PASADENA, Calif. -- With an eye toward breaking Russias monopoly on flying crew to the international space station by 2017, NASA has launched a two-stage certification process aimed at ensuring commercial passenger spaceships currently under development will meet the agencys safety standards, schedule and mission requirements.

NASA expects to award multiple firms a Certification Products Contract (CPC), each of which will run for 15 months and be worth up to $10 million. The program dovetails with the agencys ongoing partnerships with Boeing, Space Exploration Technologies Corp. (SpaceX) and Sierra Nevada Corp., to develop privately owned space transportation systems capable of flying astronauts to the space station.

If there are other companies who can demonstrate that they can indeed meet the requirements of the request for proposals, which is that they can develop a system and have already started to do that to a certain point that is integrated, then were certainly willing and very open to anybody to put in a proposal, Commercial Crew Program manager Ed Mango told Space News at the AIAA Space 2012 conference in Pasadena, Calif.

CPCs first phase is scheduled to begin in February and run through May 30, 2014. The timing is intended to influence commercial spaceship design and operations plans early enough to meet NASAs space station mission requirements and minimize potentially costly changes and schedule delays later in the development process.

After three rounds of Space Act Agreements that leveraged U.S. government funding with private investment to stimulate development of passenger spaceships, NASA is shifting to fixed-priced, Federal Acquisition Regulation (FAR)-based awards for the CPC effort. The first buy will be for data products related to an end-to-end Crew Transportation System (CTS) for an ISS design reference mission, NASA wrote in its Sept. 12 solicitation. [Now Boarding: 10 Private Spaceships Coming Soon]

That includes alternative standards, hazard reports, a verification and validation plan and a certification plan. Phase 2 includes final development, test and verification activities, including at least one and possibly more demonstration missions to the space station.

The government expects that only Phase 1 contractors will be capable of successfully competing for Phase 2, NASA wrote.

NASA intends to run its ongoing, 21-month, $1.1 billion Commercial Crew Integrated Capability (CCiCap) projects with Boeing, SpaceX and Sierra Nevada separately from any awards the companies may win under the Certification Products Contract.

They can work in conjunction if folks want to do that, but we, NASA, will keep those separate because one is for public purpose and one is for NASA purpose, Mango said.

The partners themselves, whomever would like to propose for that, are really going to end up making a system that can meet multiple customers hopefully, and if they would like to make one of those customers NASA then we are now telling them through CPC, Heres the requirements you gotta meet. How are you going to meet them? And if you cant meet them, lets talk about that and lets get to a baseline that we can both agree to, Mango said.

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NASA Launches Private Space Taxi Certification Program

HOUSTON — The NASA team behind a prototype moon lander that crashed in a test flight last month is pushing forward to build a new-and-improved replacement.

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NASA Building New Moon Lander Prototype After Fiery Crash

Published: Sept. 13, 2012 at 4:42 PM

GREENBELT, Md., Sept. 13 (UPI) -- NASA has announced a competition to select the best user-submitted pictures of extreme weather to display on its mission websites.

The best pictures of thunderstorms, tornadoes and other extreme weather condition will be featured on the NASA Precipitation Measurement Missions websites at pmm.nasa.gov and http://www.nasa.gov/GPM, the space agency said.

Images should be in JPEG (.jpg) format in as high a resolution as possible with as much accompanying data as the user is comfortable providing, NASA said, including possibly name, affiliation (school, community group, etc.), location where the photo was taken and any other interesting details about the photo.

NASA is reminding entrants to be safe and not take extreme chances when shooting extreme weather.

Submissions of photos, which can be from any time period, will be accepted through Sept. 18.

Submissions can be made at the competition website, http://www.flickr.com/groups/gpm-extreme-weather/.

NASA's Global Precipitation Measurement mission is an international satellite mission that studies Earth's water and energy cycles.

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NASA seeks extreme weather photographs

by Ledyard King, Gannett Washington Bureau

WASHINGTON -- A top NASA official told lawmakers Wednesday the agency is on track with its next crewed mission into deep space: a trip to an asteroid and then to Mars.

