LONG BEACH, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--

NASA, Aquarium of the Pacific, and Oregon Museum of Science and Industry (OMSI), and NASA Goddard Visitor Center have partnered to create a new program for the public. Our Instrumented Earth is a new exhibit-based program that will debut at each of these institutions in 2013, serving communities in Maryland, California, and Oregon. It will focus on how satellites and other observing systems contribute to our understanding of how Earth is changing and what those changes may mean to humans, said Dr. Jerry Schubel, Aquarium of the Pacific president.

The program celebrates NASAs advances in technology and illuminates how information can be harnessed to increase understanding of Earths systems to enhance human lives and protect our planet. NASA awarded the Aquarium of the Pacific with a $331,000 grant to oversee the creation of the program in conjunction with NASAs Goddard Visitor Center and OMSI. Others involved in developing it include NASA, Jet Propulsion Lab, and University of California, Irvine.

The story of Our Instrumented Earth will be illustrated on a six-foot-diameter global display called NOAAs Science On a Sphere, combining NASA satellite images and multimedia technology. Visitors to the three institutions will be transported into space to see how NASA satellites help us prepare for changes on Earth. Informal education providers are an important part of NASAs education family, said Leland Melvin, associate administrator for NASAs Office of Education in Washington. By using compelling NASA content, they help us stimulate interest in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics, or STEM, Melvin said.

The NASA visitor center, the Southern California aquarium, and the Oregon museum will reach millions of individuals in diverse communities with science that relates to their everyday lives and can help with adapting to environmental changes. Presentations will be in English and Spanish. Science on a Sphere has been a star attraction since its arrival here, and we are excited to use this platform to tell such a compelling story, said David Perry, OMSI director of museum education.This collaborative project also targets underserved youth to promote STEM learning and increase careers in these fields.

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NASA Awards $331,000 Grant to Create Our Instrumented Earth, Debuting Summer 2013 in California at the Aquarium of the ...

The NASA launch pad from which Apollo 11 lifted off for the first manned moon landing and Atlantis left Earth to fly the last space shuttle mission is now open to the public for tours.

Launch Pad 39A at the Kennedy Space Center (KSC) in Florida is the latest, limited-time tour stop being offered by the NASA spaceport's visitor complex. The tours which also include separate trips to KSC's 52-story tall Vehicle Assembly Building (VAB) and the Launch Control Center (LCC) are now being offered as part of the center's 50th anniversary celebration.

"These are very rare opportunities that NASA has worked with us to provide to our visitors from Florida, across the United States and overseas," Bill Moore, chief operating officer of NASA's Kennedy Space Center Visitor Complex, said in a statement. "With exciting new space exploration programs coming to the Kennedy Space Center, we may never have access to such historic places like this again."

Pad 39A was one of two large launch complexes built in the 1960s to support the Saturn V launches to the moon, Saturn IB launches to the Skylab space station and space shuttle launches to deploy and service satellites and build the International Space Station.

Pad 39A's twin, Pad 39B, was stripped of its iconic launch support towers last year to make way for possible future commercial and government launch vehicles. Pad 39A, which supported 92 launches since November 1967 12 Saturn V rockets and 80 shuttles is being maintained to support NASA's Space Launch System (SLS) heavy-lift next generation booster now being developed. [Giant Leaps: Biggest Moments in Spaceflight]

- Bill Moore, Kennedy Space Center Visitor Complex COO

The current downtime between launches has allowed the opportunity for the visitor complex to bring guests closer to the launch pad than ever before.

Past the perimeter

The new "KSC Up-Close: Launch Pad Tour" buses guests from the visitor complex to Pad 39A, following alongside the same river stone-lined "crawlerway" that rockets and shuttles once slowly rumbled across riding atop massive tank-like transporters. Previous bus tours drove this same path but then veered off to circle the security fence that surrounds the launch pad.

On the new tour, the guards stationed at the pad will wave the bus forward, permitting the tour to proceed almost a quarter-mile (400 meters) within the pad's perimeter.

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NASA opens Apollo launch site to the public

NASA successfully tested an inflatable heat shield Monday. The mushroom-shaped balloon inflated in orbit and splashed down in the Atlantic Ocean.

An experimentalheatshieldfor future spacecraft landings successfully survived a test launch Monday that brought it through the earth's atmosphere at speeds of up to 7,600 mph, NASA said.

