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NASA Hosts Student Rocket Fair, Helps Students Launch High-Power Rockets

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More than 30 high school, college and university teams will launch student-built rockets during the 15th annual NASA Student Launch event April 10-11 near NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama.

Middle school and high school teams will launch their rockets to an altitude of one mile, deploy onboard science experiments and land safely using a system of recovery parachutes. University and college teams will participate in either the Mini-Mars Ascent Vehicle (Mini-MAV) or the Maxi-Mars Ascent Vehicle (Maxi-MAV) divisions. Mini-MAV teams must use a robotic system to autonomously load a payload into their rocket, launch to half a mile and eject the payload during descent. Maxi-MAV teams, competing for a share of $50,000 in prize money, will attempt to meet more autonomy requirements before also launching to a half mile.

All launches will take place at Bragg Farms in Toney, Alabama. Maxi-MAV launches begin at 10 a.m. CDT and will run until approximately 5 p.m. on April 10. Mini MAV and middle and high school launches begin at 7:30 a.m. and run until completed April 11. In the event of rain, the event will move to April 12.

From 11 a.m. to 1 p.m., April 9, students will participate in a Rocket Fair at Marshall's Activities Building 4316, where they will give technical presentations to, and get valuable feedback from, engineers and team members from NASA and Student Launch corporate sponsor Orbital ATK.

New to this year's Student Launch event is a partnership with NASA's Centennial Challenges, the agency's prize program for citizen inventors. The awards banquet will be held at 6:30 p.m. April 10 inside the Davidson Center for Space Exploration at the U.S. Space & Rocket Center at 1 Tranquility Base in Huntsville. Real-time coverage of the banquet and awards presentation will be provided on the NASA Student Launch Twitter account @NASA_Launchfest.

Media interested in covering Student Launch activities should contact Angela Storey of the Marshall Public and Employee Communications Office at 256-544-0034 no later than 4 p.m. April 8. Media attending events at Marshall must report to the Redstone Visitor Center at Gate 9, Interstate 565 interchange at Rideout Road and Research Park Boulevard no later than 10 a.m. April 9 for escort. Vehicles are subject to a security search at the gate. Journalists will need photo identification and proof of car insurance.

The Student Launch program challenges participating student teams to design rockets that address the research needs of different NASA missions. Student teams will share their research results, which may be used to design and develop future NASA projects.

The program is managed by Marshall's Academic Affairs Office and supported by NASA's Office of Education, Human Explorations Operations Mission Directorate, and Centennial Challenges Program at the agencys headquarters in Washington, as well as Orbital ATK Propulsion Systems of Promontory, Utah. Marshall manages the Centennial Challenges program for NASAs Space Technology Mission Directorate in Washington.

Student Launch is open to public viewing and will be aired live on NASA Television and Marshall's Ustream and Twitter accounts, at:

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NASA Hosts Student Rocket Fair, Helps Students Launch High-Power Rockets

NASA sees Tropical Cyclone 22S 'come together right now'

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IMAGE:NASA's Aqua satellite captured this visible-light image of Tropical Storm 22S in the Southern India Ocean on April 6 at 09:45 UTC. view more

Credit: NASA Goddard's MODIS Rapid Response Team

Like the classic song from 1969, NASA's Aqua satellite passed over Tropical Cyclone 22S in the Southern Indian Ocean and saw it "come together, right now."

The Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer or MODIS instrument that flies aboard NASA's Aqua satellite captured a visible image of Tropical Storm 22S as it organized and became a tropical storm on April 6 at 09:45 UTC (5:45 a.m. EDT). The image was created by the NASA Goddard MODIS Rapid Response Team, at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland. The image showed a rounded area of clouds associated with the tropical storm and a band of thunderstorms from the north feeding into the eastern side of the center of circulation.

On April 6, 2015, at 1500 UTC (11 a.m. EDT), Tropical Cyclone 22S' maximum sustained winds were near 45 knots (51.7 mph/83.3 kph). It was centered near 14.9 south latitude and 61.4 east longitude, about 401 nautical miles (461 miles/ 743 km) northeast of Port Louis, Mauritius. 22S has tracked west-southwestward at 9 knots (10.3 mph/16.6 kph).

22S is moving along the northern edge of a subtropical ridge (elongated area) of high pressure and once that ridge weakens and moves east, the tropical storm will turn to the south and intensify to hurricane-force upon approach to Rodrigues Island. Rodrigues Island is an outer island in the Republic of Mauritius, located about 350 miles (560 km) east of Mauritius.

