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NASA Astronaut Karen Nyberg Invites Quilters to Contribute a Star Block

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International Space Station Expedition 37 Flight Engineer Karen Nyberg of NASA, a lifelong lover of sewing, is inviting fellow crafters to join her in stitching together a global community space quilt.

Nyberg, who is in the final weeks of her mission aboard the orbiting laboratory, recently shared a star-themed quilt block she was able to complete during her limited free time in space. She is now inviting quilters from the public to create their own star-themed quilt blocks to help celebrate her mission and passion for the quilting arts.

"Now that I've tried my hand sewing in space, I can say one thing with certainty: it's tricky," Nyberg said in a video sent down from the space station. "This is what I've made. It's far from being a masterpiece, but it was made in space. I'm inviting all of you to create your own star-themed quilt block. We'll be combining them with my block to create a quilt for next year's 40th anniversary International Quilt Festival in Houston. I can't wait to see what we make together."

Nyberg's complete video and other video clips of her quilting aboard the space station will be featured in a NASA exhibit at the 39th annual International Quilt Festival Thursday through Sunday, Nov. 3 at the George R. Brown Convention Center in Houston. Sewing and quilting include many of the principles and technical skills used in developing equipment for spaceflight missions. The exhibit will include sewn samples from spacesuits and parachutes, a cargo transfer bag and other soft goods from NASA's Johnson Space Center in Houston.

The deadline for submitting a block for the quilt is Aug. 1, 2014. For more information about where to send your block, visit:

Home

Nyberg and The International Quilt Festival will collaborate on having the squares stitched together for display at the 40th annual International Quilt Festival in 2014 and at other public displays. The Houston festival is the largest annual quilt festival in the world, attracting more than 60,000 guests annually.

Nyberg arrived at the space station with Fyodor Yurchikhin of the Russian Federal Space Agency and Luca Parmitano of the European Space Agency in May. The trio is scheduled to return to Earth Nov. 10.

For Nyberg's complete biography, visit:

http://go.nasa.gov/np5ICw

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NASA Astronaut Karen Nyberg Invites Quilters to Contribute a Star Block

NASA Airborne Campaign To Measure Summer Melt Of Greenland Ice Sheet

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October 31, 2013

Image Caption: The NASA C-130 on the ramp after first arriving at Wallops this summer. Credit: NASA / Patrick Black

[ Watch The Video: 5 Questions About LVIS & IceBridge ]

NASA

For the first time, a NASA airborne campaign will measure changes in the height of the Greenland Ice Sheet and surrounding Arctic sea ice produced by a single season of summer melt.

NASAs C-130 research aircraft flew from the Wallops Flight Facility in Wallops Island, Va., to Greenland on Wednesday where they will conduct survey flights to collect data that will improve our understanding of seasonal melt and provide baseline measurements for future satellite missions. Flights are scheduled to continue through Nov. 16.

The land and sea ice data gathered during this campaign will give researchers a more comprehensive view of seasonal changes and provide context for measurements that will be gathered during NASAs ICESat-2 mission, which is scheduled for launch in 2016.

The more ground we cover the more comparison points well have for ICESat-2, said Bryan Blair of Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md., principal investigator for the Land, Vegetation and Ice Sensor, or LVIS.

Warm summer temperatures lead to a decline in ice sheet elevation that often can be significant in low-lying areas along the Greenland coast. In past years, the Jakobshavn Glacier, located in the lower elevations of western Greenland, has experienced declines of nearly 100 feet in elevation over a single summer. Higher elevations farther inland see less dramatic changes, usually only a few inches, caused by pockets of air in the snowpack that shrink as temperatures warm.

Surface melt is more than half of the story for Greenlands mass loss, said Ben Smith, senior physicist at the University of Washingtons Advanced Physics Laboratory, Seattle, and member of the science team that selected flight lines for this campaign. The rest of Greenlands mass loss comes from ice flowing downhill into the ocean, often breaking off to form icebergs, and from melting at the base of the ice sheet.

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NASA Airborne Campaign To Measure Summer Melt Of Greenland Ice Sheet

NASA chief gets airborne mission updates at Langley

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Poster boards, videos, big screens and small planes were on display Friday as NASA chief Charles Bolden flew into Hampton for a quick briefing on key airborne missions operating out of NASA Langley Research Center.

It was a chance for scientists, engineers and pilots to tout their successes and their relevance as they research "sense-and-avoid" drone technology, better alternative jet fuels and a powerful laser that can help compile a 3-D profile of wind.

"This is all awesome to me," Administrator Bolden said afterward in the center's hangar. "Because it speaks to the things that we're really trying to collaborate with the FAA, Department of Defense and aviation in general to try to (improve) flying safety."

