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Merging NASA Technology and Exercise Physics | Mark Noble | TEDxHuntsville – Video

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Merging NASA Technology and Exercise Physics | Mark Noble | TEDxHuntsville
This talk was given at a local TEDx event, produced independently of the TED Conferences. Mark Noble, an Exercise Physiologist Human- Performance- Enhancement-Specialist, will demonstrate...

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Merging NASA Technology and Exercise Physics | Mark Noble | TEDxHuntsville - Video

Airborne 10.01.14: Sierra Nevada v NASA, A-29 Goes To Work, Be-200 Rebirth? – Video

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Airborne 10.01.14: Sierra Nevada v NASA, A-29 Goes To Work, Be-200 Rebirth?
Also: PPC Bird #39;s Eye View, Spitfires Return?, Cessna Sued Over 1981 Accident, Santa Monica Sues Pilot #39;s Estate, Phase 1 Flight Testing Update Sierra Nevada Corporation (SNC) has filed a legal...

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Airborne 10.01.14: Sierra Nevada v NASA, A-29 Goes To Work, Be-200 Rebirth? - Video

NASA Langley crashes a helicopter for safety research | With Video

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NASA researchers crash a 45-foot helicopter fuselage into the ground Wednesday afternoon at NASA Langley Research Center's Landing and Impact Research Facility. NASA plans to use the results of the test to improve performance, efficiency and to design saf

The helicopter airframe was winched slowly into position three stories high, suspended on cables and packed with dummies of every size seated, standing and in simulated motion.

At 15 seconds, the countdown began.

And at the end, pyrotechnics blew the cable supports, and nearly 11,000 pounds of fuselage dropped forward then straight down, slamming 30 mph into a layer of packed dirt with a resounding whump.

It may have been anti-climactic as far as crash tests go no explosions, no crumpled frame, no dangling dummy bodies but for engineers at NASA Langley Research Center, Wednesday's event was a rare opportunity to conduct a suite of experiments designed to improve helicopter safety.

The drop at the facility's historic gantry in Hampton was similar to another test conducted there last summer, except, as lead test engineer Martin Annett said afterward, "It was a lot harder hit than last year."

What researchers hope to see with the new test, though, is a lot fewer dummy "injuries," based largely on the use of three types of lightweight composite subflooring materials designed to absorb the impact and render aircraft more crash-worthy. And, by extension, more survivable.

According to NASA Langley, data from last year's test indicated some of the simulated passengers would have been seriously injured or even killed under those crash conditions.

Two of the subfloor composites used in the new test were developed by NASA's Rotary Wing Project in the Fundamental Aeronautics Program. The third was developed by the Australian Cooperative Research Center for Advanced Composite Structures in cooperation with the German Aerospace Research Center.

The U.S. Navy supplied the former Marine CH-46 Sea Knight helicopter fuselage, which was painted white and peppered with black polka dots as part of a technique called full field photogrammetry. Dozens of high-speed cameras then recorded the event inside and out at 500 frames per second, tracking each dot and helping researchers figure out exactly where and how the fuselage buckled or cracked under crash loads.

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NASA Langley crashes a helicopter for safety research | With Video

NASA Invites Public to Join #SkyScience Cloud Study

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NASA is inviting people around the globe to step outside during Earth Science Week, Oct. 12-18, observe the sky and share their observations as citizen scientists.

NASA's #SkyScience activity is part of an annual educational event organized by the American Geosciences Institute to encourage the public to engage in Earth sciences. Citizen scientists can participate in this global Earth science data collection event by observing, photographing and reporting on clouds over their location as a NASA satellite passes over. Reports and photos will be compared to data collected by NASA Earth-observing instruments as a way to assess the satellite measurements.

Using the hashtag #SkyScience, participants are encouraged to post their cloud and sky photos and observation experiences to Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, Google+ and Flickr. Throughout the week, NASA will share some of the most interesting photos on the agency's social media accounts.

In addition to #SkyScience, NASA has been engaging students in cloud observation for years through the agency's Students' Cloud Observations On-Line (S'COOL) project.

#SkyScience is another opportunity to get lots of reports in a short period of time and enable additional statistical analysis," said S'COOL project lead Lin Chambers of NASA's Langley Research Center in Hampton, Virginia.