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The demonstration launch from Wallops Flight Facility on Virginia's Eastern Shore involved a 680-pound cone of high-tech rings covered by a thermal blanket of layers of heat-resistant materials. The Inflatable Reentry Vehicle Experiment, or IRVE-3, was launched from a three-stage Black Brant rocket for a suborbital flight.

IRVE-3 separated from the launch vehicle about six minutes into the flight about 280 miles in the Atlantic Ocean off North Carolina.

An inflation system pumped nitrogen into IRVE-3 until it expanded to a mushroom shape almost 10 feet in diameter. Engineers in the Wallops control room watched as four onboard cameras confirmed the inflatableshieldheld its shape despite the force and highheatof re-entry, NASA said.

A high-speed Navy Stiletto boat based at Joint Expeditionary Base Little Creek-Fort Story was dispatched to retrieve the capsule.

The purpose of the launch was to determine whether a space capsule can use an inflatable outer shell to slow and protect itself as it enters an atmosphere at hypersonic speed during a planetary entry and descent.

"We're pushing the boundaries with this flight," said Lesa Roe, director of NASA Langley Research Center in Hampton. "We look forward to future test launches of even bigger inflatable aeroshells."

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NASA experiment blows up in space, as intended

NASA launched a novel new heat shield prototype on a successful test flight Monday (July 23), a mission that sent a high-tech space balloon streaking through Earth's atmosphere at hypersonic speeds of up to Mach 10.

The test flight blasted off atop a suborbital rocket at 7:01 a.m. EDT (1101 GMT) from NASA's Wallops Flight Facility on Wallops Island, Va. It sent a small capsule, called the Inflatable Re-entry Vehicle Experiment 3 (IRVE-3) into suborbital space, which deployed the inflatable heat shield and then plunged back down through Earth's atmosphere to splash down in the Atlantic Ocean.

The mission, according to NASA, was an unqualified success and will help shape new re-entry systems for future spacecraft.

"We had a really great flight today," James Reuther, deputy director of NASA's Space Technology Program, told reporters in a news briefing Monday (July 23). "Initial indications are we got good data. Everything performed as well, or better, than expected." [Photos: NASA's Inflatable Heat Shield Ideas for Spaceships]

The IRVE-3 flight was designed to demonstrate how the technology could be used for heat shields during atmospheric entries on future space missions.

The successful test flight is, "a first step for how we explore other worlds," said Steve Jurczyk, deputy director of NASA's Langley Research Center in Hampton, Va.

"As far as the applicability of the technology, [we were] originally motivated to do this to allow us to potentially land more masses at Mars," said Neil Cheatwood, IRVE-3 principal investigator at Langley Research Center. "Mars is a very challenging destination. It has a very thin atmosphere too much of an atmosphere to ignore, but not enough for us to do the things we would at other planets. That was our motivation about nine years ago when we started doing this stuff."

With inflatable heat shields, scientists may be able to land at higher altitudes on Mars, or use the IRVE-3 technology to one day carry larger payloads, including humans, to the surface of the Red Planet, Cheatwood added.

The IRVE-3 heat shield is a cone made up of inflatable rings that are wrapped in layers of high-tech thermal blankets to protect it (and its space capsule) from the searing heat of re-entry through Earth's atmosphere. The 680-pound (308-kg) heat shield prototype was packed inside a 22-inch wide (56-centimeter) nose cone for the test flight. It expanded to a heat shield 10 feet (3 meters) across during the flight.

During the test, which was overseen by NASA's Langley Research Center, the IRVE-3 heat shield launched into space atop a Black Brant 4 rocket and separated from the booster six minutes later, about 280 miles (450 kilometers) above the Atlantic Ocean. IRVE-3 then inflated itself with nitrogen gas as expected, creating a mushroom-shaped heat shield known as an aeroshell.

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NASA launches hypersonic inflatable heat shield

NASA's inflatable heat shield, which could someday be used to protect a large payload as it enters the atmosphere of Mars, performed as expected during a test Monday.

A prototype for a large inflatable heat shield that could one day be used for landing large payloads on Mars was tested successfully on July 23, 2012, surviving a hypersonic speeds through Earths atmosphere. The Inflatable Reentry Vehicle Experiment (IRVE-3) traveled at speeds up to 12,231 km/h (7,600 mph) after launching on a sounding rocket from NASAs Wallops Flight Facility on Wallops Island, Virginia.

