Sutter #39;s Mill Meteorite: a Californian Treasure Discovered by SETI/NASA Researchers (SETI Chats)
Hangout On Air. Alex Witze from Science News will interview Peter Jenniskens (SETI Institute), Derek Sears (NASA), and Franck Marchis (SETI Institute) Sound ...
By: SETI Institute
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NASA NEWS: Deep Space Atomic Clock Ticks Toward Success
By: NASA NEWS
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NASA NEWS: Deep Space Atomic Clock Ticks Toward Success - Video
by Kelly Sheridan, Agence France-Presse Posted on 09/06/2013 10:08 AM |Updated 09/06/2013 11:41 AM
NASA'S LADEE. NASA's Lunar Atmosphere and Dust Environment Explorer hopes to bring us more information on the moon. Screen shot from YouTube video
WASHINGTON, USA (UPDATED) - NASA hopes to unravel more of the Moon's mysteries Friday by launching an unmanned mission to study its atmosphere, the US space agency's third such probe in five years.
The Lunar Atmosphere and Dust Environment Explorer (LADEE) is to launch Friday at 11:27 pm (Saturday 3:27 am GMT) aboard a Minotaur V rocket - a converted peacekeeping missile - from NASA's Wallops Flight Facility in Virginia.
Since US astronauts last walked on the moon four decades ago, rocket scientists have learned that there is more to the Moon than just a dusty, desolate terrain.
Recent NASA robotic missions such as the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter have returned troves of images detailing the Moon's cratered surface, while NASA's Gravity Recovery and Interior Laboratory (GRAIL) revealed how being pummelled by asteroids resulted in the Moon's uneven patches of gravity.
A previous NASA satellite, the Lunar Crater Observation and Sensing Satellite(LCROSS) discovered water ice when it impacted in 2009, the space agency said.
"When we left the Moon we thought of it as an atmosphere-less ancient surface," said John Grunsfeld, associate administrator for NASA's science mission directorate.
"We have discovered that the Moon scientifically is very much alive, it is still evolving and in fact has a kind of atmosphere."
The Moon's atmosphere is so thin that its molecules do not collide, in what is known as an exosphere.
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NASA Designs 3D Printing Spider
NASA is working on a project to send a 3 dimensional printing system into space. NASA is working on a project to send a 3 dimensional printing system into sp...
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NASA has whittled to four the number of potential landing sites for its 2016 mission to Mars to four featureless plots, to ensure a safe touchdown for its InSight lander, which will probe the Red Planet's interior.
NASA has whittled to four the number of potential landing sites for its 2016 mission to Mars. All of the semifinalists, as the agency puts it, are un-interesting, featureless plots.
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NASAs next mission to Mars is scheduled to land on the planet in August 2016, six months after its launch from Earth. Called the Interior Exploration Using Seismic Investigations, Geodesy and Heat Transport lander or, more succinctly, InSight the stationary lander will tuck into Marss underground to investigate the Red Planets interior and its formation some 4.6 billion years ago. Scientists hope that plumbing beneath Marss surface will help in explaining the processes that formed Earth, as well as the exoplanets popping up in new portraits of the universe.
Choosing a landing ground for InSight is much simpler than choosing one for a Mars rover, said Matthew Golombek, a geologist at NASAs Jet Propulsion Laboratory. Rovers must be put down near the features theyve been outfitted to research, which means that the crafts have been deposited next to interesting plains or mountains. But InSight is designed to research Marss interior, which, conveniently, is accessible all over the planet, as long as the surface is soft enough to penetrate.
When you land a rover, its designed to measure certain things, so you have to make sure those things are available, says Dr. Golombek. Here, there are no real scientific requirements. That makes the job dramatically easier.
Still, there are some conditions that a plausible landing spot must meet. The four landing-site candidates, selected from an initial roster of 22 potential plots of real estate, are all in Marss Elysium Planitia, an equatorial plain named for the ancient Greeks heroic afterlife.
That region, about 500 miles southward from Curiositys touchdown spot, is near enough to the equator to protect landers from the cold closer to the poles, as well as primed to power the InSights solar array throughout the year. The region is also low enough in elevation to have the requisite atmosphere to decelerate the craft and, NASA hopes, land it without incident.
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NASA picks four possible Mars landing sites, none of them interesting
NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center Visitor Center in Greenbelt, Md. will host this month's Sunday Experiment on Sunday, Sept. 15 from 1 to 3 p.m. EDT. The Sunday Experiment is a free afternoon for children of all ages and their families to discover NASA Goddard's exciting missions.
The Sept. 15 Sunday Experiment will explore NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO) mission. SDO was launched in 2010, and is currently studying solar activity and how it causes space weather. Space weather affects our lives on Earth, and even satellites and astronauts out in space!
