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Artifacts Galore On Curiosity SOL 747 Including NASA Obfuscation – Video

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Artifacts Galore On Curiosity SOL 747 Including NASA Obfuscation
I was so busy when these came out I missed making a couple of these videos. There are some amazing things on this picture and really this whole SOL. I invite you to check out the two gigapans...

By: WhatsUpInTheSky37

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Artifacts Galore On Curiosity SOL 747 Including NASA Obfuscation - Video

NASAs Asteroid Retrieval Mission Faces Criticism

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The agencys proposed human trip to a space rock has a bumpy road ahead

Asteroids could be stepping-stones for human expansion into the solar system.

The Obama administration wants to send humans to Mars in the 2030s. Of course, such a mission requires a lot of advance engineering, and as a first step, nasa plans to send astronauts to a small asteroid that would be brought into a stable orbit around the moon. To achieve that mechanical feat, a solar-powered robotic probe is being designed to capture a space rock and slowly push it into place. A target asteroid has yet to be announced, and the robotic space tug has yet to be built, but the parties involved hope to have the rock relocated to the moon's vicinity as soon as 2021. nasa calls this concept the Asteroid Redirect Mission (ARM) and is marshaling resources across the entire agency to support it.

Michele Gates, the agency's program director for ARM, says that its advanced propulsion technology and crew activities would give nasa the capability and experience needed to someday reach Mars. The trip would demonstrate spacecraft rendezvous procedures and establish protocols for sample collection and extravehicular movements. And it would do all of this while keeping astronauts relatively safe, staying sufficiently close to home so that if something went wrong, the crew could potentially make an emergency return to Earth.

ARM's critics are loud and legion, however. In June the prestigious National Research Council issued a report stating that the mission could divert U.S. resources and attention from more worthy space exploration, highlighting parts of ARM as dead ends on the path to Mars. The harshest criticisms have come from asteroid scientists. Mark Sykes, director of the Planetary Science Institute in Tucson, Ariz., ridiculed ARM last September while testifying to a congressional committee, saying that the agency's tentative cost estimate of less than $1.25 billion for the concept's robotic component strained credulity.

It doesn't advance anything, Sykes says, and everything that could benefit from it could be benefited far more by other, cheaper, more efficient means.

The mission's detractors miss the point that it represents the nation's best opportunity in the foreseeable future to maintain its momentum in human spaceflight, says Louis Friedman, a space policy expert who helped to conceive ARM.

To this point, planetary scientist Richard Binzel of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology argues that NASA needs to look for more asteroids before it leaps into ARM. A robust asteroid survey, he says, would discover suitable targets for a crewed mission that would not require an expensive orbital relocation. By the time we would tow a tiny rock into lunar orbit, we could be discovering more attractive, larger objects passing through the Earth-moon system that are easy to reach, Binzel notes.

NASA plans to conduct a formal review of the ARM concept in February, and the Obama administration's next budget proposal is expected to request more funding for ARM. But the redirect's fate may have already been sealed by 2014's midterm elections, in which Republicans, who are largely opposed to the mission, took full control of Congress. With this latest blow to nasa's postSpace Shuttle plans for human spaceflight, the agency's astronauts may end up boldly going nowhere for many years to comeregardless of the approach.

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NASAs Asteroid Retrieval Mission Faces Criticism

NASA's plan for an off-world colony

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(CNN) -- Imagine a blimp city floating 30 miles above the scorching surface of Venus -- a home for a team of astronauts studying one of the solar system's most inhospitable planets.

NASA is currently doing just that; floating a concept that could one day see a 30-day manned mission to Earth's closest planetary neighbor.

Eventually, the mission could involve a permanent human presence suspended above the planet.

Deep heat

Also known as the morning star, and named after the goddess of love and beauty because it shone the brightest of the five planets known to ancient astronomers, Venus is a hot, sulphurous, hellish place whose surface has more volcanoes than any other planet in the solar system.

With a mean temperature of 462 degrees Celsius (863 degrees Fahrenheit), an atmospheric pressure 92 times greater than Earth's and a cloud layer of sulphuric acid, even probes to Venus have lasted little more than two hours. Its surface is hot enough to melt lead and its atmospheric pressure is the equivalent of diving a mile underwater.

But above this cauldron of carbon dioxide at an altitude of 50km (30 miles) scientists say the conditions are as close to Earth's as you'll find anywhere in the solar system.

The gravity at this altitude is only slightly lower than that of Earth, its atmospheric pressure is similar and the aerospace provides enough protection from solar radiation to make it no more dangerous than taking a trip to Canada.

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NASA's plan for an off-world colony

NASA s new commercial space partners

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Washignton, Dec 24 (IANS): NASA has selected four US companies to collaborate with the US space agency to develop new space capabilities available to the government and other customers.

The partnerships build on the success of NASA's commercial spaceflight initiatives to leverage NASA experience and expertise into new capabilities, the space agency said in a statement.

The companies selected for the Collaborations for Commercial Space Capabilities and their projects are Maryland-based ATK Space Systems; New York-basedAFinal Frontier Design; California-based Space Exploration Technologies; and Colorado-based United Launch Alliance.

"We look forward to working with these partners to advance space capabilities and make them available to NASA and other customers in the coming years," said Phil McAlister, director of commercial spaceflight development at NASA headquarters in Washington, DC.

The Collaborations for Commercial Space Capabilities (CCSC) initiative is designed to advance private sector development of integrated space capabilities through access to NASA's spaceflight resources and ensure emerging products or services are commercially available to government and non-government customers within approximately the next five years.

These collaborations are one of several NASA partnership initiatives with the commercial space industry.

Others include the Lunar CATALYST initiative which selected three companies for commercial robotic lunar lander capabilities and the Asteroid Redirect Mission Broad Agency Announcement, which selected 18 proposals for studies related to NASA's plan to collect and redirect an asteroid, then send astronauts to collect samples.

As NASA works with US industry to develop the next generation of US spaceflight services to low-Earth orbit, the agency also is developing the Orion spacecraft and Space Launch System (SLS), a crew capsule and heavy-lift rocket to provide an entirely new capability for human exploration in deep space.

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NASA s new commercial space partners

NASA Commercial Crew Partners Complete 23 Milestones In 2014

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NASAs Commercial Crew Program and the agencys industry partners completed 23 agreement and contract milestones in 2014 and participated in thousands of hours of technical review sessions. The sessions focused on creating a new generation of safe, reliable and cost-effective crew space transportation systems to low-Earth orbit destinations.

To say weve been busy would truly be an understatement, said Kathy Lueders, manager of the Commercial Crew Program. Our partners at Blue Origin, Boeing, Sierra Nevada Corporation and SpaceX have made tremendous strides in their respective systems throughout the year and were happy to have supported them along their way. My team and I are excited to continue to work with our partners in the coming year.

Blue Origin continued the development of its Space Vehicle spacecraft designed to carry people into low-Earth orbit. The company also continued work on its subscale propellant tank assembly through an unfunded Commercial Crew Development Round 2 (CCDev2) agreement with NASA, which was recently extended until April 2016. In the coming year, Blue Origin will further test its propellant tank and BE-3 engine.

Both Boeing and SpaceX began work on the Commercial Crew Transportation Capability (CCtCap) contracts to develop systems to transport astronauts to and from the International Space Station.

In 2014 Boeing closed out its Commercial Crew Integrated Capability (CCiCap) agreement and Certification Products Contract (CPC) with NASA. The company also completed its first two CCtCap milestones. Boeing worked with the agency to set an operating rhythm and path toward certification of the CST-100 spacecraft and United Launch Alliance Atlas V rocket. NASA evaluated the designs of the companys ground-based systems that will be used to carry crews to the station, including the launch complex, crew training, countdown operations mission control facilities, landing locations and post-landing operations.

Sierra Nevada Corporation (SNC) performed incremental tests of its reaction control system that will help maneuver its Dream Chaser spacecraft in space. SNC achieved its CCiCap milestone in November and built on previous propulsion system development efforts by implementing a compact prototype thruster operating in a vacuum chamber to simulate an on-orbit environment. This year, the company also performed wind tunnel and risk-reduction testing under its CCiCap agreement and closed out its Certification Products Contract with NASA. In 2015, the company will perform the second free-flight of its Dream Chaser test article at NASAs Armstrong Flight Research Center.

