ENP Newswire - 05 March 2013 Release date- 01032013 - WASHINGTON - NASA researchers have begun a series of flights using the agency's DC-8 flying laboratory to study the effects of alternate biofuel on engine performance, emissions and aircraft-generated contrails at altitude.

The Alternative Fuel Effects on Contrails and Cruise Emissions (ACCESS) research involves flying the DC-8 as high as 40,000 feet while an instrumented NASA Falcon HU-25 aircraft trails behind at distances ranging from 300 feet to more than 10 miles. 'We believe this study will improve understanding of contrails formation and quantify potential benefits of renewable alternate fuels in terms of aviation's impact on the environment,' said Ruben Del Rosario, manager of NASA's Fixed Wing Project. ACCESS flight operations are being staged from NASA's Dryden Aircraft Operations Facility in Palmdale, Calif., and will take place mostly within restricted airspace over Edwards Air Force Base, Calif. During the flights, the DC-8's four CFM56 engines will be powered by conventional JP-8 jet fuel, or a 50-50 blend of JP-8 and an alternative fuel of hydro processed esters and fatty acids that comes from camelina plants. More than a dozen instruments mounted on the Falcon jet will characterize the soot and gases streaming from the DC-8, monitor the way exhaust plumes change in composition as they mix with air, and investigate the role emissions play in contrail formation. Also, if weather conditions permit, the Falcon jet will trail commercial aircraft flying in the Southern California region, in coordination with air traffic controllers, to survey the exhaust emissions from a safe distance of 10 miles. The flight campaign began Feb. 28 and is expected to take as long as three weeks to complete. ACCESS follows a pair of Alternative Aviation Fuel Experiment studies conducted in 2009 and 2011 in which ground-based instruments measured the DC-8's exhaust emissions as the aircraft burned alternative fuels while parked on the ramp at the Palmdale facility. A second phase of ACCESS flights is planned for 2014. It will capitalize on lessons learned from the 2013 flights and include a more extensive set of measurements. The ACCESS study is a joint project involving researchers at Dryden, NASA's Glenn Research Center in Cleveland and NASA's Langley Research Center in Hampton, Va. The Fixed Wing Project within the Fundamental Aeronautics Program of NASA's Aeronautics Research Mission Directorate manages ACCESS. For more information about aeronautics research at NASA, visit: http://www.aeronautics.nasa.gov Contact: Michael BraukusTel: 202-358-1979Email: michael.j.braukus@nasa.gov [Editorial queries for this story should be sent to newswire@enpublishing.co.uk ]

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NASA Begins Flight Research Into Alternate Jet Fuel

NASA's Mars rover Curiosity is on the road to recovery from last week's computer glitch and could be back in action as early as this weekend, mission officials say.

Curiosity went into a protective, minimal-activity "safe mode" last Thursday (Feb. 28) when its handlers swapped the rover over to its backup computer. They made this switch after noticing a problem with the flash memory on Curiosity's primary "A-side" computer.

But the rover's respite may be short-lived. Curiosity came out of safe mode Saturday (March 2) and began using its high-gain antenna again a day later, so the 1-ton robot may soon resume its quest to determine if Mars has ever been able to support microbial life.

"We're out of safe mode and are back with an operable high-gain antenna, which is one of the big steps in the recovery," said Curiosity project manager Richard Cook, of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif. [Curiosity Rover's Latest Amazing Mars Photos]

Cook cautioned, however, that much work remains to be done. Engineers are still configuring the rover's backup "B-side" computer for surface operations, an activity that should take another few days.

And the Curiosity team still isn't sure what caused the A-side glitch in the first place. They hope to turn the A-side computer on again Wednesday (March 6) or so to take a look, Cook said.

"We really can't tell [the cause of the problem] without turning it on and trying to read the memory locations that look like they were corrupted," Cook told SPACE.com.

One possible cause is an impact by a high-energy charged particle called a cosmic ray. Curiosity's gear is radiation-tolerant, but that doesn't mean it's impervious to all such damage.

"We certainly have seen similar types of behavior in other pieces of memory on other missions as well as MSL," Cook said, referencing the official name of the Curiosity rover's $2.5 billion mission, the Mars Science Laboratory.

Cosmic-ray damage is usually transient, he added, so the problem on the A-side may disappear when the computer is cycled back on. Even if the glitch is more permanent, the rover team can probably still "map around it" and bring the A-side back up, giving Curiosity two functional computer systems once again.

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NASA 's Mars Rover Curiosity Recovering from Computer Glitch

NASA's Curiosity rover has powered down to wait out a Mars-bound solar blast, complicating efforts to bring the 1-ton robot back from a computer glitch.

Curiosity's handlers put the rover on standby after the sun unleashed a medium-strength flarein the Red Planet's direction Tuesday (March 5). It's the second recent shutdown for Curiosity, which had just come out of protective "safe mode" Saturday (March 2) as engineers work through an issue with its primary computer system.

