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NASA To Hold Asteroid Initiative Opportunities Forum

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February 25, 2014

Image Caption: This concept image shows an astronaut retrieving a sample from the captured asteroid. Credit: NASA

Sarah Ramsey / Rachel Kraft, NASA Headquarters

As the next step in advancing NASAs asteroid initiative, the agency will host an Opportunities Forum March 26 at NASA Headquarters in Washington.

The forum, which is open to industry, academia and interested individuals, will provide status updates from ongoing asteroid redirect mission studies and summarize how responses to a 2013 Request for Information (RFI) are helping improve mission planning activities. The event will also highlight opportunities for public engagement in the mission and activities associated with the Asteroid Grand Challenge.

NASAs Asteroid Initiative includes two separate, but related activities: the Asteroid Redirect Mission and the Asteroid Grand Challenge. NASA is currently developing concepts for the mission, which will employ a robotic spacecraft to capture a small near-Earth asteroid, or remove a boulder from the surface of a larger asteroid, and redirect it into a stable orbit around the moon. Astronauts will travel aboard NASAs Orion spacecraft, launched on the Space Launch System rocket, to rendezvous in lunar orbit with the captured asteroid material. Once there, they will collect samples to return to Earth for study.

The grand challenge is seeking the best ideas to find all asteroid threats to human populations, and to accelerate the work that NASA is already doing for planetary defense.

Prior to the March forum, NASA will issue an Announcement of Opportunities for the Asteroid Initiative. This broad agency announcement will solicit ideas for alternate capture system concepts, rendezvous sensor systems, secondary payloads, feasibility studies on adapting commercial spacecraft buses for the mission and commercial and international partnership opportunities for the mission.

Seating is limited for this event. Individuals who plan to attend must register online. The forum will be carried on NASA Television and streamed online for virtual participants. To register, or for more information on how to view the event, go to: http://socialforms.nasa.gov/asteroidforum

Media who wish to attend the forum should contact Sarah Ramsey at sarah.ramsey@nasa.gov or 202-358-1694.

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NASA To Hold Asteroid Initiative Opportunities Forum

NASA to launch satellite in collaboration with ISRO

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Washington: US space agency NASA today said it would launch a water-related satellite in collaboration with India's ISRO.

The NASA-Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) Synthetic Aperture Radar mission is a part of its plan to launch in the next seven years a series of satellite related to water and draught, the agency said.

Among others include the Ice, Cloud, and land Elevation Satellite-2 (ICESat-2); Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment (GRACE) Follow-on and Surface Water Ocean Topography mission.

"These satellite missions join more than a dozen NASA airborne sensors focused on regional-scale issues, understanding detailed Earth science processes and calibrating and validating NASA satellites," the space agency said.

"NASA monitors Earth's vital signs from land, air and space with a fleet of satellites and ambitious airborne and ground-based observation campaigns. NASA develops new ways to observe and study Earth's interconnected natural systems with long-term data records and computer analysis tools to better see how our planet is changing," it said.

"The agency shares this unique knowledge with the global community and works with institutions in the United States and around the world that contribute to understanding and protecting our home planet," it said.

NASA said it is scheduled to launch three new Earth science missions this year, which will contribute to water cycle research and water-related national policy decisions.

The Global Precipitation Measurement (GPM) Core Observatory, a joint satellite project with the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency scheduled for launch Thursday, February 27, will inaugurate an unprecedented international satellite constellation that will produce the first nearly global observations of rainfall and snowfall.

The new information will help answer questions about our planet's life-sustaining water cycle, and improve water resource management and weather forecasting.

"ISS-RapidScat, scheduled to launch to the International Space Station (ISS) in June, will extend the data record of ocean winds around the globe. The data are a key factor in climate research, weather and marine forecasting and tracking of storms and hurricanes," NASA said.

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NASA to launch satellite in collaboration with ISRO

NASA's IRIS satellite captures largest solar flare since launch

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MOFFETT, Calif., Feb. 24 (UPI) -- IRIS, NASA's Interface Region Imaging Spectrograph, a satellite telescope that can visualize light as individual wavelengths, recently witnessed its largest solar flare since it launched last year.