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We had a really great flight today, said James Reuther, deputy director of NASAs Space Technology Program, after the test flight. Initial indications are we got good data. Everything performed as well, or better, than expected.

Watch the video from the flight below.

IRVE-3 is a cone of uninflated high-tech rings covered by a thermal blanket of layers of heat resistant materials. NASA said the purpose of the IRVE-3 test was to show that a space capsule can use an inflatable outer shell to slow and protect itself as it enters an atmosphere at hypersonic speed during planetary entry and descent, or as it returns to Earth with cargo from the International Space Station. A larger version has been proposed for landing larger payloads on Mars, such as future human missions.

About 6 minutes into todays flight, as planned, the 680-pound inflatable aeroshell, or heat shield, and its payload separated from the launch vehicles 55 cm (22-inch)-diameter nose cone about 450 km (280 miles) over the Atlantic Ocean.

An inflation system pumped nitrogen into the IRVE-3 aeroshell until it expanded to a mushroom shape almost 3 meters (10 feet) in diameter. Then the aeroshell plummeted at hypersonic speeds through Earths atmosphere. Engineers in the Wallops control room watched as four onboard cameras confirmed the inflatable shield held its shape despite the force and high heat of reentry. Onboard instruments provided temperature and pressure data. Researchers will study that information to help develop future inflatable heat shield designs.

A Navy crew will attempt to retrieve the aeroshell.

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NASA tests inflatable heat shield

NASA's inflatable heat shield, which could someday be used to protect a large payload as it enters the atmosphere of Mars, performed as expected during a test Monday.

A prototype for a large inflatable heat shield that could one day be used for landing large payloads on Mars was tested successfully on July 23, 2012, surviving a hypersonic speeds through Earths atmosphere. The Inflatable Reentry Vehicle Experiment (IRVE-3) traveled at speeds up to 12,231 km/h (7,600 mph) after launching on a sounding rocket from NASAs Wallops Flight Facility on Wallops Island, Virginia.

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We had a really great flight today, said James Reuther, deputy director of NASAs Space Technology Program, after the test flight. Initial indications are we got good data. Everything performed as well, or better, than expected.

Watch the video from the flight below.

IRVE-3 is a cone of uninflated high-tech rings covered by a thermal blanket of layers of heat resistant materials. NASA said the purpose of the IRVE-3 test was to show that a space capsule can use an inflatable outer shell to slow and protect itself as it enters an atmosphere at hypersonic speed during planetary entry and descent, or as it returns to Earth with cargo from the International Space Station. A larger version has been proposed for landing larger payloads on Mars, such as future human missions.

About 6 minutes into todays flight, as planned, the 680-pound inflatable aeroshell, or heat shield, and its payload separated from the launch vehicles 55 cm (22-inch)-diameter nose cone about 450 km (280 miles) over the Atlantic Ocean.

An inflation system pumped nitrogen into the IRVE-3 aeroshell until it expanded to a mushroom shape almost 3 meters (10 feet) in diameter. Then the aeroshell plummeted at hypersonic speeds through Earths atmosphere. Engineers in the Wallops control room watched as four onboard cameras confirmed the inflatable shield held its shape despite the force and high heat of reentry. Onboard instruments provided temperature and pressure data. Researchers will study that information to help develop future inflatable heat shield designs.

A Navy crew will attempt to retrieve the aeroshell.

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NASA tests inflatable heat shield (+video)

WALLOPS ISLAND, Va. --

NASA will launch a rocket to test its next generation of spacecraft heat shields early Monday from its Wallops Island Flight Facility on Virginia's Eastern Shore.

The Inflatable Reentry Vehicle Experiment (IRVE-3) will be launched on a Black Brant XI sounding rocket and land about 100 miles east of Cape Hatteras, NC.

The heat shield -- officially called the Hypersonic Inflatable Aerodynamic Decelerator (HIAD) -- was developed at NASA's Langley Research Center in Hampton. It looks, according to NASA, like a giant cone of inner tubes assembled like a child's stacking ring toy.

NASA says the HIAD's reduced weight vs. a conventional heat shield will allow future spacecraft to carry heavier payloads. It also could allow NASA to return payloads from the International Space Station.

