NASA pulled the plug on its last powered space shuttle Friday, 20 years after it flew its first mission.

Space shuttle technicians working inside Orbiter Processing Facility-2 (OPF-2) at NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida powered down Endeavour, the youngest of the retired fleet's orbiters, at 9:58 a.m. EDT as they moved forward with preparations for the winged spacecraft's museum display.

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This September, NASA will mount Endeavour on top of a modified Boeing 747 carrier aircraft and ferry it to Los Angeles for its exhibit at the California Science Center.

NASA's youngest shuttle Built after the loss of the Challenger orbiter in 1986, the shuttle Endeavour was largely assembled from spare parts pre-fabricated during the development of its sister ships Discovery and Atlantis. Endeavour's first mission, STS-49, lifted off in May 1992.

NASA retired its shuttle fleet in July 2011, and the remaining orbiters are all headed to museums. While the agency is currently using Russian spacecraft to transport its astronauts to low-Earth orbit, U.S. commercial vehicles are planned to take over this taxi service by 2017. [ NASA's Shuttle Program in Pictures ]

"The whole thing shutting down is a shame," Dan Brandenstein, Endeavour's first commander, told collectSPACE.com just a few hours after he visited his former spaceship last Saturday. "It is good that they are saving them as museum artifacts, but you have three vehicles that are still good flying machines going on a post or in a display case."

Endeavour was the last of NASA's retired shuttle fleet to go permanently dark. Discovery, which was delivered to the Smithsonian in April, was powered down for a final time on Dec. 16, 2011. Atlantis, which is destined for display just down the road from its processing facility at the Kennedy Space Center Visitor Complex, was shut down the following week on Dec. 22.

Endeavour flew its 25th and final mission, STS-134, a year ago this month. The 16-day mission to the International Space Station launched on May 16, 2011.

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NASA unplugs last space shuttle, Endeavour

LOS ANGELES — With NASA facing tight budget constraints, the space agency must strike a balance between devoting funds to keep existing missions and spacecraft operating, while also investing in new technology and innovation for future exploration, an agency official said this week.

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NASA's Budget Woes Require Tough Space Tech Balancing Act

May 9, 2012

Image Caption: Interior of DragonRider mock-up, showing the seat configuration. Credit: NASA

Space Exploration Technologies (SpaceX) Dragon capsule has received NASA approval for their crew accommodations system, bringing the private-sector firms spacecraft one step closer to a commercial test flight, the US space agency announced Tuesday.

According to NASA, the primary purpose of the test was to find out whether or not the layout of the capsule would permit crew members to effectively maneuver around the vehicle. The aeronautics administration called it a key milestone in the SpaceX project, noting that a team of veteran space shuttle astronauts and NASA engineers conducted the evaluation as part of a pair of two-day-long reviews.

I am very pleased with the progress SpaceX and our other commercial partners are making during the CCDev2 effort, NASA Commercial Spaceflight Director Philip McAlister said in a May 8 statement. Together with NASAs development of beyond low-Earth orbit systems, commercial crew and cargo transportation is an integral part of our overall human spaceflight program.

This milestone demonstrated the layout of the crew cabin supports critical tasks, added SpaceX Commercial Crew Development Manager Garrett Reisman. It also demonstrated the Dragon interior has been designed to maximize the ability of the seven-member crew to do their job as effectively as possible.

NASA said that the Dragon prototype was equipped with seats, lights, an environmental control system, a life-support system, conceptual controls and display systems, cargo racks, and additional interior equipment.

During the review, former space shuttle crew members Rex Walheim, Tony Antonelli, Eric Boe and Tim Kopra conducted such evaluations as entering and exiting the vehicle under both normal and emergency scenarios, as well as visibility and reach evaluations, the space organization added.

As an anchor customer for commercial transportation services, we are happy to provide SpaceX with knowledge and lessons learned from our 50 years of human spaceflight, said Commercial Crew Program Manager Ed Mango. We appreciate the opportunity SpaceX gave us to provide feedback on these critical interior systems while the company maintains its flexibility to appeal to other customers.

This is the seventh of 10 milestones SpaceX must meet under the CCDev2 agreement, which continues through July 31, NASA officials said in their press release. This includes the development of a launch abort system for crew escape during launch or ascent. All of NASAs industry partners continue to meet their established milestones in developing safe, reliable and affordable commercial crew transportation capabilities.

