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NASA recreates cosmic dust in lab

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Washington, May 11 : NASA scientists have for the first time reproduced tiny particles of dust that are known to accumulate around red giant stars.

Stellar dust is very special stuff as it forms the building blocks for planets.

"The harsh conditions of space are extremely difficult to reproduce in the laboratory, and have long hindered efforts to interpret and analyse observations from space," Farid Salama, space science researcher at NASA's Ames Research Centre in California, was quoted as saying.

Using the Cosmic Simulation Chamber (COSmIC), scientists have been able to create the same dust that is ejected into the interstellar medium as a star approaches the end of its life.

Until now, the production mechanisms behind these small dust grains have been a mystery and impossible to recreate in a laboratory setting.

"Using the COSmIC simulator, we can now discover clues to questions about the composition and the evolution of the universe, both major objectives of NASA's space research programme," Salama said.

The key to COSmIC is its extreme low pressure chamber at its heart.

Able to simulate the stellar environment down to densities billions of times less than that of earth's atmosphere, jets of cold argon gas seeded with hydrocarbons are sprayed into the vacuum.

The extreme cold, high radiation environment can then be simulated, blasting the whole system with an electrical discharge.

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NASA recreates cosmic dust in lab

Space Station Live: Testing a New Spacesuit for an Asteroid Spacewalk – Video

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Space Station Live: Testing a New Spacesuit for an Asteroid Spacewalk
Interview with NASA astronauts Stan Love and Steve Bowen, conducted during a Neutral Buoyancy Lab test run of the MACES spacesuit being developed for spacewalks on an asteroid exploration mission...

By: ReelNASA

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Space Station Live: Testing a New Spacesuit for an Asteroid Spacewalk - Video

Squirrel On Mars HD, How To Find In NASA Photo, May 2014, UFO Sighting News. – Video

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Squirrel On Mars HD, How To Find In NASA Photo, May 2014, UFO Sighting News.
NASA photo: http://www.nasa.gov/images/content/694114main_Watkins-2-pia16204_full.jpg Guys, I get a lot of people asking me to show them a better video of how to find the squirrel on Mars...

By: Scott Waring

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Squirrel On Mars HD, How To Find In NASA Photo, May 2014, UFO Sighting News. - Video

NASA moon orbiter snaps image of 'Earthrise'

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NASA's Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter captured an image of the Earth rising over the moon's horizon.

The Earth rises spectacularly as a tiny blue marble above the moon in a new NASA photo that hints at the fragility of humanity and the vastness of space.

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NASA'sLunar Reconnaissance Orbitercaptured the image on Feb. 1 with its wide-angle camera, depicting a colorized view of the Earth rising over the 112-mile-wide (180 kilometers) Rozhdestvenskiy crater. NASA released a colorized version of thThe event was one of 12 such "earthrises" that occur every day from the perspective of the moon.

The LRO spacecraft's wide-angle camera takes images in a different way than most digital cameras. A typical cellphone camera has more than 5 million pixels, whereas a single frame of the LRO camera has fewer than 10,000 pixels. [Amazing Photos of Earth from Space]

But the LRO camera builds up a much larger image by taking multiple exposures as the spacecraft orbits, a technique known as "push-frame" imaging. Over the course of a month, the orbiter camera collects enough images to cover the whole moon.

The LRO usually spends its time staring at the lunar surface looking for signs of water or ice in permanently shadowed craters. But occasionally the spacecraft points into space to image the moon's exosphere, the thin atmosphere-like layer surrounding it, or to calibrate the craft's instruments. Sometimes, the spacecraft captures images of Earth (like this one) or other planets making their progress across the heavens.

In the image, Earth is a color composite of several frames, optimized for the colors blue, green and red. These colors match what the human eye detects, so they are true to what an average person might see.

FollowTanya LewisonTwitterandGoogle+.Follow us@Spacedotcom,FacebookandGoogle+. Original article onSpace.com.

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NASA moon orbiter snaps image of 'Earthrise'

NASA Spots Square-Shaped 'Hole' in the Sun (Video)

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A NASA spacecraft has made a surprising find on the surface of the sun: a square-shaped "hole" in the star's outer atmosphere.

The dark square on the sun, known as a "coronal hole," is an area where the solar wind is streaming out of the sun at superfast speeds. NASA captured a video of the sun's square-shaped coronal hole between Monday and Wednesday (May 5-7) using the powerful Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO).