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NASA sees Tropical Cyclone 22S 'come together right now'

NASA spots an eye in fast-developing Cyclone Ikola

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IMAGE:NASA's Aqua satellite captured this visible image of Tropical Cyclone Ikola in the Southern India Ocean on April 6 at 08:05 UTC. view more

Credit: NASA Goddard MODIS Rapid Response Team

Tropical Cyclone Ikola formed quickly on April 6 and quickly strengthen to hurricane-force in the Southern Indian Ocean. NASA's Aqua satellite passed overhead after the storm developed an eye.

The Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) instrument aboard NASA's Aqua satellite captured a visible image of Tropical Cyclone Ikola on April 6 at 08:05 UTC (4:05 a.m. EDT). The MODIS image clearly showed an eye with thunderstorms wrapping into the center from the eastern and western quadrants. A large, thick band of thunderstorms from the eastern side were spinning around the southern quadrant and into the western side of the low-level center. The image was created by the NASA MODIS Rapid Response Team at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland.

The Atmospheric Infrared Sounder or AIRS instrument that also flies aboard Aqua captured infrared data on the storm during the same overpass. Cloud top temperatures circling the eye were colder than -63F/-52C, indicating high, strong thunderstorms with the potential for heavy rainfall.

At 0900 UTC (5 a.m. EDT) on April 6, 2015, Tropical Cyclone Ikola's maximum sustained winds were near 65 knots (75 mph/120 kph). It was located about 1,497 nautical miles (1,723 miles/ 2,772 km) west-northwest of Learmonth, Australia, near 14.2 south latitude and 89.2 east longitude. Ikola was moving to the southeast at 9 knots (10.3 mph/16.6 kph) and poses no threat to land areas.

The Joint Typhoon Warning Center expects Ikola to strengthen to 75 knots (86.3 mph/138.9 kph) and then gradually weaken, where it is forecast to dissipate far west of Perth, Western Australia.

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NASA spots an eye in fast-developing Cyclone Ikola

NASA Extends Campaign for Public to Name Features on Pluto

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The public has until Friday, April 24 to help name new features on Pluto and its orbiting satellites as they are discovered by NASAs New Horizons mission.

Announced in March, the agency wants to give the worldwide public more time to participate in the agencys mission to Pluto that will make the first-ever close flyby of the dwarf planet on July 14.

The campaign extension, in partnership with the International Astronomical Union (IAU) in Paris, was due to the overwhelming response from the public.

Due to increasing interest and the number of submissions were getting, it was clear we needed to extend this public outreach activity, said Jim Green, director of NASAs Planetary Science Division at the agencys headquarters in Washington. This campaign not only reveals the publics excitement about the mission, but helps the team, which will not have time to come up with names during the flyby, to have a ready-made library of names in advance to officially submit to theIAU.

TheIAUis the formal authority for naming celestial bodies. Submissions must follow a set of accepted themes and guidelines set out by the IAUs Working Group for Planetary System Nomenclature. After the campaign concludes, NASAs New Horizons team will sort through the names and submit its recommendations to theIAU. TheIAUwill decide whether and how the names will be used.

The campaign allows the public of all ages to submit names for the many new features scientists expect to discover on Pluto following the encounter.

"Im impressed with the more than 40,000 thoughtful submissions, said MarkShowalter, scientist New Horizons science team co-investigator, andSETIInstitute in Mountain View, California, which is hosting the naming website. Every day brings new lessons in the world's history, literature and mythology. Participation has come from nearly every country on Earth, so this really is a worldwide campaign.

New Horizons already has covered more than 3 billion miles since it launched on Jan. 19, 2006. Its journey has taken it past each planets orbit, from Mars to Neptune, in record time, and now its now in the first stage of an historic encounter with Pluto that includes long-distance imaging, as well as dust, energetic particle and solar wind measurements to characterize the space environment near Pluto.

The spacecraft will pass Pluto at a speed of 31,000 mph taking thousands of images and making a wide range of science observations. At a distance of nearly 4 billion miles from Earth at flyby, it will take approximately 4.5 hours for data to reach Earth.

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NASA Extends Campaign for Public to Name Features on Pluto

NASA Allowing Public To Name Features On Dwarf Planet Pluto

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By Bradford Hornsby April 6, 2015 2:59 PM

(NASA/JHU APL/SwRI/Steve Gribben)

(CBS SF) NASA has partnered with the International Astronomical Union to allow the public to nominate names for soon-to-be-discovered features on Pluto and its orbiting satellites.

NASAs New Horizons spacecraft will make the first-ever close flyby of Pluto and its satellites in July, collecting thousands of photographs which should reveal an in-depth look at the features on the bodies in the Pluto system.

These features will be named by the public after a vetting by NASAs New Horizons team and the IAU. Dont get too excited and think a feature on Pluto will soon be named after you, your pet hamster, or Seymour Buttz as there is a very strict set of rules for nomenclature.

All nominated names must related to mythology and the literature and history of exploration. Nominations also can not be the name of a living person. Below are the basic rules for names from IAU.