To learn how to get involved in the #SkyScience activity, visit:

http://go.nasa.gov/skysci

For information about NASA's Earth science activities in 2014, visit:

http://www.nasa.gov/earthrightnow

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NASA Invites Public to Join #SkyScience Cloud Study

NASA Support Key To Glacier Mapping Efforts

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October 1, 2014

Image Caption: The edge of Greenland's Jakobshavn Glacier seen during an IceBridge survey flight on Apr. 19, 2014. Credit: NASA / Jim Yungel

George Hale, NASAs Goddard Space Flight Center

Thanks in part to support from NASA and the National Science Foundation, scientists have produced the first-ever detailed maps of bedrock beneath glaciers in Greenland and Antarctica. This new data will help researchers better project future changes to glaciers and ice sheets, and ultimately, sea level.

Researchers at the Center for Remote Sensing of Ice Sheets, or CReSIS, at the University of Kansas in Lawrence, Kansas, recently built detailed maps of the terrain beneath Greenlands Jakobshavn Glacier and Byrd Glacier in Antarctica. The results of this study were published in the September issue of the Journal of Glaciology. CReSIS is a major participant in NASAs Operation IceBridge, a NASA airborne science mission aimed at studying Arctic and Antarctica land and sea ice.

CReSIS researchers used computer software to process and analyze data collected during field campaigns unrelated to IceBridge that were conducted in cooperation with NASA and NSF in 2008 and 2011 to build maps of the two glaciers. These data were from an ice-penetrating radar instrument known as the Multichannel Coherent Depth Sounder / Imager, or MCoRDS / I, which is similar to the instrument IceBridge has used since 2009. Bed topography data are vital for computer models used to project future changes to ice sheets and their contribution to sea level rise. Without bed topography you cannot build a decent ice sheet model, said CReSIS director Prasad Gogineni.

Jakobshavn Glacier is of interest because it is the fastest-moving glacier in the world and drains about 7.5 percent of the Greenland Ice Sheet. Having a map of Jakobshavns bed has been a long-time goal of glaciologists. Byrd Glacier is also moving faster than average, but unlike many other glaciers, has been sounded in the past. Researchers mapped a previously unknown trench beneath Byrd Glacier and found that depth measurements from the 1970s were off by as much as a half mile in some places.

Ice-penetrating radar is one method for mapping bedrock topography. The instrument sends down radar waves, which reflect off of the ice surface, layers inside the ice sheet and bedrock back to the instrument, giving researchers a three-dimensional view. Ice-penetrating radar data from IceBridge flights helped build maps of Greenland and Antarcticas bedrock and were even used to discover a large canyon beneath the ice in northern Greenland.

Imaging rock beneath glaciers like Jakobshavn is important, but more difficult than mapping the ice sheet interior. The relatively warm ice and rough surfaces of outlet glaciers weaken and scatter radar signals, making the bed difficult to detect. To overcome these challenges, CReSIS used a sensitive radar instrument with a large antenna array and used several processing techniques to remove interference and build a view of sub-ice bedrock. We showed that we have the technology to map beds, said Gogineni.

The MCoRDS / I instrument can be traced back to an early ice-penetrating radar CReSIS designed and built in the mid-90s in cooperation with NASA and NSF. In the two decades since then CReSIS has refined this instrument and has flown on NASA aircraft and alongside NASA instruments.

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NASA Support Key To Glacier Mapping Efforts

NASA Is 3D-Printing a Better Rocket

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TIME Science space NASA Is 3D-Printing a Better Rocket Test engineer Ryan Wall, left, and propulsion systems engineer Greg Barnett prepare a rocket injector made using the 3-D printing or additive manufacturing process for a hot-fire test at NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center. Emmett GivenMSFC/NASA NASA and the U.S. Army are now using additive manufacturing to manufacture lighter, cheaper, and better-performing aircraft parts

Consider the injector. Its a lowly little engine part about as big as a basketball, small compared to the more photographic components that surround it. Its job, however, is big. On a rocket, it shoots hydrogen gas and liquid oxygen into a combustion chamber to create the thrust needed to send that rocket into space. It also needs to endure the trip.