The launch window on Monday for all rockets, including several to test tracking systems and gather atmospheric data, is 5 to 8 a.m., according to NASA. The launch window for the IRVE-3 is 7 to 7:40 a.m.

The rocket will be visible to residents in the Wallops and the southern Chesapeake Bay region, NASA says.

The visitor center at Wallops will open at 4:30 a.m. Monday for those interested in viewing the launch.

More information on this mission -- including how to view the launch on the Internet and following the countdown on Twitter and Facebook -- is available at http://www.nasa.gov/wallops.

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NASA to launch rocket from Va. on Monday

The NASA launch pad from which Apollo 11 lifted off for the first manned moon landing and Atlantis left Earth to fly the last space shuttle mission is now open to the public for tours.

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Next Stop, Launch Pad: NASA Opens Apollo, Shuttle Launch Site for Tours

NASA Space Technology Program researchers plans to launch and deploy a large inflatable heat shield aboard a rocket traveling at hypersonic speeds this weekend during a technology demonstration test from the agency's Wallops Flight Facility on Wallops Island, VA. NASA has four consecutive days of launch opportunities for the agency's Inflatable Re-entry Vehicle Experiment (IRVE-3), starting July 22, with the liftoff window from 0600-0800 EDT each day.

The test is designed to demonstrate lightweight, yet strong, inflatable structures that could become practical tools for exploration of other worlds or as a way to return items safely to Earth from the International Space Station. During this technology demonstration test flight, NASA's IRVE-3 payload will try to re-enter Earth's atmosphere at hypersonic speeds -- Mach 5, or 3,800 mph to 7,600 mph.

"As we investigate new ways to bring cargo back to Earth from the International Space Station and innovative ways to land larger payloads safely on Mars, it's clear we need to invest in new technologies that will enable these goals," said Michael Gazarik, director of NASA's Space Technology Program. "IRVE-3 is precisely the sort of cross-cutting technology NASA's Space Technology Program should mature to make these future NASA and commercial space endeavors possible."

The IRVE-3 experiment will fly aboard a three-stage Black Brant XI launch vehicle for its suborbital flight. The payload and the heat shield, which looks like a large, uninflated cone of inner tubes, will be packed inside the rocket's 22-inch-diameter nose cone. About six minutes after launch, the rocket will climb to an altitude of about 280 miles over the Atlantic Ocean. At that point, the 680-pound IRVE-3 will separate from the rocket. An inflation system similar to air tanks used by scuba divers will pump nitrogen gas into the IRVE-3 aeroshell until it becomes almost 10 feet in diameter. Instruments on board, including pressure sensors and heat flux gauges, as well as cameras, will provide data to engineers on the ground of how well the inflated heat shield performs during the force and heat of entry into Earth's atmosphere.

After its flight, IRVE-3 will fall into the Atlantic Ocean about 350 miles down range from Wallops. From launch to splash down, the flight is expected to take approximately 20 minutes. "We originally came up with this concept because we'd like to be able to land more mass and access higher altitudes on Mars," said Neil Cheatwood, IRVE-3 principal investigator at NASA's Langley Research Center in Hampton, Va. "To do so you need more drag. We're seeking to maximize the drag area of the entry system. We want to make it as big as we can. The limitation with current technology has been the launch vehicle diameter."

Cheatwood and a team of NASA engineers and technicians have spent the last three years addressing the technical challenges of materials withstanding the heat created by atmospheric entry and preparing for the IRVE-3 flight. The team has studied designs, assessed materials in laboratories and wind tunnels, and subjected hardware to thermal and pressure loads beyond what the inflatable spacecraft technology should face during flight.

This test is a follow on to the successful IRVE-2, which showed an inflatable heat shield could survive intact after coming through Earth's atmosphere. IRVE-3 is the same size as IRVE-2, but has a heavier payload and will be subjected to a much higher reentry heat.

IRVE-3 is part of the Hypersonic Inflatable Aerodynamic Decelerator (HIAD) Project within the Game Changing Development Program, part of NASA's Space Technology Program. Langley developed and manages the IRVE-3 and HIAD projects.

(NASA Image IRVE-3 inflation system)

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NASA Hypersonic Inflatable Tech Test Set

[Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech]NASA's range of telescopes continually manage to surprise and delight with their frequent discoveries of planets far, far away--some of which are particularly quirky. While Kepler may be the best known of these telescopes, this time the Spitzer Space Telescope made a pretty interesting discovery this week: an exoplanet two-thirds the size of Earth.