SDO is helping us understand where the sun's energy comes from, what happens inside of the sun, and how energy is stored and released in the sun's atmosphere. By better understanding the sun and how it works, we will be able to better predict space weather events.
Planned hands-on activities to be featured this month include building an electromagnet, comparing the magnetic fields of the Earth and sun using a "magnaprobe," and experimenting with UV light detectors.
Participants at Sunday Experiment event will learn about solar events and how they affect Earth from an SDO scientist; they can also participate in hands-on activities that explore the magnetic fields of the sun and ultraviolet light. Families will leave inspired by the activities, wowed by the scientists and engineers, and excited about Goddard's revolutionary research and technology. Visitors can witness the mesmerizing Science on a Sphere and explore the cosmos and Goddard's cutting edge science and discovery.
The Sunday Experiment usually held the third Sunday of each month from Sept. through May, with some exceptions, spotlights Goddard's world-renowned science and engineering research and technological developments. Families leave inspired by the activities, wowed by the scientists and engineers, and excited about Goddard's revolutionary research and technology. In addition to celebrating all things science, technology, engineering and mathematics, the Sunday Experiment celebrates major science missions that are managed by Goddard and set to launch in the near future.
For more information on Sunday Experiment, visit Goddard's Visitor Center Web page: http://visitorcenterevents.gsfc.nasa.gov/
For more information and directions to the NASA Goddard Visitor's Center, visit: http://www.nasa.gov/centers/goddard/visitor/home/index.html http://www.nasa.gov/centers/goddard/visitor/directions/index.html
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NASA Invites Children, Families to Learn About NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory Mission
NASA Sends Poetry to Martians
We read the Top 5 Haiku for Mars. Good Mythical Morning Ep 276! SUBSCRIBE for daily episodes: http://bit.ly/subrl2 **** MORE from this episode: http://bit.ly...
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Landing on asteroids will be a risky endeavor, perhaps aggravated by changes in asteroid dust when its touched. Credit: NASA Near Earth Object Program
NASA is really getting into this crowd-sourcing thing. The space agency asked and the public responded with hundreds of ideas of what missions could be done with asteroids in regards to protecting Earth from these space rocks and finding an asteroid humans can explore. NASA received over 400 responses to their Asteroid Initiative Request For Information request, hearing from the space industry, universities, and the general public.
Now, after looking at all the responses, NASA has chosen 96 ideas it regards as most promising, ranging from asteroid observation plans to asteroid redirection, deflection or capture systems, to creating crowd sourcing and citizen science opportunities. Next, NASA will host an Asteroid Initiative Idea Synthesis Workshop where NASA personnel and the space community will discuss and further these 96 ideas to narrow them down even further to help with its planning activities and future missions. The 96 ideas were chosen by a team of NASA scientists, engineers, and mission planners who evaluated the proposed ideas. The evaluation team rated the responses for relevance to the RFI objectives, innovativeness of the idea, maturity of the development approach, and potential to improve mission affordability.
This is the first time NASAs has used this type of crowd-sourcing and discussion method to look at possible future missions.
NASA said the ideas proposed provide the agency with fresh insight into how best to identify, capture and relocate a near-Earth asteroid for closer study and respond to asteroid threats. Ideas included pointers on how to decrease an asteroids spin, nudge it away from a path toward Earth, take samples to return to Earth and create activities to heighten public awareness of not only the threat asteroids pose, but the valuable resources and scientific benefits they may offer.
This rich set of innovative ideas gathered from all over the world provides us with a great deal of information to factor into our plans moving forward, said Robert Lightfoot, Associate Administrator for NASA. Were making great progress on formulating this mission, and we look forward to discussing further the responses we received to the RFI.
The upcoming public workshop will be held on Sept. 30 Oct. 2 and onsite participation is limited to just the presenters, but it appears the workshop will be webcast (more info later), as NASA said they will release information on virtual participation options as the workshop nears.
Source: NASA
Tagged as: Asteroid initiative, Asteroids, NASA
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NASA launches a moon satellite this week that will test ultrafast optical data transmission.
Lunar module: Engineers at NASAs Wallops Flight Facility prepare work on a moon probe that will test a high-bandwidth laser communications system.
A new communications technology slated for launch by NASA this Friday will provide a record-smashing 600 megabits-per-second downloads. The resulting probe will orbit the moon and send communications back to Earth via lasers.
The plan hints at how lasers could give a boost to terrestrial Internet coverage, too. Within a few years, commercial Internet satellite services are expected to use optical connectionsinstead of todays radio linksproviding far greater bandwidth. A Virginia startup, Laser Light Communications, is in the early stages of designing such a system and hopes to launch a fleet of 12 satellites in four years.