"Storm's a-comin'! There's a solar storm heading for Mars. I'm going back to sleep to weather it out," NASA officials wrote on behalf of the rover via Curiosity's Twitter feed today (March 6).

The rover team views the shutdown as merely a precaution, as Curiosity was designed to withstand such solar outbursts, the Associated Press reported. But the move could delay the rover's return to science operations, which had been anticipated as early as this weekend.

Curiosity landed inside Mars' huge Gale Crater last August to determine if the area has ever been capable of supporting microbial life. The robot had been operating pretty much flawlessly on the Red Planet until last Wednesday (Feb. 27), when it failed to send recorded data home to Earth and didn't shift into its daily sleep mode as planned. [Curiosity Rover's Latest Amazing Mars Photos]

The mission team determined that a glitch had affected the flash memory on Curiosity's main, or A-side, computer system. So engineers swapped the rover over to its backup (B-side) computer, which spurred Curiosity to go into safe mode on Thursday (Feb. 28).

Since then, the robot's handlers have been working to configure the B-side computer for surface operations and fix the problem with the A-side, which they think may have been caused by a fast-moving charged particle known as a cosmic ray.

Curiosity has been on the road to recovery. The rover came out of safe mode on Saturday and began using its high-gain antenna again a day later. Mission officials have expressed confidence that engineers will fix or troubleshoot the glitch soon, saying Curiosity may resume science operations as early as this weekend if all continues to go well.

The solar flare may now push that timeline back a bit, however.

NASA officials do not expect Tuesday's solar flare to seriously affect any of the agency's other robotic Mars explorers, such as the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter or Opportunity rover, the Associated Press reported.

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NASA Puts Mars Rover Curiosity on Standby After Solar Flare

NASA engineers used a robotic arm today (March 6) to unpack the first exterior cargo ever delivered to the International Space Station by an American-built commercial supply ship.

A robotics team at NASA Mission Control in Houston remotely controlled the space station's 58-foot (17 meters) Canadarm2 robotic arm to unload two so-called grapple bars from the unpressurized "trunk" of the privately built unmanned Dragon space capsule. The Dragon's trunk is a cylindrical cargo section beneath the spacecraft's re-entry module.

The Dragon spacecraft, built by the private spaceflight company SpaceX, launched to the space station on Friday (March 1) and arrived two days later to deliver about 1,200 pounds (544 kilograms) of supplies to the orbiting lab. The mission is SpaceX's second of 12 commercial cargo deliveries for NASA under a $1.6 billion agreement.

SpaceX launched a demonstration flight to the space station last May, and its first cargo delivery in October. But both of those missions only carried items inside the Dragon's pressurized re-entry capsule, which is accessible to astronauts on the station through a docking hatch. [See photos of Dragon's space station arrival]

Today's robotic arm work marked the first time SpaceX has ever delivered gear meant for the outside of the space station using the Dragon's trunk, company officials have said. SpaceX built the support hardware holding the grapple bars in place on the Dragon capsule, they added.

The six astronauts living aboard the space station unloaded the pressurized cargo section by Monday (March 4), leaving only the grapple bars to be retrieved.

"These bars, which together weigh about 600 pounds [272 kilograms], can be used to remove failed radiators on the stations S1 and P1 truss segments, should that ever be deemed necessary," NASA officials said in a statement.

The grapple bars will be stored in a temporary spot on the International Space Station exterior for now, but will eventually be mounted to a permanent storage point, NASA officials wrote in a statement.

With the Dragon capsule empty, the station crew will soon start loading the capsule with 2,668 pounds (1,210 kilograms) of experiments and unneeded items for the spacecraft's return to Earth on March 25. The Dragon is expected to splash down off Baja California in the Pacific Ocean so it can be retrieved by recovery teams.

Various space agencies are expecting items to return to Earth on board Dragon. For example, stem cells and hair that are currently being used in experiments on the station will be sent down with Dragon for the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency.

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NASA Unpacks 'Trunk' of SpaceX Cargo Capsule

A new NASA project office is taking a close look at what vital technologies the space agency needs to fulfill its deep-space exploration goals, including sending astronauts beyond low-Earth orbit.

Called the Space Technology Mission Directorate (STMD), the new office aims to produce "new inventions, new capabilities and the creation of a pipeline of innovators aimed at serving future national needs," NASA officials said in a statement. The directorate's research and development efforts will take place within NASA facilities, universities and private companies, and they will involve collaborative projects with international partners, agency officials added.

"A robust technology development program is vital to reaching new heights in space and sending American astronauts to new destinations like an asteroid andMars," NASA Administrator Charles Bolden said in a statement last week.

President Barack Obama has directed NASA to work toward launching astronauts to an asteroid by 2025, and then take aim at a manned Mars mission in the 2030s. NASA is developing a new spacecraft, the Orion deep-space capsule, and a giant rocket called the Space Launch System to serve as core vehicles for the ambitious space exploration program.

