NASA is reigniting its mighty moon rocket engine using parts retrieved from museums and displays.

Engineers working this month at the Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Ala., are completing a series of test firings using recovered components from 40-year-old F-1 engines. The 19-foot-tall (5.8 meter) by 12-foot-wide (3.8 meter) Apollo powerhouses launched the space agency's Saturn V rockets on voyages to Earth orbit and to the moon.

Between 1967 and 1973, a total of 65 F-1 engines were launched, five per flight, on 13 Saturn V boosters.

To develop the Space Launch System (SLS), NASA's next generation heavy-lift rocket, engineers are dissecting, refurbishing and re-firing components from the remaining F-1s to gain a better understanding of how the engine was designed and worked. Even four decades later, the F-1 is still the most powerful single-chamber liquid-fueled rocket engine ever developed. [Graphic: Saturn V Moon Rocket Explained]

For these tests, which included a 20-second hot fire on Jan. 10, the team removed a gas generator from an F-1 engine that was stored at Marshall and another in almost pristine condition from the Smithsonian's National Air and Space Museum in Washington, D.C.

From display stand to test stand

"Being able to hold the parts of this massive engine that once took us to the moon, restoring it, and then seeing it come back to life through hot firings and test data has been an amazing experience," Kate Estes, a NASA liquid propulsion systems engineer, said in an agency release.

The team decided to take apart the gas generator, the part of the engine responsible for supplying power to drive the giant F-1's turbopump, because its component parts were small enough to be tested in Marshall's laboratories. The gas generator is often one of the first pieces designed on a new engine because it is a key part for determining the size of the final engine assembly.

Once they had the artifacts-turned-test-samples in hand, Marshall's team used a novel technique called structured light 3D scanning to produce three-dimensional computer-aided design drawings of the gas generator.

"This activity provided us with information for determining how some parts of the engine might be more affordably manufactured using modern techniques," Estes said. "We decided that using modern instrumentation to measure the generator's performance would provide beneficial [data] for NASA and industry."

See the article here:

Blast from the Past: NASA Fires Historic Engine Parts for New Rocket

BT: Isa sa 2 SUV na sinakyan ng mga napatay sa checkpoint sa Quezon, nasa NBI na
Balitanghali is the daily noontime newscast of GMA News TV anchored by Raffy Tima and Pia Arcangel, on Saturday and Sundays by Jun Veneracion and Mariz Umali. It airs Mondays to Fridays at 11:30 AM and on weekends 12:00 PM (PHL Time). For more videos from Balitanghali, visit http://www.gmanetwork.com

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BT: Isa sa 2 SUV na sinakyan ng mga napatay sa checkpoint sa Quezon, nasa NBI na - Video

Furious Fancast #15 - Ron Moore, Fringe, and NASA Coverups
Jason and Jeremy discuss everything from Ron Moore #39;s return to UFO coverups. Tyler and Robbie join later to disuss Jurassic Park 4 - furiousfanboys.com

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Furious Fancast #15 - Ron Moore, Fringe, and NASA Coverups - Video

NASA collection of space vehicles
NASA collection. Very cheap and thrown together but there are 5 sets here and it costs less than $60.

By: LiteracyLabyrinth2

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NASA collection of space vehicles - Video

RC A10 scrapes runway at NASA
My Banana Hobby A10 flying on the NASA Ames runway. got a little too low.

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RC A10 scrapes runway at NASA - Video

The Associated Press Published Monday, Jan. 21, 2013 8:23AM EST

LOS ANGELES -- Opportunity, NASA's other Mars rover, has tooled around the red planet for so long it's easy to forget it's still alive.

Some 8,000 kilometres away from the limelight surrounding Curiosity's every move, Opportunity this week quietly embarks on its tenth year of exploration -- a sweet milestone since it was only tasked to work for three months.

"Opportunity is still going. Go figure," said mission deputy principal investigator Ray Arvidson of Washington University in St. Louis.

True, it's not as snazzy as Curiosity, the most high-tech interplanetary rover ever designed. It awed the world with its landing near the Martian equator five months ago.

After so many years crater-hopping, Opportunity is showing its age: It has an arthritic joint in its robotic arm and it drives mostly backward due to a balky front wheel -- more annoyances than show-stoppers.

For the past several months, it has been parked on a clay-rich hill along the western rim of Endeavour Crater that's unlike any scenery it encountered before. It plans to wrap up at its current spot in the next several months and then drive south where the terrain looks even riper for discoveries.

