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Category Archives: NASA

Cassini Coming Attractions at Saturn (by NASA, March 2014). Subtitulado en castellano. – Video

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Cassini Coming Attractions at Saturn (by NASA, March 2014). Subtitulado en castellano.
Qu increbles descubrimientos realizar y nos mostrar la sonda Cassini a lo largo de los prximos aos? Aqu tenis una pequea muestra.

By: Pilar Mara Esteras Casanova

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Cassini Coming Attractions at Saturn (by NASA, March 2014). Subtitulado en castellano. - Video

NASA Launches New Citizen Science Website

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Sun, Sep 28, 2014

NASA announced Saturday the opening of registration for its Mars Balance Mass Challenge and the launch of its new website, NASA Solve, at the World Maker Faire in New York.

"NASA is committed to engaging the public, and specifically the maker community through innovative activities like the Mars Balance Mass Challenge," said NASA Chief Technologist David Miller. "And NASA Solve is a great way for members of the public, makers and other citizen scientists to see all NASA challenges and prizes in one location."

The Mars Balance Mass Challenge seeks design ideas for small science and technology payloads that could potentially provide dual purpose as ejectable balance masses on spacecraft entering the Martian atmosphere.

The payloads will serve two roles: perform scientific or technology functions that help us learn more about the Red Planet, and provide the necessary weight to balance planetary landers.

Submissions are due by Nov. 21. A winner will be announced in mid-January 2015 and receive an award of $20,000.

"We want people to get involved in our journey to Mars," said Lisa May, lead program executive for NASA's Mars exploration program. "This challenge is a creative way to bring innovative ideas into our planning process, and perhaps help NASA find another way to pack more science and technology into a mission."

Launched on Nov. 18, 2013, from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida, MAVEN is the first spacecraft dedicated to exploring the upper atmosphere of Mars. It is another NASA robotic scientific explorer paving the way for the journey to Mars.

The Mars Balance Mass challenge is managed by NASA's Center of Excellence for Collaborative Innovation (CoECI). CoECI was established in coordination with White House Office of Science and Technology Policy to advance NASA open innovation efforts and extend that expertise to other federal agencies. The challenges are being released on the NASA Innovation Pavilion, one of the CoECI platforms available to NASA team members, through its contract with InnoCentive, Inc.

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NASA Launches New Citizen Science Website

NASA Rover Drill Pulls 1st Taste From Mars Mountain

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NASA's Curiosity Mars rover has collected its first taste of the layered mountain whose scientific allure drew the mission to choose this part of Mars as a landing site.

Late Wednesday, Sept. 24, the rover's hammering drill chewed about 2.6 inches deep into a basal-layer outcrop on Mount Sharp and collected a powdered-rock sample. Data and images received early Thursday at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, CA confirmed success of this operation. The powder collected by the drilling is temporarily held within the sample-handling mechanism on the rover's arm. "This drilling target is at the lowest part of the base layer of the mountain, and from here we plan to examine the higher, younger layers exposed in the nearby hills," said Curiosity Deputy Project Scientist Ashwin Vasavada of JPL. "This first look at rocks we believe to underlie Mount Sharp is exciting because it will begin to form a picture of the environment at the time the mountain formed, and what led to its growth."

After landing on Mars in August 2012 but before beginning the drive toward Mount Sharp, Curiosity spent much of the mission's first year productively studying an area much closer to the landing site, but in the opposite direction. The mission accomplished its science goals in that Yellowknife Bay area. Analysis of drilled rocks there disclosed an ancient lakebed environment that, more than three billion years ago, offered ingredients and a chemical energy gradient favorable for microbes, if any existed there.

From Yellowknife Bay to the base of Mount Sharp, Curiosity drove more than 5 miles in about 15 months, with pauses at a few science waypoints. The emphasis in mission operations has now changed from drive, drive, drive to systematic layer-by-layer investigation. "We're putting on the brakes to study this amazing mountain," said Curiosity Deputy Project Manager Jennifer Trosper of JPL. "Curiosity flew hundreds of millions of miles to do this."

Curiosity arrived Sept. 19 at an outcrop called "Pahrump Hills," which is a section of the mountain's basal geological unit, called the Murray formation. Three days later, the rover completed a "mini-drill" procedure at the selected drilling target, "Confidence Hills," to assess the target rock's suitability for drilling. A mini-drill activity last month determined that a rock slab under consideration then was not stable enough for full drilling, but Confidence Hills passed this test.

The rock is softer than any of the previous three targets where Curiosity has collected a drilled sample for analysis.

Between the mini-drill test and the sample-collection drilling, researchers used tools on Curiosity's mast and robotic arm for close-up inspection of geometrically distinctive features on the nearby surface of the rock.

These features on the Murray formation mudstones are the accumulations of resistant materials. They occur both as discrete clusters and as dendrites, where forms are arranged in tree-like branching. By investigating the shapes and chemical ingredients in these features, the team hopes to gain information about the possible composition of fluids at this Martian location long ago.

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NASA Rover Drill Pulls 1st Taste From Mars Mountain

NASA finds clear skies on exoplanet

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In a display of interstellar teamwork, NASAs Hubble, Spitzer and Kepler space telescopes have discovered clear skies and water vapor in the atmosphere of a Neptune-sized planet orbiting a star 120 light years from Earth. According to the space agency, this may not only provide insights into the formation of giant exoplanets, but also act as a new tool for detecting water on Earth-like planets orbiting other stars.

Astronomers like clear skies on Earth, because it makes it easier to look out of the atmosphere. They also like clear skies on other planets because it allows them to look in. Otherwise, they just end up looking at a load of cloud tops. In a very distant example of a nice day, astronomer found clear skies on HAT-P-11b; an exo-Neptune planet that orbits the orange dwarf star HAT-P-11 once every five days.