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SpaceX Crew Accommodations System Receives NASA Approval

ScienceDaily (May 9, 2012) Engineers at NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center are testing parts of the Orion service module to ensure the spacecraft can withstand the harsh realities of deep space missions.

To date, Marshall has completed two structural loads tests, and another is under way. Structural loads tests prove the structural performance or material behavior of a design as weight is applied to it. Most of the time, the allowable weight is exceeded to test the material at extreme conditions to verify the tolerance of the material or design.

"Marshall was called upon to assist since we had the necessary test facilities and experienced team that could move out quickly to take on these very complex tests," said Scott Chartier, a test engineer in Marshall's Propulsion Systems Test Branch. "We were able to save time and budget since we had the facilities Orion needed and they didn't have to build a duplicate test facility."

To date, development tests have been performed on key structural pieces of the Orion spacecraft called the shear panel and the conical adapter. Both of these pieces can be thought of as the skeleton of the Orion vehicle. These tests validated the design and manufacturing processes that will be used for Orion's service module and verified the load-bearing capabilities of the components.

"The shear panel and conical adapter joint achieved all load conditions, and no permanent or visual damage was observed after the tests," said Chartier. "In addition, the conical adapter was successfully taken to the maximum capability, which concluded the test series."

The next set of tests will provide data that will be used for acceptance of the design and incorporated into the Orion Exploration Flight Test 1 (EFT-1). The results from these tests will be used to assess the materials and workmanship of the Orion service module's shear panels. The acceptance test is laying the groundwork for EFT-1, planned for 2014 that will launch an uncrewed Orion spacecraft on a Delta IV Heavy to an altitude of 3,600 statute miles above Earth -- a distance that has not been achieved by a craft intended for human flight since the Apollo missions. This test will ensure that several of Orion's systems, including the heat shield, can withstand a return to Earth from a deep space mission.

"We are excited to have the opportunity to do these structural tests at Marshall to help with NASA's Orion program," Chartier said. "It will help us get Orion to that first test flight."

The Orion spacecraft, managed by NASA's Johnson Space Center in Houston, will be launched on missions by NASA's Space Launch System -- a heavy-lift launch vehicle that will provide an entirely new capability for human exploration beyond low-Earth orbit. Designed to be flexible for launching spacecraft for crew and cargo missions, SLS will expand human presence beyond low-Earth orbit and enable new missions of exploration across the solar system. SLS is managed by the Marshall Center.

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NASA conducts tests on Orion service module

ScienceDaily (May 9, 2012) NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter has revealed that movement in sand dune fields on the Red Planet occurs on a surprisingly large scale, about the same as in dune fields on Earth.

This is unexpected because Mars has a much thinner atmosphere than Earth, is only about one percent as dense, and its high-speed winds are less frequent and weaker than Earth's.

For years, researchers debated whether sand dunes observed on Mars were mostly fossil features related to past climate, rather than currently active. In the past two years, researchers using images from Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter's High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment (HiRISE) camera have detected and reported sand movement.

Now, scientists using HiRISE images have determined that entire dunes as thick as 200 feet (61 meters) are moving as coherent units across the Martian landscape. The study was published online May 9 by the journal Nature.

"This exciting discovery will inform scientists trying to better understand the changing surface conditions of Mars on a more global scale," said Doug McCuistion, director, NASA's Mars Exploration Program, Washington. "This improved understanding of surface dynamics will provide vital information in planning future robotic and human Mars exploration missions."

Researchers analyzed before-and-after images using a new software tool developed at the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) in Pasadena, Calif. The tool measured changes in the position of sand ripples, revealing the ripples move faster the higher up they are on a dune.

The study examined images taken in 2007 and 2010 of the Nili Patera sand dune field located near the Martian equator. By correlating the ripples' movement to their position on the dune, the analysis determined the entire dunes are moving. This allows researchers to estimate the volume, or flux, of moving sand.

"We chose Nili Patera because we knew there was sand motion going on there, and we could quantify it," said Nathan Bridges, a planetary scientist at Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory in Laurel, Md., and lead author of the Nature paper. "The Nili dunes also are similar to dunes in places like Antarctica and to other locations on Mars."