Long before Curiosity became everybody's favorite rover, Opportunity was the darling.

The six-wheel, solar-powered rover parachuted to Eagle Crater in Mars' southern hemisphere on Jan. 24, 2004, weeks after its twin Spirit landed on the opposite side of the planet.

During the first three months, there were frequent updates about the twin rovers' antics. The world, it seemed, followed every trail, every rock touched and even kept up with Spirit's health scare that it eventually recovered from.

See more here:

NASA's older Mars rover begins 10th year of exploration

High art recently met high tech as NASAs Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO) received an image of the Mona Lisa via laser. Traveling about 240,000 miles (386,000 km), the image was sent to the probe in lunar orbit using a laser beamed from NASAs Next Generation Satellite Laser Ranging (NGSLR) station at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland as a demonstration of lasers as a deep-space communications tool.

Painted by Leonardo da Vinci between 1503 and 1519, the Mona Lisa is one of the most famous images in the world. The enigmatic portrait has been reproduced and parodied countless times over the centuries, so it was a logical choice for the demonstration. It was received by the Lunar Orbiter Laser Altimeter (LOLA) aboard the LRO, which was launched June 18, 2009. The LOLA uses lasers to map the topography of the Moon as the LRO travels in a polar orbit at an altitude of 50 kilometers (31 miles) above the lunar surface.

Artist's concept of the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (Image: NASA)

The LOLA routinely receives laser signals from Earth as NASA tracks its position, and its the only satellite outside of Earth orbit to be tracked this way. For the demonstration, the image of the Mona Lisa was broken into an array of 152 pixels by 200 pixels. These were converted into shades of gray by assigning each a number from zero to 4,095. The laser was fired in pulses with the length of each pulse corresponding to one of the 4,096 numbers, at a rate of 300 bits per second. These were received by the LOLA and reconstructed based on the timing of the pulses.

Once completed, the image was then re-transmitted to Earth by radio telemetry. Turbulence in the Earths atmosphere degraded some of the information, resulting in a spotty version of the famous painting, but the team applied Reed-Solomon coding, which is an error-correction algorithm commonly used in CDs and DVDs, to correct it.

Image as sent through the Earth's atmosphere and after applying the Reed-Solomon error correction (Image: Xiaoli Sun, NASA Goddard)

"This is the first time anyone has achieved one-way laser communication at planetary distances," said LOLA's principal investigator, David Smith of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. "In the near future, this type of simple laser communication might serve as a backup for the radio communication that satellites use. In the more distant future, it may allow communication at higher data rates than present radio links can provide."

This demonstration is only the first step in a more ambitious program. According to the LRO deputy project scientist, Richard Vondrak, "This pathfinding achievement sets the stage for the Lunar Laser Communications Demonstration (LLCD), a high data rate laser-communication demonstrations that will be a central feature of NASA's next moon mission, the Lunar Atmosphere and Dust Environment Explorer (LADEE)."

After LLCD, NASA plans the Laser Communications Relay Demonstration (LCRD), which will be NASA's first long-duration optical communications mission with the aim of developing the system for deep space communications.

The video below outlines the laser transmission operation.

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NASA sends Mona Lisa to the Moon

Scientists with NASA's planet-hunting Kepler spacecraft have revamped the mission's online archive of alien worlds, opening up the database for the entire world to see.

Researchers are now posting all exoplanet sightings by the Kepler observatory into a single, comprehensive website called the "NASA Exoplanet Archive." Instead of going through the long planet confirmation process before making data publicly available, since December of last year, scientists have started shoveling out all the data Kepler collects into a comprehensive list.

"When we make that list, right away it goes to the archive," Kepler mission team member Steve Howell told SPACE.com during the 221st American Astronomical Society meeting in Long Beach, Calif., this month. "So the day we know about the list, the archive knows about the list. And then everybody, including us, can work on that list. But that list is dynamic so if we, or a community person, makes an observation and says, 'Hey, I looked at this planet candidate but it's really an eclipsing binary,' then that entry in the archive will be changed."

The archive has information about the size, orbital period and other metrics of any possible planet discovered and investigated by Kepler.[Gallery: A World of Kepler Planets]

"It's all in real time," Howell said. "The sausage-making process is exposed."

Before the new archive was debuted, astronomers were already doing creative work with the data. One created a visually stunning video of every known Kepler planet candidate 2,299 unconfirmed exoplanets at the time orbiting one central point.

