By Tony Hoffman

NASA has released many iPhone apps, most with a specific focus: for example, NASA Television is a viewer for the space agency's own TV channel, ISSLive gives the latest on the International Space Station (ISS), and NASA Space Weather explores solar flares, geomagnetic storms, and the like. NASA App (for iPhone) is the space agency's flagship app, and in that role, it aggregates a wide range of NASA content, including much that isn't found in the other apps. This frequently updated app has well-written news stories, dazzling videos and images, a portal to streamed NASA tv and radio, information on NASA missions present and future, how to visit the various NASA centers, and much more. There's something for everyone, from children and students to seasoned space geeks, in NASA App, and it's an easy pick for Editors' Choice.

Into the Grid Opening the app in portrait mode reveals a grid of 9 squares. The sections are titled Missions; Images; Videos; Tweets; TV & Radio; News & Features; Centers; Features; and Programs. Missions gives information on active and upcoming NASA missions. The first two items are Launch Schedule and Sighting Opportunities. Launch Schedule gives information about upcoming launches by NASA (and SpaceX; the first mission mentioned is that company's Falcon9 ongoing resupply flight to the ISS) and its ISS partners. Sighting Opportunities tells you how to view the brightest satellites/spacecraft (mainly the ISS) from your location.

The Missions are then listed in alphabetical order; tapping one takes you to a page with information about it. They include well-known missions such as the Hubble Space Telescope and more obscure ones like Calipso (Cloud-Aerosol Lidar and Infrared Pathfinder Satellite Observation), a joint U.S./French meteorological mission that studies clouds and aerosols.

Dazzling Images and Video Images offers more than 9,000 beautiful images on a huge range of subjects, from the Hubble Extreme Deep Field view of distant galaxies to the Space Shuttle Endeavour being transported through the streets of Los Angeles. Tapping on an image, and then tapping on the "I" button in the screen's lower left calls up information on the photo. New photos are frequently added.

In the Videos section are nearly 9,000 well-produced and informative video clips, and new ones are frequently added. You can see cool videos showing the latest on the Curiosity Mars mission or ISS, clips of solar flares and other phenomena, and much more. You can mark a video as a Favorite, email the video, or post it to Twitter or Facebook.

The rather cumbersome Tweets section brings up recent tweets from a range of NASAaccounts: @NASA; @NASA_ICE; @NewHorizons2015; NASAGoddard; and many more. You can email the tweets, post them to Facebook, or retweet them. However, when you retweet name of the NASA twitter account disappears, so you have to enter it yourself after the @. Likewise, you can reply to the tweet, but you have to click on a twitter handle within a tweet, click on the Write icon, and compose a tweet from scratch. (Once again, it doesn't automatically pick up the Twitter handle of the NASA account.) It can be used as a normal Twitter client, but it's awkward as such.

TV and Radio lets you access Third Rock, NASA's rock music Internet radio station, or NASA TV, either the primary stream or an alternate, and provides video-out support.

Your Source for Space News To help you keep up on the latest space news, News and Features is a growing repository of more than 3,000 well-written and informative stories, under headings such as "Top Stories" "History and People" "NASA in Your Life" "Station and Shuttle" "Breaking News" "Solar System" and more. You can search News and Features for articles on specific subjects, and individual stories for keywords. You can print stories (via AirPrint, if you have a compatible printer on your Wi-Fi network), post them to Facebook or Twitter, or email them.

Visiting NASA Want to visit the Kennedy Space Center, or a similar NASA facility? Centers lets you plan a trip to a NASA center. It shows a map of the U.S., with each NASA center marked by a red pin, and your location marked in blue. Tapping a pin brings up information on visiting that center, including hours of operation, ticket info, and links to other useful information.

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NASA App (for iPhone)

ScienceDaily (Oct. 29, 2012) NASA's Tropical Rainfall Measuring Mission, or TRMM satellite, can measure rainfall rates and cloud heights in tropical cyclones, and was used to create an image to look into Hurricane Sandy on Oct. 28, 2012. Owen Kelly of NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md. created this image of Hurricane Sandy using TRMM data.

At 2:20 p.m. EDT on Sunday, Oct. 28, Hurricane Sandy was a marginal category 1 hurricane and its eyewall is modest, as TRMM reveals, which gives forecasters and scientists hints about its possible future strength.

The eyewall appeared somewhat compact with its 40 km (24.8 miles) diameter. The eyewall contained only relatively light precipitation, and none of Sandy's eyewall storm cells managed to burst through, or even reach, the tropopause which has about a 10 km (6.2 miles) height at mid-latitudes. Evidence of the weak updrafts in the eyewall comes from the fact that the TRMM radar's reflectivity stayed under 40 dBZ, a commonly cited signal strength at which updrafts can be vigorous enough to form hail and to lift smaller ice particles up through the tropopause and into the stratosphere.