The study adds important information about the pace at which blowing sand could be actively eroding rocks on Mars. Using the new information about the volume of sand that is moving, scientists estimate rocks in Nili Patera would be worn away at about the same pace as rocks near sand dunes in Antarctica, where similar sand fluxes occur.

"Our new data shows wind activity is indeed a major agent of evolution of the landscape on Mars," said Jean-Philippe Avouac, Caltech team leader. "This is important because it tells us something about the current state of Mars and how the planet is working today, geologically."

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NASA spacecraft detects changes in Martian sand dunes

ScienceDaily (May 8, 2012) NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope has detected light emanating from a "super-Earth" planet beyond our solar system for the first time. While the planet is not habitable, the detection is a historic step toward the eventual search for signs of life on other planets.

"Spitzer has amazed us yet again," said Bill Danchi, Spitzer program scientist at NASA Headquarters in Washington. "The spacecraft is pioneering the study of atmospheres of distant planets and paving the way for NASA's upcoming James Webb Space Telescope to apply a similar technique on potentially habitable planets."

The planet, called 55 Cancri e, falls into a class of planets termed super Earths, which are more massive than our home world but lighter than giant planets like Neptune. The planet is about twice as big and eight times as massive as Earth. It orbits a bright star, called 55 Cancri, in a mere 18 hours.

Previously, Spitzer and other telescopes were able to study the planet by analyzing how the light from 55 Cancri changed as the planet passed in front of the star. In the new study, Spitzer measured how much infrared light comes from the planet itself. The results reveal the planet is likely dark, and its sun-facing side is more than 2,000 Kelvin (3,140 degrees Fahrenheit), hot enough to melt metal.

The new information is consistent with a prior theory that 55 Cancri e is a water world: a rocky core surrounded by a layer of water in a "supercritical" state where it is both liquid and gas, and topped by a blanket of steam.

"It could be very similar to Neptune, if you pulled Neptune in toward our sun and watched its atmosphere boil away," said Michal Gillon of Universit de Lige in Belgium, principal investigator of the research, which appears in the Astrophysical Journal. The lead author is Brice-Olivier Demory of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge.

The 55 Cancri system is relatively close to Earth, at 41 light-years away. It has five planets, with 55 Cancri e the closest to the star and tidally locked, so one side always faces the star. Spitzer discovered the sun-facing side is extremely hot, indicating the planet probably does not have a substantial atmosphere to carry the sun's heat to the unlit side.

NASA's James Webb Space Telescope, scheduled to launch in 2018, likely will be able to learn even more about the planet's composition. The telescope might be able to use a similar infrared method to Spitzer to search other potentially habitable planets for signs of molecules possibly related to life.

"When we conceived of Spitzer more than 40 years ago, exoplanets hadn't even been discovered," said Michael Werner, Spitzer project scientist at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif. "Because Spitzer was built very well, it's been able to adapt to this new field and make historic advances such as this."

In 2005, Spitzer became the first telescope to detect light from a planet beyond our solar system. To the surprise of many, the observatory saw the infrared light of a "hot Jupiter," a gaseous planet much larger than the solid 55 Cancri e. Since then, other telescopes, including NASA's Hubble and Kepler space telescopes, have performed similar feats with gas giants using the same method.

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NASA's Spitzer sees the light of alien 'super-Earth'

The lunar rover from the Apollo 17 mission on the moons surface. Where has NASA technology wound up since? [Credit: NASA]Last month, residents of Washington, DC and New York City watched as two Space Shuttles were ferried to their final homes. Even though these orbiters are no longer in service, humans now have a permanent home in space via the International Space Station, and over 500 people from almost 40 countries can say they have flown in space. But for the 6.8 billion residents of Earth whove yet to reach orbit, what benefits of space exploration do we see on a daily basis? What do US citizens get from our space agency, NASA?

The short answer is: quite a lot. Lets take a look at where NASA funding--at present, less than 0.5% of the US federal budget--shows up in our daily lives, and beyond.

Even more fun than a NASA database enumerating technologies, NASA City is an interactive site where you can explore spinoffs of space exploration, and see how they trace back to our homes and cities. As the site's slogan puts it, Space is everywhere you look.