The coronal hole appears dark in the NASA view because there is less material emitting light in the ultraviolet range of the spectrum used to make the video, according to a NASA video description. [Biggest Solar Storms of 2014 (Photos)]

"Inside the coronal hole you can see bright loops where the hot plasma outlines little pieces of the solar magnetic field sticking above the surface," SDO officials wrote in the video description. "Because it is positioned so far south on the sun, there is less chance that the solar wind stream will impact us here on Earth."

NASA's sun-watching Solar Dynamics Observatory is just one of a fleet of spacecraft keeping a close watch on the weather on Earth's parent star. In 2013, the sun experienced its peak activity of its 11-year solar weather cycle.

Email Tariq Malik at tmalik@space.com or follow him@tariqjmalik and Google+. Follow us@Spacedotcom, Facebook and Google+. Original article on Space.com.

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NASA Spots Square-Shaped 'Hole' in the Sun (Video)

NASA Astronauts Perform Underwater Testing Of Tools For Future Mission To An Asteroid

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Stan Love and Steve Bowen, two experienced NASA astronauts who between them had spent more than 62 hours in space on nine shuttle mission spacewalks, went underwater in a 40-foot-deep swimming pool in the Neutral Buoyancy Laboratory at NASAs Johnson Space Center on Friday to help engineers determine what astronauts will need on the space agencys next asteroid mission.

The swimming pool, which helps provide the lack of gravity needed for astronauts to practice for spacewalks, housed a mockup of the Orion spacecraft that would carry astronauts to the asteroid. There was also a mock-up of the robotic spacecraft that would be used to capture an asteroid and bring it into a stable orbit near the moon.

Were working on the techniques and tools we might use someday to explore a small asteroid that was captured from an orbit around the sun and brought back by a robotic spacecraft to orbit around the moon, Love said in a statement. When its there, we can send people there to take samples and take a look at it up close. Thats our main task: Were looking at tools wed use for that, how wed take those samples.

According to NASA, the tools that geologists use to collect core samples or to chip of rocks on Earth are not safe to be used in space. Therefore, Love and Bowen tried out a pneumatic hammer to give them a feel for whether a battery-powered version might be useful. The astronauts also evaluated a version of the spacesuit that could be worn on an asteroid.

We need some significant modifications to make it easy to translate. I cant stretch my arms out quite as far as in the [space station space suit], Bowen said. The work envelop is very small. So as we get through, we look at these tasks. These tasks are outstanding to help us develop what needs to be modified in the suit as well.

NASA has already started working on identifying an asteroid, which could be reached by a robotic mission to capture it and bring it into a stable orbit around the moon. Once the asteroid is at the desired postion, the Orion spacecraft and Space Launch System rocket would launch a crew of astronauts to explore it and gather samples.

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In this video, astronauts Stan Love and Steve Bowen discuss their work underwater to test tools and techniques for exploring an asteroid.

Here Love and Bowen practice climbing out of the Orion spacecraft and take samples from an asteroid in the Neutral Buoyancy Laboratory at Johnson Space Center.

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NASA Astronauts Perform Underwater Testing Of Tools For Future Mission To An Asteroid

Falcon 20-E5 Aircraft Flies Close Behind NASA DC-8 to Sample Exhaust – Video

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Falcon 20-E5 Aircraft Flies Close Behind NASA DC-8 to Sample Exhaust
This video was taken from a NASA HU-25C Guardian chase plane looking toward NASA #39;s DC-8, with a Falcon 20-E5 from the German Aerospace Agency (DLR) soon to fly into the DC-8 #39;s exhaust. The...

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Falcon 20-E5 Aircraft Flies Close Behind NASA DC-8 to Sample Exhaust - Video

NASA Uses GPS to Find Sierra Water Weight

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For the first time, NASA scientists have used GPS to find the total weight of winter snowpack and soil moisture in Californias Sierra Nevada. The new results complement other satellite measurements and could provide a reality check for computer models used to estimate the state's water and snowpack.

A team led by Donald Argus of NASAs Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif., studied data from 1,069 GPS research sites in California, Nevada, Oregon and Washington, extending back to 2006. For each site, they averaged the difference in the ground level between October 1 (the end of the dry season) and April 1 of each year, when the snow is likely to be at its greatest weight. They then calculated how much water would be required to create the observed height changes.

On average, the yearly change in water weight between summer and winter in the Sierra Nevada of California and Klamath Mountains on the California-Oregon border was equal to 2 feet (0.6 meters) of water.

The GPS water data could help inform water managers what water resources were likely to be available after the winter or provide early warning of how dry the mountains are going to be in a fire season. They complement airborne and space missions that measure the water cycle, such as JPL's Airborne Snow Observatory and Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment spacecraft.