The first Orion test flight will launch in 2014 and be an unmanned mission. The first Space Launch System test is slated for 2017 and could fly a robotic deep-space flight around the moon.

"A top priority of NASA is to invest in cross-cutting, transformational technologies. We focus on collaboration with industry and academia that advances our nation's space exploration and science goals while maintaining America's competitive edge in the new innovation economy," Bolden added.

The STMD will be headed by NASA associate administrator Michael Gazarik, who previously served as the agency's the director of the Space Technology Program within the Office of the Chief Technologist.

Former deputy director of the Space Technology Program James Reuther will join Gazarik, serving as the STMD's the deputy associate administrator for programs. Dorothy Rasco, previously the business manager for NASA's now retired space shuttle program, will become the directorate's deputy associate administrator for management, NASA officials said.

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NASA Creates Space Technology Office to Aid Future Missions

NASA's Mars rover Curiosity is out of safe mode and back on active status after computer trouble had sidelined the vehicle for nearly a week.

The space agency reported that Curiosity is now running on its backup computer system, known as its B-side. It's been taken out of its minimal-activity safe mode and ready to return to full operation.

"We are making good progress in the recovery," said Mars Science Laboratory Project Manager Richard Cook in a statement.

"One path of progress is evaluating the A-side with intent to recover it as a backup. Also, we need to go through a series of steps with the B-side, such as informing the computer about the state of the rover -- the position of the arm, the position of the mast, that kind of information," he said.

Jim Erickson, Curiosity's deputy project manager, told Computerworld on Monday that engineers watching the rover's telemetry last week noticed certain applications would terminate mid-sequence. The cause, he noted, appears to be a file corruption.

"We are doing multiple things at the same time," said Erickson. "All we know is the vehicle is telling us that there are multiple errors in the memory. We think it's a hardware error of one type or another but the software did not handle it gracefully. We'd like to have our vehicles withstand hardware trouble and continue to function."

Now that NASA's computer specialists have fully switched the rover over onto its redundant, onboard computer system, they are trying to repair the problem on the main system. They also are attempting to shore up the rover's software so it can better withstand hardware glitches.

At this point, NASA engineers are looking to keep Curiosity running on the B-side system, while repairing the A-side so it can be on stand-by as the new backup.

NASA is on a deadline to get the rover fully functional before April 4, when communication with all Mars rovers and orbiters will end for about a month.

A solar conjunction -- when the Sun will be in the path between the Earth and Mars -- is fast approaching and will keep NASA engineers from sending daily instructions to the rover, or from receiving data and images in return.

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NASA Mars rover Curiosity on road to recovery

MOFFETT FIELD, Calif. -- NASA's Ames Research Center and Sustainable Silicon Valley (SSV), Santa Clara, Calif., are partnering to showcase game-changing solutions to regional and global sustainability.

Last fall, NASA and SSV invited researchers, inventors and companies to submit their creative solutions for competitive review by a panel of experts from academia, research, business and venture communities. After evaluating more than 100 entries that addressed water management, energy use, and transportation, judges will announce the most compelling entries from 6 - 8:30 p.m. PST Thursday March 7, 2013 at Microsoft Research Silicon Valley, building 4, Mountain View, Calif.

Speakers include Hon. Chuck Reed, mayor, San Jose, Calif.; Daniel Rasky, director and co-founder, Space Portal at NASA Ames; Nancy E. Pfund, managing partner, Double Bottom Line (DBL) Venture Capital Investors, San Francisco, Calif.; and Josh Henretig, director, Environmental Sustainability, Microsoft Corp., Redmond, Wash. Reporters interested in attending the finalist announcement must send requests for media credentials to Kenneth Heiman, kheiman@sustainablesv.org or call 408-230-2304. Reporters also can register at this website: http://showcasefinalists.eventbrite.com/#

"NASA's work in creating and maintaining sustainable human habitats in space pays off for the American taxpayer when the results of this space research and development are applied to create solutions on our home planet," said Steven Zornetzer, associate director for technology at NASA Ames. "This is technology transfer at its best for it may lead to game-changing solutions here on Earth."

Finalists were judged on creativity, approach and game-changing goals. These goals include developing and implementing multiple elements as part of the solution; mitigation, adaptation or scalable strategies; reasonable risk; and a combination of elements that re-enforce one another to create an ecosystem of solutions that generate a positive environmental and economic impact.

At the Showcase of Solutions, attendees can network with others who share their passion and entrepreneurial spirit for global sustainability. Angel investors and venture capitalists also are expected to attend the event. The showcase will provide an opportunity to exhibit impactful ideas and proposed solutions to humanity's grand challenges that highlight the payoff from investing in space technology and the value of tech transfer.