NASA and its team of private contractors are "making excellent progress" toward launching an unmanned test flight in 2017 in preparation for the real mission, Dan Dumbacher, NASA's deputy associate administrator for Exploration Systems Development, told members of a House Science, Space and Technology subcommittee.

Tests measuring water impact, acoustics, vibrations and parachute landings of the Orion crew vehicle are either under way or nearly complete, and the manufacturing of a "state-of-the-art" heat shield has begun, he said. Design work is underway on the $30 billion "heavy lift" rocket known as the Space Launch System that will carry Orion, Dumbacher said.

His comments Wednesday came nearly a year after NASA unveiled the design of the rocket, which will be longer than a football field and is billed as the most powerful U.S. rocket since the Saturn V that took Apollo astronauts to the moon in the late 1960s and early 1970s.

If the time line holds, a manned test flight of the Space Launch System and Orion capsule will take place in 2021. If that's successful, an asteroid landing would be feasible by 2025, followed by a landing on Mars sometime in the 2030s.

A 20-year wait to reach Earth's neighbor sounds agonizingly distant given the successful Mars landing earlier this year by Curiosity, a car-sized science lab currently roving the Martian surface for clues to life.

But space exploration remains delicate and expensive, and NASA has had to navigate the priorities of changing administrations. President Barack Obama called for the Mars mission after scrapping a moon mission sought by President George W. Bush.

Even if the engineering goes well, there's a question of money. At a time when Congress is contemplating deep cuts in discretionary programs such as space exploration, NASA might not have the budget it needs over time to sustain the program as currently designed.

The project's requested fiscal 2013 budget alone is nearly $2.8 billion: $969 million for Orion, $1.3 billion for the Space Launch System, and $405 million for Kennedy Space Center to prepare for the eventual launch.

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NASA: Manned Mars mission still on track

PASADENA, California (Reuters) - The Mars rover Curiosity was due to wrap up an exhaustive, weeks-long instrument check on Thursday, clearing the way for its first lengthy drive to determine whether the Red Planet has ever been hospitable to life, NASA officials said. The six-wheeled, nuclear-powered rover landed five weeks ago inside a giant impact basin called Gale Crater, near the Martian ...

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NASA's Mars rover ready to "drive, drive, drive"

12-09-2012 15:03 Fifty years ago, President John Kennedy challenged us to go to the moon within the decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard. As we remember Neil Armstrong this week -- the man who, with a single step realized the hopes of a president, this nation and the world -- we are recognizing the extraordinary achievements of the past five decades achieved by our nation's space agency and where the passion to explore will lead us in the future. President Barack Obama has set NASA on course toward an asteroid and to send humans to Mars within the next two decades. This goal is not without notable challenges, but using the knowledge, expertise and American ingenuity that has been the trademark of NASA scientists and engineers for the last half-century, NASA continues to make possible that which is seemingly impossible. At 3:00 pm EDT on Wednesday, September 12, NASA astronauts, scientists and engineers held a Google+ Hangout to talk about NASA's rich history of innovation and ingenuity and talk about NASA's future goals for scientific discovery and human spaceflight. During the event, we'll be joined by: - Dan Dumbacher, Deputy Associate Administrator for Exploration Systems Development in NASA's Human Exploration and Operations Mission Directorate. He is the former Director of Engineering at NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center. Previously, he was the deputy director of safety and mission assurance at Marshall. - Ron Garan, astronaut who ...

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50 Years Later: NASA Discusses Using Innovation and Ingenuity to do Big Things - Video

Overnight, tropical depression 14 (TD14) gained enough intensity to earn the name Nadine, the 14th tropical storm of the 2012 Atlantic hurricane season. Our tropical weather expert, Brian McNoldy says he could only find two others years in 160 years of records in which the 14th storm formed sooner: 1936 and 2011.

Nadine is on a projected path that threatens no land area according to the National Hurricane Center, but a NASA field campaign is taking full advantage of this storm to get deeper insight into how hurricanes develop and intensify.

Flight path of NASA unmanned aircraft and its position over then tropical depression 14 (now Nadine) as of 5:30 p.m. EDT Tuesday. Its altitude at the time was 60,300 feet. (NASA)

Related: From tropical disturbance to hurricane: To be or not to be?