"Researchers have known that up-and-down movements observed in GPS sites may be due to the weight of water, but this is the first time weve inferred the volume of water from GPS movements," said Argus. The results were published recently in Geophysical Research Letters. JPL's Yuning Fu and Felix Landerer are coauthors.

GPS receivers used for scientific research are far more precise than the commercial models found in cars and backpacks worldwide. These scientific receivers can measure changes in their location smaller than a quarter of an inch (a few millimeters).

The new study took advantage of the fact that Earth sags under the weight of water, like a mattress under a sleeping person. Also like a mattress, the sagging is localized rather than widespread, so that a heavy mountain snowfall depresses the ground beneath it but barely affects flatlands 40 to 50 miles away. GPS receivers accurately monitor the location and extent of the ground's sinking in winter and rebounding in spring.

Argus noted that the precision of the new measurement was possible because of the density of the GPS network. "The spatial resolution of GPS is only limited by the spacing of sites," he said. "In California, we are blessed with all these GPS sites that were placed here because of earthquakes. We're getting a resolution of less than 100 kilometers because that's how closely the sites are spaced."

The researchers compared the new measurement with modeled estimates, finding that NASA's widely used North American Land Data Assimilation System (NLDAS) NOAH model overestimates winter water storage in the Sierra by about 50 percent.

Argus sees many future uses for the new measurement technique. "We anticipate that GPS along with other airborne and spaceborne measurements will next be used together to improve estimates of groundwater change in California's Central Valley," he said. He hopes to use the measurement technique to create a near-real-time monitoring system for snowpack, offering another tool in the arsenal of California water managers to manage flood control, hydroelectric power generation and the state's valuable and scarce water supply.

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NASA Uses GPS to Find Sierra Water Weight

NASA Hosts Media Teleconference on West Antarctic Ice Sheet Findings

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NASA will host a media teleconference at 12:30 p.m. EDT Monday, May 12, to discuss new research results on the stability of the West Antarctic Ice Sheet and its potential contribution to future sea level rise.

The briefing participants are:

-- Eric Rignot, professor of Earth system science at the University of California Irvine, and glaciologist at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California;

-- Sridhar Anandakrishnan, professor of geosciences at Pennsylvania State University, University Park; and,

-- Tom Wagner, cryosphere program scientist with the Earth Science Division of NASA's Science Mission Directorate in Washington.

For dial-in information, media should email their name, affiliation and telephone number to Steve Cole atstephen.e.cole@nasa.govno later than 11:30 a.m. Monday. Questions can also be submitted on Twitter using the hashtag #askNASA.

For decades scientists have recognized that this area of the massive ice sheet covering Antarctica is particularly vulnerable to the effects of a changing climate. The majority of the ice sheet in West Antarctica is grounded on bedrock that lies below sea level, making it susceptible to melting from warm ocean waters.

Audio of the teleconference will be streamed live at:

http://www.nasa.gov/newsaudio

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NASA Hosts Media Teleconference on West Antarctic Ice Sheet Findings

NASA Laser Demo Promises Interplanetary Internet

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WASHINGTON -- A NASA laser communications demonstration that succeeded in transmitting high-rate data to the moon and back has laid the groundwork for an even more ambitious relay demonstration scheduled for as early as 2017. If successful, a future optical relay network could serve as the basis for an interplanetary Internet with as much as 100 times higher data rates than conventional communication satellites with the same mass and power, NASA claims.

The Lunar Laser Communication Demonstration (LLCD) carried aboard a NASA lunar orbiter successfully transmitted data at a record rate of 622 megabits per second on October 17, 2013. The optical system delivered six times the bandwidth of standard radio-frequency communications networks now used for space communications. The two-way optical system also demonstrated an error-free upload rate of 20 megabits per second.

The download rate of the 0.5-watt laser system used in the lunar demonstration is roughly equivalent to streaming 30 HDTV channels simultaneously, program managers said. Measured another way, they said a Google map of Mars using current communications technology would require nine years. A future laser communications network could reduce mapping time to nine weeks.

NASA Administrator Charles Boldin noted in a message transmitted to the moon via the laser system that the trial was a precursor to a more ambitious demonstration later in the decade called the Laser Communications Relay Demonstration. "With optical communications, we'll be able to transmit more data so that future rovers on other planets and human missions to an asteroid and Mars will enjoy Internet-like connections," he claimed.

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NASA Laser Demo Promises Interplanetary Internet


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