IRIS fixes its gaze on various parts of the sun, looking for solar energy activity. The satellite can't focus on the entirety of the sun, so scientists at NASA have to make decisions about where to look for solar flares and other solar phenomena.

On Jan. 28, scientists at NASAs Ames Research Center in Moffett Field, Calif., spotted some moderate electromagnetic activity and focused in on what turned out be the strongest solar flare IRIS has captured. The satellite was able to record the blaze of x-rays and light leaping out from the sun's surface and into its lower atmosphere, known as the chromosphere. The flare was determined to be an M-class flare, the second strongest after X-class.

Because IRIS can picture individual light waves -- each wavelength's frequency corresponding with different temperatures, materials, and velocities -- scientists are hopeful that such imagery can help them better understand how energy, light, and heat behave during an event like a solar flare, as well as determine exactly what precipitates their occurrence.

[NASA]

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NASA's IRIS satellite captures largest solar flare since launch

NASA to Discuss Earth Science Help for California Drought

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NASA officials will participate in a media briefing at 9:30 a.m. PST Tuesday, Feb. 25 about the agency's work to use its Earth observation assets to help the state of California better manage its water resources and monitor and respond to its ongoing drought.

The briefing will be held at the Sacramento Convention Center, Room 103, 1400 J Street in Sacramento. Media will be able to listen and ask questions via phone. For dial-in information, representatives should e-mail their name, affiliation and telephone number to Dwayne Brown atdwayne.c.brown@nasa.govby 9:15 a.m. PST.

Audio of the teleconference also will be streamed live at:http://www.nasa.gov/newsaudio

At 11:15 a.m. PST on Tuesday, NASA scientists will be available to respond to questions from the public via social media using the hashtag #askNASA.

Following two consecutive years of drought conditions, 2014 is shaping up to be one of California's driest years on record. In January, California Governor Edmund G. Brown Jr. declared a Drought State of Emergency outlining specific responses to the critically dry conditions. NASA and the California Department of Water Resources (DWR) are collaborating to apply NASAs unique satellite and airborne remote sensing resources and research to the drought's challenges.

The briefing participants are:

-- Jeanine Jones, Interstate Water Resources Manager, DWR, Sacramento

-- Lawrence Friedl, director, Applied Sciences Program, NASA Headquarters, Washington

-- Forrest Melton, senior research scientist with the Cooperative for Research in Earth Science and Technology, NASA's Ames Research Center, Moffett Field, Calif.

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NASA to Discuss Earth Science Help for California Drought

NASA GPM Core Observatory's Rehearsal Weekend At Tanegashima

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Image Caption: Global Precipitation Measurement Mission Launch Site at JAXA's Tanegashima Space Center. Credit: NASA/Bill Ingalls

By Ellen Gray, NASAs Goddard Space Flight Center

On the first floor of the Spacecraft Test and Assembly building at the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agencys (JAXA) Tanegashima Space Center, Japan, a skeleton crew of blue-shirted NASA engineers for the Global Precipitation Measurement (GPM) mission fill three rows of computer stations. Sitting with them, on top of one of the desktop computers, is a squat, roundish doll. About the size of a grapefruit, its bright red with a stylized, decorative face. Its most noticeable feature is that it only has one eye colored in.

Its a Daruma doll, systems engineer Lisa Bartusek of NASA said during a lull in the launch dress rehearsal that took place Feb. 22 and 23, the weekend before the GPM launch. The doll is a symbol of good luck and in Japan is often given as a gift for encouragement to reach a goal. When you set a goal, you color one eye in, and when you reach your goal, you color in the other one, Bartusek said.

The goal for the GPM team in Japan? A good launch.

On Feb. 28 during a launch window that begins at 3:07 a.m. JST, the GPM Core Observatory is scheduled to blast into orbit aboard a Japanese H-IIA rocket. Due to the time difference with the United States, thats 1:07 p.m. EST on Feb. 27.

GPM is an international mission led by NASA and JAXA to measure rain and snowfall over most of the globe multiple times a day. To get that worldwide view of precipitation, multiple satellites will be contributing observations for a global data set, all unified by the advanced measurements of GPMs Core Observatory. Built at NASAs Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md., the Core Observatory is launching from JAXAs Tanegashima Space Center on Tanegashima Island.