Located 120 light years distant in the constellation of Cygnus, HAT-P-11b is a hot world with a rocky core and gaseous atmosphere. According to NASA, this is the smallest planet on which any sort of molecules have been detected. Previously, molecules, including water vapor, have been detected in the atmospheres of Jupiter and super-Jupiter sized planets because of their size and less dense atmospheres. But HAT-P-11b is the smallest planet yet where water has been detected nothing of its size has been within the range of current technology until now.

Artist's concept comparing the atmosphere of exoplanet HAT-P-11b (right) and how other exoplanets seen until now may look (left) (Image: NASA/JPL-Caltech)

The technique used for peeking through the atmosphere is called transmission spectroscopy. This involves studying the light from the planets star as it passes through the planets atmosphere. Obviously, if that atmosphere is laden with clouds, the light wont go through. Fortunately, HAT-P-11bs atmosphere has clear skies in at least the higher altitudes. This clearness was demonstrated by the fact that the Hubble could detect the starlight.

Using the Hubble's Wide Field Camera 3, the team took spectroscope readings of the light passing through the planets atmosphere and compared it to that of the star. The differences would indicate the presence and nature of any molecules in the air around HAT-P-11b.

According to NASA, the team did detect water vapor, but water can be found in regions of cooler stars called starspots, which are analogous to sunspots. To eliminate the possibility that all they were seeing was water on HAT-P-11, the team used data from the Kepler and Spitzer telescopes. Since they can see in the infrared, they could determine the temperature of the star and concluded that any starspots present would be too hot for water, which would break down into its constituent atoms at too high a temperature.

NASA says that HAT-P-11b has an atmosphere of water vapor, hydrogen, and other gases yet to be determined, and that the data will be helpful in learning more about the diversity of giant exoplanets and their formation. NASA plans to continue working to detect clear skies and water vapor on smaller and smaller planets with the goal of ultimately finding water on an Earth-like exoplanet using the James Webb telescope, which launches in 2018.

"The work we are doing now is important for future studies of super-Earths and even smaller planets, because we want to be able to pick out in advance the planets with clear atmospheres that will let us detect molecules," says Heather Knutson of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena.

Source: NASA

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NASA finds clear skies on exoplanet

Curiosity Rover Report: A Taste of Mount Sharp (Sept. 25, 2014) – Video

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Curiosity Rover Report: A Taste of Mount Sharp (Sept. 25, 2014)
NASA #39;s Curiosity Mars rover has collected its first drill sample from the base of Mount Sharp. The scientific allure of the layered mountain inside a crater drew the team to choose this part...

By: NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory

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Curiosity Rover Report: A Taste of Mount Sharp (Sept. 25, 2014) - Video

India’s Mars Mission Mangalyaan sends first shocking image from Mars, NASA stunned – Video

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India #39;s Mars Mission Mangalyaan sends first shocking image from Mars, NASA stunned
India Mars Mission Mangalyaan sends first images from Mars, India Mars Mission Mangalyaan sends first shocking images from Mars, NASA stunned.

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India's Mars Mission Mangalyaan sends first shocking image from Mars, NASA stunned - Video

Expedition 41/42 Launches, Arrives, and Enters the International Space Station – Video

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Expedition 41/42 Launches, Arrives, and Enters the International Space Station
Expedition 41/42 Soyuz Commander Alexander Samokutyaev and Flight Engineers Elena Serova of the Russian Federal Space Agency (Roscosmos) and Barry Wilmore of NASA launched on the Russian Soyuz...

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Expedition 41/42 Launches, Arrives, and Enters the International Space Station - Video

Sierra Nevada Corp. protests NASA space contract

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Sierra Nevada Corp. filed a protest of a major NASA contract late Friday, saying its proposal to ferry astronauts to the International Space Station would save money and should be given further consideration.

Earlier this month, NASA awarded contracts to Boeing and SpaceX under what is called the commercial crew program, which would allow the United States, for the first time since the space shuttle was retired three years ago, to launch astronauts into space from U.S. soil.

The contract would end the U.S.s reliance on Russia, which currently charges more than $70million a seat for trips aboard its Soyuz space craft to the space station.

Boeings contract is worth up to $4.2billion; SpaceX, which said it could perform the work for far less, was awarded a valued at $2.6billion.

In announcing its protest in a statement, Sierra Nevada noted that it had never filed a legal challenge to a government contract award in its 51-year history.

But the Nevada-based company said that it was compelled to file a protest with the Government Accountability Office because of serious questions and inconsistencies in the source selection process. Sierra Nevadas proposal was the second-lowest-priced, the company said, while it achieved mission suitability scores comparable to the other two proposals.

The award by NASA would mean the U.S. government would spend up to $900million more at the publicly announced contracted level for a space program equivalent to the program that [Sierra Nevada] proposed, the statement said.

Unlike SpaceX and Boeing, which would use capsules to dock to the space station, Sierra Nevada proposes using a reusable miniature shuttle called the Dream Chaser.

The so-called space plane provides a wider range of capabilities and value, the statement said.

A NASA spokeswoman declined to comment.

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Sierra Nevada Corp. protests NASA space contract

Success of mangalyaan tweeted from all over the world | NASA tweeted – Video

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Success of mangalyaan tweeted from all over the world | NASA tweeted
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Success of mangalyaan tweeted from all over the world | NASA tweeted - Video

Successful Mars mission ‘significant milestone’ for India: NASA – Video

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Successful Mars mission #39;significant milestone #39; for India: NASA
Successful Mars mission #39;significant milestone #39; for India: NASA US space agency congratulates India and ISRO for placing satellite in Mars orbit on very first try; no other country, including...

By: RED MAX

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Successful Mars mission 'significant milestone' for India: NASA - Video


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