Already, some companies provide short-range through-the-air optical connections for tasks such as connecting campus or office buildings when an obstruction such as a river or road makes laying fiber infeasible. There are a bunch of technologies that all come together for new applications and improved service, not just one, says Heinz Willebrand, president and CEO of Lightpointe, a San Diego-based company whose technology provides up to 2.5 gigabits per second for a few hundred meters.
One new technology figuring in NASAs moon probe: a superconducting nanowire detector, cooled to 3 degrees Kelvin. That gadget, developed at MIT and itsLincoln Laboratory, is designed to detect single photons sent nearly a quarter of a million miles from infrared lasers on an orbiting lunar probe, which is being launched Friday to measure dust in the lunar atmosphere.
The new communications system, dubbed Lunar Laser Communications Demonstration, will deliver six times greater download speeds compared to the fastest radio system used for moon communications. It will use telescopes that are just under one meter in diameter to pick up the signal. But it could be rengineered to provide 2.5 gigabits per second, if the ground telescope designed to detect the signals were enlarged to three meters in diameter, says Don Boroson, the Lincoln Lab researcher who led the project. This is demonstrating the first optical data transmission for a deep-ish space mission. If you resize it and partly rengineer it, you could potentially do it to Mars, he says.
Because clouds block photons, detectors are being installed at three spots: one each in California and New Mexico, and a third on the Canary Islands. On this mission, though, the system will merely be tested. Most operations will be handled by radio technologiesupgraded versions of the system that delivered Neil Armstrongs One small step for man transmission in 1969. But if all goes well, optical systems will likely dominate space transmissions in the future, with radio systems serving as a backup.
In addition to the nanowire detector, the system depends on high-speed encoding and decoding of data, and a separate set of calculations and adjustments to keep the telescopes pointed at each other. There are a bunch of technologies that are new and exciting, Boroson says.
But what may be even more exciting for bandwidth-hungry Earthlings is the prospect of a satellite-based all-optical network to augment the ground-based one.
Originally posted here:
NASA's next moon shot a robotic spacecraft tasked with investigating lunar dust and the moon's thin atmosphere is set to launch from Virginia this week.
The Lunar Atmosphere and Dust Environment Explorer (LADEE for short) is scheduled to start its journey to the moon on Friday (Sept. 6) at 11:27 p.m. EDT (0327 Sept. 7 GMT), launching atop a Minotaur 5 rocket, the maiden voyage for the new booster.
Weather permitting, the launch may be visible to observers along the East Coast of the United States when the rocket lifts off from NASA's Wallops Flight Facility on Wallops Island, Va. [Photos: NASA's LADEE Moon Dust Mission in Pictures]
"I love this mission. LADEE is going to be fantastic," John Grunsfeld, associate administrator for NASA's science mission directorate, told reporters in a briefing on Aug. 22. "I'm getting really excited as we move to the launch pad first of all because it's going to the moon. Ever since I was a young boy like so many folks looking up at the sky I've wondered about the moon."
LADEE pronounced "laddie," not "lady" will probe the lunar atmosphere for signs of moon dust that could have created a distinct glow on the moon's horizon that Apollo astronauts saw before sunrise. Scientists think that the mysterious luminosity could have been created by charged dust above the surface of the moon.
- John Grunsfeld, associate administrator for NASA's science mission directorate
The LADEE spacecraft will also use its instrumentation to examine the thin atmosphere of the moon, called a surface boundary exosphere. Many moons, plants and some large asteroids all have this kind of atmosphere making it the most common kind of atmosphere in the solar system, Sarah Noble, a LADEE program scientist said.
Investigating the moon's atmosphere could help scientists understand more about the nature of atmospheres on many other bodies in the solar system including the closest planet to the sun, Mercury.
"The interesting thing about Mercury is that we don't have any samples of Mercury's surface ..." Noble said. "On the moon, we actually already know what the rocks are at the surface, but [LADEE] will help to compare what is on the surface versus what is in the atmosphere on the moon. [This science] will actually help us work our way back to Mercury and understand the difference between what we're seeing in the atmosphere and what might be on the ground there. We're actually going to learn about Mercury even from this lunar mission."
Once launched, LADEE will take 30 days to make it into its final orbit around the moon. The probe could make it to the Earth's cosmic neighbor in less time, but it would use too much fuel getting there, mission scientists said.
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NASA has chosen 96 ideas it regards as most promising from more than 400 submitted in response to its June request for information (RFI) about protecting Earth from asteroids and finding an asteroid humans can explore.