[ Watch the Video: GPM: Greetings from Minamitame! ]

Tanegashima is a small island off the southern coast of Kyushu, the southernmost of Japans four big islands. Its about 35 miles long and 9 miles wide, similar in size to Guam, and covered in sugar cane and sweet potato farms as well as a dense subtropical forest. Its small town rural Japan, but as soon as you drive into the southernmost town of Minamitane rockets start appearing on every major signpost.

Minamitane is the closest town to Tanegashima Space Center. It has a few main streets, a mix of modern shops, 60s concrete facades, clapboard restaurants with brightly colored banners, and hotels studded with every JAXA and NASA mission sticker thats passed through the space center going back two decades.

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NASA GPM Core Observatory's Rehearsal Weekend At Tanegashima

NASA suspends space capsule recovery test in ocean

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The Associated Press This Wednesday, Feb. 19, 2014 photo released by NASA shows crews testing a test version of Orion's forward bay cover, NASA's next-generation space capsule. NASA and the Navy suspended the test Thursday, Feb. 20, 2014 off the coast of San Diego after a problem was discovered. (AP Photo/NASA)

AP/February 21, 2014

SAN DIEGO (AP) A training exercise designed to showcase the governments ability to recover a space capsule at sea was scrubbed after NASA ran into trouble off the Southern California coast, the space agency said Friday.

Crews had difficulty tying down a mock-up of the Orion capsule aboard an amphibious warship off the shores of San Diego.

NASA said cables attached to the capsule werent strong enough to handle turbulence and snapped off twice while it was in the well deck of the USS San Diego before it could be moved out to sea on Thursday.

With the Orion mock-up still on the Navy ship, teams could not practice fetching the spacecraft from the ocean.

Even though the testing didnt go as we had planned, were learning lessons that will help us be better prepared to retrieve Orion, Bill Hill of NASA headquarters said in a statement.

Engineers were troubleshooting the problem, and it was not clear when the test would be rescheduled.

NASA has been developing a next-generation spacecraft to carry astronauts beyond low-Earth orbit, possibly to an asteroid or Mars. Orion, which will make its first unmanned test flight this fall, is being designed to travel to deep space and return at speeds of 25,000 mph by splashing down into the Pacific.

The water landing is a throwback to the 1960s and 1970s when Navy ships routinely tracked and recovered Mercury, Gemini and Apollo spacecraft after re-entering Earths atmosphere.

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NASA suspends space capsule recovery test in ocean

NASA Media Telecon to Announce Latest Kepler Discoveries, 26 Feb.

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NASA will host a news teleconference at 1 p.m. EST (18:00 UTC), Wednesday, Feb. 26, to announce new discoveries made by its planet-hunting mission, the Kepler Space Telescope.Briefing participants:-- Douglas Hudgins, exoplanet exploration program scientist, NASAs Astrophysics Division in Washington-- Jack Lissauer, planetary scientist, NASAs Ames Research Center, Moffett Field, Calif.-- Jason Rowe, research scientist, SETI Institute, Mountain View, Calif.-- Sara Seager, professor of planetary science and physics, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, Mass.Launched in March 2009, Kepler was the first NASA mission to find Earth-size planets in or near the habitable zone -- the range of distance from a star in which the surface temperature of an orbiting planet might sustain liquid water. The telescope has since detected planets and planet candidates spanning a wide range of sizes and orbital distances. These findings have led to a better understanding of our place in the galaxy.For dial-in information, media should e-mail their name, affiliation and telephone number to J.D. Harrington atj.d.harrington@nasa.govno later than 12 noon EST, Wednesday.The public is invited to listen to the teleconference live via UStream:http://www.ustream.tv/nasa-arcQuestions can be submitted on Twitter using the hashtag #AskNASA.Audio of the teleconference also will be streamed live:http://www.nasa.gov/newsaudioA link to relevant graphics will be posted at the start of the teleconference on NASAs Kepler site:http://www.nasa.gov/keplerContacts:J.D. HarringtonNASA Headquarters, Washington, D.C.+1 202-358-5241j.d.harrington@nasa.govMichele JohnsonAmes Research Center, Moffett Field, Calif.+1 650-604-6982michele.johnson@nasa.gov

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NASA Media Telecon to Announce Latest Kepler Discoveries, 26 Feb.


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