Cosmic Log

Alan Boyle, Science Editor NBC News

July 4, 2013 at 12:00 AM ET

NASA

An artist's conception shows the Kepler observatory in space.

The team behind NASA's planet-hunting Kepler observatory says it will start trying to revive the ailing probe in mid- to late July.

Two of the four reaction wheels in Kepler's fine-pointing guidance system are out of commission, which has left the 15-foot-long (4.7-meter-long) spacecraft in limbo since mid-May. Three wheels have to be working in order for Kepler to observe distant stars with the precision needed to detect planets.

Kepler identifies distant worlds by looking for the telltale dips in starlight that occur when a planet passes across its sun's disk. The spacecraft is designed to stare at 150,000 stars in a patch of sky that straddles the constellations Cygnus and Lyra. Since the telescope's launch in 2009, Kepler has identified 3,277 planet candidates and 134 confirmed planets and there's lots more archived data yet to be analyzed.

Roger Hunter, project manager for the $600 million mission, laid out the rescue plan in an update issued Wednesday. "The engineering team has devised initial tests for the recovery attempt and is checking them on the spacecraft test bed at the Ball Aerospace facility in Boulder, Colo.," he wrote. "The team anticipates that exploratory commanding of Kepler's reaction wheels will commence mid- to late July."

The spacecraft is currently in an energy-conserving mode known as Point Rest State, and will remain in that mode during the tests, Hunter said. He said other adjustments have been made to improve the spacecraft's fuel efficiency and reduce the possibility that it would retreat into safe mode. Both those steps should improve the chances that Kepler can be nudged back into service.

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NASA readies its rescue plan for planet-hunting Kepler probe

NASA #39;s new way of launching satellites
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Comet ISON WTF NASA? Hot Binary Action (part 15) Does ISON have a companion?
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NASA HPDE June 2, 2013 Buttonwillow config 1CW 987s
Created and uploaded using RaceRender 2.9.1b.

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Solar Filament Eruption Carves a Channel | NASA SDO Space Science Sun HD Video
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NASA Ames Introduces LADEE Spacecraft Animation
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Little Black Egg. Pizza Oven "NASA We are ready for liftoff"
#39; #39; Little Black Egg Pizza oven", Based on the original from VillaRoma. This is just a 22 #39; Weber grill ($99.00) Propane brush burner (Harbor Freight $24.00) P...

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How Astronauts Train Underwater at NASA #39;s Neutral Buoyancy Lab
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Synopsis - Jul 02, 2013

General Information

Solicitation Number: NNH13ZCQ002L Posted Date: Jul 02, 2013 FedBizOpps Posted Date: Jul 02, 2013 Recovery and Reinvestment Act Action: No Original Response Date: Aug 02, 2013 Current Response Date: Aug 02, 2013 Classification Code: A -- Research and Development NAICS Code: 336414

Contracting Office Address

NASA/Goddard Space Flight Center, NASA Headquarters Acquisition Branch, Code 210.H, Greenbelt, MD 20771

Description

REQUEST FOR INFORMATION (RFI): THIS IS *NOT* A REQUEST FOR PROPOSAL, QUOTATION, OR INVITATION TO BID NOTICE.

The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) is continually looking for ways to help advance the development of commercial space products and services. With the recent influx of U.S. private-sector companies interested in space exploration and utilization, NASA is seeking to better understand U.S. industry's interests in a myriad of exploration activities, including the private development of robotic lander capabilities for the lunar surface. To that end, NASA's Advanced Exploration Systems Division in the Human Exploration and Operations Mission Directorate is seeking input through this Request for Information (RFI) that focuses on an industry-developed robotic lander that can be integrated with a launch vehicle for the purposes of supporting commercial (and potentially future NASA) missions. An industry-NASA partnership would:

* Transfer and capitalize on a long history of NASA investments in lander technologies and expertise

* Support a growing commercial interest in robotically delivering payloads to the lunar surface more reliably and cost-effectively than under current models

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NASA Request for Information on Potential Partnerships for Industry-led Development of Robotic Lunar Landers

NASA has achieved an "A" on the fiscal year 2012 (FY12) Small Business Administration (SBA) Procurement Scorecard.

