1. NASA

Category Archives: NASA

NASA Armstrong Flight Research Center: A Vision for the World of Flight – Video

Posted on by


NASA Armstrong Flight Research Center: A Vision for the World of Flight
This fast-paced video highlights some of the flight research and other activities that occurred at NASA #39;s Dryden Flight Research Center in 2013, and looks ah...

By: NASA Armstrong Flight Research Center

See more here:

NASA Armstrong Flight Research Center: A Vision for the World of Flight - Video

NASA mission to Europa takes small step toward reality (+video)

Posted on by

NASA's 2015 budget includes a small down payment on a potential mission to Europa, a moon of Jupiter and one of the solar system's potentially most habitable spots.

Europa or bust?

Subscribe Today to the Monitor

Click Here for your FREE 30 DAYS of The Christian Science Monitor Weekly Digital Edition

In its fiscal 2015 budget, NASA has included a small deposit on a possible mission to one of the solar system's potentially most habitable spots: Jupiter's ice-sheathed moon Europa.

The agency is asking Congress for $15 million to officially begin identifying affordable concepts for a Europa mission, noted Elizabeth Robinson, NASA's chief financial officer, at a briefing on Tuesday.

At the moment, the agency has no official cost estimate for such a mission and a launch date no more specific than sometime in the mid-2020s. But a 2012 study commissioned by NASA highlighted three approaches that carried price tags ranging from $1.8 billion to $3 billion. Of those, the study team identified a $2.1 billion mission as the one that would return the most science for the best price. It consisted of a spacecraft performing multiple flybys of Europa.

While $15 million may seem like chump change against a potential price tag of $2 billion, give or take, putting the figure in the budget "is significant, it means we're getting serious," says James Green, who heads NASA's planetary science division.

Congress has already delivered $80 million to NASA to begin spadework on a mission to Europa in mind. Now, by putting the mission in the budget, the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) is giving the program a new level of concreteness, since it must include spending estimates for an additional four years beyond fiscal 2015.

"The fact that OMB put it in as line item by name says that administration finally got the message that Congress was going to insist on this and they might as well go ahead and put it in the budget," says Scott Hubbard, former head of NASA's Mars exploration program and now a consulting professor of aeronautics and astronautics at Stanford University in Palo Alto, Calif.

Continue reading here:

NASA mission to Europa takes small step toward reality (+video)

Is NASA really going to send a probe to Europa? [w/updates]

Posted on by

NASA said Tuesday that it wants to plan a robotic mission to Jupiters watery moon Europa, where astronomers speculate there might be life. (1996 photo of Europa/AP Photo/NASA)

Whats NASA really up to? Sometimes its hard to know for sure. For a number of years NASA has developed various programs and missions that did not survive the erosional forces of constricting budgets and strategic changes. The agency has a dilemma: It takes at least a decade to do anything significant in space, but our political cycle is faster than that. Thus there are these phantom programs that exist on paper, that look like real plans, but which may never become physical, tangible realities. As a reporter covering NASA programs, you want to add a stipulation somewhere in your story that says, in effect, This may not actually happen.

Even programs where the metal has already been cut can wind up in the trash heap. The Constellation Program of Bush 43 was a major effort to return astronauts to the moon, but it never felt 100 percent real, because the plan lacked any sense of political urgency or public buy-in. It felt vulnerable to shifting winds. And such a wind came along the zephyr known as Barack Obama. Obama killed Constellation. That meant the demise of the Ares 1 rocket after it had already burned through billions of dollars. And what were they going to do with that $500 million, brand-new mobile launcher at the Cape that was designed for the Ares 1? (Answer: They can probably re-purpose it for another rocket, but space hardware is so customized that its not like adjusting the height knob on a workout machine at the gym.)

Surviving from Constellation is the Orion capsule, but where will you go with it, if not back to the moon? NASA last year proposed the Asteroid Redirect Mission, which would involve astronauts in Orion visiting a captured asteroid in lunar orbit. In the new FY2015 budget request, the Obama administration wants to boost funding for the ARM, to $133 million in 2015, but you can expect political rancor on that front. The ARM is hardly a slam dunk, in part because they havent found a target rock. Republicans dont like it because it has Obamas imprimatur, and they took the rare step last year of trying to prevent NASA from spending any money on it. The ARM has no international partners. It is not essential to the hopes and dreams and bottom lines of the huge aerospace corporations (although a captured rock would give Orion and the SLS rocket a destination in the relatively near term other than points in space or interesting orbits around the moon). So the ARM lives, but its precisely the kind of program that a subsequent Congress or Republican administration would take delight in killing.