On Tuesday, NASA sent an unmanned Global Hawk into TD14/Nadine on a 26 hour mission to sample the storms environment. It is the longest continuous period a storm has ever been investigated, considerably longer than the capabilities of manned Air Force Hurricane Hunter planes. Climate Centrals Andrew Freedman put it this way: To put that [26 hour flight] in further perspective, the longest regularly scheduled passenger flight is between Singapore and Newark, N.J., which clocks in at a comparatively paltry 18 hours and 55 minutes.

One of two Global Hawks NASA is using to investigate tropical weather systems (NASA) The drone that gazed down on Nadine is one of two Global Hawks NASA will dispatch from Wallops Island, Va. to collect data on tropical systems through early October and again in 2013 and 2014.

The planes are operated from ground control stations at Wallops and Dryden Flight Research Center at Edwards Air Force Base, Calif. The mission is formally known as the Hurricane and Severe Storm Sentinel (HS3).

NASA video overview of HS3

Reaching altitudes as high as 60,000 feet, the Hawks can fly above the highest-penetrating storms, while its suite of cutting-edge instruments can sense the air all the way down to the ocean surface.

Link: An interactive view of the Hawk aircraft

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NASA drone spies on tropical storm Nadine

A NASA jumbo jet used to ferry space shuttles around the country has arrived in Florida, where for the last time it'll be paired with one of the winged spacecraft for a transcontinental trip.

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NASA Jumbo Jet Arrives in Fla. for Final Space Shuttle Ferry Flight

September 11, 2012

Image Caption: NASA's free "Earth-Now" app, now available for Android as well as iPhone, immerses cyber explorers in dazzling visualizations of near-real-time global climate data from NASA's fleet of Earth science satellites, bringing a world of ever-changing climate data to your fingertips. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech

One of the top iPhone education apps in the iTunes store is now available for Android. The free NASA Earth Now Android app immerses cyber explorers in dazzling visualizations of near-real-time global climate data from NASAs fleet of Earth science satellites, bringing a world of ever-changing climate data to users fingertips.

Available at http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/apps, Earth Now displays data on many of the key vital signs of our planet that NASA satellites track. The data, displayed on your smart phone in 3-D, include current surface temperature, carbon dioxide levels and global sea level.

The regularly updated data are displayed as color maps projected over a 3-D Earth model that can be rotated by a single finger stroke, or zoomed in and out by the pinch or spread of two fingers. Color-coded legends indicate the relative strength or weakness of environmental conditions. Descriptions provide background information on each data set.

Android users now have a new resource for accessing up-to-date information on Earths changing climate, said Michael Greene, manager, public engagement strategy at NASAs Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif. Since its debut in February 2012, the iPhone version of Earth Now has been downloaded nearly 250,000 times. Additional NASA Earth science data sets will be added in the future.

Earth Now is closely integrated with NASAs Webby Award-winning Global Climate Change website, http://climate.nasa.gov, which is devoted to educating the public about Earths changing climate, providing easy-to-understand information about the causes and effects of climate change, and information about how NASA studies it. The app was developed by JPLs Earth Science Communications and Visualization Technology Applications and Development Teams, with support from NASA Headquarters.

For more information on NASAs Earth Science Program, visit: http://www.nasa.gov/topics/earth. For a comprehensive list of NASA apps and other tools to connect and collaborate, visit: http://www.nasa.gov/connect.

JPL is a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena.

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NASA's New App 'Earth Now' Available For Android

A NASA satellite captured this image of a smoke plume rising from Manhattan on the morning of Sept. 11, 2001, shortly after two planes crashed into the World Trade Center. NASA re-released the photo today in memory of the victims of the terrorist attacks that rocked New York City and the United States.

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Haunting NASA Photo Shows NYC From Space on 9/11

Tropical Depression 14 formed earlier today (Sept. 11) out over the Atlantic Ocean, and NASA has one of its unmanned Global Hawk drones in the air to investigate the burgeoning storm.