During the past six years, NASA's demonstrated commitment to the agency's small business program has raised the agency's overall grade from an "F" to an "A" after receiving a grade of "C" in FY09 and FY10 and a grade of "B" in FY11.

The annual SBA Procurement Scorecard measures how well federal agencies reach their established small business and socio-economic prime and subcontracting goals. It also measures how the agencies provide accurate and transparent contracting data and report on agency-specific progress.

Despite the overall spending decrease by the agency due to federal budget constraints in FY12, NASA awarded approximately $2.6 billion directly to small businesses. This was about $100 million more when compared to FY11, clearly demonstrating NASA's overall commitment of support to the nation's small businesses.

"This achievement would not have been possible without the tireless work of the agency's small business specialists, technical advisors, acquisition personnel, and the entire small business programs team," said Glenn Delgado, associate administrator for NASA's Office of Small Business Programs. "Nor would it have been possible without the wide range of small businesses working in fields from finance to high-tech manufacturing that support NASA's mission."

Small business support has been on the forefront of NASA senior management agency strategy. Several initiatives from NASA's Office of Small Business Programs have been recognized as best practices in the federal government.

NASA is committed to promoting and integrating all small businesses into the competitive base of contractors that pioneer the future of space exploration, scientific discovery and aeronautics research.

For information about the NASA's small business programs, visit: http://www.osbp.nasa.gov/

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NASA Makes the Grade on the SBA Procurement Scorecard

July 2, 2013

Image Caption: One of the grand prize winning characters of the GPM Anime contest, Mizu-chan wears a flowing blue dress with clouds at the hemline. Mizu-chan, created by Sabrynne Buchholz from Hudson, Colo., will co-star in a comic series about precipitation science and GPM mission. Credit: Sabrynne Buchholz

NASA

She can evaporate water with her hair. He measures all the rainfall and snowfall on Earth. Selected as the winners of the Global Precipitation Measurement missions Anime Challenge, these two characters will star in their own comic series to help teach the public about precipitation science and the Global Precipitation Measurement mission.

The GPM mission, a collaboration between NASA and Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency, the space agencies of France and India, and other international partners, challenged people from around the world to design an anime character to help demonstrate GPM educational science themes of the water cycle, weather and climate, and technology. Anime, short for animation, is a Japanese style of art that has filled shows and comics that are popular around the world.

After receiving more than 40 submissions, a panel of NASA scientists and outreach specialists selected two grand prize winners and two runner-up winners from three different age categories.

The two grand prize winners are Sabrynne Buchholz from Hudson, Colo., and Yuki Kiriga from Tokyo, Japan.

Buchholz, 14, was the president of her schools art club this past year and hopes to pursue a career in animation. She enjoys watching anime and learning about Asian cultures. Her winning character for the contest is Mizu-chan (Mizu means water) who personifies water and precipitation. Mizu-chans blue dress and blue strands of hair signify water while the yellow strands of her hair represent the sun. Her dress is hemmed with clouds, which can produce rain or snow. When water drops from the clouds lining her dress, it evaporates with help from her yellow strands of hair and then goes back through the water cycle, where it condenses again as clouds at the bottom of her dress.

The runner-up winners in the other categories:

Middle school (ages 13-15): Kielamel Sibal, 13, Winnipeg, Canada; and Nicole Bohlen, 15, Winter Park, Fla.

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NASA Announces GPM Mission Anime Contest Winners

NASA has awarded a contract to ASRC Federal Space & Defense (AS&D) of Greenbelt, Md., for the Electrical Systems Engineering Services II (ESES II) for the agency's Goddard Space Flight Center.

This is a cost plus award fee, indefinite delivery/indefinite quantity contract with a maximum ordering value of $475 million. This contract has a 30-day phase-in period with a 5-year effective ordering period from the date of award, which was Tuesday, July 2. The contract was awarded under the Small Business Set Aside program.