Which finally brings up the issue of a Europa mission. Seth Borenstein of the Associated Press wrote about the Europa proposal Tuesday. (Could be fish under the ice there!) Theres $15 million in the Obama budget request for a Europa mission (heres my news article that touches on the NASA budget its mostly about the United States and Russia being roommates in space). But a Europa mission would be a Flagship class mission, meaning $1 billion-plus in cost. NASA Administrator CharlesBolden said a few months ago that the space agency couldnt afford new Flagships in the near future (other than ones already underway). Other officials confirmed that: Theres no money in the tight NASA budget for Flagships right now. Any plausible mission to Europa is definitely Flagship-class, as I reported in December in the final installment of the Destination Unknown series.

Initial estimates for a Europa orbiter put the cost at $4.7 billion. Thats expensive even by flagship-mission standards. Getting a spacecraft into orbit around Europa is tricky, because its close to Jupiter and at the bottom of the planets deep gravity well. Jupiter also emits intense radiation, and the spacecrafts instruments would need to be covered in costly lead shielding.

So engineers went to a Plan B. Rather than orbiting Europa, the spacecraft would go into an orbit around Jupiter, spending most of its time outside the planets radiation field, and then swoop in repeatedly, with 34 flybys of Europa and nine of the moon Ganymede.

At this point the Europa Clipper is just a concept under study, and it is not clear when or if it will graduate and become a real mission.

So, does NASA intend to do a Flagship-class Europa mission? What do we make of the $15 million in the budget request? Reporters on the NASA budget teleconference Tuesday pressed Bolden to clarify the issue. He didnt. Finally, NASA chief financial officer Elizabeth Robinson said the Europa mission is in the early pre-formulation stage and said of the future scale of the mission, Were frankly just not sure at this point.

One likely outcome is that Congress will see the $15 million request from the administration and raise it substantially. That was suggested to me by Rep. Adam Schiff , the Democrat who represents Pasadena (home base of NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory) and who is a big booster of the NASA planetary program.

Here is the original post:

Is NASA really going to send a probe to Europa? [w/updates]

NASA mission to Europa takes small step toward reality

Posted on by

NASA's 2015 budget includes a small down payment on a potential mission to Europa, a moon of Saturn and one of the solar system's potentially most habitable spots.

Europa or bust?

Subscribe Today to the Monitor

Click Here for your FREE 30 DAYS of The Christian Science Monitor Weekly Digital Edition

In its fiscal 2015 budget, NASA has included a small deposit on a possible mission to one of the solar system's potentially most habitable spots: Jupiter's ice-sheathed moon Europa.

The agency is asking Congress for $15 million to officially begin identifying affordable concepts for a Europa mission, noted Elizabeth Robinson, NASA's chief financial officer, at a briefing on Tuesday.

At the moment, the agency has no official cost estimate for such a mission and a launch date no more specific than sometime in the mid-2020s. But a 2012 study commissioned by NASA highlighted three approaches that carried price tags ranging from $1.8 billion to $3 billion. Of those, the study team identified a $2.1 billion mission as the one that would return the most science for the best price. It consisted of a spacecraft performing multiple flybys of Europa.

While $15 million may seem like chump change against a potential price tag of $2 billion, give or take, putting the figure in the budget "is significant, it means we're getting serious," says James Green, who heads NASA's planetary science division.

Congress has already delivered $80 million to NASA to begin spadework on a mission to Europa in mind. Now, by putting the mission in the budget, the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) is giving the program a new level of concreteness, since it must include spending estimates for an additional four years beyond fiscal 2015.

"The fact that OMB put it in as line item by name says that administration finally got the message that Congress was going to insist on this and they might as well go ahead and put it in the budget," says Scott Hubbard, former head of NASA's Mars exploration program and now a consulting professor of aeronautics and astronautics at Stanford University in Palo Alto, Calif.

The rest is here:

NASA mission to Europa takes small step toward reality

Is NASA really going to send a probe to Europa? [Updated w/NASA response]

Posted on by

NASA said Tuesday that it wants to plan a robotic mission to Jupiters watery moon Europa, where astronomers speculate there might be life. (1996 photo of Europa/AP Photo/NASA)

Whats NASA really up to? Sometimes its hard to know for sure. For a number of years NASA has developed various programs and missions that did not survive the erosional forces of constricting budgets and strategic changes. The agency has a dilemma: It takes at least a decade to do anything significant in space, but our political cycle is faster than that. Thus there are these phantom programs that exist on paper, that look like real plans, but which may never become physical, tangible realities. As a reporter covering NASA programs, you want to add a stipulation somewhere in your story that says, in effect, This may not actually happen.