The winning solutions and their inventors and technologists will be present May 23, 2013, at the SSV WEST Summit/ Planetary Sustainability Showcase at the NASA Ames Conference Center, building 152, located in the NASA Research Park, Moffett Field, Calif. The Showcase is open to the public.

"To speed us towards innovative, feasible solutions that we can implement at real scale, we need to encourage and tap our most creative thinkers and inventors to address our planet's unprecedented challenges," said Marianna Grossman, director of Sustainable Silicon Valley.

For more information about the Showcase of Solutions Finalists Announcement, visit: http://go.nasa.gov/X1DRRC

For more information about the Showcase of Solutions Finalists Announcement Event, visit: http://www.sustainablesv.org/content/finalists-announcement

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NASA Ames Research Center Invites Media to Showcase of Solutions Finalists Announcement

The surface of the planet Mercury has been completely mapped for the first time in history, scientists say.

The closest planet to the sun hasn't received as much scientific attention as some of its more flashy solar system neighbors, such as Mars, butNASA's Messenger spacecraftis helping to close the gap. The probe has been in orbit around Mercury since March 2011, and its team announced Feb. 28 that the spacecraft had finished mapping the planet's surface.

"We can now say we have imaged every square meter of Mercury's surface from orbit," said Messenger principal investigator Sean Solomon of the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory in Laurel, Md. "Admittedly, some regions are in permanent shadow, but we're actually peering into those shadows with our imaging systems."

Before Messenger, less than half the surface had been imaged by NASA'sMariner 10 spacecraft, which made several flybys of Mercury in 1974 and 1975. Messenger is the first probe to orbit the planet. In addition to photographing the unseen parts of Mercury, the spacecraft substantially improved on the resolution of existing maps. [Latest Mercury Photos by NASA's Messenger]

"When we set out with the Messenger mission we didn't know if the planet would look like the other half that was seen in the '70s," Solomon told SPACE.com. "There was a great debate over how important volcanism was in the history of Mercury."

Messenger quickly showed that not only didvolcanism occur during Mercury's past, but it might have been widespread.

The spacecraft also revealed never-before-seen types of terrain on the planet, such as surface pockmarks called hollows that scientists suspect are created when volatile materials sublimate off the surface.

"Unstable material is exposed to the temperatures and space environment, and slowly over thousands, maybe millions, of years, it's lost to Mercury's atmosphere and to space, to create a depression or hollow in an area where there are often many such hollows that etch the terrain," Solomon said.

The $446 million Messenger probe (which stands for MErcury Surface, Space ENvironment, GEochemistry, and Ranging) launched in 2004. It made one flyby of Earth, two flybys of Venus and three flybys of Mercury itself before finally entering orbit around its destination planet in 2011.

The Messenger spacecraft's primary mission ran through March 2012, but it was granted a one-year extension to operate until March 2013. Now the Messenger mission science team is hoping NASA will approve a second mission extension for two more years, that would last until the spacecraft runs out of fuel and crashes into Mercury's surface.

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NASA Spacecraft Makes 1st Complete Map of Planet Mercury

NASA's Curiosity rover, which has been exploring Mars since it landed to much fanfare last August, should be running at full capacity next week, after a memory glitch set the robot back.

On February 28, controllers put the rover into "minimal activity safe mode," when they switched the machine's operations to a backup computer after detecting malfunctions in the primary computer's flash memory.

"We are making good progress in the recovery," Mars Science Laboratory Project Manager Richard Cook, of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, said in a statement late Monday.

The statement said the rover exited safe mode on Saturday and its high gain antenna went back online on Sunday.

Now controllers are evaluating the once-primary "A-side" computer to see if it can be repaired to act as a back up, while performing diagnostics with the "B-side" computer to get it up to full function.

"We need to go through a series of steps with the B-side, such as informing the computer about the state of the rover -- the position of the arm, the position of the mast, that kind of information," Cook said.

The team has yet to determine what caused the memory problems, NASA said, but emphasized that the rover never lost contact with Earth.

The six-wheeled robot, with 10 scientific instruments on board, is the most sophisticated ever sent to another planet.

The $2.5 billion Curiosity mission, which is set to last at least two years, aims to study the Martian environment and to hunt for evidence of water in preparation for a possible future manned mission.

This image released by NASA on February 7, 2013, taken onboard NASA's Mars rover Curiosity, shows a self-portrait of NASA's Mars rover Curiosity. NASA's Curiosity rover, which has been exploring Mars since it landed to much fanfare last August, should be running at full capacity next week, after a memory glitch set the robot back.

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NASA 's Curiosity rover to be back online next week

The Return - Nasa Archive UFOs 2013 More UFO Discovery #39;s Part 2
More UFO Discovery #39;s In The Nasa Archives. Here is my new 2013 UFO film preview. It is part 2 to UFOs In The Nasa Space Archives. If you have not seen part 1, then it is a must. Please visit my channel to view, or do a search to locate it. I hope you enjoy this preview, and the full version will be out shortly. Cheer #39;s Jason.

