Select Page ::

NASA picks 25 to live tweet MAVEN event from mission HQ in Colorado

Posted on September 21, 2014 by Danzig

Ryan Ziolko in Firing Room 4 of the Launch Control Center at Kennedy Space Center, from where the Space Shuttle launches were controlled. (Courtesy Ryan Ziolko)

As NASA's Mars MAVEN enters orbit around the Red Planet on Sunday, a select group of everyday folks will take on a very special mission: To tell the MAVEN story over social media.

NASA Social events, which launched in 2008 under the moniker NASA Tweetup, gather people to live tweet or otherwise socially share a launch, landing or other NASA experience while rubbing shoulders with the scientists and astronauts who make it all happen.

"It allows people to get behind the walls where most of the time the general public can't go," NASA social media manager John Yembrick said. "It gives people that personal experience behind the scenes and helps tell the story."

Donna Fasano of Denver snapped this photo when she learned she had been chosen to be part of the NASA Social event. "I had the biggest grin. It was permagrin. It was cheek-splitting grin. I did a happy dance. I called everybody," she said. (Courtesy Donna Fasano)

On Sunday, 25 people selected from across the U.S. by NASA's social media team will gather at the University of Colorado at Boulder's Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics , to meet the scientists responsible for MAVEN's science operations.

They'll then go to MAVEN's Flight Operations Center at Lockheed Martin Space Systems in Littleton, where they'll see spacecraft under development and watch MAVEN enter Mars' orbit.

And, of course, they'll be tweeting, Facebooking and Instagramming the entire time for the world to see.

Participants are vetted by NASA's social media team, but they aren't all necessarily space nerds. They do have one thing in common, however their dedication, said Aries Keck (@Aries), NASA social team member.

"They might be a musician from Brooklyn, but they will know the (spacecraft's) exact deacceleration rate better than I will because they're just so into it."

View post:

NASA picks 25 to live tweet MAVEN event from mission HQ in Colorado

NASA Launches RapidScat Wind Watcher to Space Station

Posted on September 21, 2014 by Danzig

A new NASA mission that will boost global monitoring of ocean winds for improved weather forecasting and climate studies is among about 5,000 pounds (2,270 kilograms) of NASA science investigations and cargo now on their way to the International Space Station aboard SpaceX's Dragon spacecraft. The cargo ship launched on the company's Falcon 9 rocket from Space Launch Complex-40 at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida at 10:52 p.m. PDT Saturday, Sept. 20 (1:52 a.m. EDT Sunday, Sept. 21).

The SpaceX mission is the company's fourth cargo delivery flight to the space station through a $1.6 billion NASA Commercial Resupply Services contract. Dragon's cargo will support experiments to be conducted by the crews of space station Expeditions 41 and 42.

The International Space Station-Rapid Scatterometer, or ISS-RapidScat, mission will monitor ocean winds from the vantage point of the space station. This space-based scatterometer, developed by NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, California, is a remote sensing instrument that uses radar pulses reflected from the ocean's surface from different angles to calculate surface wind speed and direction. This information will be useful for weather and marine forecasting and hurricane monitoring.

ISS-RapidScat's berth on the space station will put it in an orbit that is unique from any other wind measuring instrument currently in orbit. This vantage point will give scientists the first near-global direct observations of how ocean winds vary over the course of the day due to solar heating. The new mission will also provide cross-calibration of the international constellation of ocean wind satellites, extending the continuity and usefulness of the scatterometer data record.

Approximately nine days after berthing with the station, the RapidScat instrument and its nadir adapter, which orients the instrument to point down at Earth, will be robotically installed on the External Payload Facility SDX site of the Columbus module over a three-day period by the station's robotic arm, which is controlled by ground controllers at NASA's Johnson Space Center. ISS- RapidScat is an autonomous payload, requiring no interaction from station astronauts.

Using a different end effector -- a mechanical hand -- the station's robotic arm will first extract RapidScat's nadir adapter from the trunk of the Dragon and install it on an external site on the Columbus module. The arm will then pluck the RapidScat instrument assembly from the Dragon's trunk and attach it to the nadir adapter, completing the installation. Each of the two operations will take about six hours.

Once installed, RapidScat will be activated over a period of three days. Checkout of RapidScat will be completed approximately two weeks after installation. About two weeks of preliminary calibration and validation will then follow. RapidScat will then be ready to begin its two-year science mission.

Dragon also will deliver the first-ever 3-D printer in space. The technology enables parts to be manufactured quickly and cheaply in space, instead of waiting for the next cargo resupply vehicle delivery. The research team also will gain valuable insight into improving 3-D printing technology on Earth by demonstrating it in microgravity.

New biomedical hardware launched aboard the spacecraft will help facilitate prolonged biological studies in microgravity. The Rodent Research Hardware and Operations Validation (Rodent Research-1) investigation provides a platform for long-duration rodent experiments in space. These investigations examine how microgravity affects animals, providing information relevant to human spaceflight, discoveries in basic biology and knowledge that may have direct impact toward human health on Earth.

Read this article: