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NASA Wallops Flight Facility Sounding Rocket integration and machine shop tour – Video

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NASA Wallops Flight Facility Sounding Rocket integration and machine shop tour
Part of the tour the NASA Social folks (invited to see the launch of LADEE) got at NASA #39;s Wallops Flight Facility was to see the sounding rocket integration ...

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NASA Wallops Flight Facility Sounding Rocket integration and machine shop tour - Video

Telexploration: How video game technologies can take NASA to the next level – Video

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Telexploration: How video game technologies can take NASA to the next level
How would you like to swim in the oceans of Europa? What would it feel like to climb Mount Olympus on Mars? Is it possible for all of us to experience these ...

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Telexploration: How video game technologies can take NASA to the next level - Video

NASA using surplus military drones to probe hurricanes

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NASA is now utilizing surplus military drones to investigate hurricanes from Maine to the Caribbean.

WJZ 13 in Baltimore reports the space agency launched a drone from its Wallops Island facility in Virginia on Wednesday in order to get a close-up look at Hurricane Humberto, still lingering off the Eastern seaboard.

The purpose is to give people warning of whats going to be happening. How strong is it going to be? Do I need to board up the house or not? Chris Naftel of the Global Hawk Project told the CBS affiliate.

The U.S. Air Force donated the Global Hawk surveillance drones to NASA, which then replaced the drones spy gear with scientific instruments to examine severe storms, and specifically hurricanes.

(We) will have a permanent ground station here. So Global Hawks will be a permanent part of our future here, Shane Dover of the Wallops Aircraft Office told WJZ 13.

There are two questions on which NASA scientists primarily want the drone research to focus. One is what role thunderstorms within a hurricane play in its intensification. Researchers aren't sure if the thunderstorms are a driver of storm intensity or a symptom of it.

The other is what role the Saharan Air Layer plays in the tropical storm development. The Saharan Air Layer is a dry, hot, dusty layer of air from Africa. Scientists have been at odds with each other over whether it helps hurricanes strengthen or does the opposite. One school of thought is that the Saharan Air Layer provides energy for storms to grow, while others have suggested it is a negative influence on storm growth because of the effect the dry air has on wet storms.

"There's a bit of a debate in terms of how important it is, one way or the other," said Scott Braun, a research meteorologist at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md., who is the drone project's principal investigator.

This is the second year NASA has launched Global Hawks from the Eastern Shore of Virginia, a strategic location that allows drones to spend plenty of time studying storms shortly after they form off the coast of Africa or as they approach the Caribbean Sea or Gulf of Mexico.

This year's mission will end later this month, and the third and final year of the project's flights will start again next August. NASA officials hope three years of flights will give them enough data to begin answering their questions.

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NASA using surplus military drones to probe hurricanes

NASA websites hacked by Brazilian group

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Nearly a dozen NASA websites run from the heart of Silicon Valley were hacked on Tuesday and remain offline days later, following a politically motivated digital broadside against the space agency.

My understanding is the entire NASA Ames Center had a hack attack that took the website down, spokesman JD Harrington told FoxNews.com. However, another NASA spokesman later denied that the entire center was taken down, instead saying that the attack was of a much smaller scope.

The Ames Center in Mountain View, Calif., where scientists once worked on the Viking and Pioneer spacecraft, currently houses high-tech facilities for NASA and others; Google leases 42.2 acres at Ames for a planned 1.2 million square foot of office and R&D space, for example.

A group calling itself BMPoC took credit for the hack, saying it had taken down the sites to protest UScyber intelligence activities.

On Sept. 10, 2013, a Brazilian hacker group posted a political message on a number of NASA websites. a NASA spokesman told FoxNews.com. Within hours of the initial posting, information technology staff at the Ames Research Center discovered the message and immediately started an investigation, which is ongoing. At no point were any of the agencys primary websites, missions or classified systems compromised.

Read more at Fox News

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NASA websites hacked by Brazilian group

NASA HEOMD Internal Memo on Personnal Electronic Devices

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NASA will be implementing the IT security measures described in the attached memo this week. I am sending this note to all of HEOMD so that you have a clearer understanding of what this means to you and any personal devices you connect to NASA's email / NOMAD ActiveSync service, and so you aren't taken by surprise if or when your personal device starts asking you to do things, like setting an unlock code.

- ActiveSync is the primary means of connecting a device such as an iPhone, iPad, Android or other type of device to NOMAD so that you can access your NASA email on the device. ActiveSync has the ability to 'push' certain policies to any device that uses ActiveSync to connect to NASA's email system. When you configure and connect your device to NASA's email system, though you may select "Microsoft Exchange" as the connectivity option, ActiveSync is the actual service and protocol that does the work to create and maintain the connection and to get and send your email.

- Understand that NASA has not banned use of your own personal devices to access NOMAD / NASA email, though NASA does have the authority and ability to do so. The phrase "Bring Your Own Device", or "BYOD" is used to denote such devices that are not issued by NASA or the Government, but which are instead personally owned.

- For some odd reason, there are a significant number of non-NASA issued and non-Government devices that are accessing NOMAD via ActiveSync. Even more odd is that the number of new non-NASA devices that connect to NOMAD increases significantly in the days and weeks immediately after Christmas. (Yeah, I know why, but I want to add a sense of mystery here).

- Accessing email and other NASA information that is not for public release via personal devices does pose some risk to NASA data; implementing certain security precautions on a device helps reduce that risk significantly should that device be lost or stolen, regardless of whether it is a government-owned or personally owned device. Connecting to NOMAD via a personal device is a privilege, not a right. With the privilege come some restrictions, and some risks. By connecting your personal device to NOMAD or the NASA internal network, you are implicitly accepting those restrictions and risks.

- The attached policy is a compromise between allowing use of personal devices and banning personal devices entirely from connecting to NOMAD. The goal here is to ensure that some minimum security is enabled on any device that NASA does not manage and that is connecting to NOMAD.

- The policies that NASA's NOMAD / ActiveSync server will be pushing to your personal device at a minimum will enable several capabilities on your device to improve its security. First, the policies will ensure that a PIN or passcode is set and that must be used to unlock the device so that if it is lost or stolen, it will not be easy for an unauthorized individual to gain access to your email. Second, where a device can implement this, the policies pushed will set the device to be auto-wiped if there are more than 10 failed attempts to unlock the device; this is to reduce the likelihood of a brute-force guessing of the unlock code. Third, the policies will ensure that encryption capabilities for data-at-rest are turned on for your personal device.

- Each device is different, so I'm not certain what the effects will be on every type of device. I do know that for iOS devices such as iPhones or iPads the changes won't be too onerous. iOS uses data-at-rest encryption by default, so that is already turned on. If you do not have an unlock code set on your iOS device, once the policies are pushed, you will be prompted to set at minimum a 4 digit unlock code, and your device will auto-lock after 15 minutes being idle. Also, failure to input the correct unlock code after 10 tries will auto-wipe the device. Also, the option is there for a remote wipe of your device from ActiveSync, but that option will not be used without the device owner's direct permission and by their request. Again, I am not certain what you will see or how other devices will react to the policies being pushed.

- Contrary to the nonsense you've been reading at nasawatch or elsewhere, NASA does not obtain control of your personal device; NASA cannot remotely read the contents of your device; NASA does not know your unlock code; and NASA will not remotely trigger a wipe of your personal device without your direct authorization to do so. We are NASA, not NSA. Don't drop the first 'A', eh?

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NASA HEOMD Internal Memo on Personnal Electronic Devices

NASA's Voyager 1 spacecraft embarks on historic journey into interstellar space

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Sep. 12, 2013 NASA's Voyager 1 spacecraft officially is the first human-made object to venture into interstellar space. The 36-year-old probe is about 12 billion miles (19 billion kilometers) from our sun.

New and unexpected data indicate Voyager 1 has been traveling for about one year through plasma, or ionized gas, present in the space between stars. Voyager is in a transitional region immediately outside the solar bubble, where some effects from our sun are still evident. A report on the analysis of this new data, an effort led by Don Gurnett and the plasma wave science team at the University of Iowa, Iowa City, is published in Thursday's edition of the journal Science.

"Now that we have new, key data, we believe this is mankind's historic leap into interstellar space," said Ed Stone, Voyager project scientist based at the California Institute of Technology, Pasadena. "The Voyager team needed time to analyze those observations and make sense of them. But we can now answer the question we've all been asking -- 'Are we there yet?' Yes, we are."

Voyager 1 first detected the increased pressure of interstellar space on the heliosphere, the bubble of charged particles surrounding the sun that reaches far beyond the outer planets, in 2004. Scientists then ramped up their search for evidence of the spacecraft's interstellar arrival, knowing the data analysis and interpretation could take months or years.

Voyager 1 does not have a working plasma sensor, so scientists needed a different way to measure the spacecraft's plasma environment to make a definitive determination of its location. A coronal mass ejection, or a massive burst of solar wind and magnetic fields, that erupted from the sun in March 2012 provided scientists the data they needed. When this unexpected gift from the sun eventually arrived at Voyager 1's location 13 months later, in April 2013, the plasma around the spacecraft began to vibrate like a violin string. On April 9, Voyager 1's plasma wave instrument detected the movement. The pitch of the oscillations helped scientists determine the density of the plasma. The particular oscillations meant the spacecraft was bathed in plasma more than 40 times denser than what they had encountered in the outer layer of the heliosphere. Density of this sort is to be expected in interstellar space.

The plasma wave science team reviewed its data and found an earlier, fainter set of oscillations in October and November 2012. Through extrapolation of measured plasma densities from both events, the team determined Voyager 1 first entered interstellar space in August 2012.

"We literally jumped out of our seats when we saw these oscillations in our data -- they showed us the spacecraft was in an entirely new region, comparable to what was expected in interstellar space, and totally different than in the solar bubble," Gurnett said. "Clearly we had passed through the heliopause, which is the long-hypothesized boundary between the solar plasma and the interstellar plasma."

The new plasma data suggested a timeframe consistent with abrupt, durable changes in the density of energetic particles that were first detected on Aug. 25, 2012. The Voyager team generally accepts this date as the date of interstellar arrival. The charged particle and plasma changes were what would have been expected during a crossing of the heliopause.

"The team's hard work to build durable spacecraft and carefully manage the Voyager spacecraft's limited resources paid off in another first for NASA and humanity," said Suzanne Dodd, Voyager project manager, based at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif. "We expect the fields and particles science instruments on Voyager will continue to send back data through at least 2020. We can't wait to see what the Voyager instruments show us next about deep space."

Voyager 1 and its twin, Voyager 2, were launched 16 days apart in 1977. Both spacecraft flew by Jupiter and Saturn. Voyager 2 also flew by Uranus and Neptune. Voyager 2, launched before Voyager 1, is the longest continuously operated spacecraft. It is about 9.5 billion miles (15 billion kilometers) away from our sun.

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NASA's Voyager 1 spacecraft embarks on historic journey into interstellar space

NASA Making Voyager Spacecraft Announcement Today: Watch It Live

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Editor's Note: The news is out, NASA's Voyager 1 spacecraft has left the solar system and has entered interstellar space.It's Official! Voyager 1 Spacecraft Has Left Solar System

More Voyager News:

NASA says it will hold a press conference today (Sept. 12) to discuss an apparently new development with the agency's two far-flung Voyager spacecraft at the edge of the solar system, and you can watch the announcement live online.

The Voyager mission press conference will begin at 2 p.m. EDT (1800 GMT) and be hosted at NASA headquarters in Washington, D.C. You can watch NASA's Voyager announcement live on SPACE.com here, courtesy of NASA TV. The announcement does not indicate if it is about the Voyager 1 mission or Voyager 2 mission, both launched in 1977.

According to NASA's advisory, today's announcement "is related to a paper to be published in the journal Science," and the discovery is embargoed until 2 p.m. EDT. NASA has invited the public to ask questions via Twitter using the agency's #AskNASA hashtag.

NASA has two Voyager spacecaft currently on their way out of the solar system.

NASA'sVoyager 1spacecraft is the farthest manmade object from Earth. The probe launched on Sept. 5, 1977and is currently about 11.6 billion miles (18.7 billion kilometers) from Earth. The spacecraft, like its twin Voyager 2, runs on a nuclear power source, which has allowed it to continue operating for just over 36 years.

A long-standing mystery is whether Voyager 1 is still on the edge of the solar system, or actually in interstellar space. For years, Voyager 1 has been traversing a boundary layer of the solar system known as the heliopause as it exits the solar system.

In August, scientists not involved in the Voyager mission published a study suggesting Voyager 1 left the solar system in 2012 in the Astrophysical Journal Letters. But NASA's Voyager 1 mission team and other researchers have said that their data indicated Voyager 1 was still plying through a strange transition zone at the fringe of our solar system.

Voyager 1 and Voyager 2 launched on a so-called "grand tour" of the solar system that ultimately sent the spacecraft on unprecedented flybys of Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune.

