1. NASA

Category Archives: NASA

NASA Decommissions Its Galaxy Hunter Spacecraft

Posted on by

NASA has turned off its Galaxy Evolution Explorer (GALEX) after a decade of operations in which the venerable space telescope used its ultraviolet vision to study hundreds of millions of galaxies across 10 billion years of cosmic time.

"GALEX is a remarkable accomplishment," said 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."

Operators at Orbital Sciences Corporation in Dulles, Va., sent the signal to decommission GALEX at 3:09 p.m. EDT Friday, June 28. The spacecraft will remain in orbit for at least 65 years, then fall to Earth and burn up re-entering the atmosphere. GALEX met its prime objectives and its mission was extended three times before NASA decided to end it.

Highlights from the mission's decade of sky scans include: -- The discovery of 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. -- The discovery of a missing link in galaxy evolution -- the teenage galaxies transitioning from young to old.

The mission also captured a dazzling collection of snapshots, showing everything from ghostly nebulas to a spiral galaxy with huge, spidery arms.

In a first-of-a-kind move for NASA, the agency in May 2012 loaned GALEX to Caltech, which used private funds to continue operating the satellite while NASA retained ownership. Since then, investigators from around the world have used GALEX to study everything from stars in our own Milky Way galaxy to hundreds of thousands of galaxies 5 billion light-years away.

In the space telescope's last year, it scanned across large patches of sky, including the bustling, bright center of our Milky Way. The telescope spent time staring at some areas of the sky exploded stars, called supernovae, and monitoring how objects, such as the centers of active galaxies, change over time. GALEX also scanned the sky for massive, feeding black holes and shock waves from early supernova explosions.

Data from the last year of the mission will be made public in the coming year.

"GALEX, the mission, may be over, but its science discoveries will keep on going," said Kerry Erickson, the mission's project manager at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Pasadena, Calif.

A slideshow showing some of the popular GALEX images can be seen here: http://go.nasa.gov/17xAVDd

Original post:

NASA Decommissions Its Galaxy Hunter Spacecraft

NASA Launches Sun-Watching Satellite

Posted on by

From its perch in low-Earth orbit, NASA's newest satellite will soon get a close-up look at a little-explored region of the sun that's thought to drive space weather that can affect Earth.

The Iris satellite was boosted into orbit about 400 miles above Earth by a Pegasus rocket Thursday evening after a sunset launch. Engineers will test the satellite first before turning on its telescope to stare at the sun.

"We're thrilled," NASA launch director Tim Dunn said in a NASA TV interview after orbit was achieved.

Unlike a typical launch, an airplane carrying the rocket and satellite flew from Vandenberg Air Force Base to a drop point over the Pacific some 100 miles off California's central coast. At an altitude of 39,000 feet, the plane released the rocket, which ignited its engine and streaked skyward.

Mission controllers anxiously waited as the rocket made the 13-minute climb into space and cheered after learning that Iris had separated from the rocket as planned.

There were some issues. At one point, communications signals were lost and ground controllers had to track Iris using other satellites orbiting Earth. When it came time for Iris to unfurl its solar panels after entering orbit, there was a lag before NASA confirmed the satellite was generating power.

Previous sun-observing spacecraft have yielded a wealth of information about our nearest star and beamed back brilliant pictures of solar flares.

The 7-foot-long Iris, weighing 400 pounds, carries an ultraviolet telescope that can take high-resolution images every few seconds.

Unlike NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory, which observes the entire sun, Iris will focus on a little-explored region that lies between the surface and the corona, the glowing white ring that's visible during eclipses.

The goal is to learn more about how this mysterious region drives solar wind a stream of charged particles spewing from the sun and to better predict space weather that can disrupt communications signals on Earth.

See the rest here:

NASA Launches Sun-Watching Satellite

NASA Launches Satellite to Study How Sun’s Atmosphere is Energized

Posted on by

WASHINGTON -- NASA's Interface Region Imaging Spectrograph (IRIS) spacecraft launched Wednesday at 7:27 p.m. PDT (10:27 p.m. EDT) from Vandenberg Air Force Base, Calif. The mission to study the solar atmosphere was placed in orbit by an Orbital Sciences Corporation Pegasus XL rocket.

"We are thrilled to add IRIS to the suite of NASA missions studying the sun," said John Grunsfeld, NASA's associate administrator for science in Washington. "IRIS will help scientists understand the mysterious and energetic interface between the surface and corona of the sun."