The contractor will provide electrical systems engineering support services and related work to Goddard's Applied Engineering and Technology Directorate's Electrical Engineering Division, Instrument Systems and Technology Division, Software Engineering Division, Mechanical Systems Division, and the Mission Engineering and Systems Analysis Division. Additional work will include the study, design, systems engineering, development, fabrication, integration, testing, verification, and operations of space flight, airborne, and ground system hardware and software. The work also includes development and validation of new technologies to enable future space and science missions.

Contracted services will be performed at Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md., the contractor's off-site facilities and other NASA locations.

For information about NASA and agency programs, visit: http://www.nasa.gov

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NASA Selects Electrical Systems Engineering Services Contract

NASA recently completed a major space technology development milestone by successfully testing a pressurized, large cryogenic propellant tank made of composite materials. The composite tank will enable the next generation of rockets and spacecraft needed for space exploration.

Cryogenic propellants are gasses chilled to subfreezing temperatures and condensed to form highly combustible liquids, providing high-energy propulsion solutions critical to future, long-term human exploration missions beyond low-Earth orbit. Cryogenic propellants, such as liquid oxygen and liquid hydrogen, have been traditionally used to provide the enormous thrust needed for large rockets and NASA's space shuttle.

In the past, propellant tanks have been fabricated out of metals. The almost 8 foot- (2.4 meter) diameter composite tank tested at NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Ala., is considered game changing because composite tanks may significantly reduce the cost and weight for launch vehicles and other space missions.

"These successful tests mark an important milestone on the path to demonstrating the composite cryogenic tanks needed to accomplish our next generation of deep space missions," said Michael Gazarik, NASA's associate administrator for space technology at NASA Headquarters in Washington. "This investment in game changing space technology will help enable NASA's exploration of deep space while directly benefiting American industrial capability in the manufacturing and use of composites."

Switching from metallic to composite construction holds the potential to dramatically increase the performance capabilities of future space systems through a dramatic reduction in weight. A potential initial target application for the composite technology is an upgrade to the upper stage of NASA's Space Launch System heavy-lift rocket.

Built by Boeing at their Tukwila, Wash. facility, the tank arrived at NASA in late 2012. Engineers insulated and inspected the tank, then put it through a series of pressurized tests to measure its ability to contain liquid hydrogen at extremely cold temperatures. The tank was cooled down to -423 degrees Fahrenheit and underwent 20 pressure cycles as engineers changed the pressure up to 135 psi.

"This testing experience with the smaller tank is helping us perfect manufacturing and test plans for a much larger tank," said John Vickers, the cryogenic tank project manager at Marshall. "The 5.5 meter (18 foot) tank will be one of the largest composite propellant tanks ever built and will incorporate design features and manufacturing processes applicable to an 8.4 meter (27.5 foot) tank, the size of metal tanks found in today's large launch vehicles."

The NASA and Boeing team are in the process of manufacturing the 18 foot (5.5 meter)-diameter composite tank that also will be tested at Marshall next year.

"The tank manufacturing process represents a number of industry breakthroughs, including automated fiber placement of oven-cured materials, fiber placement of an all-composite tank wall design that is leak-tight and a tooling approach that eliminates heavy-joints," said Dan Rivera, the Boeing cryogenic tank program manager at Marshall.

Composite tank joints, especially bolted joints, have been a particularly troubling area prone to leaks in the past. Boeing and its partner, Janicki Industries of Sedro-Woolley, Wash., developed novel tooling to eliminate the need for heavy joints.

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NASA Tests Game Changing Composite Cryogenic Fuel Tank

NASA Tuesday issued a Request for Information (RFI) that will help agency officials better understand current plans in the U.S. commercial space industry for a robotic lunar landing capability. The RFI will assist NASA in assessing U.S. industry's interest in partnerships to develop a robotic lander that could enable commercial and agency missions.

- Read the RFI.