This may not seem like such a big deal, but it's not very common for us to find exoplanets (planets outside of our own solar system) to be smaller than Earth in size, or us to fine one so relatively close. The planet, named UCF-1.01, is "just" 33 light years away. Additionally, Spitzer is normally used to study exoplanets already discovered and not to discover new exoplanets, so this is not only a first for the telescope, but a potential new role in for it.

Size-wise, UCF-1.01 is around 5,200 miles in diameter, and was discovered when scientists were using Spitzer to study Neptune-sized exoplanet GJ 436b, which orbits the red-dwarf star GJ 436. Scientists noticed "dips" in the infrared coming from the star that were not caused from GJ 436b passing by it. This in turn led to the discovery of UCT-1.01. Its year lasts only about 1.4 Earth days due to how close the planet orbits its star.

The planet's temperatures are around 1,000 degrees Fahrenheit, meaning there's very little in terms of atmosphere. This isn't surprising, considering how closely it orbits its sun. Scientists believe the planet itself has melted slightly, causing a molten surface.

It's a precious discovery, considering that of the 1,800 planetary candidates discovered by NASA, only three were smaller than Earth. Three. You can find out more about the Spitzer Space Telescope and its missions on NASA's website.

[NASA]

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NASA Scopes Out Another Exoplanet That's Two-Thirds the Size of Earth

NASA's Mars Curiosity Rover, expected to land on the Red planet in three weeks, is NASA's most advanced robotic mission yet.

When NASA's newest rover, Curiosity, reaches Mars in about three weeks, it will not be the first to set its wheels on the Red Planet, but it will be the largest and most advanced robotic explorer that has ever been sent to our planetary neighbor.

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TheCuriosity rover, also called the Mars Science Laboratory, was launched in late November 2011, and is expected to land on Mars on the night of Aug. 5 PDT (early Aug. 6 EDT). The $2.5 billion rover will touch down at Gale Crater, and is designed to search for clues that Mars could be now, or in the ancient past, a habitable planet for microbial life.

NASA first set its sights on landing on the Red Planet in the 1970s. The agency achieved its first Mars landing in 1976 with the Viking 1 lander. Since then, the agency has had six spacecraft successfullytouch down on the Martian surface. But with the impending arrival of Curiosity, NASA will showcase the most sophisticated Martian rover yet.

"The Curiosity landing is the hardest NASA robotic mission ever attempted in the history ofexploration of Mars, or any of our robot exploration," John Grunsfeld, associate administrator for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, said in a news briefing Monday (July 16) at the agency's headquarters in Washington, D.C.

For starters, the way Curiosity will lower itself to the surface of Mars in less than 20 days is unprecedented. The rover will use a new and complex sky crane system to slow its descent.

According to Doug McCuistion, director of the Mars Exploration Program at NASA Headquarters, Curiosity's landing "could arguably be the most important event most significant event in the history of planetary exploration." [How Curiosity's Nail-Biting Landing Works (Pictures)]

Previous Mars rovers, such as the twin Spirit and Opportunity rovers (collectively known as theMars Exploration Rovers), used airbags to cushion their landing. Spirit and Opportunity arrived at the Red Planet about three weeks apart in January 2004. Each rover weighs about 384 pounds (174 kilograms), but since Curiosity tips the scales at 1 ton, it was deemed too heavy and too large for an airbag-assisted landing.

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Why is NASA's latest Mars Rover biggest and best yet?

NASA history on iTunes. Credit: NASA

GREENBELT, Md., July 20 (UPI) -- NASA says it's posting historical video, audio, photographs and documents to iTunes to observe the 43rd anniversary of the Apollo 11 moon landing.

The material will be available for free download on iTunes U, a platform for making educational resources available to a wide audience through the iTunes Store, the space agency said in a release Friday.

NASA's History Program Office iTunes U site currently contains about 300 items from a broad sweep of NASA activities related to important moments, activities and figures in the space agency's history.

"New materials will continue to be uploaded as we expand the coverage both in depth and breadth," Bill Barry, NASA's chief historian, said. "We're thrilled to educate people on NASA's rich history and are open to user suggestions and requests."