Pushing flight safety is preaching to the choir. A compact man, Bolden is not only a former naval aviator and retired Marine Corps major general, but he has flown four times on the Space Shuttle twice as mission commander.

He listened attentively to each presentation and never missed an opportunity to shake the hand of a Langley pilot.

Drone sense

Sense-and-avoid technology, once cracked, is key to the $80 billion market in unmanned aerial systems, or UAS, explained Frank Jones, associate director of Langley's Research Services Directorate.

The technology uses sophisticated computer algorithms to enable unmanned drone aircraft to detect and maneuver around other aircraft and tall stationary objects, such as buildings and cell phone towers.

Bolden watched a video of earlier test flights illustrating how aircrafts deliberately set on collision paths successfully used sense-and-avoid technology to avoid catastrophe, with one plane veering off safely.

The technology is still evolving, Jones said, and tests continue to unearth room for improvement in areas such as air speed and communications.

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NASA chief gets airborne mission updates at Langley

Nasa's 'Witch Head Nebula' Looks Hauntingly Real… Because It Is (PICTURE)

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Dusty Space Cloud

This image shows the Large Magellanic Cloud galaxy in infrared light as seen by the Herschel Space Observatory, a European Space Agency-led mission with important NASA contributions, and NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope. In the instruments' combined data, this nearby dwarf galaxy looks like a fiery, circular explosion. Rather than fire, however, those ribbons are actually giant ripples of dust spanning tens or hundreds of light-years. Significant fields of star formation are noticeable in the center, just left of center and at right. The brightest center-left region is called 30 Doradus, or the Tarantula Nebula, for its appearance in visible light.

This enhanced-color image shows sand dunes trapped in an impact crater in Noachis Terra, Mars. Dunes and sand ripples of various shapes and sizes display the natural beauty created by physical processes. The area covered in the image is about six-tenths of a mile (1 kilometer) across. Sand dunes are among the most widespread wind-formed features on Mars. Their distribution and shapes are affected by changes in wind direction and wind strength. Patterns of dune erosion and deposition provide insight into the sedimentary history of the surrounding terrain.

This image obtained by the framing camera on NASA's Dawn spacecraft shows the south pole of the giant asteroid Vesta. Scientists are discussing whether the circular structure that covers most of this image originated by a collision with another asteroid, or by internal processes early in the asteroid's history. Images in higher resolution from Dawn's lowered orbit might help answer that question. The image was recorded with the framing camera aboard NASA's Dawn spacecraft from a distance of about 1,700 miles (2,700 kilometers). The image resolution is about 260 meters per pixel.

This undated photo shows a classic type 1a supernova remnant. Researchers Saul Perlmutter and Adam Riess of the United States and US-Australian Brian Schmidt won the 2011 Nobel Physics Prize on October 4, 2011 for their research on supernovae.

A quartet of Saturn's moons, from tiny to huge, surround and are embedded within the planet's rings in this Cassini composition. Saturn's largest moon, Titan, is in the background of the image, and the moon's north polar hood is clearly visible. See PIA08137 to learn more about that feature on Titan (3,200 miles, or 5,150 kilometers across). Next, the wispy terrain on the trailing hemisphere of Dione (698 miles, or 1,123 kilometers across) can be seen on that moon which appears just above the rings at the center of the image. See PIA10560 and PIA06163 to learn more about Dione's wisps. Saturn's small moon Pandora (50 miles, or 81 kilometers across) orbits beyond the rings on the right of the image. Finally, Pan (17 miles, or 28 kilometers across) can be seen in the Encke Gap of the A ring on the left of the image. The image was taken in visible blue light with the Cassini spacecraft narrow-angle camera on Sept. 17, 2011. The view was obtained at a distance of approximately 1.3 million miles (2.1 million kilometers) from Dione and at a Sun-Dione-spacecraft, or phase, angle of 27 degrees. Image scale is 8 miles (13 kilometers) per pixel on Dione.

Combining almost opposite ends of the electromagnetic spectrum, this composite image of the Herschel in far-infrared and XMM-Newton's X-ray images obtained January 20, 2012, shows how the hot young stars detected by the X-ray observations are sculpting and interacting with the surrounding ultra-cool gas and dust, which, at only a few degrees above absolute zero, is the critical material for star formation itself. Both wavelengths would be blocked by Earth's atmosphere, so are critical to our understanding of the lifecycle of stars . (AFP / Getty Images)

Resembling looming rain clouds on a stormy day, dark lanes of dust crisscross the giant elliptical galaxy Centaurus A. Hubble's panchromatic vision, stretching from ultraviolet through near-infrared wavelengths, reveals the vibrant glow of young, blue star clusters and a glimpse into regions normally obscured by the dust. (NASA / ESA / Hubble Heritage)

A bubbling cauldron of star birth is highlighted in this image from NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope. Infrared light that we can't see with our eyes has been color-coded, such that the shortest wavelengths are shown in blue and the longest in red. The middle wavelength range is green. Massive stars have blown bubbles, or cavities, in the dust and gas--a violent process that triggers both the death and birth of stars. The brightest, yellow-white regions are warm centers of star formation. The green shows tendrils of dust, and red indicates other types of dust that may be cooler, in addition to ionized gas from nearby massive stars.