But placed in context, the TRMM-observed properties of Hurricane Sandy's eyewall are evidence of remarkable vigor. Most hurricanes only have well-formed and compact eyewalls at category 3 strength or higher. Sandy was not only barely a category 1 hurricane, but Sandy was also experiencing strong wind shear, Sandy was going over ocean typically too cold to form hurricanes, and Sandy had been limping along as a marginal hurricane for several days.

Kelley said, "With infrared satellite observations used in imagery one can speculate about what the sort of convective (rising air that form the thunderstorms that make up a tropical cyclone) storms are developing under the hurricane's cloud tops, but Sandy was sneaking up the East Coast too far out at sea for land-based radars to provide definitive observations of the rain regions inside of the hurricane's clouds." The radar on the TRMM satellite could provide this missing information during this overflight of Hurricane Sandy.

The TRMM satellite also showed that the super-sized rainband that extended to the west and north of the center did contain vigorous storm cells, as indicated by the red regions of radar reflectivity in excess of 40 dBZ. This rainband is expected to lash the coast well before the hurricane's center make landfall. Even further west, at the upper left corner of the image, one can see two small storm cells. These storm cells are the southern-most tip of the independent weather system that is coming across the United States and that is expected to merge and possibly reinvigorate the remnants of Hurricane Sandy after Sandy makes landfall.

On Oct. 29 at 5 a.m. EDT the National Hurricane Center noted that the center of Hurricane Sandy was located near latitude 35.9 north and longitude 70.5 west. This was about 410 miles east southeast of Washington, D.C. Sandy was moving north at 15 mph and its winds had increased since Oct. 28. Maximum sustained winds are now near 85 mph. Tropical Storm force winds extend almost 500 miles from the center.

At 8 a.m. EDT on Oct. 29, the National Hurricane Center reported tropical-storm-force winds were occurring along the coasts of southern New Jersey Delaware and eastern Virginia and extend as far inland as the central and southern Chesapeake Bay.

Sandy is forecast to make landfall along the southern new jersey coast tonight. However sandy will severely impact the region well before it comes ashore.

TRMM stands for Tropical Rainfall Measuring Mission, and it is a joint mission between NASA and JAXA, the Japan Space Exploration Agency. Some of the questions about hurricanes left unanswered by the TRMM satellite will be explored by the Global Precipitation Measuring (GPM) satellite scheduled for launch in 2014. For more information, visit http://pmm.gsfc.nasa.gov.

Excerpt from:

NASA's TRMM Satellite analyzes Hurricane Sandy in 3-D

CLEVELAND - NASA's Glenn Research Center Director Ray Lugo and NASA Associate Administrator Robert Lightfoot recognized over 500 Glenn employees and contractors for exceptional contributions and achievements in science, technology, engineering, craftsmanship, leadership, bravery and administrative service at the annual Honor and Center Awards Ceremony held earlier this year.

Below are the Honor Award recipients, their hometowns and the award citations from the ceremony program.

Presidential Rank Award of Meritorious Senior Professional: Bruce M. Steinetz, Westlake, for sustained superior accomplishment in management of programs of the U.S. Government and for noteworthy achievement of quality and efficiency in public service.

Early Career Achievement Medal: Vivake M. Asnani, North Olmsted, for exceptional early career contributions advancing the state of the art in surface mobility and terramechanics with significant impact on major NASA missions and programs.

Nikki D. Brown, for professional and personal achievements in excellent procurement support to Glenn Research Center projects and programs.

Lynn A. Capadona, Avon, for exceptional achievements in supporting the NASA research and flight programs as an early career employee.

John J. DeGreen, Lake County, for outstanding engineering contributions to fulfill the mission of the Glenn Research Center.

Stefanie M. Hirt, for significant achievement and team leadership in the development of low-boom supersonic inlet technology.

Equal Employment Opportunity Medal: Denise R. Busch, for outstanding achievement in Equal Employment Opportunity efforts in recruiting and training future leaders.

Lancert E. Foster, Cleveland, for sustained and outstanding contributions to the principles of equal opportunity, diversity and inclusion.

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NASA Glenn Awards Ceremony Honors Workforce Achievements

A prototype version of the Canadian Space Agency's proposed Artemis rover. Credit: Canadian Space Agency

Published: Oct. 29, 2012 at 7:49 PM

OTTAWA, Oct. 29 (UPI) -- The Canadian Space Agency says it's in talks with NASA to launch a rover beyond Earth orbit aboard NASA's huge new deep space rocket.

Canada recently unveiled seven rover prototypes, some of which have been field-tested and have impressed NASA officials, and impressed officials with the U.S. space agency, Gilles Leclerc of the Canadian Space Agency said.

NASA is considering including a rover on an early mission of its space launch system rocket set to become operational in the early 2020s, Leclerc said, noting the discussions between the two agencies are only preliminary given uncertainty about future NASA funding which could impact mission plans.

"I don't want to speak for NASA -- it is touchy -- but there are opportunities for missions around the moon or on the moon," Leclerc, the CSA's director-general of space exploration, said. "You can certainly envisage automatic robotic missions to the moon."

NASA has not discussed any possible SLS missions beyond the first two, a flight in 2017 to send an uncrewed Orion spacecraft into lunar orbit and another potential flight in 2021 to take a crew beyond the moon.

"NASA does not have plans for either [mission] to land on a foreign surface," NASA spokeswoman Rachel Kraft told SPACE.com.

"As we continue to define future mission requirements, NASA anticipates that we will continue to engage in co-operative activities with CSA involving Canadian rovers and associated technologies," Kraft said in a statement.

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Canada, NASA in space rover talks

WASHINGTON, Oct. 29, 2012 /PRNewswire/ --NASA invites its social media followers to a special event with astronaut Joe Acaba from 9 -11:30 a.m. EST Tuesday, Dec. 4. The event will take place in the James E. Webb Memorial Auditorium at NASA Headquarters, 300 E St. SW in Washington.

(Logo: http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20081007/38461LOGO )

Acaba launched to the International Space Station on a Russian Soyuz spacecraft May 15. He spent 123 days aboard the orbiting laboratory as a flight engineer of the Expedition 31 and 32 crews. He returned to Earth Sept. 17 after four months off the planet.

NASA Socials are in-person meetings with people who engage with the agency through Twitter, Facebook, Google+ and other social networks. This NASA Social is an opportunity to meet and speak with Acaba, the people behind NASA's social media accounts and other space-exploration-minded participants.

Registration for the event is open to NASA social media followers and their guests from noon EDT Tuesday, Oct. 30, until 5 p.m. EST Monday, Nov. 5. NASA will select 150 participants by lottery from those who register online. Additional applicants will be placed on a waiting list.

Aboard the space station, Acaba supported the arrival of the first commercial resupply spacecraft, SpaceX's Dragon; an undocking, re-docking and final undocking demonstration of the Russian ISS Progress 47 cargo spacecraft; the first single-day launch-to-docking demonstration of a Progress; the arrival and departure of the third Japanese cargo ship; and served as intra-vehicular crew member for two U.S.-based spacewalks, helping to restore a critical power unit and exchange a faulty camera on the station's robotic arm.

Acaba participated in numerous scientific research experiments and performed regular maintenance and operational tasks aboard the orbiting complex. He also frequently tweeted on his Twitter account, @AstroAcaba, and participated in an #askStation TweetChat.

Acaba also flew aboard space shuttle Discovery in March 2009 during a space station assembly mission, during which he spent almost 13 hours performing two spacewalks.

To join and track the conversation online during the NASA Social, follow the hashtag #NASASocial. For more information on NASA Socials and to register, visit:

http://www.nasa.gov/social

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NASA Hosts DC Social Media Event with Station Astronaut Joe Acaba

The pieces are coming together for NASA's newest spaceship Orion, with its first unmanned launch test scheduled for September 2014.

The Orion space capsule is designed to carry humans farther into the solar system than they've ever been by taking trips to the moon, asteroids and Mars.

It will be the first new spaceship built by NASA since the space shuttle was developed in the 1970s. The space agency is planning to outsource travel to low-Earth orbit, including the International Space Station, to the private space sector, allowing NASA itself to focus on traveling beyond.

"I think having a test flight in '14 is huge people can see it right there," Orion program manager Mark Geyer told SPACE.com in September. "It's a really important goal."

Orion was originally conceived as a next-generation spacecraft, called the Orion Crew Exploration Vehicle, under NASA's now-defunct Constellation program. When that program was cancelled by the Obama administration, the Orion design was carried forward as the Orion Multi-Purpose Crew Vehicle.

The engineering team behind the capsule has weathered political ups and downs, but say they are glad to be approaching flight time for the craft. [Photos: NASA's Orion Spaceship Test Explained]

"It's hard to put in 80 hours a week and then have somebody go, 'I dont want to do that anymore,'" Geyer said. "We kind of went through that two years ago, but fortunately we came out on the other side."

Orion first test flight will be called the Exploration Flight Test 1 (EFT 1), and will include a test of more than half the systems that will appear in the ultimate finished Orion. These include its heat shield, which is a totally novel design made of a special composite material and an ablative coating deigned to burn off as the capsule re-enters Earth's searing atmosphere for the trip home.

EFT 1 will also test the capsule's primary structure design and put its avionics and computer systems through their paces.

However, for this first flight test Orion will ride to space aboard a Delta 4 heavy rocket a proven flight vehicle from ULA (United launch Alliance) that won't be its ultimate booster. Eventually, Orion is planned to launch toward the moon and beyond on NASA's Space Launch System (SLS), a new heavy-lift rocket still under development. The first flight test for Orion and SLS together, called Exploration Mission 1, is slated for 2017.

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New NASA Spaceship Comes Together for 2014 Test Launch

16-10-2012 14:05 Join the NASA JSC co-ops and interns on a journey around the Johnson Space Center. Along the way they highlight manned space flight projects and its future.