The material is available at http://www.nasa.gov/connect/itunesu.html.

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NASA puts history up on iTunes

Astronomers working with NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope have discovered a nearby world that's smaller than Earth - and possibly covered with magma. (Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech)

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NASA May Have Found A Lava Covered Planet

NASA provides a quick look at its current and future human spaceflight activities.

By Alan Boyle

NASA is closing out one chapter in the multibillion-dollar effort to create new fleets of spaceships, and getting ready to open the next one. Sometime in the next month or two, the space agency will pick up to three teams of companies to receive hundreds of millions of dollars worth of funding for their spaceship development efforts. That's a lot of money but it's important to keep all those expenditures in perspective.

As an accompaniment to this week's series of commentaries about the commercial space race, here's a guide to what's gone on before and what's coming up:

Cargo transportsNASA's push to commercialize transportation services to low Earth orbit began in 2006, a couple of years after the White House decided that the space shuttle fleet had to be retired, when SpaceX and Rocketplane Kistler were awarded almost half a billion dollars to support the development of robotic cargo spacecraft capable of resupplying the space station in the post-shuttle era. "If it doesn't work, I've frankly made the wrong bet," said Mike Griffin, who was NASA's administrator at the time.

In Rocketplane Kistler's case, the bet didn't pay off. NASA paid the company $32.1 million, but Rocketplane failed to win enough private backing to keep going. The company lost its NASA funding and ended up declaring bankruptcy. Orbital Sciences Corp. was selected as a replacement.

With May's successful demonstration flight of the Dragon cargo capsule, SpaceX has virtually completed all its objectives for the Commercial Orbital Transportation Services program, or COTS. It should soon get the last of the $396 million in COTS money that NASA has set aside for the company. Orbital Sciences, meanwhile, is gearing up for key flight tests of its Antares rocket and Cygnus capsule, and at last report has received $266.5 million of its $288 million in COTS money.

Even as the development program nears its end, SpaceX and Orbital are getting ready to begin routine cargo flights to the space station under a follow-on program known as Commercial Resupply Services, or CRS. SpaceX is due to get $1.6 billion for 12 flights scheduled through 2015, while Orbital gets $1.9 billion for eight flights. Citing NASA figures, NBC News' Jay Barbree says SpaceX and Orbital have each received $337.6 million in preparation for the CRS flights.

May 31: SpaceX's Dragon cargo craft returns to Earth from the International Space Station.

Space taxis So far, we've been talking about unmanned flights to the space station, but NASA also needs U.S. spaceships capable of carrying astronauts to and from the station. Because these "space taxis" will be carrying people rather than mere stuff, the safety standards will have to be higher than they are for cargo craft. In 2010, NASA started setting aside funds to support the development of such spacecraft by private-sector partners. In the first phase of the program, NASA awarded $50 million to five companies for work on future spaceships or safety systems: $3.7 million to Blue Origin, $18 million to the Boeing Co., $1.4 million to Paragon Space Development Corp., $20 million to Sierra Nevada Corp., and $6.7 million to United Launch Alliance.

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NASA's costly space race

NASA wants to boost the signal coming from stars, galaxies and black holes while turning down the background noise. The U.S. space agency invented a new amplifier that can boost electrical signals from the universe and possibly help find the key to making quantum computers.

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NASA Pumps Up the Volume on Space Signals

19-07-2012 09:01 A crucial, and often underappreciated, facet of science lies in deciding how to turn the raw numbers of data into useful, understandable information -- often through graphs and images. Such visualization techniques are needed for everything from making a map of planetary orbits based on nightly measurements of where they are in the sky to colorizing normally invisible light such as X-rays to produce "images" of the sun. More information, of course, requires more complex visualizations and occasionally such images are not just informative, but beautiful too. Such is the case with a new technique created by Nicholeen Viall, a solar scientist atNASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md. She creates images of the sun reminiscent of Van Gogh, with broad strokes of bright color splashed across a yellow background. But it's science, not art. The color of each pixel contains a wealth of information about the 12-hour history of cooling and heating at that particular spot on the sun. That heat history holds clues to the mechanisms that drive the temperature and movements of the sun's atmosphere, or corona. To look at the corona from a fresh perspective, Viall created a new kind of picture, making use of the high resolution provided by NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO). SDO's Atmospheric Imaging Assembly (AIA) provides images of the sun in 10 different wavelengths, each approximately corresponding to a single temperature of material. Therefore, when one looks at the ...