The Kepler teams new "open" attitude toward data release is giving everybody, not just members of the scientific community, a chance to do some hands-on scientific research by building their own experiments, Howell said.

A group of high school students has already taken data from groups of planets observed by Kepler and mapped them against a map of known stars looking for a pattern. Howell doesnt think they'll see much, but he's glad that they have the opportunity to get creative.

"The entire world can help us with this Kepler data," Howell said. "I don't see any downside."

Alien Planet Quiz: Are You an Exoplanet Expert?

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NASA's Alien Planet Archive Now Open to the World

Want to stay on top of all the space news? Follow @universetoday on Twitter

Video caption: Preview of Mars Curiosity Parade Float. Jim Green, Director of the Science Mission Directorate Planetary Systems Division at NASA Headquarters, describes the replica of the Mars Curiosity Rover on the second NASA float in Mondays (Jan 21, 2013) presidential inaugural parade. Parade photos below

Full scale models of NASAs Curiosity Mars rover and the Orion crew capsule are participating in the 2013 Presidential Inaugural Parade on Monday, Jan 21, 2013, in Washington, DC representing NASAs robotic and human spaceflight endeavors.

The fantastically successful Curiosity rover is discovering widespread evidence for the ancient flow of liquid water on Mars.

The Orion multi-purpose capsule will take our astronauts back to the Moon and farther into space than ever.

NASA is the ONLY federal agency asked to be in the inaugural parade and now Curiosity is leading the NASA group with Orion after Curiosity.

Update 530 PM EDT - NASAs 2 floats just passed by a cheering and waving President Obama & VP Biden at the reviewing stand in front of the White House prominently near the front of the parade. See float photos from the parade below

Walking alongside both floats are members of the Curiosity team from NASAs Jet Propulsion Laboratory including Mohawk Guy and several current and former astronauts.

The participating astronauts are Alvin Drew, Serena Aunon, Kate Rubins, Mike Massimino, Lee Morin and Kjell Lindgren, as well as Leland Melvin, NASAs associate administrator for Education, and John Grunsfeld, NASAs associate administrator for Science.

The marching team for Curiosity includes Richard Cook-project manager (from JPL), Bobak Ferdowsi (otherwise known as Mohawk Guy)-flight director (from JPL), Dave Lavery program executive (from NASA Headquarters) , Michael Meyer program Scientist (from NASA Headquarters), Jennifer Trosper-mission manager (from JPL) and Ashwin Vasavada, Deputy Project Scientist (from JPL)

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NASA’s Curiosity and Orion Shine at Presidential Inaugural Parade

LOS ANGELES (AP) Opportunity, NASAs other Mars rover, has tooled around the red planet for so long its easy to forget its still alive.

Some 5,000 miles away from the limelight surrounding Curiositys every move, Opportunity this week quietly embarks on its tenth year of exploration a sweet milestone since it was only tasked to work for three months.

Opportunity is still going. Go figure, said mission deputy principal investigator Ray Arvidson of Washington University in St. Louis.

True, its not as snazzy as Curiosity, the most high-tech interplanetary rover ever designed. It awed the world with its landing near the Martian equator five months ago.

After so many years crater-hopping, Opportunity is showing its age: It has an arthritic joint in its robotic arm and it drives mostly backward due to a balky front wheel more annoyances than show-stoppers.

For the past several months, it has been parked on a clay-rich hill along the western rim of Endeavour Crater thats unlike any scenery it encountered before. It plans to wrap up at its current spot in the next several months and then drive south where the terrain looks even riper for discoveries.

Long before Curiosity became everybodys favorite rover, Opportunity was the darling.

The six-wheel, solar-powered rover parachuted to Eagle Crater in Mars southern hemisphere on Jan. 24, 2004, weeks after its twin Spirit landed on the opposite side of the planet.

During the first three months, there were frequent updates about the twin rovers antics. The world, it seemed, followed every trail, every rock touched and even kept up with Spirits health scare that it eventually recovered from.

Opportunity immediately lived up to its name, touching down in an ancient lakebed brimming with minerals that formed in the presence of water, a key ingredient for life. After grinding into rocks and sifting through dirt, Opportunity made one of the enduring finds on Mars: Signs abound of an ancient environment that was warmer and wetter than todays dusty, cold desert state.

