey to Mars -- testing cutting-edge technologies and making scientific discoveries while studying our changing Earth and the infinite universe as the agency made progress on the next generation of air travel.

We continued to make great progress on our journey to Mars this year, awarding contracts to American companies who will return human space flight launches to U.S. soil, advancing space technology development; and successfully completing the first flight of Orion, the next deep space spacecraft in which our astronauts will travel, said NASA Administrator Charles Bolden. We moved forward on our work to create quieter, greener airplanes and develop technologies to make air travel more efficient; and we advanced our study of our changing home planet, Earth, while increasing our understanding of others in our solar system and beyond.

NASA achieved a major milestone in December on its journey to Mars as the agencys Orion spacecraft completed its first voyage to space during a four-and-a-half-hour flight test.

Orion is part of NASAs plan to develop new technologies and capabilities to send astronauts farther than ever before, first to an asteroid, and onward to the Red Planet.

Science, technology, engineering and math (STEM)-related education soared to new heights with a student-built radiation experiment aboard Orion. NASAs Office of Education, partnered with the Lockheed Martin Corp., used the Exploration Design Challenge to engage students in STEM by inviting them to help tackle one of the most significant dangers of human space flight -- radiation exposure.

NASAs parallel path for human spaceflight also took a giant leap forward in September when the agency announced U.S. astronauts once again would travel to and from the International Space Station (ISS) from the United States on American spacecraft under groundbreaking contracts worked by NASAs Commercial Crew Program. The agency selected Boeing and SpaceX to transport U.S. crews to and from the space station using their CST-100 and Crew Dragon spacecraft, respectively, with a goal of ending the nations sole reliance on Russia in 2017. NASAs parallel path for human spaceflight involves U.S. commercial companies providing access to low-Earth orbit while NASA prepares deep space exploration missions with Orion and the Space Launch System (SLS) rocket.

The SLS rocket, the most powerful ever built, moved from the concept phase to the development phase in 2014. Also this year, all major tools were installed at NASAs Michoud Assembly Facility in New Orleans where the rocket will be constructed.

For 40 years, increasingly advanced robotic explorers have studied the conditions on Mars. This has dramatically increased our scientific knowledge about the planet, as well as helped pave the way for astronauts on the journey to Mars. In July, NASA announced its Mars Rover 2020, which is based on the successful Curiosity rover. Mars 2020 will carry instruments to conduct unprecedented science and exploration technology investigations on the Red Planet, including help with data for a human mission to Mars.

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NASA Marks Accomplishments In Space And On Our Home Planet In 2014

Saksi: Umano’y lider ng grupong hinihinalang nasa likod ng ilang jewelry store robbery, arestado – Video

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Saksi: Umano #39;y lider ng grupong hinihinalang nasa likod ng ilang jewelry store robbery, arestado
Saksi is GMA Network #39;s late-night newscast hosted by Arnold Clavio and Pia Arcangel. It airs Mondays to Fridays at 11:30 PM (PHL Time) on GMA-7. For more videos from Saksi, visit ...

By: GMA News and Public Affairs

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Saksi: Umano'y lider ng grupong hinihinalang nasa likod ng ilang jewelry store robbery, arestado - Video

NASA's X-Ray Of The Sun Is A Stunner

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Provided by IBT US Sun Shines in NuSTAR High-Energy X-rays

The sun dazzled like a Christmas tree in hues of reds, greens and blues in its first-ever portrait taken in high-energy X-rays this week. NASAs Nuclear Spectroscopic Telescope Array, or NuSTAR, wasbuilt in 2012, chiefly to observe distant high-energy phenomena like supernovas and black holes. But the extraordinary image released by the space agency on Monday proved the supersensitive telescope can also capture our home star and could potentially solve a long-standing mystery.

"At first I thought the whole idea was crazy," Fiona Harrison, NuSTARs lead scientist, said in a statement this week. "Why would we have the most sensitive high-energy X-ray telescope ever built, designed to peer deep into the universe, look at something in our own back yard?"

The sun is too bright for other telescopes, like NASAs Chandra X-ray Observatory. But NuSTARs mirrors and detectors block out much of the glare. This is the first solar portrait ever taken by NuSTAR, according to a press release from NASA. Its just a fluke that because of the way that NuSTAR is designed it is able to look at the sun without damaging it, Harrison of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena told the Los Angeles Times.

The different colors in the solar portrait reveal the varying high-energy emissions detected by the supersensitive telescope, though NuSTAR can detect up to 79 kiloelectron volts. The green shades depict energies between 2 and 3 kiloelectron volts, while the blues show energies between 3 and 5 kilo electron volts. These high-energy X-rays that stream off the sun come from gas heated to above 3 million degrees.

The red represents ultraviolet light and lower-temperature material at 1 million degrees captured by NASAs Solar Dynamics Observatory. The NuSTARs green and blue image was then overlaid onto the Solar Dynamics Observatorys red, according to NASA. Thats what resulted in this really beautiful image, which I think Im going to make on my Christmas card next year, Harrison told the Los Angeles Times on Thursday.

The space telescopes high-energy views could finally determine how the suns corona the thin, pearly atmosphere that surrounds the star somehow heats to an average of 1.8 million degrees Fahrenheit, while the suns surfaceheats to amere 10,800 degrees. Scientists suspect tiny solar flares or nanoflares jumping off the suns surface could be the reason, according to research by the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics. NuSTAR could help get to the bottom of this so-called coronal heating problem and other mysteries which have baffled scientists, like dark matter, according to NASA.

"NuSTAR will be exquisitely sensitive to the faintest X-ray activity happening in the solar atmosphere, and that includes possible nanoflares," David Smith, solar physicist and member of the NuSTAR team, said in a statement this week.

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NASA's X-Ray Of The Sun Is A Stunner


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