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NASA Safari 1 - An Introduction - Video

Artist's concept of the Kepler space telescope. Credit: NASA

Published: Oct. 16, 2012 at 5:03 PM

MOFFET FIELD, Calif., Oct. 16 (UPI) -- Technical problems could keep NASA's Kepler space telescope from its goal of finding Earth-sized planets in habitable zones around other stars, astronomers say.

Launched in 2009, Kepler monitors thousands of stars for dips in brightness, an indication a planet could be passing in front of them. The space telescope needs another four years to complete its exoplanet survey but a critical hardware failure on Kepler this summer has astronomers worried the mission could end at any time, Spaceflight Now reported Tuesday.

One of the spacecraft's four reaction wheels -- spinning masses that control Kepler's orientation in space and keep the telescope locked on to target stars -- stopped July 14 due to increasing friction.

"We have to guide very accurately, and we had four reaction wheels to do this guidance," William Borucki, mission principal investigator at NASA's Ames Research Center in Moffett Field, Calif., said. "One of those was a spare, and we now have lost one of those four wheels ... The guiding is still great, but they've all had over a billion revolutions. If we lose another one, this mission terminates. We cannot track very well with two. We cannot track well enough to find planets."

Engineers will try to ensure Kepler's three active reaction wheels stay warm and operating by alternating their rotation between clockwise and counter-clockwise directions, Borucki said.

"We're trying to understand how to protect those last three wheels," he said. "People have studied these reaction wheels over the years and never came up with a good answer."

The Kepler mission was intended to last three-and-a-half years, but NASA hopes to keep the telescope operational through 2016, the report said.

Continued here:

Glitch could end NASA planet search

The following is a statement about the European Southern Observatory's latest exoplanet discovery from NASA's Science Mission Directorate Associate Administrator, Dr. John Grunsfeld.

"We congratulate the European Southern Observatory team for making this exciting new exoplanet discovery. For astronomers, the search for exoplanets helps us understand our place in the universe and determine whether Earth is unique in supporting life or if it is just one member of a large community of habitable worlds. NASA has several current and future missions that will continue in this search.

"An example is NASA's Kepler mission. It was specifically designed to survey a specific region of our Milky Way galaxy to detect Earth-size and smaller planets in or near the habitable zone -- that region around a star where it is theoretically possible for a planet to maintain liquid water on its surface -- and determine the fraction of the hundreds of billions of stars in our galaxy that might have such planets. Kepler works very differently from HARPS. Rather than detecting the wobble in the host star, Kepler detects the slight dimming of a star when a planet passes in front of it.

"NASA's Hubble and Spitzer space telescopes have contributed to the study of exoplanets. Using their photometric and spectroscopic sensitivity, these space telescopes have made the first steps in characterizing the atmospheres of planets around other stars. They can only do this when the exoplanets pass serendipitously in front of its star, allowing the space telescope to study light that has filtered through the planet's atmosphere.

"NASA's James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) will provide a unique facility that will serve through the next decade as the mainstay for characterization of transiting exoplanets. The main transit studies JWST will be able to undertake are: discovery of unseen planets, determining exoplanet properties like mass, radius, and physical structure, and characterizing exoplanet atmospheres to determine things like their temperature and weather. If there are other planets in the Alpha Centauri system farther from the star, JWST may be able to detect them as well through imaging.

"NASA is also studying two medium-class exoplanet missions in our Explorer program, and in the spring of 2013 will select one of them to enter development for flight later in the decade."

For more information about NASA's missions and programs, visit: http://www.nasa.gov

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NASA Statement On Alpha Centauri Planet Discovery

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. -- Media accreditation is open for activities surrounding space shuttle Atlantis' move to the Kennedy Space Center Visitor Complex in Florida for permanent public display. Atlantis is scheduled to depart the Vehicle Assembly Building (VAB) at NASA's Kennedy Space Center at approximately 7 a.m. EDT on Nov. 2.

The shuttle will embark on a 10-mile journey from the VAB to the visitor complex, stopping along the route for a NASA ceremony at about 9:45 a.m. Following the ceremony, Atlantis will travel to Space Florida's Exploration Park for a viewing opportunity for visitor complex guests before departing for its new home.

Members of the media are invited to cover the ceremony and photograph Atlantis at designated locations throughout the move to Exploration Park. After departing Exploration Park, additional photo locations will be available for media coverage.

Ceremony participants include:

-- NASA Administrator Charles Bolden -- NASA Kennedy Space Center Director Robert Cabana -- Current and former astronauts of Atlantis' final mission, STS-135 -- Chief Operating Officer, Delaware North Companies Parks & Resorts, Kennedy Space Center Visitor Complex, Bill Moore

MEDIA ACCREDITATION

For international journalists, the deadline to apply for credentials is noon, Oct. 22. For U.S. journalists, the application deadline is close of business, Oct. 30.

All media accreditation requests must be submitted online at: https://media.ksc.nasa.gov

For a schedule of Kennedy Space Center Visitor Complex media events and to apply for accreditation for coverage of activities at Exploration Park and the visitor complex, news media should contact Andrea Farmer at afarmer@dncinc.com or Catherine Segar at csegar@dncinc.com.

