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Expedition 41/42 Crew Conducts News Conference and Traditional Ceremonies in Russia – Video

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Expedition 41/42 Crew Conducts News Conference and Traditional Ceremonies in Russia
Expedition 41/42 Soyuz Commander Alexander Samokutyaev of the Russian Federal Space Agency (Roscosmos), NASA Flight Engineer Barry Wilmore and Flight Engineer Elena Serova of Roscosmos and...

By: NASA

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Expedition 41/42 Crew Conducts News Conference and Traditional Ceremonies in Russia - Video

NASA Eyes Potential Landing Sites for 2020 Mars Rover Mission

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NASA is looking for a place to land its next car-size rover on Mars.

Expected to launch in 2020, the space agency asked scientists where they'd like to see the rover land on the Martian surface. Officials came away with more than 50 potential landing spots requested by the scientific community during a workshop held in May. Now, NASA officials working with the rover are going to start investigating those suggestions to see which will be the best fit for the spacecraft and its mission.

"I think we have 55-ish community proposals of [landing] sites," George Tahu, Mars 2020 roverprogram executive, said during a Planetary Science Subcommittee teleconference on Sept. 3. "We took the first crack at those. Nothing has been eliminated at this point. It's just the first cut at starting to look at them." [NASA's 2020 Mars Rover in Pictures]

There are some engineering constraints put on the landing site. For example, the target region can't be too rocky or high in altitude, so working within those parameters, scientists are trying to find the best spot on the planet for the 2020 rover to accomplish its scientific goals.

The rover is designed to seek out signs of past life on Mars, following up on the Curiosity rover's discovery that, Mars could have been habitable billions of years ago.

In order to search for possible signs of past life, the 2020 rover will drill into interesting rocks and cache them as samples, saving them for the day when the rocks can be sent back to Earth where scientists can examine them in person.

"[The] 2020 [Mars rover] has the overarching moniker of seeking the signs of life, so the focus of the science community is: Where would be the best place on Mars where evidence of life might have been preserved," Michael Meyer, NASA's lead scientist for the Mars program, said. "That kind of sets the overall tone."

NASA will use imagery collected by probes orbiting the Red Planet to get more detailed information about potential landing sites before making a decision about where to land. NASA officials are hoping to land the new rover somewhere with many different kinds of rock types, allowing the rover to potentially cache a wide variety of rocks.

Scientists working on the project hope that the final landing site will be chosen two years before launch, Meyer told Space.com.

A 'Curiosity' Quiz: How Well Do You Know NASA's New...

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NASA Eyes Potential Landing Sites for 2020 Mars Rover Mission

NASA Releases International Global Precipitation Measurement Mission Data

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The most accurate and comprehensive collection of rain, snowfall and other types of precipitation data ever assembled now is available to the public. This new resource for climate studies, weather forecasting, and other applications is based on observations by the Global Precipitation Measurement (GPM) Core Observatory, a joint mission of NASA and the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA), with contributions from a constellation of international partner satellites.

The GPM Core Observatory, launched from Japan on Feb. 27, carries two advanced instruments to measure rainfall, snowfall, ice and other precipitation. The advanced and precise data from the GPM Core Observatory are used to unify and standardize precipitation observations from other constellation satellites to produce the GPM mission data. These data are freely available through NASA's Precipitation Processing System at Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland.

"We are very pleased to make all these data available to scientists and other users within six months of launch," said Ramesh Kakar, GPM program scientist in the Earth Science Division at NASA Headquarters, Washington.

In addition to NASA and JAXA, the GPM mission includes satellites from the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, U.S. Department of Defense's Defense Meteorological Satellite Program, European Organisation for the Exploitation of Meteorological Satellites, Indian Space Research Organisation, and France's Centre National dtudes Spatiales.

Instruments on the GPM Core Observatory and partner satellites measure energy naturally emitted by liquid and frozen precipitation. Scientists use computer programs to convert these data into estimates of rain and snowfall. The individual instruments on the partner satellites collect similar data, but the absolute numbers for precipitation observed over the same location may not be exactly the same. The GPM Core Observatory's data are used as a reference standard to smooth out the individual differences, like a principal violinist tuning the individual instruments in an orchestra. The result is data that are consistent with each other and can be meaningfully compared. With the higher sensitivity to different types of precipitation made possible by the GPM Core Observatory's Microwave Imager (GMI) and Dual-frequency Precipitation Radar (DPR), scientists can for the first time accurately measure the full range of precipitation from heavy rain to light rain and snow. The instruments are designed not only to detect rain and snow in the clouds, but to measure the size and distribution of the rain particles and snowflakes. This information gives scientists a better estimate of water content and a new perspective on winter storms, especially near the poles where the majority of precipitation is snowfall.

"With this GPM mission data, we can now see snow in a way we could not before," said Gail Skofronick-Jackson, GPM project scientist at Goddard Space Flight Center. "Cloud tops high in the atmosphere have ice in them. If the Earths surface is above freezing, it melts into rain as it falls. But in some parts of the world, it's cold enough that the ice and snow falls all the way to the ground."

One of the first storms observed by the GPM Core Observatory on March 17 in the eastern United States showed that full range of precipitation. Heavy rains fell over the North and South Carolina coasts. As the storm moved northward, West Virginia, Virginia, Maryland and Washington were covered with snow. The GMI observed an 547 mile-wide track of precipitation on the surface, while the DPR imaged every 820 feet vertically to get the three-dimensional structure of the rain and snowfall layer by layer inside the clouds.

"What's really clear in these images is the melting layer, the place in the atmosphere where ice turns into rain," said Skofronick-Jackson. "The melting layer is one part of the precipitation process that scientists dont know well because it is in such a narrow part of the cloud and changes quickly. Understanding the small scale details within the melting layer helps us better understand the precipitation process."