SpaceX performed two milestones, its Dragon Primary Structure Qualification and Delta Crew Vehicle Critical Design Review, in November as part of its CCiCap agreement. Under that agreement, SpaceX also performed other critical design reviews of its systems and operations this year. The company continued to provide NASA with data in preparation for the companys Certification Baseline Review under its CCtCap contract, which was approved this month. SpaceX also closed out its CPC contract with NASA in 2014. Next year, SpaceX will perform two abort tests for its Crew Dragon spacecraft under its CCiCap agreement.

"Our partners and providers are working on real hardware and will be doing exciting tests next year, Lueders said. Pad infrastructures, processing facilities, hardware and crew training mock-ups, which are all key elements crucial to flying crew safely in just a few years, will take a more cohesive shape next year.

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NASA Commercial Crew Partners Complete 23 Milestones In 2014

NASA looks at some severe holiday weather from space

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VIDEO:This wide-field animation of NOAA's GOES-East satellite data from Dec. 21 to 24 shows the movement of storm systems through the U.S., Central and South America. view more

Severe weather in the form of tornadoes is not something people expect on Christmas week but a storm system on Dec. 23 brought tornadoes to Mississippi, Georgia and Louisiana. As the storm moved, NASA's RapidScat captured data on winds while NOAA's GOES satellite tracked the movement of the system.

NASA's RapidScat instrument flies aboard the International Space Station and captured a look at some of the high winds from the storms that brought severe weather to the U.S. Gulf Coast on Dec. 23. In addition, an animation of images from NOAA's GOES-East satellite showed the movement of those storms and other weather systems from Canada to South America from Dec. 21 to 24.

RapidScat spotted high winds in the Gulf of Mexico while Mississippi was experiencing tornadoes late on Dec. 23. One image RapidScat captured was on Dec. 23 at 1800 UTC (12 p.m. CST) that showed winds as fast as 30 meters per second/67.1 mph/108 kph off the southeastern coast of Texas. As the storm system moved east, on Dec. 24 at 02:00 UTC (Dec. 23 at 8 p.m. CST) RapidScat clocked sustained surface winds of the same strength near south central Louisiana and east of Mobile Bay, Alabama.

In addition to RapidScat imagery, NASA created an animation of visible and infrared satellite data from NOAA's GOES-East satellite that showed the development and movement of the weather system that spawned tornadoes affecting the Gulf Coast of the U.S. on Dec. 23 and early Dec. 24.

To create the images and the video, NASA/NOAA's GOES Project takes the cloud data from NOAA's GOES-East satellite and overlays it on a true-color image of land and ocean created by data from the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) instrument that flies aboard NASA's Aqua and Terra satellites. Together, those data created the entire picture of the storm systems and show their movement.

Coupled with local weather observations, soundings, and computer models, data from satellites like NOAA's Geostationary Operational Environmental Satellite or GOES-East (also known as GOES-13) gives forecasters information about developing weather situations. In real-time, the NOAA's GOES-East satellite data in animated form showed forecasters how the area of severe weather was developing and moving.

According to NOAA's National Weather Service (NWS), holiday travel on Dec. 24 includes widespread rain for the eastern U.S., snow and wind for the Great Lakes and more snow for the Great Basin and Rocky Mountains.

In the Short Range Public Discussion on Dec. 24, NWS noted: Severe weather will continue to be possible across portions of the Southeast with damaging winds as the primary threat; however tornadoes cannot be ruled out. Strong winds will also be possible from the Tennessee Valley into the Northeast.

NWS forecasts cited "a broad area of steady rain is expected from Florida to New England, with the heaviest rainfall occurring south of the Virginia state line. The southeastern states can expect some strong to severe thunderstorms ahead of the cold front. On the western side of the developing surface low, rain is expected to change to snow from Illinois to northern Michigan, with several inches of snow accumulation a possibility. There will also be a fair amount of wind over this region as the low intensifies. Some higher-elevation snow showers are also possible for parts of the central and northern Appalachians after the cold front moves through.

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NASA looks at some severe holiday weather from space


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