Kennedy Press Site Office Hours for Atlantis Move Activities Times may be adjusted closer to the event.

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NASA Opens Media Accreditation, Announces Events for Shuttle Atlantis' Final Move

An Atlas V rocket that is to carry the New Horizons spacecraft on a mission to the planet Pluto lifts off from launch pad 41 on Jan. 19, 2006, at the Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Cape Canaveral, Fla.

When New Horizons, the unmanned NASA spacecraft en route to Pluto, was originally green lit in 2001, astronomers thought Pluto only had one moon. It was also still considered a planet.

[VIEW:Mysterious Alien Planets]

A lot has changed since then, and new discoveries could put the spacecraft's mission in jeopardy. Pluto, demoted to "dwarf planet" status, now has five known moons and may even have rings similar to Saturn. Those moons act as "debris generators" and could make New Horizons' approach dangerous, scientists from the project said Tuesday.

"Because our spacecraft is traveling so fastmore than 30,000 miles per houra collision with a single pebble, or even a millimeter-sized grain, could cripple or destroy New Horizons," project scientist Hal Weaver said in a statement.

[READ: Earth-Like Planet Found in Nearest Star System]

Launched in 2006, New Horizons passed Mars in April of that year; Jupiter in 2007; Saturn in 2008; and Uranus last year. It is set to reach Pluto in July, 2015 and will monitor it from nearby before heading out of the solar system.

"We're going into some unknown hazards," Alan Stern, principal investigator of the project, says. "The concerns we have are a lot higher than they were a few years ago."

Stern says the team is planning a "backup trajectory" in case New Horizons' projected path seems littered with debris. Currently, it takes about six and a half hours for a signal from Earth to reach New Horizons; by the time it reaches Pluto, it'll take nine hours.

[READ: Researchers Discover Why Water Exists on the Moon]

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NASA's Pluto-Observing Spacecraft Faces Rough Future

Synopsis - Oct 16, 2012

UAS AOC draft rules - Posted on Oct 16, 2012 New!

General Information

Solicitation Number: NNH13ZUA001L Posted Date: Oct 16, 2012 FedBizOpps Posted Date: Oct 16, 2012 Recovery and Reinvestment Act Action: No Original Response Date: Nov 15, 2012 Current Response Date: Nov 15, 2012 Classification Code: A -- Research and Development NAICS Code: 334511

Contracting Office Address

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

Description

NATIONAL AERONAUTICS AND SPACE ADMINISTRATION

Request for Information - Centennial Challenges Unmanned Aircraft System (UAS) Airspace Operations Challenge, NNH13ZUA001L

AGENCY: National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA).

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NASA Request for Information: Centennial Challenges Unmanned Aircraft System Airspace Operations Challenge

The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) Dryden Flight Research Center has released a solicitation entitled "NASA Announcement of Flight Opportunities (AFO) for Payloads Maturing Crosscutting Technologies that Advance Multiple Future Space Missions to Flight Readiness Status." The current solicitation cycle, AFO #6, provides access to flights on parabolic flights, suborbital Reusable Launch Vehicles (sRLV), and high-altitude balloons.

Applications are due on or before 11:59 PM Eastern Time December 21, 2012, and selections will be announced in February 2013 (target). The solicitation is available by opening the NASA Research Opportunities home page at http://nspires.nasaprs.com , selecting "Solicitations," then selecting "Open Solicitations," and, selecting "NOCT110 Announcement of Flight Opportunities." To go directly to the solicitation page on NSPIRES click here.

NASA's Office of the Chief Technologist (OCT) seeks to mature towards flight readiness status crosscutting technologies that perform relevant environment testing and advance multiple future space missions. To facilitate this goal, NASA is providing access to certain flight opportunities available to the Agency, on a no-exchange-of-funds basis, to entities that have technology payloads meeting specified criteria. The payloads may be exposed to a near-zero or reduced gravity environment by flying on aircraft that provide parabolic flight trajectories and on sRLVs that are potentially capable of flying to altitudes above 100 km. For flight tests that do not require microgravity, but do require the temperature, pressure and atmospheric conditions of high altitudes, balloon flights are available. Refer to https://flightopportunities.nasa.gov/platforms/ for specific information on vehicle and flight characteristics.

This call is open to all individuals and organizations, U.S. and non-U.S. Such organizations may include educational institutions, industry, nonprofit organizations, Federally Funded Research and Development Centers, NASA Centers, the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), other Government agencies, and partnerships between such entities.

Science payloads will not be evaluated under this announcement. Prospective responders with science payloads are encouraged to respond to open solicitations for science from the NASA Science Mission Directorate (SMD) and Human Exploration and Operations Research Mission Directorate (HEOMD).

All applications must be submitted electronically through NSPIRES by an authorized organizational representative (AOR). Potential applicants and proposing organizations are urged to access the electronic proposal system well in advance of the application due date to familiarize themselves with its structure and to enter the requested information. Note that it may require several weeks for non-U.S. organizations to obtain the registrations needed to submit a proposal.