By: Jason Kirby

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The Return - Nasa Archive UFOs 2013 More UFO Discovery's Part 2 - Video

A small group of engineers at NASA's Ames Research Center, Moffett Field, Calif., have launched a new web-based tool for scientists and engineers to use when designing spacecraft trajectories to interplanetary destinations.

The Trajectory Browser, as the web application is called, can provide an instantaneous assessment of the launch date, time and flight path requirements for future missions to asteroids, comets and planets for the next 25 years.

"The Trajectory Browser website is best used as a first-cut tool to assess the existence of trajectories to small bodies and planets and provide ball-park values on launch date, duration and trajectory requirements," said Cyrus Foster, an aerospace engineer at the NASA Ames Mission Design Center and lead developer of the Trajectory Browser. "The website is flexible enough to provide information about various types of missions such as rendezvous, sample return or flybys and is routinely updated with the latest asteroid and comet discoveries made by astronomers and NASA missions."

After specifying the destination, a user then enters whether the mission will be one-way or round-trip, and include a flyby or rendezvous of the destination. In a similar fashion to internet search engines, the user can press "search" and view a list of suitable trajectories highlighting their detailed requirements, such as launch energy, mission duration, and a visual "travel itinerary" that specifies all the critical events of that trajectory. An animation tool then lets the user follow the relative movements of the spacecraft, Earth and destination from launch to arrival.

For example, users can find a trajectory to rendezvous a spacecraft with the 150-feet in diameter asteroid 2012DA14, which passed close, but safely, by Earth on Friday, Feb. 15, 2013. According to calculations by the Trajectory Browser tool, a spacecraft could be launched to rendezvous with 2012DA14 on Feb. 24, 2014, Feb. 19, 2018 and again on Feb. 22, 2019. To view an example of these trajectories, visit: http://go.nasa.gov/Z5ZSB3

NASA's Near Earth Object Program and the HORIZONS system managed by NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif., acquire asteroid and comet observation data from various sources and generate the trajectories for these asteroids. The Trajectory Browser uses these asteroid trajectories and computes a potential spacecraft trajectory launching from Earth.

In 2016, NASA is scheduled to launch the Origins-Spectral Interpretation-Resource Identification-Security-Regolith Explorer mission or OSIRIS-REx to an asteroid called 1999 RQ36. The mission will mark the first U.S. project to return asteroid samples to Earth for analysis. OSIRIS-REx will be a pathfinder for future spacecraft designed to perform reconnaissance on any newly-discovered threatening objects.

Trajectory Browser requires an HTML5-compatible browser such as Internet Explorer 9, Firefox 3.6+, Safari 3.2+, Chrome 11+ or Opera 10.6+ with Javascript enabled.

To explore the Trajectory Browser website, visit: http://trajbrowser.arc.nasa.gov

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NASA Launches Interactive Website to Design Interplanetary Missions

Planetary flybys are awesome.

As a spacecraft swings around the trailing side of a planet it gains speed and direction, momentum engineers can use to accelerate it to its next destination using little if any fuel for mid-course corrections. Its not a new idea. Gravity assists are how the Voyager probes visited the outer planets with one launch, its how NASA got Apollo 13 home and its how Denis Tito plans to whip a married couple around the far side of Mars within the decade.

And in the mid 1960s, its something NASA considered as a future application for its Apollo hardware.

PHOTOS: Five Canceled NASA Missions

NASAs study of manned flybys came via Bellcomm, a division of AT&T established in 1963 to assist the space agency with research, development, and overall documentation of systems integration. In the mid 1960s, flybys with upgraded and modified Apollo hardware seemed like a natural stepping stone between the Apollo lunar missions and the agencys inevitable next steps of an Earth-orbiting space station, manned Mars landings, and manned missions in orbit around Venus.

It was Bellcomm mathematician A. A. VanderVeen who studied the manned flyby possibilities for NASA.

In 1967, he identified 5 favorable launch opportunities for a Mars flyby between 1978 and 1986. Two windows in 1979 and 1983 were ideal, feasible with then-existing launch technology and had the shortest transit time between planets. VanderVeen found that very little propulsion was needed with these launch windows.

After the initial burn towards Mars, physics would take over and guide the spacecraft to its rendezvous with Mars. Probes would do the hard work. Approaching Mars, the crew would release automated probes, one of which could even land on the surface, collect a sample, and launch to rendezvous with the spacecraft on its way back to Earth. VanderVeen also noted that these dates were perfect: Mars was bound to be NASAs next target after Apollo.

PHOTOS: The Gemini Missions: Paving the Path for Apollo

But weight was a persistent issue in all the Mars flyby scenarios; the propulsion needed to launch a spacecraft into Earth orbit then fire it off to Mars was substantial. VanderVeen found an elegant, and scientifically exciting, solution: add a Venus flyby to the Mars trip. Mars, Earth, and Venus align with the sun five times every 32 years, but Venus and Mars alignments happen more frequently making double (Earth-Venus-Mars-Earth) or even triple (Earth-Venus-Mars-Venus-Earth) flybys a viable mission. Taking advantage of favorable launch windows to Venus also reduced overall launch weight.