A conventional rocket engine injector may be comprised of a hundred different pieces, making it costly to assemble. On an object that costs several hundred thousand dollars per launch, and billions in development costs, any savings are welcome. Its one reason why the cash-strapped National Aeronautics and Space Administration has been toying around with rocket parts made using an additive manufacturing process, better known as 3D printing.

In August, the agency test-fired a 3D-printed injector that withstood a record 20,000 pounds of thrust, which actually isnt all that impressive. Paired with rocket boosters and the rest, the complete Space Launch Systema new heavy-lift vehicle that will power NASAs deep-space missions starting in 2017will create 9.2 million pounds of thrust at liftoff, the equivalent in horsepower of 208,000 Corvette engines revving up at once. What is impressive is the fact that the injector had just two parts and could produce 10 times as much thrust as any previously 3D-printed injector.

For NASA, additive manufacturing represents a way for the agency to stretch its technological capabilities and its $17 billion budget as it looks to build the next class of rocket engines to take its aircraft onto asteroids and to Mars. The advances in the technology are finally getting to the point where we can see parts additively manufactured for demanding NASA applications, says Dale Thomas, associate technical director at NASAs Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Ala., where NASA has been trying out a variety of 3D-printed propulsion parts for more than a year. What the agency lacks, however, is the knowledge required to judge just how well 3D-printed engine parts will stand up during space flight. We dont understand the material properties really well and how they behave under stress, Thomas says.

Enter the Integrated Product Team, a partnership formed in late May between the Marshall Center, the University of Alabama in Huntsville (as in Go Chargers, not Roll Tide), and the U.S. Army Aviation and Missile Research Development and Engineering Center, known as AMRDEC. The question at the central of the partnership: Is there a way to 3D-print material strong enough to insert into a working aircraft?

There is good reason to be uncertain about3D-printing parts that can be used in missiles topped with warheads or rockets ferrying astronauts. Which powdered metals will be easiest to print and strongest to deploy? What 3D-printing machines will work the best? The three groups believe that, by pooling their resources and trading notes, they will save time and taxpayer dollars developing additive manufacturing processes useful to the private sector, the military, and space exploration. They also believe they will manufacture higher-quality partslighter, strongerthan those created today through conventional machining techniques.

For the military, that means lighter missile components that can still handle vibrations during flight.

You always want to save weight for an aviation platform. How do you save weight? Machine the part in a way to minimize frequency vibrations, says James Lackey, acting director of AMRDEC in Huntsville. Only through additive layering can you take advantage of what a mathematical formula tells you this design solution needs.

Conventional machining can be thought of as subtractive manufacturing. You begin with a block of some material and gradually chop some off, a process that constrains the types of parts that can be designed. Additive manufacturing is different. Imagine instead a laser-centering machine that heats up and fuses together successive layers of powdered metalsinconel alloys, grades of steel, titanium, aluminumto construct simpler rocket engine components. This is how NASA created the injector it test-fired a year ago.

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NASA Is 3D-Printing a Better Rocket

NASA images reveal shocking scale of Aral Sea environmental disaster

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Terra satellite image, Aug. 25, 2000.(NASA)

Terra satellite image, Aug. 15, 2001.(NASA)

Terra satellite image, Aug. 12, 2005.(NASA)

Terra satellite image, Aug. 19, 2014.(NASA)

A series of NASA satellite images has revealed the shocking decline of water levels in the Aral Sea, a massive environmental disaster dubbed the quiet Chernobyl.

NASAs Terra satellite began capturing the images in 2000, when the vast central Asian lake known as the Aral Sea was already a fraction of its 1960 size (as shown by the black line in the images).

It shows the power of long-term satellite observation from space, a NASA spokesman told FoxNews.com, noting that the Terra satellite will have been in space for 15 years in December.

The victim of a Soviet era water diversion project in Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan, the Aral Sea was once the fourth largest lake in the world, but now holds less than 10% of its original water volume.

By 2000 the body of water had already separated into Northern and Southern Aral Seas, also known the Small and Large Seas. As the satellite image taken in 2000 shows, the Southern Sea was split into tenuously-connected eastern and western lobes, or basins.

Within 12 months, however, the southern part of the connection had been lost, and the shallower eastern basin began to quickly retreat over the subsequent years. Dry conditions in 2014 caused the basin to completely dry up for the first time in modern times, according to NASA.

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NASA images reveal shocking scale of Aral Sea environmental disaster


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