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NASA's older Mars rover notches another milestone

NASA's prolific planet-hunting Kepler space telescope has been placed in a precautionary "safe mode" after engineers noticed a problem with the instrument's orientation mechanism.

The Kepler telescope went into safe mode on Jan. 17 for a planned 10 days, during which time the telescope's reaction wheels spinning devices used by the observatory to maintain its position in space will be rested. The move comes after researchers detected an unexpected increase in the amount of torque needed to rotate one of the wheels, mission officials said.

"Resting the wheels provides an opportunity to redistribute internal lubricant, potentially returning the friction to normal levels," Kepler officials wrote in a Jan. 17 mission update.

Kepler will not make any new science observations for its search for alien planets while in safe mode, team members said.

"Once the 10-day rest period ends, the team will recover the spacecraft from this resting safe mode and return to science operations," Kepler officials wrote. "That is expected to take approximately three days. An update will be posted after the wheel rest operation is complete."[Gallery: A World of Kepler Planets]

When the Kepler spacecraft launched in March 2009, it had four functional reaction wheels three for immediate use, plus one spare. The wheels help the telescope keep its precise aim at more than 150,000 target stars, which it monitors for the presence of orbitingexoplanets.

One of the wheels failed last July. Since the spacecraft needs three functioning reaction wheels to work properly, another failure could potentially end the $600 million Kepler mission.

Kepler detects alien planetsby flagging the telltale brightness dips caused when they cross the face of their parent stars from the instrument's perspective. Kepler generally needs to witness three such "transits" to identify a planetary candidate.

The telescope has already spotted more than 2,700 potential planets, including a number in their host stars' habitable zones that range of distances that could support liquid water on a world's surface. To date, just 105 of these candidates have been confirmed, but mission scientists think at least 90 percent should end up being the real deal.

If the three remaining reaction wheels keep spinning normally and Kepler doesn't suffer any other major issues, it could keep scanning its patch of sky for several more years to come. Last year, NASA announced that it had extended the mission through at least 2016.

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NASA's Planet-Hunting Kepler Telescope Stalled by Glitch

With President Barack Obama taking the oath of office to begin his second term today, it kicks off four more years for NASA to pursue its audacious goal of sending astronauts farther into deep space than ever before.

Two major pieces of NASA's deep-space exploration program full-size replicas of the agency's new Orion space capsule and Mars rover Curiosity will make an appearance during Obama's inaugural parade today (Jan. 21).

NASA's "Mohawk Guy" Bobak Ferdowsi, a Curiosity flight director renowned for his hairstyle, will also march in the parade, and has promiseda new hairdo to mark the event. Several NASA astronauts, including Michael Massimino the agency's most followed space man on Twitter (@Astro_Mike) will appear in the parade, too.

In his first term as president, Obama canceled NASA's moon-oriented Constellation program and directed the space agency to pursue a new vision of deep-space exploration, a program that aims to send the firstmanned mission to an asteroid by 2025. By the mid-2030s, the target is Mars.

Obama unveiled the space exploration vision in April 2010 at NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral, Fla. A year later, NASA's space shuttle program already winding down by the time Obama first took office flew its final missions. In 2012, the iconic winged space planes were delivered to museums across the country. [NASA Photos: Obama's 2nd Inauguration]

At the same time, NASA was busy developing a new spacecraft for deep-space exploration, theOrion space capsule, as well as a giant rocket called the Space Launch System to boost the capsule off the planet. The agency is developing another craft, theSpace Exploration Vehicle, designed to make the trip to a near-Earth asteroid or other deep-space destination.

Here's a look at NASA's human spaceflight projects that will be under way during Obama's second term:

Deep space exploration

Construction has already begun on NASA's first Orion space capsule to fly and will continue throughout this year. That prototype is expected to launch unmanned atop an existing Delta 4 Heavy rocket in 2014 for an initial test. A more ambitious unmanned test flight around the moon is planned for 2017, when an Orion capsule will make an unmanned trip around the moon after launching on the first Space Launch System booster.

The first operational flights of the complete Orion and Space Launch System designs are expected by 2021. By that time, Obama's second term will have been over for several years. [Curiosity Rover Rolls In Inauguration Parade (Video)]

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With Obama Inauguration, NASA's Deep-Space Mission Continues

NASAs Amazing High Definition images of Stars, Nebulas, Galaxys, and Black Holes taken by NASA!
NASA #39;s Amazing High Definition images of Stars, Nebula #39;s, Galaxy s, and Black Holes -- SUBSCRIBE NOW! - Daily Space Global News and Events!!