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NASA's 'Inspirational' Mars Flyby

Venus gleams over Saturn's enormous shoulder in two stunning new photos captured by NASA's Cassini spacecraft, which is orbiting the ringed planet.

Earth's hellishly hot "sister planet" peeks through Saturn's iconic rings in one image, which Cassini took last November when it was in Saturn's shadow. Because of the vast gulf between the two worlds, the Earth-sizeVenus appears as a bright white dot, just above and to the right of the picture's center.

When it took the photo, Cassini was about 498,000 miles (802,000 kilometers) from Saturn and looking toward the unlit side of the rings from slightly below the ring plane, researchers said. Each pixel in the image covers about 28 miles (44 km).

Cassini captured the other image on Jan. 4, when the probe was approximately 371,000 miles (597,000 km) from Saturn. Venus appears near the top of the photo, sandwiched between Saturn's bright, curving limb and its G ring. The scale in this view is 20 miles (32 km) per pixel.[Gallery: The Rings and Moons of Saturn]

The broad, fuzzy streak lower down is Saturn's E ring, which was generated by the icy plume of particles erupting from geysers on the planet's enigmatic moon Enceladus. The luminous point to the left of the E ring is a distant star, researchers said.

This isn't the first time Cassini has seen a planet from the inner solar system from its vantage point around Saturn. In 2006, the spacecraft snapped an amazing view of Earth as it appeared from the ringed planet. That photo, called "In Saturn's Shadow," is one of the most popular Cassini images taken to date, researchers said.

Though Venus is about the same size as Earth and has a similar rocky composition, conditions on the two planets' surfaces are very different. Astronauts walking around on Venus would experience pressures 100 times greater than those on Earth's surface and temperatures around 870 degrees Fahrenheit (466 degrees Celsius) hot enough to melt lead.

Both of these extremes are a result of Venus' thick, carbon-dioxide-dominated atmosphere, which has created a runaway greenhouse effect on the second planet from the sun.

The $3.2 billion Cassini mission is a joint effort involving NASA, the European Space Agency and the Italian Space Agency. Cassini launched in 1997 and arrived at the Saturn system in 2004. It is now studying the ringed planet and its many moons on an extended mission that runs through at least 2017.

Follow SPACE.com senior writer Mike Wall on Twitter @michaeldwallor SPACE.com @Spacedotcom. We're also on FacebookandGoogle+.

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NASA Spacecraft Photographs Venus as Seen from Saturn

March 4, 2013

Image Caption: Artist's concept of the Suomi NPP satellite in space. Credit: NASA/Goddard Scientific Visualization Studio/Ryan Zuber

NASA

The Suomi National Polar-orbiting Partnership (NPP) satellite, a partnership between NASA and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), was transitioned to NOAA operational organization control Feb. 22, 2013. The transition marks the next step of the mission that supports NASAs Earth science research and NOAAs weather forecasting missions.

Suomi NPP continues the observations of Earth from space that were pioneered by NASAs Earth Observing System. The satellites five instruments are providing scientists with data to extend more than 30 key long-term datasets. These records, which include observations of the ozone layer, land cover, atmospheric temperatures and ice cover, provide critical data for global change science.

Suomi NPP is an important asset for NASA, NOAA, and the nation, said Michael Freilich, director of the Earth Science Division in NASAs Science Mission Directorate in Washington. As a true collaboration in which all partners benefit, Suomi NPP measurements are supporting researchers and weather forecasters alike.

Suomi NPP also collects critical data for our understanding of long-term climate change while increasing our ability to improve weather forecasts in the short term. NOAA meteorologists are incorporating Suomi NPP information into their weather prediction models to produce forecasts and warnings that already are helping emergency responders anticipate, monitor, and react to many types of natural events.

Satellites like Suomi NPP are critical to the National Weather Services mission and improved decision support services, said Louis Uccellini, director of NOAAs National Weather Service. These polar satellites provide an important dataset for the global Earth-observing system and will lead to improved forecasts out to three days in the future and beyond.

The Suomi NPP mission is a bridge between NASAs legacy Earth-observing missions and NOAAs next-generation Joint Polar Satellite System (JPSS). Suomi NPP carries groundbreaking new Earth-observing instruments that JPSS will use operationally. The first satellite in the JPSS series, JPSS-1, is targeted for launch in early 2017.

NASA launched Suomi NPP Oct. 28, 2011, from California. Since then, the JPSS program based at NASAs Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt., Md., has been helping maintain the Suomi NPP instruments in addition to providing the ground system, with NOAA institutional organizations providing operational mission support. The NOAA operations group now assumes responsibility for Suomi NPP.