The ideas provide the agency with fresh insight into how best to identify, capture and relocate a near-Earth asteroid for closer study and respond to asteroid threats. They include pointers on how to decrease an asteroid's spin, nudge it away from a path toward Earth, take samples to return to Earth and create activities to heighten public awareness of not only the threat asteroids pose, but the valuable resources and scientific benefits they may offer.
"This rich set of innovative ideas gathered from all over the world provides us with a great deal of information to factor into our plans moving forward, said Robert Lightfoot, Associate Administrator for NASA. "We're making great progress on formulating this mission, and we look forward to discussing further the responses we received to the RFI."
These ideas were submitted by industry, universities, international organizations, and the public. NASA's selection process involved agency scientists, engineers and mission planners who are formulating details of the asteroid initiative.
NASA's request for information was the first opportunity for industry and other potential partners to offer ideas for the asteroid initiative.
NASA plans a public workshopSept. 30 - Oct. 2to examine and synthesize the 96 highly rated ideas. The workshop will feature discussions by experts from inside and outside NASA. The other approximately 300 ideas, which were not selected for examination, may be fed into planning for the asteroid initiative.
NASA's asteroid initiative has two parts: the mission by astronauts to explore an asteroid and a grand challenge to protect the planet. It is included in President Obama's fiscal year 2014 budget request for NASA, and leverages the agency's progress on its Space Launch System rocket, Orion spacecraft and cutting-edge technology development. The mission is a key step in NASA's plan to send humans to Mars in the 2030s.
To learn more about the RFI selection process and view the workshop outline, visit: http://www.nasa.gov/content/asteroid-initiative-idea-synthesis-workshop
For more information about NASA's asteroid initiative, visit: http://www.nasa.gov/asteroidinitiative
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NASA #39;s Lunar Atmosphere and Dust Environment Explorer (LADEE) Mission to Orbit Moon
NASA #39;s Lunar Atmosphere and Dust Environment Explorer (LADEE) is a robotic mission that will orbit the moon to gather detailed information about the lunar atmosphere, conditions near the surface...
By: MrChakaMalaka
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NASA's Lunar Atmosphere and Dust Environment Explorer (LADEE) Mission to Orbit Moon - Video
Nearby Andromeda Galaxy is Full of Black Holes | NASA Chandra Space Science HD
Visit my website at http://www.junglejoel.com - astronomers using the Chandra X-Ray telescope are discovering black holes in the nearby Andromeda galaxy. Please rate and comment, thanks! Credits: NASA.
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Nearby Andromeda Galaxy is Full of Black Holes | NASA Chandra Space Science HD - Video
Airborne 07.02.13: Terrafugia To Fly At OSH13, Electroplanes Too!, NASA Thruster Record
Also: Foxx Confirmed, AEA AML-STC Workshop, JetBlue iPads, Model Aviation Day Is Coming! If you weren #39;t excited about Oshkosh before, you should be now... as it will likely be the first time...
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Airborne 07.02.13: Terrafugia To Fly At OSH13, Electroplanes Too!, NASA Thruster Record - Video
NASA Observes LGBT Month with Robert Hurt
Visualization Scientist for the Spitzer Mission, Robert Hurt, reflects on how his title means more than working on the visual science of communication but also on how his own orientation within...
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Comet ISON WTF NASA? Hubble Wishes Granted. She #39;s big.
Brand spanking new Hubble Motion Picture moving photographs of Comet c2012 s1 ISON!!! I think Amy Mainzer has a crush on me. 🙂 YAY TOTAL victory! good job Astonishers! I am speechless*! oh...
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Comet ISON WTF NASA? Hubble Wishes Granted. She's big. - Video
NASA Secrets Revealed
Alex continues with former Nasa mission control engineer Raymond Teagues discussing the American and Russian space programs, the missions to the moon and the secretive parts of the space programs...
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NASA Insider Questions Moon Landing
Stay in the know - Follow Alex on Twitter: https://twitter.com/RealAlexJones #39;Like #39; Alex on FACEBOOK https://www.facebook.com/AlexanderEme... [[[DONATE TO ALEX JONES**]]] $5 or $10 A week....
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NASA Astronaut Chats from Space with Home State Media
Aboard the International Space Station, Expedition 36 Flight Engineer Karen Nyberg, a native of Vining, Minn., discussed life and research on the orbital laboratory with KMSP-TV in Minneapolis...
By: NASAtelevision
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NASA Astronaut Chats from Space with Home State Media - Video
Charles Bolden, NASA Administrator
Our guest is NASA Administrator and retired Marine Corps General, Charles Bolden. He talks about his experiences as an astronaut and his current duties as administrator of the world #39;s largest...
By: CSPAN
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