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NASA Drones Investigating Tropical Depression 14

NASA’s giant crawler transporter that carried the Apollo missions and the Space Shuttles to the launch pad is getting an upgrade. In service since the mid-1960s, the 2,495 tonne (2,750 ton) vehicle is receiving new engines and other improvements that will allow it to carry the future Space Launch System (SLS) rockets due to enter service in 2017... Continue Reading NASA’s giant crawler ...

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NASA’s giant crawler transporter gets an overhaul

"We will be putting the arm through a range of motions and placing it at important 'teach points' that were established during Earth testing, such as the positions for putting sample material into the inlet ports for analytical instruments," said Daniel Limonadi of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Pasadena, California

"These activities are important to get a better understanding for how the arm functions after the long cruise to Mars and in the different temperature and gravity of Mars, compared to earlier testing on Earth."

Since the Mars Science Laboratory (MSL) spacecraft placed Curiosity inside Mars' Gale Crater on Aug. 5 the rover has driven a total of 358 feet (109 meters).

The drives have brought it about one-fourth of the way from the landing site, named Bradbury Landing, to a location selected as the mission's first major science destination, Glenelg.

"We knew at some point we were going to need to stop and take a week or so for these characterization activities," said Michael Watkins, JPL's Curiosity mission manager.

"For these checkouts, we need to turn to a particular angle in relation to the sun and on flat ground. We could see before the latest drive that this looked like a perfect spot to start these activities."

The work at the current location will prepare Curiosity and the team for using the arm to place two of the science instruments onto rock and soil targets.

In addition, the activities represent the first steps in preparing to scoop soil, drill into rocks, process collected samples and deliver samples into analytical instruments.

Checkouts in the next several days will include using the turret's Mars Hand Lens Imager to observe its calibration target and the Canadian-built Alpha Particle X-Ray Spectrometer to read what chemical elements are present in the instrument's calibration target.

"We're still learning how to use the rover. It's such a complex machine -- the learning curve is steep," said JPL's Joy Crisp, deputy project scientist for the MSL Project, which built and operates Curiosity.

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NASA's Curiosity rover takes self-portrait from Mars

September 9, 2012

Image Credit: NASA/Tony Landis

Brett Smith for redOrbit.com Your Universe Online

NASA has launched the part of its Hurricane and Severe Storm Sentinel (HS3) mission designed to study hurricanes in the field this week with the programs first flight of an unmanned Global Hawk aircraft over Hurricane Leslie in the Atlantic Ocean.

The research drone took off from NASAs Dryden Flight Research Center at Edwards Air Force Base in California Thursday and landed at the federal agencys Wallops Flight Facility on Wallops Island, Va., on Friday after spending 10 hours in the air collecting data on the Category 1 storm.

Last weeks flight is the first of two scheduled flights for the program this month. The first Global Hawk carried a payload of instruments dedicated to measuring the environment during the storm.

The primary objective of the environmental Global Hawk is to describe the interaction of tropical disturbances and cyclones with the hot, dry, and dusty air that moves westward off the Saharan desert and appears to affect the ability of storms to form and intensify, said HS3 mission principal investigator Scott Braun in a NASA statement.

As the plane approached and flew over the storm, it measured cloud structure, temperature, water vapor vertical profile, cloud properties, and particulate matter such as dust and sea salt. Once the craft was over the storm, it ejected small sensors parachuted down through the storm to record winds, temperature and humidity.

A second Global Hawk that takes flight in two weeks will focus on flying over a developing or established storm and looking and the internal mechanics that make it tick by measuring eyewall and rain-band winds and precipitation using Doppler radar.

Instruments on the over-storm Global Hawk will examine the role of deep thunderstorm systems in hurricane intensity change, particularly to detect changes in low-level wind fields in the vicinity of these thunderstorms, said Braun.

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NASA Flies Global Hawk Over Hurricane Leslie

PASADENA, Calif. -- NASA's Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer (WISE) mission has led to a bonanza of newfound supermassive black holes and extreme galaxies called hot DOGs, or dust-obscured galaxies.

Images from the telescope have revealed millions of dusty black hole candidates across the universe and about 1,000 even dustier objects thought to be among the brightest galaxies ever found. These powerful galaxies, which burn brightly with infrared light, are nicknamed hot DOGs.