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Operational Control Of Environmental Satellite Transferred By NASA

The Suomi National Polar-orbiting Partnership (NPP) satellite, a partnership between NASA and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), was transitioned to NOAA operational organization control Feb. 22. The transition marks the next step of the mission that supports NASA's Earth science research and NOAA's weather forecasting missions.

Suomi NPP continues the observations of Earth from space that were pioneered by NASA's Earth Observing System. The satellite's five instruments are providing scientists with data to extend more than 30 key long-term datasets. These records, which include observations of the ozone layer, land cover, atmospheric temperatures and ice cover, provide critical data for global change science.

"Suomi NPP is an important asset for NASA, NOAA, and the nation," said Michael Freilich, director of the Earth Science Division in NASA's Science Mission Directorate in Washington. "As a true collaboration in which all partners benefit, Suomi NPP measurements are supporting researchers and weather forecasters alike."

Suomi NPP also collects critical data for our understanding of long-term climate change while increasing our ability to improve weather forecasts in the short term. NOAA meteorologists are incorporating Suomi NPP information into their weather prediction models to produce forecasts and warnings that already are helping emergency responders anticipate, monitor, and react to many types of natural events.

"Satellites like Suomi NPP are critical to the National Weather Service's mission and improved decision support services," said Louis Uccellini, director of NOAA's National Weather Service. "These polar satellites provide an important dataset for the global Earth-observing system and will lead to improved forecasts out to three days in the future and beyond."

The Suomi NPP mission is a bridge between NASA's legacy Earth-observing missions and NOAA's next-generation Joint Polar Satellite System (JPSS). Suomi NPP carries groundbreaking new Earth-observing instruments that JPSS will use operationally. The first satellite in the JPSS series, JPSS-1, is targeted for launch in early 2017.

NASA launched Suomi NPP Oct. 28, 2011, from California. Since then, the JPSS program based at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt., Md., has been helping maintain the Suomi NPP instruments in addition to providing the ground system, with NOAA institutional organizations providing operational mission support. The NOAA operations group now assumes responsibility for Suomi NPP.

Suomi NPP instruments observe key attributes of the Earth, including measurements of cloud and vegetation cover, ice cover, ocean color, and sea and land surface temperatures. The suite includes the Visible/Infrared Imaging Radiometer Suite (VIIRS); the Cross-track Infrared Sounder (CrIS); the Clouds and Earth Radiant Energy System (CERES); the Advanced Technology Microwave Sounder (ATMS); and the Ozone Mapping and Profiler Suite (OMPS).

"Observations from Suomi NPP are helping to advance science and to increase the accuracy of short-term meteorological predictions," said James Gleason, Suomi NPP project scientist at NASA Goddard. "ATMS data are being used by the National Weather Service in their forecast models. And OMPS data continued over 30 years of ozone hole measurements helping the community put this year's smaller ozone hole in perspective."

Suomi NPP observes Earth's surface twice a day, once in daylight and once at night, flying 512 miles (824 kilometers) high in a polar orbit. The satellite sends its data once an orbit to a ground station in Svalbard, Norway. The information is transferred via fiber optic cable for processing at NOAA's Satellite Operations Facility in Suitland, Md. Data products are archived at the NOAA National Climatic Data Center in Ashville, N.C.

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NASA Transfers Operational Control of Environmental Satellite

A computer problem onboard the Mars rover Curiosity has forced NASA scientists to put the rover into safe mode while they try to bring a backup system online and try to figure out what is wrong with the main computer.

"We are doing multiple things at the same time," Jim Erickson, Curiosity's deputy project manager, told Computerworld. "All we know is the vehicle is telling us that there are multiple errors in the memory ... We think it's a hardware error of one type or another but the software did not handle it gracefully. We'd like to have our vehicles withstand hardware trouble and continue to function."

Erickson explained that last week engineers watching the rover's telemetry noticed certain applications would begin and then terminate mid-sequence. The problem appears to be a file corruption.

Scientists put Curiosity, which landed on Mars last August, into a minimal-activity safe mode last Wednesday. Since then they have been working on three different issues.

They are trying to switch the rover over onto its redundant, onboard computer system, referred to as the B-side. And while trying to repair the problem on the main system, Erickson noted that engineers are also trying to shore up the rover's software so it can better withstand hardware glitches.

"We are bringing the B-side online and getting it ready to conduct science experiments, and conduct all the driving and other activities that we normally do," Erickson said.

He added that NASA should know within two weeks if it will be able to bring the main computer back to full operation.

"I wouldn't say we're concerned but we'll go through the process and find out what happened and go from there," said Erickson. "If we have to stay on the B-side, there will be no change in science capabilities but we'd have only one side to work with and wouldn't have resilience. But we'll take what the reality is."

NASA is on a deadline to get the rover's computer repaired because as of April 4, the agency will not be able to communicate with any of the Mars rovers or orbiters for a month.