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NASAs Amazing High Definition images of Stars, Nebulas, Galaxys, and Black Holes taken by NASA! - Video

Photos of UFO deleted by NASA #39;s Website! (2013 Images)
What do you think?

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Photos of UFO deleted by NASA's Website! (2013 Images) - Video

A daring, "Angry Birds"-like NASA mission could bombard a Martian moon with robotic "hedgehog" probes in the next few decades, scientists say.

The space hedgehogs are actually small, spiky, spherical rovers that form part of a novel mission idea called Phobos Surveyor. The rovers would take advantage of the low gravity on the Mars moon Phobos, its sister moon Deimos, or asteroids in the solar system. Engineers have designed the devices to work in concert with a nearby mother ship.

The hedgehogs would work well in the low gravity of the 16-mile-wide (27 kilometers) Phobos, a force 1,000 times weaker than the gravity on Mars itself, where NASA's Curiosity and Opportunity rovers currently explore, said researcher Marco Pavone of Stanford University. Gravity on Mars is about one-third that of the Earth.

"The problem with [conventional] rovers is, in low gravity, you don't have any traction. That means your wheels spin and you do not move," said Pavone, who developed the hedgehog mission concept. [Boldest Mars Missions in History]

Robot hedgehogs in space

Instead of using wheels to move across a planetary surface, however, the hedgehogs would use internal, rotating discs. Plans call for three discs encased in each hedgehog. Each spacecraft would measure about 2 feet (0.6 meters) in diameter, and NASA has already built a prototype version, researchers said.

The three discs inside a hedgehog point in different directions, giving controllers the ability to move the devices with precision, Pavone said. Slightly speeding up the discs can send the hedgehogs tumbling, and a quick spin can make the hedgehog hop to a nearby location, he added.

To get to Phobos, the hedgehogs will potentially hitch a ride inside the proposed Phobos Surveyor, which could be a Discovery-class NASA mission with a cost of about $250 million and a streamlined development schedule to meet its science goals. At best, the Phobos mission could launch in 10 to 20 years, but that assumes the concept is approved and funded.

The exploitation of inertial motion is not entirely new to space exploration, as the Japanese Space Agency's Hayabusa spacecraft pursued a similar idea. That craft released a small lander while above the asteroid Itokawa.

Dubbed MINERVA (for MIcro/Nano Experimental Robot Vehicle for Asteroid), Hayabusa's tiny lander was supposed to bounce on the asteroid using rotating actuators. But it never made it to the surface.

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NASA Eyes 'Hedgehog' Invasion of Mars Moon Phobos

January 19, 2013

Image Caption: The fully integrated spacecraft and science instrument for NASA's Interface Region Imaging Spectrograph (IRIS) mission is seen in a clean room at the Lockheed Martin Space Systems Sunnyvale, Calif. facility. The solar arrays are deployed in the configuration they will assume when in orbit. Credit: Lockheed Martin

NASA

NASAs next Small Explorer (SMEX) mission to study the little-understood lower levels of the suns atmosphere has been fully integrated and final testing is underway.

Scheduled to launch in April 2013, the Interface Region Imaging Spectrograph (IRIS) will make use of high-resolution images, data and advanced computer models to unravel how matter, light, and energy move from the suns 6,000 K (10,240 F / 5,727 C) surface to its million K (1.8 million F / 999,700 C) outer atmosphere, the corona. Such movement ultimately heats the suns atmosphere to temperatures much hotter than the surface, and also powers solar flares and coronal mass ejections, which can have societal and economic impacts on Earth.

This is the first time well be directly observing this region since the 1970s, says Joe Davila, IRIS project scientist at NASAs Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md. Were excited to bring this new set of observations to bear on the continued question of how the corona gets so hot.

A fundamentally mysterious region that helps drive heat into the corona, the lower levels of the atmosphere namely two layers called the chromosphere and the transition region have been notoriously hard to study. IRIS will be able to tease apart whats happening there better than ever before by providing observations to pinpoint physical forces at work near the surface of the sun.

The mission carries a single instrument: an ultraviolet telescope combined with an imaging spectrograph that will both focus on the chromosphere and the transition region. The telescope will see about one percent of the sun at a time and resolve that image to show features on the sun as small as 150 miles (241.4 km) across. The instrument will capture a new image every five to ten seconds, and spectra about every one to two seconds. Spectra will cover temperatures from 4,500 K to 10,000,000 K (7,640 F/4,227 C to 18 million F/10 million C), with images covering temperatures from 4,500 K to 65,000 K (116,500 F/64,730 C).