Comments and questions may be sent via e-mail to peer-review-afo@nasaprs.com. Responses to inquiries will be answered by e-mail and may also be included in the Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ) document located on the NSPIRES page associated with the solicitation; anonymity of persons/institutions who submit questions will be preserved.

Visit us on the web: http://flightopportunities.nasa.gov Follow us on Twitter: http://twitter.com/nasafo Subscribe to our mailing list: https://lists.nasa.gov/mailman/listinfo/flightopportunities-news

Please follow SpaceRef on Twitter and Like us on Facebook.

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NASA OCT Announcement of Flight Opportunities #6 Now Open

12-10-2012 09:00 O-type stars are among the most massive and hottest known, pounding their surroundings with intense ultraviolet light and powerful outflows called stellar winds. NASA's Swift and ESA's XMM-Newton X-ray observatories took part in a 2011 campaign to monitor the interaction of two O stars bound together in the same binary system: Cygnus OB2 #9. This video is public domain and can be downloaded at: Like our videos? Subscribe to NASA's Goddard Shorts HD podcast: Or find NASA Goddard Space Flight Center on Facebook: Or find us on Twitter:

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NASA | X-ray Satellites Monitor the Clashing Winds of a Colossal Binary - Video

Iron Man's suit may be the most famous exoskeleton in the world right now, but NASA is giving it some real-life competition with the X1 Robotic Exoskeleton.

It's a wearable robot. Sweet.

The X1 Robotic Exoskeleton looks like a cross between the legs of a Stormtrooper and a Transformer. The suit is a spinoff from NASA's Robonaut 2 humanoid robot project.

The X1 is focused on either helping or hindering a person's legs, depending on its job description. When it's set to inhibit, the X1 resists movement and could be used to help astronauts exercise in space. When it's set to help, it could be used to assist paraplegics and others with lower body injuries with walking.

Four motorized joints and six passive joints give the 57-pound suit a good range of motion. It also gives it some nice Iron Man flavor, minus the propulsion feet.

The X1 is a joint effort from NASA, The Florida Institute for Human and Machine Cognition, and the awesomely named Oceaneering Space Systems.

It's still deep in the research and development phase, but the suit could some day be used both in space and on Earth. I'm also imagining a robotic suit like the one Ripley wears in "Aliens" to move gear and battle nasty creatures. I'm sure this is what NASA had in mind when they started on the X1 project. Somebody is going to have to step up and fight the alien queen.

(Via The Verge)

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NASA exoskeleton suit is half way to Iron Man

Brett Smith for redOrbit.com Your Universe Online

As the Cassini spacecraft hurtles around Saturn along its continuing mission, NASA announced the fifteen-year anniversary of the probes launch this week.

The $3.3-billion mission lifted off the launch pad on October 15, 1997 and has traveled over 3.8 billion miles since flying past Venus twice and Jupiter once en route to entering orbit around the ringed planet in 2004.

The mission has provided a treasure trove of interplanetary data that it has transmitted from the depths of space back to Earth: 444 gigabytes of scientific data and over 300,000 images. The craft carries several instruments, including a radar mapper, an infrared spectrometer, an ultraviolet spectrograph and a cosmic dust analyzer.

Information culled from these instruments has been used in more than 2,500 published journal reports, including descriptions of ice water plumes on Saturns Enceladus, the hydrocarbon-filled lakes of Titan, and a gigantic storm in Saturns atmosphere.

As Cassini conducts the most in-depth survey of a giant planet to date, the spacecraft has been flying the most complex gravity-assisted trajectory ever attempted, said Cassini program manager Robert Mitchell in a statement. Each flyby of Titan, for example, is like threading the eye of the needle. And weve done it 87 times so far, with accuracies generally within about one mile, and all controlled from Earth about one billion miles away.

Mitchell added that 15 years of flight have had their impact on the craft; however Cassini still performs its daily tasks with precision.

Im proud to say Cassini has accomplished all of this every year on-budget, with relatively few health issues, he said. Cassini is entering middle age, with the associated signs of the passage of years, but its doing remarkably well and doesnt require any major surgery.

Cassini performs a series of maneuvers as it hurtles around Saturn. The flight instructions are sent from NASA and take into account the numerous gravitational fields in Cassinis path and its limited fuel supply, 72 pounds of radioactive plutonium.

According to NASA, the 4,700-pound craft still has a long mission ahead as it cruises though middle age. Saturns trip around the sun takes 29.7 Earth years and Cassini will have a front row seat as the gas giants northern hemisphere passes into spring. It will be the first time scientists observe the changing of Saturns seasons from such close range.

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NASA Celebrates Cassini's 15 Year Anniversary

NASA's Commercial Crew Program (CCP) partner Blue Origin has successfully fired the thrust chamber assembly for its new 100,000 pound thrust BE-3 liquid oxygen, liquid hydrogen rocket engine. As part of Blue's Reusable Booster System (RBS), the engines are designed eventually to launch the biconic-shaped Space Vehicle the company is developing.