IRIS is a NASA Explorer Mission to observe how solar material moves, gathers energy and heats up as it travels through a little-understood region in the sun's lower atmosphere. This interface region between the sun's photosphere and corona powers its dynamic million-degree atmosphere and drives the solar wind. The interface region also is where most of the sun's ultraviolet emission is generated. These emissions impact the near-Earth space environment and Earth's climate.

The Pegasus XL carrying IRIS was deployed from an Orbital L-1011 carrier aircraft over the Pacific Ocean at an altitude of 39,000 feet, off the central coast of California about 100 miles northwest of Vandenberg. The rocket placed IRIS into a sun-synchronous polar orbit that will allow it to make almost continuous solar observations during its two-year mission.

The L-1011 took off from Vandenberg at 6:30 p.m. PDT and flew to the drop point over the Pacific Ocean, where the aircraft released the Pegasus XL from beneath its belly. The first stage ignited five seconds later to carry IRIS into space. IRIS successfully separated from the third stage of the Pegasus rocket at 7:40 p.m. At 8:05 p.m., the IRIS team confirmed the spacecraft had successfully deployed its solar arrays, has power and has acquired the sun, indications that all systems are operating as expected.

"Congratulations to the entire team on the successful development and deployment of the IRIS mission," said IRIS project manager Gary Kushner of the Lockheed Martin Solar and Atmospheric Laboratory in Palo Alto, Calif. "Now that IRIS is in orbit, we can begin our 30-day engineering checkout followed by a 30-day science checkout and calibration period."

IRIS is expected to start science observations upon completion of its 60-day commissioning phase. During this phase the team will check image quality and perform calibrations and other tests to ensure a successful mission.

NASA's Explorer Program at Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md., provides overall management of the IRIS mission. The principal investigator institution is Lockheed Martin Space Systems Advanced Technology Center. NASA's Ames Research Center will perform ground commanding and flight operations and receive science data and spacecraft telemetry.

The Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory designed the IRIS telescope. The Norwegian Space Centre and NASA's Near Earth Network provide the ground stations using antennas at Svalbard, Norway; Fairbanks, Alaska; McMurdo, Antarctica; and Wallops Island, Va. NASA's Launch Services Program at the agency's Kennedy Space Center in Florida is responsible for the launch service procurement, including managing the launch and countdown. Orbital Sciences Corporation provided the L-1011 aircraft and Pegasus XL launch system.

For more information about the IRIS mission, visit:

Originally posted here:

NASA Launches Satellite to Study How Sun's Atmosphere is Energized

Orbital Sciences Corporation : ORBITAL SUCCESSFULLY LAUNCHES NASA’S IRIS SATELLITE ABOARD PEGASUS ROCKET

Posted on by

ORBITAL SUCCESSFULLY LAUNCHES NASA`S IRIS SATELLITE ABOARD PEGASUS ROCKET

-- Latest Pegasus Mission Is 28th Consecutive Successful Launch Over 16-Year Period --

-- Company`s Air-Launched Rocket Accurately Deploys NASA`s Newest Heliophysics Science Satellite Into Low-Earth Orbit --

(Dulles, VA 27 June 2013) -- Orbital Sciences Corporation (ORB) announced today that its Pegasus rocket successfully launched the Interface Region Imaging Spectrograph (IRIS) satellite for the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA). The IRIS spacecraft was deployed into its targeted orbit approximately 400 miles above the Earth and early results confirm that the satellite is operating as anticipated at this stage of its mission.

The launch of the Pegasus rocket originated from Vandenberg Air Force Base (VAFB), California when Orbital`s` L-1011 "Stargazer" carrier aircraft took off from the airfield at approximately 6:30 p.m. (PDT). Following a one-hour preplanned positioning flight, the Pegasus rocket was released at approximately 40,000 feet from Orbital`s L-1011 "Stargazer" carrier aircraft at 7:27 p.m. (PDT). After a 13-minute powered flight sequence, Pegasus launched the 440-pound IRIS satellite into its polar, sun-synchronous Earth orbit.

"The Pegasus rocket carried out another successful mission for NASA today, extending its record of consecutive successful missions to 28 over a 16-year period," said Mr. Ron Grabe, Orbital`s Executive Vice President and General Manager of its Launch Systems Group. "We are proud of our launch team and are pleased to have contributed to a successful beginning of this important NASA heliophysics science mission."