A SanDisk Cruzer flash drive with a Liquidmetal outer casing. [Credit: Liquidmetal Technologies]Do you own a flash storage drive? NASA helped develop an alloy that shows up in thumb drive casings used by SanDisk for their Cruzer Titanium drives. Called liquidmetal, this alloy is a mix of several different metals that form a glass at room temperature and is incredibly resilient against corrosion and scratching. Liquidmetal shows up in baseball bats, skis, and medical equipment.

In your home, NASA technology has led to advances in food safety (including hyperspectral imaging of chickens to scan for diseases) and methods for removing carbon monoxide from buildings. Insulated paint helps reduce your heating bill, thanks to research toward finding ways to protect the Space Shuttle. Even athletic shoes and your memory foam mattress owe thanks to NASA tech.

Hyperspectral imaging of chicken products! [Credit: NASA]

When it comes to safety and health, NASA has improved heart monitoring devices as well as equipment for firefighters and first responders. Self-illuminating paint makes it easier to navigate out of darkened buildings in emergencies, again, because of NASA innovations. Advances in robotic surgery spring from NASA research.

The next time you go for a drive, thank a NASA engineer and a crash test dummy from space! The auto industry uses NASA tracking devices to better understand how dummies respond in crash tests. Brake and air conditioning systems are made more efficient by NASA-designed software.

If reading a big ole PDF is more your style, NASA has a 224-page booklet on its spinoff technology from 2011 alone. Perhaps youll read it while commuting as a passenger in a safer car or a more efficient airplane sporting tech from space.

If youre curious as to what NASA technologies in your life have origins close to home, NASA has a website that details spinoff tech in your area based on location, NASA center, and field of research. Since the NASA Ames Research Center is closest to San Francisco-based PCWorld, I checked to see what the latest and most local spunoff tech is: Advisory Systems [that] Save Time, Fuel for Airlines, which can save tens of thousands of flight minutes and millions in fuel costs and thousands of tons of carbon emissions for commercial airlines.

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Thank You, Space! How NASA Tech Makes Life Better on Earth

Nicholas Katzenbach, civil-rights policy defender, dies at 90

As deputy attorney general in 1963, Nicholas Katzenbach confronted Alabama's segregationist governor demanding he obey a federal court order to admit two black students to the all-white University of Alabama. Scott Pelley reports the trusted adviser to JFK and LBJ has died at the age of 90.

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Video: NASA monitoring "monster sunspots"

NASA needs a new service after retiring space shuttle last year Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos runs of four companies research space taxi service

By Eddie Wrenn

PUBLISHED: 06:45 EST, 10 May 2012 | UPDATED: 07:53 EST, 10 May 2012

Two of NASA's biggest contractors are teaming up with a European agency to create a 'space taxi' for when astronauts need a quick lift away from this planet.

Currently, NASA must 'catch a ride' from the Russian space agency when astronauts want to visit the International Space Station, following the retirement of the space shuttle last year.

Exactly what fare Russia charges NASA for the 260-mile trip is unknown, but NASA will certainly want to be less reliant on another nation for space jaunts.

So now NASA is funding space taxi research with four separate companies - Boeing, Space Exploration Technologies, Sierra Nevada Corp, and Blue Origin, a startup owned by Amazon.com founder Jeff Bezos.

The Space Shuttle Enterprise, taking a quick trip through New York last month as it prepares for retirement at the Intrepid Sea, Air and Space Museum in New York

NASA is reviewing bids for at least two design contracts, valued at $300 million to $500 million apiece.

The taxi service will be composed of recycled space shuttle parts along with a new NASA prototype spaceship.

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NASA 'space taxi' will reduce reliance on Russia to go to International Space Station

NASA announced yesterday that for the first time, it's seen the light of a planet outside of our solar system that is similar in size to the Earth. This planet, 55 Cancri e, is a "super-Earth" that is about twice the size of our planet with about eight times the mass. Although its surface does appear to contain water, it's much closer to its star than Earth is to the Sun, which makes its "year ...

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NASA Detects The Light Of A 'Super-Earth'

A 2013 spending bill that would fund NASA’s commercial crew program below the level President Barack Obama requested drew a veto threat Monday (May 7) as the U.S. House of Representatives was preparing to begin debate on the proposal.