"WISE has exposed a menagerie of hidden objects," said Hashima Hasan, WISE program scientist at NASA Headquarters in Washington. "We've found an asteroid dancing ahead of Earth in its orbit, the coldest star-like orbs known and now, supermassive black holes and galaxies hiding behind cloaks of dust."

WISE scanned the whole sky twice in infrared light, completing its survey in early 2011. Like night-vision goggles probing the dark, the telescope captured millions of images of the sky. All the data from the mission have been released publicly, allowing astronomers to dig in and make new discoveries.

The latest findings are helping astronomers better understand how galaxies and the behemoth black holes at their centers grow and evolve together. For example, the giant black hole at the center of our Milky Way galaxy, called Sagittarius A*, has 4 million times the mass of our sun and has gone through periodic feeding frenzies where material falls towards the black hole, heats up and irradiates its surroundings. Bigger central black holes, up to a billion times the mass of our sun, may even shut down star formation in galaxies.

In one study, astronomers used WISE to identify about 2.5 million actively feeding supermassive black holes across the full sky, stretching back to distances more than 10 billion light-years away. About two-thirds of these objects never had been detected before because dust blocks their visible light. WISE easily sees these monsters because their powerful, accreting black holes warm the dust, causing it to glow in infrared light.

"We've got the black holes cornered," said Daniel Stern of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif., lead author of the WISE black hole study and project scientist for another NASA black-hole mission, the Nuclear Spectroscopic Telescope Array (NuSTAR). "WISE is finding them across the full sky, while NuSTAR is giving us an entirely new look at their high-energy X-ray light and learning what makes them tick."

In two other WISE papers, researchers report finding what are among the brightest galaxies known, one of the main goals of the mission. So far, they have identified about 1,000 candidates.

These extreme objects can pour out more than 100 trillion times as much light as our sun. They are so dusty, however, that they appear only in the longest wavelengths of infrared light captured by WISE. NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope followed up on the discoveries in more detail and helped show that, in addition to hosting supermassive black holes feverishly snacking on gas and dust, these DOGs are busy churning out new stars.

"These dusty, cataclysmically forming galaxies are so rare WISE had to scan the entire sky to find them," said Peter Eisenhardt, lead author of the paper on the first of these bright, dusty galaxies, and project scientist for WISE at JPL. "We are also seeing evidence that these record setters may have formed their black holes before the bulk of their stars. The 'eggs' may have come before the 'chickens.'"

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NASA's WISE Survey Uncovers Millions of Black Holes

Teachers or museums looking for space souvenirs just need to ask NASA, which is giving away space shuttle tiles and astronaut food as part of a program to inspire the next generation of space explorers, scientists and engineers.

The items are being given away on a first-come, first-served basis using an online application system to verify eligibility.

The tiles are a significant part of the space shuttle program as they allowed NASA to reuse the vessels on multiple missions. Thousands of the tiles covered the exterior of the space shuttle on their early missions to protect against temperatures up to 2,300 degrees Fahrenheit. NASA eventually replaced the tiles with a different flexible insulation material.

For those interested in the food, a limited number of packaged meals are available for show, not for actual consumption. The food was precooked or processed so it required no refrigeration and was ready to eat, or easily prepared, just by adding water or by heating. Each package will contain three items, including entre, dessert and beverage.

Although all the items are free to eligible schools or museums, there is a shipping and handling fee -- $23.40 for shuttle tiles and $28.03 for the food.

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NASA giving away space shuttle souvenirs

07-09-2012 16:30 The outpouring of admiration and respect continues as people around the nation, including members of the NASA family, pay tribute to the late Neil Armstrong. Also, JFK's Rice speech revisited; Curiosity roves; Orion 'chutes and drop tests; EVA wrap-up; and more.