This composite image shows the central region of the spiral galaxy NGC 4151. X-rays (blue) from the Chandra X-ray Observatory are combined with optical data (yellow) showing positively charged hydrogen (H II) from observations with the 1-meter Jacobus Kapteyn Telescope on La Palma. The red ring shows neutral hydrogen detected by radio observations with the NSF's Very Large Array. This neutral hydrogen is part of a structure near the center of NGC 4151 that has been distorted by gravitational interactions with the rest of the galaxy, and includes material falling towards the center of the galaxy. The yellow blobs around the red ellipse are regions where star formation has recently occurred. (NASA / CXC / CfA / J. Wang)

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Nasa's 'Witch Head Nebula' Looks Hauntingly Real... Because It Is (PICTURE)

NASA to conduct aerial survey of Greenland, arctic seas ice cover

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GREENBELT, Md., Nov. 1 (UPI) -- NASA says an airborne survey will measure changes in the Greenland ice sheet and surrounding arctic sea ice produced by a single season of summer melt.

The first-ever such survey will be conducted using survey instruments on a C-130 research aircraft that flew from Wallops Island, Va., to Greenland Wednesday, the space agency reported. Survey flights will be conducted through Nov. 16, to collect data that will improve understanding of seasonal melt and provide baseline measurements for future satellite missions, officials said.

The data gathered will give researchers a more comprehensive view of seasonal changes and provide context for measurements to be gathered during NASA's ICESat-2 satellite mission, scheduled for launch in 2016, they said.

"The more ground we cover the more comparison points we'll have for ICESat-2," Bryan Blair at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md., said.

In past years, some glaciers in western Greenland have experienced declines of nearly 100 feet in elevation in a single summer, scientists said.

"Surface melt is more than half of the story for Greenland's mass loss," said Ben Smith of the University of Washington's Advanced Physics Laboratory, a member of the science team selecting flight lines for the aerial survey.

The C-130 will fly out of Thule and Kangerlussuaq, Greenland, scientists said.

"We plan to concentrate our flights on areas northwest, southeast and southwest Greenland and the Arctic Ocean," said Michelle Hofton, mission scientist at Goddard and the University of Maryland. "The measurements we collect along lines sampled in IceBridge's spring 2013 Arctic campaign will allow scientists to assess changes over the summer."

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NASA to conduct aerial survey of Greenland, arctic seas ice cover

NASA TV Airs Discussion on Removing Barriers to Deep Space Exploration

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NASA Television will air a roundtable discussion with aerospace industry leaders at 9 a.m. EST Tuesday, Nov. 12 about the progress being made toward sending humans into deep space.

The live broadcast will take place at the Newseum, 555 Pennsylvania Ave. NW, in Washington, and is open to visitors with paid admission.

Panelists representing NASA and its prime contractors will discuss the work being done on the agency's Orion spacecraft and Space Launch System rocket, which will carry humans farther into space than ever before. The participants are:

-- William Gerstenmaier, associate administrator for human exploration and operations, NASA

-- Julie Van Kleek, vice president, advanced space and launch programs, Aerojet Rocketdyne

-- Charlie Precourt, vice president and general manager, ATK Space Launch Division

-- John Elbon, vice president and general manager, Boeing Space Exploration

-- Jim Crocker, vice president and general manager, civil space, Lockheed Martin Space Systems

Orion and the Space Launch System will provide the United States an entirely new human space exploration capability, a flexible system that can extend human presence beyond low-Earth orbit and enable new missions of exploration in our solar system.

The discussion is sponsored by TechAmerica's Space Enterprise Council in partnership with the George Marshall Institute and the Coalition for Space Exploration.

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NASA TV Airs Discussion on Removing Barriers to Deep Space Exploration

NASA Sets Launch Date for MAVEN Mission to Mars

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NASA's MAVEN mission to Mars is scheduled for a Nov. 18 launch from Cape Canaveral, Fla., the space agency announced this week.

The 37.5-foot long, unmanned Mars Atmosphere and Volatile Evolution (MAVEN) spacecraft is currently set to lift off atop a United Launch Alliance (ULA) Atlas V 401 at 1:28 p.m. Eastern on Nov. 18 but NASA has set a 20-day launch window following that date in the event of delays.