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NASA Budget Cuts Draw Threat of Presidential Veto

CAPE CANAVERAL, Florida (Reuters) - Two of NASA's prime contractors are teaming with Europe's Astrium to develop a commercial space taxi built from shuttle heritage booster rockets and a prototype NASA spaceship originally designed as an alternative to the deep-space Orion capsule, the companies announced on Wednesday. The system, known as Liberty, is among at least four contenders for the next ...

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Shuttle rocket-builder vying for NASA space taxi work

In what must be a meteorite-hunting first, a team of scientists took a zeppelin out Thursday (May 3) to search for fragments from a rare daytime fireball that exploded over California last month.

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NASA, SETI Use Airship to Hunt Meteorites From Big Fireball

You know the name Google, but have you heard of H211? It's the private holding company named after a hangar at NASA's Moffett Field. Inside that hangar sits a fleet of airplanes that have been parked there since 2007. So how does Google play into this? The same men who run Google are the principals of H211.

Ken Ambrose is the Executive Director and Vice President of H211. He usually shies away from the spotlight. In fact, this is the first time he allowed TV news cameras in the cockpit as he flew a scientific mission for NASA, measuring ozone and greenhouse gases. But science is just one component of H211's mission here.

In an interview on the tarmac at NASA, NBC Bay Area's Stephen Stock said to Ambrose, "There are some critics who say wait a minute, this is just a well-connected, well heeled, well financed group of people flying their private jets in and out of a government run facility.""I don't think we're doing anything all that unusual. We're willing to do it and we're willing to pay for it," Ambrose answered Stock.

And pay they do. According to an agreement with NASA, H211 shells out $113,365.74 a month. That's a third more rent than they'd have to pay at most other airports. "Why is it so important for H211 to be here, here at NASA," Stock asked Ambrose who answered. "Good question.It's expensive, but it's proximate."

And that's the rub. Google headquarters sits just blocks away from Moffett Field. "Is it coincidence that the founders are just across the street," Stock asked Ambrose. He answered, "Sure, it's convenient."

By policy, NASA won't let just any private company use government facility such as NASA Ames, but there are exceptions says NASA's Debra Fena. "We welcome anybody who wants to have a place on the NASA research park use the airfield who do two things. Have a NASA alignment to one of our missions, and is financially solvent." In other words, private planes like the fleet owned by H211 and Google's principals parked inside a taxpayer owned hangar must be used for scientific research. How much scientific research isn't specified.

"Some would say well that's just an excuse in order for Google or H211 to park their private planes here," Stock said to Fena. "It's a pretty expensive excuse for them. Our space act agreement is right now aligned with our airborne earth science requirements, data that we couldn't otherwise collect and we are very proud of that alignment. We are very proud of the relationship that has worked thus far since 2007," Fena replied back.

Make no mistake, there is science being done here with the help of these private planes. Dr. Laura Iraci is the science lead for NASA on the project that uses the H211 modified German fighter. She says, "Bad air quality days, good air quality days, having access over and over again to sample the same location is really quite valuable. And it's not something that's often available. Aircraft like this are hard to come by and they are expensive to operate."

"How many of these flights have you flown?" Stock asked Iraci. "This makes our 42nd scientific flight," she answered. "Out of how many years?" "A little more than two."

Ken Ambrose says he's flown more than 80 such flights in that jet. But what about the other planes kept in this hangar? Are they flying scientific missions?

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How Google Execs Get Fly at NASA Ames

ScienceDaily (May 5, 2012) NASA's high-flying ER-2 Airborne Science aircraft has concluded its four-week deployment to validate data acquired by the Multiple Altimeter Beam Experiment Lidar (MABEL) laser altimeter over the Greenland ice cap and surrounding sea ice fields.

After an almost 10 and one-half hour transit flight from its deployment base in Keflavik, Iceland, NASA ER-2 pilot Stu Broce landed ER-2 806 April 27 at the Dryden Aircraft Operations Facility at Air Force Plant 42 in Palmdale, Calif. The lengthy flight from Iceland included data collection by the MABEL instrument over a portion of broadleaf deciduous forest in Wisconsin. The ground support and science crew that supported the flights returned several days later.

"We completed 100 percent of the science flights," said Broce, noting that they were able to acquire data on several additional ad hoc targets that were not in the original plan. "The weather cooperated, the plane worked well as did the science instruments."