Even programs where the metal has already been cut can wind up in the trash heap. The Constellation Program of Bush 43 was a major effort to return astronauts to the moon, but it never felt 100 percent real, because the plan lacked any sense of political urgency or public buy-in. It felt vulnerable to shifting winds. And such a wind came along the zephyr known as Barack Obama. Obama killed Constellation. That meant the demise of the Ares 1 rocket after it had already burned through billions of dollars. And what were they going to do with that $500 million, brand-new mobile launcher at the Cape that was designed for the Ares 1? (Answer: They can probably re-purpose it for another rocket, but space hardware is so customized that its not like adjusting the height knob on a workout machine at the gym.)

Surviving from Constellation is the Orion capsule, but where will you go with it, if not back to the moon? NASA last year proposed the Asteroid Redirect Mission, which would involve astronauts in Orion visiting a captured asteroid in lunar orbit. In the new FY2015 budget request, the Obama administration wants to boost funding for the ARM, to $133 million in 2015, but you can expect political rancor on that front. The ARM is hardly a slam dunk, in part because they havent found a target rock. Republicans dont like it because it has Obamas imprimatur, and they took the rare step last year of trying to prevent NASA from spending any money on it. The ARM has no international partners. It is not essential to the hopes and dreams and bottom lines of the huge aerospace corporations (although a captured rock would give Orion and the SLS rocket a destination in the relatively near term other than points in space or interesting orbits around the moon). So the ARM lives, but its precisely the kind of program that a subsequent Congress or Republican administration would take delight in killing.

Which finally brings up the issue of a Europa mission. Seth Borenstein of the Associated Press wrote about the Europa proposal Tuesday. (Could be fish under the ice there!) Theres $15 million in the Obama budget request for a Europa mission (heres my news article that touches on the NASA budget its mostly about the United States and Russia being roommates in space). But a Europa mission would be a Flagship class mission, meaning $1 billion-plus in cost. NASA Administrator CharlesBolden said a few months ago that the space agency couldnt afford new Flagships in the near future (other than ones already underway). Other officials confirmed that: Theres no money in the tight NASA budget for Flagships right now. Any plausible mission to Europa is definitely Flagship-class, as I reported in December in the final installment of the Destination Unknown series.

Initial estimates for a Europa orbiter put the cost at $4.7 billion. Thats expensive even by flagship-mission standards. Getting a spacecraft into orbit around Europa is tricky, because its close to Jupiter and at the bottom of the planets deep gravity well. Jupiter also emits intense radiation, and the spacecrafts instruments would need to be covered in costly lead shielding.

So engineers went to a Plan B. Rather than orbiting Europa, the spacecraft would go into an orbit around Jupiter, spending most of its time outside the planets radiation field, and then swoop in repeatedly, with 34 flybys of Europa and nine of the moon Ganymede.

At this point the Europa Clipper is just a concept under study, and it is not clear when or if it will graduate and become a real mission.

So, does NASA intend to do a Flagship-class Europa mission? What do we make of the $15 million in the budget request? Reporters on the NASA budget teleconference Tuesday pressed Bolden to clarify the issue. He didnt. Finally, NASA chief financial officer Elizabeth Robinson said the Europa mission is in the early pre-formulation stage and said of the future scale of the mission, Were frankly just not sure at this point.

One likely outcome is that Congress will see the $15 million request from the administration and raise it substantially. That was suggested to me by Rep. Adam Schiff , the Democrat who represents Pasadena (home base of NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory) and who is a big booster of the NASA planetary program.

Originally posted here:

Is NASA really going to send a probe to Europa? [Updated w/NASA response]

NASA's Quest for Green Rocket Fuel Passes Big Test

Posted on by

A greener fuel "less toxic than caffeine" could replace NASA's dangerous hydrazine rocket propellant

Ball Aerospace

For decades, NASA has relied on an efficient but highly toxic fuel known as hydrazine to power satellites and manned spacecraft. Now the agency is laying the groundwork to replace that propellant with a safer, cleaner alternative.

NASA's Green Propellant Infusion Mission, or GPIM, has passed its first thruster pulsing test, a major milestone that paves the way for a planned test flight in 2015, agency officials said. NASA unveiled the rocket thruster success Tuesday (July 9) in Washington, D.C., during a briefing with aerospace industry officials and Colorado Sen. Mark Udall (D-CO).

The GPIM initiative aims to demonstrate that a green fuel with nearly 50 percent better performance than hydrazine could power Earth-circling satellites and eventually deep space missions.