"U.S. industry is flourishing with innovative ideas based on NASA's pioneering work to explore space, including low-Earth orbit and the moon," said William Gerstenmaier, NASA's associate administrator for human exploration and operations in Washington." As NASA aims to expand human presence in the solar system through missions to an asteroid and Mars, hundreds of new technologies and experiments aboard the International Space Station are giving humans the tools we need to explore the unknown. New robotic commercial capabilities on the moon could extend that research in important ways, just as NASA expertise could help advance commercial endeavors to reach the moon."

NASA does not envision an exchange of funds between the agency and any industry partners. Potential NASA contributions to a partnership could include the technical expertise of NASA staff on integrated teams, providing NASA center test facilities at no cost, or contributing hardware or software for commercial lander development and testing.

A commercial lunar lander jointly developed with NASA would capitalize on NASA's previous investments and expertise in lander technologies. It also would stimulate a commercial capability to deliver payloads to the lunar surface reliably and cost-effectively. Such a capability could enable new services of interest to NASA. These include transportation to support technology demonstrations and science objectives, such as sample returns, resource prospecting at the lunar poles and geophysical network deployment. These services would require the ability to land small- and medium-class payloads, ranging from 62 to 992 lbs (30 to 450 kg), at various lunar sites.

A potential partnership could support launch of a lander as early as 2018. Responses to the RFI will assess the feasibility of a commercial lunar transportation capability in the near-future. This would precede any decision for a future solicitation. The RFI is for planning purposes only and does not constitute a commitment by the government to contract for services.

For more information about NASA exploration and future missions, visit: http://www.nasa.gov/exploration

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NASA Seeks Information on Commercial Robotic Lunar Lander Capabilities

"The Galaxy Next Door" This composite image of the Andromeda galaxy was produced by NASA's Galaxy Evolution Explorer, showing Andromeda's ultraviolet side. NASA sent a decommission command to the space telescope Friday.

"The Galaxy Next Door" This composite image of the Andromeda galaxy was produced by NASA's Galaxy Evolution Explorer, showing Andromeda's ultraviolet side. NASA sent a decommission command to the space telescope Friday.

NASA is sending a reliable servant into a retirement that will end with a fiery re-entry into Earth's atmosphere in about 65 years. That's the fate that awaits the Galaxy Evolution Explorer, the "galaxy hunter" space telescope whose original 29-month mission was extended to more than 10 years.

Along the way, the orbiting system, known as GALEX, helped scientists study how galaxies and stars are born, and how they change over time.

Since its launch in the spring of 2003, GALEX photographed nebulae and spiral galaxies, and "used its ultraviolet vision to study hundreds of millions of galaxies across 10 billion years of cosmic time," NASA says.

GALEX was shut down at 3:09 p.m. ET Friday, when a decommission signal was sent to the orbiting craft, according to NASA, which has also published a photo gallery of compelling images from the project.

"GALEX is a remarkable accomplishment," says Jeff Hayes, NASA's GALEX program executive in Washington. "This small Explorer mission has mapped and studied galaxies in the ultraviolet, light we cannot see with our own eyes, across most of the sky."

The space agency published this list of highlights in GALEX's career:

Discovering a gargantuan, comet-like tail behind a speeding star called Mira. Catching a black hole "red-handed" as it munched on a star. Finding giant rings of new stars around old, dead galaxies. Independently confirming the nature of dark energy. Discovering a missing link in galaxy evolution the teenage galaxies transitioning from young to old.

And they're likely to be joined by other revelations, as the reams of data yielded by the space telescope project are reviewed. NASA and the California Institute of Technology, which manages the Jet Propulsion Lab for the space agency, plan to release the project's most recent data to the public in the next 12 months.

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NASA Has Shut Down Space Telescope Orbiting Earth

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BP: Tindahan sa GenSan, na-holdup; nasa P5-M halaga ng mga alahas at cellphone, natangay
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NASA launches IRIS spacecraft on Pegasus rocket to study sun #39;s energy
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