These unique capabilities will be coupled with state of the art 3-D numerical modeling on supercomputers, such as Pleiades, housed at NASAs Ames Research Center in Moffett Field, Calif. Indeed, recent improvements in computer power to analyze the large amount of data is crucial to why IRIS will provide better information about the region than ever seen before.

The interpretation of the IRIS spectra is a major effort coordinated by the IRIS science team that will utilize the full extent of the power of the most advanced computational resources in the world. It is this new capability, along with development of state of the art codes and numerical models by the University of Oslo that captures the complexities of this region, which make the IRIS mission possible. Without these important elements we would be unable to fully interpret the IRIS spectra, said Alan Title, the IRIS principal investigator at the Advanced Technology Center (ATC) Solar and Astrophysics Laboratory in Palo Alto, Calif.

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NASA's IRIS Spacecraft Has Been Fully Integrated And Final Testing Has Begun

A NASA spacecraft that constantly stares at the sun for signs of solar storms snaps images and videos so detailed that even the latest ultra-high-definition televisions can't keep up.

The spacecraft, called the Solar Dynamics Observatory, is responsible for some of the mostamazing photos of solar flaresand other sun weather events. Its instrumentsrecord images at a whopping resolution of 4,096 by 4,096 pixels, more than four times the resolution an average HD television.

SDO sun images are even recorded in higher definition than the newly released "Ultra-HD TV" machines unveiled at the2013 Consumer Electronics Showcaseearlier this month. While Ultra-HD TVs have about four times the resolution of an average HD TV, the SDO photos are still twice as large as an Ultra-HD screen, NASA officials said in a statement.

"Such detailed pictures show features on the sun that are as small as 200 miles across, helping researchers observe such things as what causes giant eruptions on the sun known as coronal mass ejections (CME) that can travel toward Earth and interfere with our satellites," they explained.

While features 200 miles (322 kilometers) across sound large, the sun itself is 864,938 miles (1.3 million km) in diameter.

NASA's SDO mission launched in February 2010 to record unprecedented views of the sun, solar flares and other space weather events. As of December 2012, the spacecraft had captured more than 100 million images of the sun, about the equivalent of eight hours of TV programming a day for four months, mission managers said.

The SDO spacecraft is one of several space observatories keeping a constant watch on the sun. NASA's twin Stereo spacecraft and the NASA/ESA SOHO spacecraft also provide daily views of the Earth's closest star.

Follow Miriam Kramer on Twitter@mirikrameror SPACE.com@Spacedotcom. We're also onFacebook&Google+.

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Amazing NASA Sun Photos Outshine Ultra HDTVs

NASA Pt1 "Lift-off to Secretcy"
NASA No Actual Science Allowed. "Lift off to Secretcy" reflects nasa not telling truths about space or their missions. This song was a user request. This song is laid-back until the drums kick in then it rides smooth til the end. The end of this song will be the begging of part 2. They might be three parts to this song. Thanks go to my growing fans. I created this song I hold all copyrights. Sorry to my subscribers but the post to my subscribers option grayed out while typing my post to you.

By: 420Akillese

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NASA Pt1 "Lift-off to Secretcy" - Video

While NASA will not be as busy as Obama during the 2013 Presidential Inauguration, it is planning to celebrate the special event with several activites throughout the weekend for those lucky enough to be in Washington D.C. while also providing plenty of opportunities to join in on the fun for those who could not make the trip.

On Friday, between 10 a.m. and 4 p.m. EST, NASA is opening its doors to the public as part of an open house. NASA announced that people can explore their headquarters 300 E St. SW and be a part of panel discussions with NASA officials. Some of the topics that will be discussed include the future of human spaceflight, future technology, current research on the International Space Station as well as the Mars mission and Curiosity rover. There will also be displays located throughout the headquarters detailing NASAs rich history and current projects.

On Saturday, NASA will take part in the National Day of Service on the National Mall between 10 a.m. and 5 p.m. EST. The public will learn more about NASA as well as ways to get involved with the government agency. Astronauts will also be on hand to discuss NASAs role in research and space exploration. The astronauts that will attend the event include Kjell Lindgren and Serena Aunon, between 10 a.m and noon, Lee Morin and Kate Rubins, between 12:30 p.m. and 2:30 p.m. and Mike Massimino and Alvin Drew, between 3 p.m. and 5 p.m.