Erickson explained that NASA was approaching the solar conjunction, when the Sun will be in the path between the Earth and Mars for about a month. With the Sun in the way, NASA won't be able to send daily instructions to the rover, or receive data and images in return.

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NASA conducts Martian tech support to repair Curiosity

NASA's Cassini spacecraft photographs captured two awesome pictures of Venus as seen from Saturn.

Published: March. 4, 2013 at 4:50 PM

NASA's Cassini spacecraft has captured two stunning new photos of Venus as seen from Saturn. The $3.2 billion Cassini mission is a joint effort among NASA, the European Space Agency and the Italian Space Agency to orbit the ringed planet and its moons, SPACE.com reported. The spacecraft launched in 1997 and arrived in Saturn in 2004. Cassini is due to come back to Earth on 2017.

For this image, in which earth's sister planet is seen through Saturn's iconic rings, Cassini took the photos at about 489,000 miles from Saturn and 880 million miles from Venus. Each pixel in the image covers about 28 miles.

{b:Venus appears as a bright dot shining through Saturn's rings in this image, taken on Nov. 10, 2012, by NASA's Cassini spacecraft. Cassini was about 498,000 miles from the ringed planet at the time. CREDIT: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Space Science Institute}

In this shot, Venus appears between Saturn's incandescent curving limb and its G ring. The scale from this view is 20 miles per pixel.

Venus gleams as a bright dot between Saturn's limb and its G ring near the top of this photo, which NASA's Cassini spacecraft took on Jan. 4, 2013. CREDIT: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Space Science Institute via Space.com

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NASA spacecraft photographs Venus as seen from Saturn [PHOTOS]

NASA's Mars rover Curiosity is on the road to recovery from last week's computer glitch and could be back in action as early as this weekend, mission officials say.

Curiosity went into a protective, minimal-activity "safe mode" last Thursday (Feb. 28) when its handlers swapped the rover over to its backup computer. They made this switch after noticing a problem with the flash memory on Curiosity's primary "A-side" computer.

But the rover's respite may be short-lived. Curiosity came out of safe mode Saturday (March 2) and began using its high-gain antenna again a day later, so the 1-ton robot may soon resume its quest to determine if Mars has ever been able to support microbial life.

"We're out of safe mode and are back with an operable high-gain antenna, which is one of the big steps in the recovery," said Curiosity project manager Richard Cook, of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif. [Curiosity Rover's Latest Amazing Mars Photos]

Cook cautioned, however, that much work remains to be done. Engineers are still configuring the rover's backup "B-side" computer for surface operations, an activity that should take another few days.

And the Curiosity team still isn't sure what caused the A-side glitch in the first place. They hope to turn the A-side computer on again Wednesday (March 6) or so to take a look, Cook said.

"We really can't tell [the cause of the problem] without turning it on and trying to read the memory locations that look like they were corrupted," Cook told SPACE.com.

One possible cause is an impact by a high-energy charged particle called a cosmic ray. Curiosity's gear is radiation-tolerant, but that doesn't mean it's impervious to all such damage.

"We certainly have seen similar types of behavior in other pieces of memory on other missions as well as MSL," Cook said, referencing the official name of the Curiosity rover's $2.5 billion mission, the Mars Science Laboratory.

Cosmic-ray damage is usually transient, he added, so the problem on the A-side may disappear when the computer is cycled back on. Even if the glitch is more permanent, the rover team can probably still "map around it" and bring the A-side back up, giving Curiosity two functional computer systems once again.

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NASA's Mars Rover Curiosity Recovering from Computer Glitch

Minecraft Mod Galacticraft - Building NASA The Wrong Way! Episode 3
Today I am playing some minecraft with a pretty cool mode called galacticraft. In this episode I finally got started on the space craft. I managed to find diamonds, so I could finally mine some titanium ore and build some stuff like the oxygen concentrator and a air fan. I know it #39;s not to much but hey you got to start some were. PS the website will tell you how to instal it except for one part. You will need mod loader. Just do a google search and it will come up. Download it and extractet with with WinRAR. Then when you have the extracted folder go to your minecraft bin folder and open the minecraft rar with WinRAR. Delete the METE thing folder and copy every thing into that folder from the modload extracted folder. Then just follow the directions they provide. My Website Social Media ArcadeBuster: arcadebuster.com Facebook tinyurl.com Twitter: tinyurl.com Skype: yumyumchannel. Mod Galacticraft Download/Main Website http://www.micdoodle8.com

By: YummiestChannelEver

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Minecraft Mod Galacticraft - Building NASA The Wrong Way! Episode 3 - Video

Feature Race NASA Big Bore 2/17/13
This is the main race at Firebird International Raceway East track. The car is the Inde Motorsports Ranch Racing Crossfire SRT6.

By: Justin Stevenson

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Feature Race NASA Big Bore 2/17/13 - Video