The launch of IRIS marks the 45th overall mission for the Pegasus program. Its launch history now includes 42 launches to orbit, which collectively have deployed more than 80 satellites for Earth and space science missions overseen by NASA; military and technology demonstration spacecraft for the U.S. Department of Defense; and communications and imaging satellites for commercial customers. Pegasus technology has also been used to launch three hypersonic flight experiments in Earth`s stratosphere for NASA`s HyperX program.

IRIS is a NASA Small Explorer (SMEX) mission designed to observe how solar material moves, gathers energy and heats up as it travels through a little-understood region in the Sun`s lower atmosphere. This interface region between the Sun`s photosphere and corona powers its dynamic million-degree atmosphere and drives the solar wind. The interface region also is where most of the Sun`s ultraviolet emission is generated that impacts the near-Earth space environment and Earth`s climate.

About the Pegasus Rocket

Follow this link:

Orbital Sciences Corporation : ORBITAL SUCCESSFULLY LAUNCHES NASA'S IRIS SATELLITE ABOARD PEGASUS ROCKET

NASA: Voyager 1 Is in a ‘New Region’ of Space

Posted on by

NASA

For months, space enthusiasts have been sitting on the edges of their seats, ready for the Voyager 1 spacecraft to become the first emissary of human civilization to cross from the bubble around our sun* into interstellar space. Last August, two of the three instruments on Voyager 1 started sending back signals that something was -- suddenly, dramatically -- different. Particles from our sun fell way off, and cosmic rays from outside our system shot up. Was this the moment we'd all been waiting for?

Well, not quite yet. That third indicator -- the magnetic field data -- has turned out to be a bit, well, stubborn, showing month after month that Voyager is still in our sun's magnetic field. Two out of three ain't bad, as they say, but scientists need all three boxes checked before they will officially say that Voyager has crossed over, NASA explained in a release today.

Now scientists are giving Voyager's current home a new name -- the heliosheath depletion region. As Kelly Oakes writes in a terrific explanation in Scientific American:

Yep, what Voyager's instruments are now showing us is so odd we need a new name for it. Voyager is, almost literally, pushing the boundaries of our knowledge about the solar system.

Which, if you think about it, is hardly surprising. As Stamatios Krimigis of John Hopkins University, Maryland, and his colleagues write in one of the three papers out today, our ideas about the size and shape of the bubble of plasma we call the heliosphere, created by the solar wind that continuously flows from the sun, are older than the space age.

A trio of papers published in Science today details what scientists know about this new region, including two temporary shifts in the magnetic field data that occurred on May 29 and September 26 of last year, both times reverting to the data associated with our heliosphere (the bubble of solar winds emanating from our sun).

Voyager 1 launched in 1977 and has been traveling at astounding speeds for nearly 36 years (around 38,000 miles per hour currently). It is now more than 11 billion miles away from the sun. As we wait for it to reach its next and perhaps final frontier, scientists don't have a clear idea of what to expect. "I mean this is the first time any spacecraft has been there," Voyager project scientist Ed Stone of Caltech said to me last year.

We didn't know that the "heliosheath depletion region" was going to be there, or that it was going to be this big, but now that Voyager's been there for a while, we may as well give it a name. And while Voyager's departure from our heliosphere might not be the sort of clean, sudden that many of us would find satisfying, the new region is, well, a new region -- a piece of our little home in the universe that we didn't know about before, and now, thanks to Voyager, we do.

More here:

NASA: Voyager 1 Is in a 'New Region' of Space

Huge Plasma Cloud Swirls Above the Sun | NASA SDO Space Science Full HD Video – Video

Posted on by


Huge Plasma Cloud Swirls Above the Sun | NASA SDO Space Science Full HD Video
Visit my website at http://www.junglejoel.com - a huge mass of plasma swirled above the Sun #39;s surface for over 36 hours (June 16 through June 17, 2013). Plea...

By: CoconutScienceLab

See the original post here:

Huge Plasma Cloud Swirls Above the Sun | NASA SDO Space Science Full HD Video - Video

Astronaut Training Technique Tests: "Water Immersion… Balanced Gravity Conditions" 1964 NASA – Video

Posted on by


Astronaut Training Technique Tests: "Water Immersion... Balanced Gravity Conditions" 1964 NASA
more at http://scitech.quickfound.net/ Early tests to determine the potential of underwater simulation of microgravity (weightlessness, zero-g...) for astron...

By: Jeff Quitney

Follow this link:

Astronaut Training Technique Tests: "Water Immersion... Balanced Gravity Conditions" 1964 NASA - Video


  1. NASA