Hydrazine has powered satellites and manned spacecraft for years, but it is highly flammable and corrosive, making it dangerous and expensive to transport. Since the fuel can be extremely harmful if it is inhaled or touches the skin, it is handled by workers wearing inflatable suits.

The new rocket fuel, dubbed AF-M315E, is far more benign; it is stored in glass jars and has been described as less toxic than caffeine.

The propellant is an energetic ionic liquid that evaporates more slowly and requires more heat to ignite than hydrazine, making it more stable and much less flammable.Its main ingredient is hydroxyl ammonium nitrate, and when it burns, it gives off nontoxic gasses like water vapor, hydrogen and carbon dioxide.

Importantly, M315E is safe enough to be loaded into a spacecraft before it goes to the launch pad, which would cut the time and cost of ground processing for a vehicle headed for space.

"In today's world you cannot and do not want to load a spacecraft with hydrazine and ship it," said Michael Gazarik, associate administrator for NASA's Space Technology Mission Directorate (STMD).

Read the original here:

NASA's Quest for Green Rocket Fuel Passes Big Test

NASA says it wants to go to Jupiter's crazy moon, Europa

Posted on by

In its latest budget request, the space agency asks for a little coin for a trip to one of the other places in our solar system with the best chance of harboring life.

NASA wants to put its money where the crazy subsurface alien ocean is.

NASA and the White House are asking Congress to bankroll a new intrastellar road trip to a destination that's sort of like the extraterrestrial Atlantis of our solar system -- Jupiter's intriguing moon, Europa.

On its surface, Europa appears to be an iced-over rock orbiting the biggest planet in our neighborhood and often getting nuked by Jupiter's radiation belt. However, it's believed that a subsurface ocean exists beneath the ice, kept liquid by a phenomenon called tidal flexing. Just last month, Hubble spotted evidence of a plume of water vapor at the moon's south pole.

This makes Europa, or at least its hidden ocean, one of the better places for finding evidence of life elsewhere in our solar system, be they microbes or the alien antagonist in the highly underrated "Europa Report."

On Tuesday, NASA released an overview of its $17 billion budget request for fiscal year 2015, which includes funds "for the formulation for a mission to Jupiter's moon, Europa," according to a statement from administrator Charles Bolden.

In recent years, NASA has been developing concepts for exploring Europa that include the launch of "clipper" that would flyby and gather data from above the moon, as well as a possible lander. The cost of the clipper mission was estimated (PDF) in 2012 at just under $2 billion, while the cost of a landing on Europa was pegged at $2.8 billion.

While the exact amount NASA is requesting Congress to approve for moving forward on a trip to Europa won't be known for a few more days, it's not likely to be anywhere near the full amount needed to launch the mission. The part of the budget request that includes the Europa mission is a $1.2 billion chunk for planetary science that includes other efforts to explore planetary bodies in our solar system, and it's not likely that Europa will get a big share of that amount, given the recent (not unjustified) fascination with Mars and asteroids.

But the fact that Europa is part of NASA's official pitch for its approach to the future of space exploration is progress for anyone interested in getting to know what might be swimming around below those layers of radiation, ice, and who knows what else. Still, if NASA wants to reach Europa first, they may want to hurry, because the son of famed explorer and diver Jacques Cousteau is also eager to take a dip in those alien waters. No, seriously.

Read more:

NASA says it wants to go to Jupiter's crazy moon, Europa

NASA and JAXA ISS Astronauts Congratulate ‘Gravity’ on Academy Awards #Oscars2014 – Video

Posted on by


NASA and JAXA ISS Astronauts Congratulate #39;Gravity #39; on Academy Awards #Oscars2014
Aboard the International Space Station, NASA Astronauts Mike Hopkins and Rick Mastracchio and JAXA Astronaut Koichi Wakata congratulate the filmmakers and ac...

By: w1TenMinutes

Original post:

NASA and JAXA ISS Astronauts Congratulate 'Gravity' on Academy Awards #Oscars2014 - Video

Saylor Foundation and NASA’s SSE 101: Subunit 1.1 Common Definitions of Systems Engineering – Video

Posted on by


Saylor Foundation and NASA #39;s SSE 101: Subunit 1.1 Common Definitions of Systems Engineering
Saylor.org and NASA have partnered to bring you this video as part of our Space Systems Engineering Online Course. Take the full SSE101: Survey of Systems En...

By: The Saylor Academy

Read more:

Saylor Foundation and NASA's SSE 101: Subunit 1.1 Common Definitions of Systems Engineering - Video


  1. NASA