The ER-2 flew more than 100 hours on 16 flights in the MABEL validation campaign, including 14 data collection flights over Greenland and surrounding sea ice areas and two transit flights between Keflavik and its home base in Palmdale. Several of the flights were conducted concurrently and on the same flight tracks as flights of other NASA environmental science aircraft involved in the Arctic IceBridge campaign in order to compare data being recorded by the MABEL with instruments on the other aircraft.

Broce had one word to describe the areas of Greenland over which the ER-2 flew: desolate.

A former Air Force pilot, Broce had not flown in this area of the world before the MABEL mission. He noted that one flight took him to 84 degrees north latitude where, he commented, the sun is at a very low angle.

Targets of the flights included wide areas of Greenland's ice sheets and surrounding sea ice fields, the Jacobshavn, Svalbard and East Glaciers, and a volcano in Iceland.

NASA ER-2 research pilot Tim Williams, Dryden's senior representative on the deployment, noted that more than 5.5 terrabytes of data was collected by the MABEL laser altimeter, the Cloud Physics Lidar and other instruments on board the ER-2 during the mission.

MABEL was developed at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center to simulate a similar instrument planned for NASA's IceSat-2 environmental satellite that is scheduled for launch in 2016. Scientists consider laser altimetry from satellites or aircraft to be the most accurate method of gauging changing elevations over a period of time, and thus determine the thickening or thinning of Arctic or Antarctic ice fields and sea ice related to climate change.

Flight and science team members participated in a number of public and educational outreach activities during their stay in Iceland, including briefings on MABEL and IceSAT-2 during a speech on climate by Iceland's president, to the U.S. ambassador and embassy personnel, and to middle- and high-school students, the University of Reykjavik and the Keiler Aviation Academy in Keflavik.

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NASA's ER-2 completes MABEL validation deployment

Arctic ice is undergoing rapid changes, and for the fourth year running, NASA scientists are flying missions above the region's forbidding landscapes to monitor the changes taking place there.

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Stunning Ice Views Captured by Airborne NASA Mission

Summary: NASA and the European Space Agency (ESA) have confirmed they were recently hacked. The hacking group The Unknowns says most of the 10 companies it attacked have patched their systems.

Two of the 10 organizations listed in a recent hack attack have confirmed the alleged security breaches. Furthermore, the new hacker group The Unknowns behind the attack says many of the systems have now been patched, which was supposedly their goal.

Earlier this week, The Unknowns claimed to have hacked 10 organizations around the world, gaining administrator access for all and leaking data for some. In addition to revealing how to access the computer systems of the organizations in question, The Unknowns also posted screenshots showing they gained accessed to each and every one.

The group even put together 250MB worth of military documents from their hacks and uploaded the collection to MediaFire. Some of the leaked documents were several years old, but there were also a few from earlier in 2012.

The Unknowns listed 10 victim websites for which it publicly posted administrator accounts and passwords:

For the NASA hack, the group also decided to leak one of the research centers databases. They released names, employers, home addresses, and e-mail addresses of 736 victims on Pastebin. ESA is the other organization for which they also leaked more data, also via Pastebin. Both NASA and ESA have now confirmed the attacks.

NASA security officials detected an intrusion into the site on April 20 and took it offline, a NASA spokesperson said in a statement. The agency takes the issue of IT security very seriously and at no point was sensitive or controlled information compromised. NASA has made significant progress to better protect the agencys IT systems and is in the process of mitigating any remaining vulnerabilities that could allow intrusions in the future.

The group used SQL injection The use of SQL injection is an admitted vulnerability, ESA security office manager Stefano Zatti told ZDNet UK. This needs to be addressed at a coding level.

In their original message, the group said the goal of their attacks is to improve the state of online security around the globe. Since my first article, The Unknowns Twitter account, which has gained some 200 followers since it was created this week, has sent out the following tweets:

For all the people out there who want me to support them with their Hacking knowledge, in any way, please stop doing that, I wont answer. Informing you that the link we used to penetrate threw the ESETs Database is no more Vulnerable. This really a great thing to know For all the people out there that are asking us to check if their website is well secured; we will get to you as fast as we can.. Were soon going to email our Victims informing them on how we penetrated threw their Databases, they will get all the info they need. The Unknowns - Message: http://pastebin.com/biNMb7gf @TheHackersNews @FoxNews @5_News @BreakTheSec

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NASA, ESA confirm hacks; The Unknowns says systems patched

HAMPTON A NASA Langley jet is flying above the icy deep-blue expanse of Greenland on a mission to research climate change.