The test was part of Blue Origin's work supporting its funded Space Act Agreement with NASA during Commercial Crew Development Round 2 (CCDev2). CCDev2 continues to bring spacecraft and launch vehicle designs forward to develop a U.S. commercial crew space transportation capability that ultimately could become available for the government and other customers.

Full Text of Space Act Agreement

"Blue Origin continues to be extremely innovative as it develops a crew-capable vehicle for suborbital and orbital flights," said Ed Mango, CCP manager. "We're thrilled the company's engine test fire was met with success."

The test took place early this month on the E-1 test stand at NASA's Stennis Space Center near Bay St. Louis, Miss. Blue Origin engineers successfully completed the test by powering the thrust chamber to its full power level.

"We are very excited to have demonstrated a new class of high-performance hydrogen engines," said Rob Meyerson, president and program manager of Blue Origin. "Access to the Stennis test facility and its talented operations team was instrumental in conducting full-power testing of this new thrust chamber."

As part of CCDev2, Blue Origin also completed a system requirements review of its spacecraft. During the review, engineers and technical experts representing NASA, the Federal Aviation Administration and the company assessed the spacecraft's ability to meet safety and mission requirements to low-Earth orbit. That review also included results from more than 100 wind tunnel tests of the vehicle's aerodynamic design, stability during flight and cross-range maneuverability.

All of NASA's industry partners, including Blue Origin, continue to meet their established milestones in developing commercial crew transportation capabilities.

While NASA works with U.S. industry partners to develop commercial spaceflight capabilities, the agency also is developing the Orion spacecraft and the Space Launch System (SLS), a crew capsule and heavy-lift rocket to provide an entirely new capability for human exploration. Designed to be flexible for launching spacecraft for crew and cargo missions, SLS and Orion will expand human presence beyond low-Earth orbit and enable new missions of exploration into the solar system.

For more information about NASA's Commercial Crew Program, visit: http://www.nasa.gov/commercialcrew

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NASA Commercial Crew Partner Blue Origin Completes Rocket Engine Thrust Chamber Test

NASA partner United Launch Alliance (ULA) has completed the fifth and final milestone for its Commercial Crew Development Round 2 (CCDev2) agreement with the agency's Commercial Crew Program.

Full text of Space Act Agreement

The Hazard, System Safety and Probabilistic Risk Assessment detailed how ULA's Atlas V rocket launch system hardware would ensure crew safety during launch and ascent.

"The ULA team did an outstanding job outlining how it plans to integrate its launch vehicle with completely different spacecraft designs," said Ed Mango, NASA's Commercial Crew Program manager. "We commend ULA for taking on the challenge of human spaceflight, and we look forward to learning more about their innovative and cost-saving solutions as we continue to move forward in developing a crew transportation capability for America."

During the year-long unfunded partnership, five reviews by technical experts from NASA and ULA assessed the company's design implementation plans, detailed system and sub-system analysis, qualification, certification and flight data.

"This has been a tremendous team effort between NASA, ULA and our commercial crew partners and we have made a great deal of progress toward safe, affordable human spaceflight," said George Sowers, ULA's vice president of human launch services.

As a follow on to CCDev2, NASA recently announced funded partnerships for the agency's Commercial Crew Integrated Capability (CCiCap) initiative. Two of the three recipients, The Boeing Company and Sierra Nevada Corp. (SNC), have selected ULA's Atlas V rocket as their launch vehicle.

"This baseline will be used by both Boeing and SNC as they proceed into the CCiCap phase, providing them with the confidence that the flight-proven Atlas V will be ready to safely, reliably and cost-effectively launch," said Sowers.

With the completion of the CCDev2 milestones, ULA establishes a technical foundation for potentially certifying its Atlas V rocket for crewed missions. It also marks the development of the design criteria for the rocket's emergency detection system, which would allow crew members to escape if something were to go wrong with either the launch vehicle or spacecraft. In addition, ULA established requirements for its dual-engine Centaur configuration and selected the design approaches it would take for accommodating a spacecraft and its crew at the company's launch facility in Florida, Space Launch Complex 41 on Cape Canaveral Air Force Station.

All of NASA's industry partners, including ULA, continue to meet their established milestones in developing commercial crew transportation capabilities.

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NASA and United Launch Alliance Complete Space Act Agreement

The days of big government funding of the space program are gone. At the end of World War II, a new era of competition between the United States and the Soviet Union began. Out of this Cold War came the Space Race. Each side was eager to prove its technological dominance by being the first to put a man on the moon. On July 20, 1969, Apollo 11 successfully placed two astronauts on the moon, giving the United States the edge in the Space Race.

Winning the Space Race wasn't cheap. The year of 1966 marked the largest space expenditure in government history with nearly 4.5% of U.S. government spending committed to NASA. From 1964 to 1967, more than 3% was committed to winning the Space Race.