MAVEN will be the space agency's first scientific mission to Mars since successfully landing the Curiosity Mars rover on the surface of the planet in August 2012. Unlike Curiosity, MAVEN is an orbital mission, designed to circle the planet from above to search for clues as to "how the sun may have stripped Mars of most of its atmosphere, turning a planet once possibly habitable to microbial life into a cold and barren desert world," according to NASA.

"The MAVEN mission is a significant step toward unraveling the planetary puzzle about Mars' past and present environments. The knowledge we gain will build on past and current missions examining Mars and will help inform future missions to send humans to Mars," John Grunsfeld, associate administrator for NASA's Science Mission Directorate in Washington, said in a statement.

The MAVEN spacecraft will travel through interplanetary space for about 10 months before arriving at its destination next September. After locking into a preliminary orbit around Mars, mission engineers will spend five weeks testing the probe's instruments and science mapping sequences while positioning it in its final science-mapping orbit, NASA said.

MAVEN's primary mission will last a year, during which it will "study the nature of the red planet's upper atmosphere, how solar activity contributes to atmospheric loss, and the role that escape of gas from the atmosphere to space has played through time," the space agency said.

The probe will carry three suites of scientific instruments designed to measure the planet's ionosphere and the effect of the solar wind on it, determine the "global characteristics of the upper atmosphere and ionosphere," and measure the composition and isotopes of neutral gases and ions.

MAVEN, which arrived in Florida in August, was built by NASA partner and ULA member Lockheed Martin. The solar-powered spacecraft will weigh more than 5,600 pounds with a full load of fuel at launch and around 1,990 pounds during its mission, when it will operate on as little as 1135 watts of solar power when Mars is at its furthest distance from the Sun. MAVEN has a high-gain antenna which will be used to communicate with Earth twice a week.

The MAVEN mission is being led by principal investigator Dr. Bruce Jakosky of the University of Colorado, which is providing two of the probe's science instruments. The University of California at Berkeley Space Sciences Laboratory is also supplying four science instruments, and NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md., which is also managing the project, will have two science instruments aboard the spacecraft.

Lockheed Martin will provide mission operations in addition to building the probe itself. NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif. will conduct program management, communications, and navigation support duties via the Mars Program Office and its Deep Space Network operations, the space agency said.

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NASA Sets Launch Date for MAVEN Mission to Mars

NASA Hosts Earth Science Social Media Event

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One-hundred people from 22 U.S. states and some foreign countries will attend a two-day NASA Social on Nov. 4 and 5 at the agency's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif.

The attendees, who follow NASA and JPL on Twitter, Facebook, Google+ and other social networks, will tour JPL, participate in interactive events and hear from scientists and engineers about current and upcoming space- and Earth-observing missions. Attendees will share their experiences with their followers through the various social media platforms.

The Nov. 4 events will highlight NASA's role in studying Earth and its climate and will preview three Earth-observing missions JPL is preparing for launch in 2014: the Soil Moisture Active Passive (SMAP) spacecraft, which will measure soil moisture from space; ISS-RapidScat, which will measure ocean winds from the International Space Station; and the Orbiting Carbon Observatory-2 (OCO-2), which will study atmospheric carbon dioxide from space. Tour stops will include the Spacecraft Assembly Facility, where SMAP and ISS-RapidScat are being built, and JPL's Earth Science Center. The upcoming Global Precipitation Measurement (GPM) mission, which will measure snowfall from space, will also be discussed. GPM is managed by Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Md.

The Nov. 5 events will focus on JPL planetary science missions, including the interstellar Voyager and the Curiosity Mars rover. Tour stops will include mission control for NASA's Deep Space Network and the Mars Yard, where rovers undergo test drives.

NASA Social attendees were selected from more than 475 people who registered online. Participants represent Canada, Croatia, Indonesia, Norway, Peru, the United States and the United Kingdom. Attendees from the U.S. come from 22 states: Alabama, Alaska, Arizona, Arkansas, California, Colorado, Georgia, Illinois, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Nebraska, Nevada, New Jersey, New York, North Carolina, Oregon, Texas, Utah, Virginia, Washington and Wisconsin.

NASA Television will broadcast a portion of the NASA Social, on Nov. 4 starting at 10 a.m. PST (1 p.m. EST) at http://www.nasa.gov/ntv and http://www.ustream.tv/nasajpl2 .

MEDIA CREDENTIALS

To cover the NASA Social, media must arrange access in advance through Courtney O'Connor in JPL Media Relations at oconnor@jpl.nasa.gov or 818-354-2274.

The specific deadline for media who want to join the Nov. 4, 1:30 p.m. tour is Wednesday, Oct. 30, at 1 p.m. Tour stops include the Spacecraft Assembly Facility and JPL's Earth Science Center. Non-U.S. citizens must also bring valid passports.

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NASA Hosts Earth Science Social Media Event


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