Later on, NASA has planned a Star Party at the Arlington Planetarium. That event takes place between 5:30 p.m. and 9:30 p.m. EST. The public can gaze at the stars with telescopes while astronauts and NASA leaders will discuss space exploration. If you cant make it to the star party, NASA invites would-be astronomers to submit photos to their Flickr page.

On Monday, Jan. 21, NASA will take part in the inauguration parade with two full-sized replicas of the Curiosity Mars rover and the Orion space capsule. Several NASA officials including the aforementioned astronauts and Bobak Ferdowski, better known as Mohawk Guy, will march in the parade. Mohawk Guy promises a new haircut that will be funand a bit of a surprise from the one he sported during the Curiosity landing on Mars, reports NBC Los Angeles.

Some of the events will be part of an official NASA Live Stream and you can view it below.

Live Video streaming by Ustream

Continue reading here:

NASA Announces Inauguration Weekend Events Including ‘Mohawk Guy’ And Live Stream [VIDEO]

The fully integrated spacecraft and science instrument for NASA's Interface Region Imaging Spectrograph (IRIS) mission is seen in a clean room at the Lockheed Martin Space Systems Sunnyvale, Calif. facility. The solar arrays are deployed in the configuration they will assume when in orbit. Credit: Credit: Lockheed Martin

NASA's next Small Explorer (SMEX) mission to study the little-understood lower levels of the sun's atmosphere has been fully integrated and final testing is underway.

Scheduled to launch in April 2013, the Interface Region Imaging Spectrograph (IRIS) will make use of high-resolution images, data and advanced computer models to unravel how matter, light, and energy move from the sun's 6,000 K (10,240 F / 5,727 C) surface to its million K (1.8 million F / 999,700 C) outer atmosphere, the corona. Such movement ultimately heats the sun's atmosphere to temperatures much hotter than the surface, and also powers solar flares and coronal mass ejections, which can have societal and economic impacts on Earth.

"This is the first time we'll be directly observing this region since the 1970s," says Joe Davila, IRIS project scientist at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md. "We're excited to bring this new set of observations to bear on the continued question of how the corona gets so hot."

A fundamentally mysterious region that helps drive heat into the corona, the lower levels of the atmospherenamely two layers called the chromosphere and the transition regionhave been notoriously hard to study. IRIS will be able to tease apart what's happening there better than ever before by providing observations to pinpoint physical forces at work near the surface of the sun.

The mission carries a single instrument: an ultraviolet telescope combined with an imaging spectrograph that will both focus on the chromosphere and the transition region. The telescope will see about one percent of the sun at a time and resolve that image to show features on the sun as small as 150 miles (241.4 km) across. The instrument will capture a new image every five to ten seconds, and spectra about every one to two seconds. Spectra will cover temperatures from 4,500 K to 10,000,000 K (7,640 F/4,227 C to 18 million F/10 million C), with images covering temperatures from 4,500 K to 65,000 K (116,500 F/64,730 C).

These unique capabilities will be coupled with state of the art 3-D numerical modeling on supercomputers, such as Pleiades, housed at NASA's Ames Research Center in Moffett Field, Calif. Indeed, recent improvements in computer power to analyze the large amount of data is crucial to why IRIS will provide better information about the region than ever seen before.

"The interpretation of the IRIS spectra is a major effort coordinated by the IRIS science team that will utilize the full extent of the power of the most advanced computational resources in the world. It is this new capability, along with development of state of the art codes and numerical models by the University of Oslo that captures the complexities of this region, which make the IRIS mission possible. Without these important elements we would be unable to fully interpret the IRIS spectra," said Alan Title, the IRIS principal investigator at the Advanced Technology Center (ATC) Solar and Astrophysics Laboratory in Palo Alto, Calif.

"NASA Ames is pleased to partner with Lockheed Martin on this exciting mission," said John Marmie, assistant project manager at Ames. "The Mission Operations Center testing with the Observatory and Space/Ground Networks are progressing well, as we prepare to support launch and flight operations. Our daily interface with the IRIS observatory will enable our scientists a means to better understand the solar atmosphere."

The IRIS observatory will launch from Vandenberg Air Force Base, Calif., and will fly in a sun-synchronous polar orbit for continuous solar observations during a two-year mission.

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NASA's IRIS spacecraft is fully integrated