Since the days of the Cold War, government funding of NASA has slowly declined. The 2012 projections call for only 0.5% of spending to go to NASA. Numerous missions were canceled because of the falling budget since the Cold War:

Pluto Kuiper ExpressThe Pluto Kuiper Express was a spacecraft that was planned for launch in 2004. It was slated to arrive at Pluto in 2012. The goal of the mission was to study the Kuiper Belt that sat beyond Neptune. The price tag in 2000 was $350 million. This cost was too steep for Congress to stomach. In 2006, plans to explore Pluto were again impacted when its status as a planet was removed. However, later that year NASA launched a spacecraft that will reach Pluto in 2015.

Mars Telecommunication OrbiterIn 2009, to service its growing population of rovers and other planned science vehicles, NASA was to launch an orbiter to arrive in 2010 called the Mars Telecommunication Orbiter. Its primary duty was to provide a better means of communication between Mars and Earth. Think of it as an upgrade to the planet's Wi-Fi system at a cost of $500 million. This project was canceled in 2005 because NASA shifted priorities. No longer was the anticipated volume of data enough to justify the high cost.

Comet Rendezvous and Asteroid FlybyThis project had big goals. This spacecraft, set to launch in 1995, was going to perform an asteroid flyby, but it had the loftier goal of piggybacking on an asteroid and firing a sensor into its core. The project was canceled in 1992 as a result of congressional funding cuts. Later, NASA realized some of the goals of this mission with its Stardust and Deep Impact missions.

ExoMars MissionThe ExoMars Mission was to be a collaboration between NASA and the European Space Agency that would have landed a mobile scientific platform on Mars. The craft was supposed to then drill deep into the subsurface of Mars and analyze those samples. Scientists know that because of the hostile environment of the planet, proving that life once existed on Mars would require drilling into the planet where erosion hasn't had an effect. The platform was to land on Mars between 2016 and 2018. According to Space.com, the United States will likely tell the ESA that it can no longer provide a launch vehicle for this mission due to budget cuts.

The MoonIn 2003, President George W. Bush laid out a vision to return human beings to the moon by 2020. In 2010, President Obama shifted the vision from landing astronauts on the moon to developing lower-cost vehicles that could act as space taxis. This vision included provisions to incentivize NASA and private companies to develop lower-cost vehicles to reach space. This emphasis came in the wake of the high-dollar space shuttle program that proved to be more costly and less versatile than originally planned.

The Bottom LineThe biggest of NASA's accomplishments and its failures are well known. Who could forget the "one small step for man" event or the Challenger and Columbia disasters? Opponents of the nation's space policy argue that the space program has gone backwards. Michio Kaku, professor of theoretical physics at the City University of New York, argues that NASA's priorities are in desperate need of a new vision.

Priorities are often dictated by money. In a global economy where there is little room for discretionary spending, funding for space exploration has been put on hold around the world.

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5 NASA Missions You Didn't Know Were Canceled

NASA Deputy Administrator Lori Garver, second from left, gets a tour Monday of the progress on the Mars Atmosphere and Volatile Evolution mission at Lockheed Martin Space Systems in Waterton Canyon. The mission is to launch in fall 2013. (Kristin Leigh Painter, The Denver Post)

NASA Deputy Administrator Lori Garver visited Lockheed Martin Space Systems in Jefferson County on Monday for a progress update on the next mission to Mars Mars Atmosphere and Volatile Evolution, a.k.a. MAVEN as well as the heat shield for Orion, the next human-carrying space mission.

"These are two of our prized missions," said Garver, a Colorado College graduate who is NASA's second in command. "(MAVEN) will allow us to continue to 'follow the water.' "

In addition to designing and building the MAVEN spacecraft, Lockheed Martin will operate mission control following its planned November 2013 launch.

Garver and her team suited up and toured the cleanroom where the orbiter is being assembled. Following a briefing by the team, NASA officials found the project to be on schedule and on budget.

MAVEN is what industry insiders call an orbiter, not a lander. The solar-powered spacecraft won't have a dramatic surface landing like Curiosity but will remain in the Red Planet's orbit while studying its atmosphere.

Scientists believe that Mars was possibly once habitable but that the sun stripped away 99 percent of its atmosphere, leaving a cold, dusty environment. MAVEN will be loaded with scientific instruments to measure the compositional change over a two-year period.

Colorado is also home to the mission's principal investigator, Bruce Jakosky, from the University of Colorado at Boulder. Between the university and Lockheed Martin, there are about 175 full-time jobs dedicated to MAVEN in Colorado.

"Those are jobs all the way from high-tech down to undergraduates," said Nick Schnei-der, MAVEN's ultraviolet-spectrometer lead at CU.

With future budgetary fears for NASA swirling, Garver outlined the agency's major priorities at a news conference Monday morning. No. 1, Garver said, is the Space Launch System deep-space missions which Orion falls under.

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NASA deputy administrator Lori Garver tours Lockheed Martin in Denver