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NASA Releases International Global Precipitation Measurement Mission Data

NASA Hosts Media Briefing to Announce New Earth-Observing Role for International Space Station

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September 4, 2014

Image Credit: The first in a series of NASA Earth-observing instruments to be mounted on the exterior of the International Space Station is scheduled for launch this month. ISS-RapidScat will monitor ocean winds for climate research, weather predictions and hurricane monitoring. Credit: NASA

WASHINGTON, Sept. 4, 2014 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ NASA opens a new era this month in its exploration of our home planet with the launch of the first in a series of Earth science instruments to the International Space Station. A media briefing on this addition to NASAs Earth-observing program will air at 1 p.m. EDT Monday, Sept. 8, on NASA Television and the agencys website.

http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnvar/20081007/38461LOGO

The first Earth-observing instrument to be mounted on the exterior of the space station will launch from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station, Florida, on the next SpaceX Commercial Resupply Services flight. ISS-RapidScat will monitor ocean winds for climate research, weather predictions and hurricane monitoring from the space stations unique vantage point.

The second instrument is the Cloud-Aerosol Transport System (CATS), a laser instrument that will measure clouds and the location and distribution of pollution, dust, smoke, and other particulates in the atmosphere. CATS will follow ISS-RapidScat on the fifth SpaceX space station resupply flight.

The briefing will take place in the NASA TV studio at the agencys Headquarters, located at 300 E Street SW in Washington. The briefing panelists are:

Julie Robinson, ISS Program chief scientist, NASAs Johnson Space Center, Houston

Steve Volz, associate director for flight programs in the Earth Science Division, NASA Headquarters, Washington

Melanie Miller, lead SpaceX-4 robotics officer, Johnson

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NASA Hosts Media Briefing to Announce New Earth-Observing Role for International Space Station

INOMN2014 – Video

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INOMN2014
About InOMN International Observe the Moon Night (InOMN) is an annual event that is dedicated to encouraging people to #39;look up #39; and take notice of our nearest neighbor, the Moon. From...

By: Solar System Exploration Research Virtual Institute

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INOMN2014 - Video

NASA Invites Public To Submit Items For Asteroid Mission Time Capsule

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NASA is inviting the worldwide public to submit short messages and images on social media that could be placed in a time capsule aboard a spacecraft launching to an asteroid in 2016.

Called the Origins-Spectral Interpretation-Resource Identification-Security-Regolith Explorer (OSIRIS-REx), the spacecraft (pictured) will rendezvous with the asteroid Bennu in 2019, collect a sample and return the cache in a capsule to Earth in 2023 for detailed study. The robotic mission will spend more than two years at the 1,760-foot-wide asteroid and return a minimum of 2 ounces of its surface material.

Topics for submissions by the public should be about solar system exploration in 2014 and predictions for space exploration activities in 2023. The mission team will choose 50 tweets and 50 images to be placed in the capsule. Messages can be submitted through September 30.

"Our progress in space exploration has been nothing short of amazing," says Dante Lauretta, OSIRIS-REx principal investigator at the University of Arizona, Tucson. "I look forward to the public taking their best guess at what the next 10 years holds and then comparing their predictions with actual missions in development in 2023."

This event is the second of NASA's efforts to engage space enthusiasts around the world in the OSIRIS-REx mission, following the agency's January invitation to participate in Messages to Bennu, which asked the public to submit their names to be etched on a microchip aboard the spacecraft.

"It is exciting to think that some people may formulate predictions then have the chance to help make their prediction a reality over the next decade," said Jason Dworkin, OSIRIS-REx project scientist at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland.

When the sample return capsule returns to Earth in 2023 with the asteroid material, the mission team will open the time capsule to view the messages and images, at which time the selected submissions will be posted online by NASA.

"OSIRIS-REx has to take many years to perform a complex asteroid sample return," said Bruce Betts, the director of science and technology at The Planetary Society in Pasadena, California, a public outreach partner on the asteroid mission. "A time capsule capitalizes on the long duration of the mission to engage the public in thinking about space exploration -- where are we now, and where will we be."

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NASA Invites Public To Submit Items For Asteroid Mission Time Capsule

Dr. Robert Zubrin – Mars Direct: Humans to the Red Planet within a Decade – Video

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Dr. Robert Zubrin - Mars Direct: Humans to the Red Planet within a Decade
Achieving a human mission to Mars has been a fascination of humanity for some time. In the 1990s, Dr. Robert Zubrin proposed the "Mars Direct" mission architecture, using conventional rockets...

By: NASA Ames Research Center

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Dr. Robert Zubrin - Mars Direct: Humans to the Red Planet within a Decade - Video

NASA Aims to Establish Traffic Rules for Drones

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NASA is looking for partners to collaborate on a traffic management system for drones, according to recently filed documents. "Currently, there is no established infrastructure to enable and safely manage the widespread use of low-altitude airspace," NASA explained in a fact sheet (PDF) outlining the proposal. Drones and remotely guided small craft like those used by hobbyists have no awareness of each other, and may not be able to avoid each other or things like power lines or high winds. NASA aims to create a system to track and manage the growing number of craft in the air.

The proposed UTM (Unmanned aerial system Traffic Management) project is still in early stages, despite work form NASA along these lines for more than a decade. For now the plan is to work with aircraft makers, aviation experts, makers of sensors and software, and generally anyone who has something to contribute to the idea. There's no set timeline, but the first tests could occur as early as mid-2015.

First published September 5 2014, 3:59 PM

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NASA Aims to Establish Traffic Rules for Drones


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