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NASA Making Voyager Spacecraft Announcement Today: Watch It Live

NASA Launches Drones From Va. to Study Storms

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NASA scientists are using former military surveillance drones to help them understand more about how tropical storms intensify, which they say could ultimately save lives by improving forecast models that predict a hurricane's strength.

The unmanned Global Hawk aircraft were designed to perform high-altitude, long-endurance reconnaissance and intelligence missions for the Air Force. Two of the original Global Hawks built in the developmental process for the military have found new life as part of NASA's research mission, studying storms that form over the Atlantic Ocean. NASA planned to launch one of the drones from its Wallops Flight Facility on Wednesday to study Tropical Storm Gabrielle, which re-formed in the Atlantic on Tuesday.

"The biggest scientific question we're trying to attack is why do some hurricanes intensify very rapidly and why do others not intensify at all? In the last 20 years, we've made terrific progress in forecasting where hurricane tracks will go," said Paul Newman, deputy project scientist for the research mission. "But we've made almost no progress in the past 20 years in forecasting intensity."

More accurately predicting a storm's intensity would help government officials and coastal residents decide whether an evacuation is needed, as well as avoid developing a false sense of security among residents who frequently cite failed storm expectations as a reason not to leave their homes when warned to do so.

There are two questions on which NASA scientists primarily want the drone research to focus. One is what role thunderstorms within a hurricane play in its intensification. Researchers aren't sure if the thunderstorms are a driver of storm intensity or a symptom of it.

The other is what role the Saharan Air Layer plays in the tropical storm development. The Saharan Air Layer is a dry, hot, dusty layer of air from Africa. Scientists have been at odds with each other over whether it helps hurricanes strengthen or does the opposite. One school of thought is that the Saharan Air Layer provides energy for storms to grow, while others have suggested it is a negative influence on storm growth because of the effect the dry air has on wet storms.

"There's a bit of a debate in terms of how important it is, one way or the other," said Scott Braun, a research meteorologist at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md., who is the drone project's principal investigator.

This is the second year NASA has launched Global Hawks from the Eastern Shore of Virginia, a strategic location that allows drones to spend plenty of time studying storms shortly after they form off the coast of Africa or as they approach the Caribbean Sea or Gulf of Mexico.

This year's mission will end later this month, and the third and final year of the project's flights will start again next August. NASA officials hope three years of flights will give them enough data to begin answering their questions.

The drones are considered advantageous over manned aircraft because they can fly for much longer periods of time than traditional research aircraft and at much greater altitudes. Global Hawks can spend up to 28 hours in the air at a time and reach altitudes up to 12.3 miles, or roughly twice that of a typical commercial airliner.

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NASA Launches Drones From Va. to Study Storms

Nearly a dozen NASA websites hacked, remain offline

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Nearly a dozen NASA websites run from the heart of Silicon Valley were hacked on Tuesday and remain offline days later, following a politically motivated digital broadside against the space agency.

My understanding is the entire NASA Ames Center had a hack attack that took the website down, spokesman JD Harrington told FoxNews.com. However, another NASA spokesman later denied that the entire center was taken down, instead saying that the attack was of a much smaller scope.

The Ames Center in Mountain View, Calif., where scientists once worked on the Viking and Pioneer spacecraft, currently houses high-tech facilities for NASA and others; Google leases 42.2 acres at Ames for a planned 1.2 million square foot of office and R&D space, for example.

- NASA spokesman

A group calling itself BMPoC took credit for the hack, saying it had taken down the sites to protest U.S. cyberintelligence activities.

On Sept. 10, 2013, a Brazilian hacker group posted a political message on a number of NASA websites." a NASA spokesman told FoxNews.com. "Within hours of the initial posting, information technology staff at the Ames Research Center discovered the message and immediately started an investigation, which is ongoing. At no point were any of the agencys primary websites, missions or classified systems compromised.

The group has apparently hacked not just one but several websites that housed information on the Kepler space telescope, planetary exploration, the moon and more, all run out of Ames Research Center.

They include kepler.arc.nasa.gov, event.arc.nasa.gov, academy.arc.nasa.gov, planetaryprotection.nasa.gov, nextgenlunar.arc.nasa.gov, lunarscience.nasa.gov, iln.arc.nasa.gov and more, according to NASA Watch.

A notice on the kepler.arc.nasa.gov website simply reads Down for Maintenance: The requested webpage is down for maintenance. Please try again later.

But a member of the science team also confirmed that the site was down due to an attack.

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Nearly a dozen NASA websites hacked, remain offline


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