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NASA | Van Gogh Sun - Video

When NASA's newest rover, Curiosity, reaches Mars in about three weeks, it will not be the first to set its wheels on the Red Planet, but it will be the largest and most advanced robotic explorer that has ever been sent to our planetary neighbor.

The Curiosity rover, also called the Mars Science Laboratory, was launched in late November 2011, and is expected to land on Mars on the night of Aug. 5 PDT (early Aug. 6 EDT). The $2.5 billion rover will touch down at Gale Crater, and is designed to search for clues that Mars could be now, or in the ancient past, a habitable planet for microbial life.

NASA first set its sights on landing on the Red Planet in the 1970s. The agency achieved its first Mars landing in 1976 with the Viking 1 lander. Since then, the agency has had six spacecraft successfully touch down on the Martian surface. But with the impending arrival of Curiosity, NASA will showcase the most sophisticated Martian rover yet.

"The Curiosity landing is the hardest NASA robotic mission ever attempted in the history of exploration of Mars, or any of our robot exploration," John Grunsfeld, associate administrator for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, said in a news briefing Monday (July 16) at the agency's headquarters in Washington, D.C.

Bigger and better

For starters, the way Curiosity will lower itself to the surface of Mars in less than 20 days is unprecedented. The rover will use a new and complex sky crane system to slow its descent.

According to Doug McCuistion, director of the Mars Exploration Program at NASA Headquarters, Curiosity's landing "could arguably be the most important event most significant event in the history of planetary exploration." [How Curiosity's Nail-Biting Landing Works (Pictures)]

Previous Mars rovers, such as the twin Spirit and Opportunity rovers (collectively known as the Mars Exploration Rovers), used airbags to cushion their landing. Spirit and Opportunity arrived at the Red Planet about three weeks apart in January 2004. Each rover weighs about 384 pounds (174 kilograms), but since Curiosity tips the scales at 1 ton, it was deemed too heavy and too large for an airbag-assisted landing.

"The mass of Spirit and Opportunity was just about at the limit for what that airbag design could handle," McCuistion said.

Spirit and Opportunity were designed for three-month missions on Mars, but both far outlived their warranties. After getting stuck in Martian sand and losing contact with Earth, Spirit was officially declared dead in May 2011. But, Opportunity is still alive and well, and is currently exploring a massive crater, called Endeavour. Since it landed on the Red Planet, Opportunity has logged an impressive 21.4 miles (34.4 km).

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NASA's Newest Mars Rover Is Biggest and Best Yet

Synopsis/Solicitation Combo - Jul 19, 2012 General Information Solicitation Number: NNK12LZS0001R Posted Date: Jul 19, 2012 FedBizOpps Posted Date: Jul 19, 2012 Recovery and Reinvestment Act Action: No Original Response Date: Aug 20, 2012 Current Response Date: Aug 20, 2012 Classification Code: A -- Research and Development NAICS Code: 336414 Set-Aside Code: Total Small Business

Contracting Office Address

NASA/John F. Kennedy Space Center, Procurement, Kennedy Space Center, FL 32899

Description

NASA/KSC has a requirement for a CubeSat Nano Launcher Deployer System Design in accordance with attached Statement of Work.

This notice is a combined synopsis/solicitation for commercial items prepared in accordance with the format in FAR Subpart 12.6, as supplemented with additional information included in this notice. This announcement constitutes the only solicitation, which is issued as a Request for Quotation (RFQ); quotes are being requested and a written solicitation will not be issued.

Offers for the items(s) described above are due by August 20, 2012 at 10:00AM ET to NASA/Kennedy Space Center, Procurement, Attn: Jennifer Dorsey, OP-LS, KSC, FL 32899 or Jennifer.L.Dorsey@nasa.gov and must include solicitation number, proposed delivery schedule, discount/payment terms, warranty duration (if applicable), taxpayer identification number (TIN), identification of any special commercial terms, and be signed by an authorized company representative.

Offerors are required to use the On-Line RFQ system to submit their quote. The On-line RFQ system is linked above or it may be accessed at http://prod.nais.nasa.gov/cgi-bin/eps/bizops.cgi?gr=C&pin= . The information required by FAR Subpart 12.6 is included in the on-line RFQ. Oral communications are not acceptable in response to this notice. All responsible sources may submit an offer which shall be considered by the agency.