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Armstrong Tributes Continue on This Week at NASA - Video

September 7, 2012 - NASA's Space Technology Program has selected 5 technologies that could revolutionize America's space capabilities. The following proposals were selected for funding: Representing and Exploiting Cumulative Experience with Objects for Autonomous Manipulation; Lightweight High Performance Acoustic Suppression Technology Development; Fast Light Optical Gyroscopes for Precision Inertial Navigation; EHD-Based Variable Conductance Thermal Interface Material; and Membrane Enabled Reverse Lung. NASA NASA Ames Reseach Center Moffett Field, CA, 94035 USA Press release date: August 17, 2012

WASHINGTON, -- NASA's Space Technology Program has selected five technologies that could revolutionize America's space capabilities.

In March, NASA issued a call for proposal focused on sudden and unexpected innovations that hold a potential for providing a "game-changing" impact on the efficiency and effectiveness of the agency's space capabilities.

NASA has selected the following proposals for funding:

--"Representing and Exploiting Cumulative Experience with Objects for Autonomous Manipulation," University of Massachusetts, Amherst. This technology could improve autonomous robotic operations using artificial intelligence during deep space missions.

--"Lightweight High Performance Acoustic Suppression Technology Development," NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif. This technology could suppress acoustic environments during launch. By reducing vibrations by acoustic suppression during launch, the amount of prelaunch vibration stress testing for onboard instruments also could be reduced.

--"Fast Light Optical Gyroscopes for Precision Inertial Navigation," NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center, Huntsville, Ala. This technology could enhance navigation capabilities for spacecraft by improving the performance of existing gyroscopes by a factor of 1,000.

--"EHD-Based Variable Conductance Thermal Interface Material," The Boeing Company, El Segundo, Calif. The development of this thermal material could provide better heat management for spacecraft.

--"Membrane Enabled Reverse Lung," Oceaneering Space Systems, Houston. This technology could reduce the number of life support systems needed for astronauts.

"NASA's Space Technology Program is enabling our future in space by investing in revolutionary and game-changing technologies that could open new doors for how we live, work and investigate space," said Michael Gazarik, director of the program at NASA Headquarters in Washington. "We are confident these selected technologies, with their highly qualified research teams, will enable great new opportunities for the next chapter in NASA's innovation story."

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NASA Picks Revolutionary Space Tech Proposals for Development

A prototype NASA lander completed a successful free flight on Sept. 5, helping to bring a new generation of landing vehicles closer to reality.

The Mighty Eagle flew up to 100 feet, identified an on-the-ground target with its onboard cameras, and then autonomously landed itself at the chosen spot. The successful flight is part of a series of incremental tests to mature this technology.

The prototype brings to mind earlier Apollo-era test crafts such as the Lunar Landing Research Vehicle, which nearly killed astronaut Neil Armstrong during a training maneuver in 1968.

The cute three-legged lander stands at 4 feet high and 8 feet in diameter, so its not designed to carry astronauts. Instead, NASA engineers are hoping that such a vehicle could one day autonomously land cargo and scientific instruments on the moon, an asteroid, or other airless body in the solar system.

It stands in contrast to NASAs Morpheus Lander, a larger craft capable of bringing about 1,000 pounds to the lunar surface, which might include a robotic humanoid, small rover, or scientific laboratory. During its first untethered test on Aug. 9, Morpheus suffered an inglorious explosion after it flipped over shortly after liftoff.

The video below shows the Mighty Eagle in action during an earlier test on Aug. 8, when the vehicle flew 30 feet in the air.

Image: NASA/MSFC/Dennis Olive

Video: NASA Marshall TV

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NASA's Newest Autonomous Lander Passes Flight Test

The little rover is on the go, and NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter was there to document it.

NASA's Curiosity rover has been sending back awesome images of the Martian surface since it landed on the red planet in early August. But to see the rover itself, you need the work of another NASA craft, the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, which has been circling the planet since 2006. Earlier this week, it was able to capture the above picture of the rover, in which you can clearly see the tracks it has left in the Martian dust. (NASA notes the color in the image has been enhanced to show detail, hence the bluish tinge.)

NASA additionally released a video chronicling the rover's progress so far and previewing the weeks ahead.

Two additional pictures from the Orbiter, mentioned and described in the above video, are below.

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NASA Satellite Captures First Glimpse of Curiosity's Tracks from Martian Orbit