Two pilots and a crew took off last month to join Operation IceBridge, which NASA launched in 2009 to document changes in the Arctic and Antarctic ice sheets, ice shelves and sea ice.

They're navigating an HU-25C donated by theU.S. Coast Guardthat was retrofitted with a glass pane in the bottom that allows a sensor to peer through and collect data on polar ice. The jet is small, speedy and capable of going high and far while carrying research equipment, two pilots and operators to monitor the devices.

The view from 28,000 feet high is of a vast, featureless white ice cap, says Langley pilot Richard Yasky. He is currently operating from Thule Air Base in northwestern Greenland.

As he swoops the plane along assigned research tracks, he sees what he describes as the stunning contrast of deep-blue water and snow-covered rocky coastlines.

The crew has gathered ice-elevation data along the length of the Saqqap and Narsup glaciers near Greenland's capital. The country is both beautiful and desolate, he says.

"We look forward to many more flight hours gathering ice-elevation data and looking at areas of Greenland we have not seen yet," he said in an email.

The researcher's work will yield an unprecedented 3-D view of rapidly-changing features of polar ice such as how quickly it's melting, according to NASA.

Elvis on board

A Land, Vegetation and Ice Sensor (LVIS, yes, pronounced Elvis) is on board Langley's jet. It shoots laser beams to yield quick, accurate results about the height of the terrain it flies over.

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NASA Langley deploys jet to Arctic to collect data on climate change

May 4, 2012 7:25pm

A previously unknown hackers group calling themselves The Unknowns has compromised websites and obtained documents from NASA, the U.S. Air Force, the French Ministry of Defense, the European Space Agency, the Bahrain Ministry of Defense, the Thai Royal Navy and Harvard Universitys School of Public Health.

The group posted several screenshots and documents on Pastebin.com, showing the results of its intrusions: http://pastebin.com/uhWSRrSf

A website that was breached at NASAs Glenn Research Center shows a screen from the Interagency Advanced Power Group which conducts research on space and land-based energy programs with the Army, Air Force, Navy, Energy Department and NASA.

Victims, we have released some of your documents and data, the group wrote on a web posting. We probably harmed you a bit but thats not really our goal because if it was then all of your websites would be completely defaced but we know that within a week or two, the vulnerabilities [sic] we found will be patched and thats what were actually looking for. Were ready to give you full info on how we penetrated threw your databases and were ready to do this any time so just contact us, we will be looking forward for this.

A NASA spokesman, contacted by ABC News, said, NASA security officials detected an intrusion into the site on April 20 and took it offline. The agency takes the issue of IT security very seriously and at no point was sensitive or controlled information compromised. NASA has made significant progress to better protect the agencys IT systems and is in the process of mitigating any remaining vulnerabilities that could allow intrusions in the future.

A member of the group who uses the Twitter handle ZyklonB also claims to have penetrated computer systems at Oak Ridge National Laboratory. A spokesman for the laboratory said, The laboratory network was never compromised.

The spokesman said that ZyklonB gained access to an external website where scientists make data publicly available for research purposes. It is unclear if the group was trying to gain access to the labs more sensitive networks.

We are a new hacker group, we have never been in any hacking team before, the group said in a message posted Friday. We are not Anonymous Version 2 and we are not against the US Government. We cant call ourselves White Hat Hackers but were not Black Hat Hackers either Now, we decided to hack these sites for a reasonThese Websites are important, we understand that we harmed the victims and were sorry for that were soon going to email them all the information they need to know about the penetrations we did.

And for all the other websites out there: Were coming, please, get ready, protect your website and stop us from hacking it, whoever you are. Contact us before we take action and we will help you.

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Hackers Group Hits NASA, USAF

Arctic ice is undergoing rapid changes, and for the fourth year running, NASA scientists are flying missions above the region's forbidding landscapes to monitor the changes taking place there.

Excerpt from:

NASA's Airborne Arctic Mission Captures Stunning Ice Views