All offers shall be valid for 60 days.

This procurement is a total small business set-aside. The NAICS Code and the small business size standard for this procurement are ------336414, 1,000 employees respectively. The offeror shall state in their offer their size status for this procurement.

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NASA KSC Solicitation: Cubesat Nano Launcher Deployer System

Budget cuts have forced NASA to drastically scale back its planetary science missions. But the space agency still has hopes for a future mission that will collect samples of Martian soil and bring them to Earth.

Despite NASA's tough budget situation, the 1-ton rover streaking toward an Aug. 5 landing on Mars is unlikely to be the space agency's last big, ambitious Red Planet mission.

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Funding cuts have forced NASA to shelve plans for future multibillion-dollar "flagship" planetary missions beyond the $2.5 billionCuriosity rover, which will investigate Mars' potential to host past or present microbial life after it touches down three weeks from now. For the time being, the space agency is looking for ways to explore the Red Planet on the cheap.

But over the long haul, NASA still has its sights set on a particularly alluring flagship a sample-return effort that would bring pieces ofMarsback to Earth for study.

"The scientific goal and for human exploration as well of a Mars sample-return is still the highest priority in the long term," John Grunsfeld, NASA's associate administrator for science, said in April. [7 Biggest Mysteries of Mars]

President Barack Obama's federal budget request for 2013, which was unveiled in February, keeps NASA's overall budget flat, at $17.7 billion.

But the requestcuts NASA's planetary science fundingfrom $1.5 billion to $1.2 billion, with further reductions expected in coming years. The space agency's Mars program gets hit particularly hard, with funding dropping from $587 million this year to $360 million in 2013, then falling to just $189 million in 2015.

As a result, NASA is scaling back and reformulating its Red Planet exploration strategy. The space agency has put together a committee called the Mars Program Planning Group, which is assessing possiblefuture missions to Mars.

Read more:

Will Curiosity be NASA's last Mars rover?

A NASA spacecraft orbiting Saturn has captured an amazing view of lightning in broad daylight on the ringed planet.

The Cassini orbiter captured the daytime lightning on Saturn as bright blue spots inside a giant storm that raged on the planet last year. NASA unveiled the new Saturn lightning photos Wednesday (July 18), adding that the images came as a big surprise.

"We didn't think we'd see lighting on Saturn's day side only its night side," said Ulyana Dyudina, a Cassini imaging team associate at the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, in a statement. "The fact that Cassini was able to detect the lightning means that it was very intense."

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Cassini spotted the daytime lightning while observing a giant Saturn storm on March 6, 2011. A blue filter on the spacecraft's main camera recorded the lightning flashes, and scientists then exaggerated the blue tint in order to pin down the lightning's location and size, researchers said.

The Saturn lightning in Cassini's new images apparently packs quite a wallop. An analysis of the new images revealed that the energy from the visible lightning flashes alone could have spiked up to 3 billion watts over one second. That makes the daytime Saturn lightning on par with some of the strongest lightning flashes on Earth.

Cassini mission scientists said the lightning on Saturn was spotted across a region 100 miles (160 kilometers) wide where it exited the cloud layer. In all, Cassini spotted eight daytime lightning flashes on Saturn, five in one part of the storm and three in an another, they added.[More Photos of Saturn's Monster Storm]

The lightning-spawning storm on Saturn was not a short-lived tempest. The storm wrapped completely around Saturn at its peak and is the longest-lived storm ever seen on the ringed planet. It began in December 2010 and lasted about 200 days, finally sputtering out in late June 2011.

One mystery that remains is why the daytime Saturn lightning only turned up in Cassini's blue imaging filter. Scientists aren't sure if that means the lightning is actually blue in color, or if it's due to a short exposure time of the camera that helps the camera filter detect the lightning.

"As summer storm season descends upon Earth's northern latitudes, Cassini provides us a great opportunity to see how weather plays out at different places in our solar system," Cassini project scientist Linda Spilker, of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif., said in a statement. "Saturn's atmosphere has been changing over the eight years Cassini has been at Saturn, and we can't wait to see what happens next."

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NASA spies bright-blue 'intense' lightning on Saturn