Pluto: Names for the Underworld from the worlds mythologies, Gods, goddesses, and dwarfs associated with the Underworld. Heroes and other explorers of the Underworld. Writers associated with Pluto and the Kuiper Belt. Scientists and engineers associated with Pluto and the Kuiper Belt.

Charon: Destinations and milestones of fictional space and other exploration. Fictional and mythological vessels of space and other exploration. Fictional and mythological voyagers, travelers and explorers.

Styx: River gods.

Nix: Deities of the night.

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NASA Allowing Public To Name Features On Dwarf Planet Pluto

Mars rover Curiosity spots 'ice cream sandwich' rocks (Photos)

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This photo, taken by NASA's Mars rover Curiosity on March 18, 2015, shows a network of two-tone mineral veins at an area called "Garden City" in the foothills of Mount Sharp.(NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS)

This image, taken by the Curiosity rover's Mars Hand Lens Imager on Mars 25, 2015, is a close-up of a two-tone mineral vein at the Garden City site in the lower reaches of Mount Sharp.(NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS)

NASA's Curiosity rover has photographed some Martian rocks that bear a passing resemblance to a tasty frozen treat.

The rocks, which lie at a site dubbed Garden City near the base of Mars' 3.4-mile-high Mount Sharp, harbor ridges up to 2.5 inches tall that are composed of bright and dark mineral veins.

"Some of them look like ice-cream sandwiches: dark on both edges and white in the middle," Curiosity science team member Linda Kah of the University of Tennessee said in a statement. "These materials tell us about secondary fluids that were transported through the region after the host rock formed." [Latest Photos from NASA's Mars Rover Curiosity]

The car-size Curiosity rover touched down in August 2012, on a mission to determine if Mars could ever have supported microbial life. The rover found evidence of an ancient, habitable lake-and-stream system at a spot near its landing site called Yellowknife Bay.

The fluid movement responsible for the Garden City veins was likely more recent than the conditions that formed the Yellowknife Bay lake, which probably existed around 3.5 billion years ago.

"Mud that formed lake-bed mudstones Curiosity examined near its 2012 landing site and after reaching Mount Sharp must have dried and hardened before the fractures formed," NASA officials wrote in the statement. "The dark material that lines the fracture walls reflects an earlier episode of fluid flow than the white, calcium-sulfate-rich veins do, although both flows occurred after the cracks formed."

Mount Sharp has long been Curiosity's main science destination. Mission team members want the rover to climb up through the mountain's foothills, reading a history of Mars' changing environmental conditions as it goes.

Curiosity reached the foot of Mount Sharp in September 2014. The six-wheeled robot then spent six months exploring the bottom layers of an outcrop called Pahrump Hills, drilling into three different rocks to collect samples for analysis.

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Mars rover Curiosity spots 'ice cream sandwich' rocks (Photos)

Eyes in the sky: How NASA helps gauge drought impact

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Shortly before 5 P.M. Pacific Daylight Time on Friday, a small, nondescript Beechcraft Air King climbed from the runway at Mammoth Yosemite Airport, reached 15,300 feet and headed over the snow-starved Sierra Nevada.

To anyone driving past the airport, nestled on the backside of the mountain range, the airplane's departure might have seemed like just another private plane taking off from a rural airfield.

Instead, the 1960s-vintage, twin-engine turboprop NASA's Airborne Snow Observatory (ASO) is playing a key role in helping water managers in drought-ravaged California track the amount of water stored in the state's paltry Sierra snow pack.

The aircraft carries two instruments whose data combine to provide the most comprehensive estimates yet of snow's water content critical information for forecasting the mount of water that the mountains hold in reserve for what traditionally has been the state's dry season.

The observatory began flying in 2013 as a three-year demonstration project, starting with one watershed. On Friday, the ASO would fly two sorties, traveling along tightly spaced, back-and-forth tracks over four watersheds.

The observatory's progress during its first two years has transformed from a let's-see-if-this-works effort to a must-have data source that has caught the attention of other western states.

Until now, water managers have never known the true distribution of snow water equivalent across a watershed, says Thomas Painter, a hydrologist at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena and the project's lead scientist.

"You can't manage what you don't measure," he says.

Yet mountain snows provide about 75 percent of the West's water. Population growth, a relentless draw-down of water stored in aquifers, and global warming's projected impact on precipitation and soil moisture pose significant challenges for managing water resources.

As if to underscore the point, researchers at NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies and Columbia University's Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory published a study in February that yielded projections for "a remarkably drier future that falls outside the contemporary experience" of people and ecosystems in western North America.

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Eyes in the sky: How NASA helps gauge drought impact

World Tech Update Microsoft Surface 3, Amazons Dash Button, NASAs flying saucer – Video

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World Tech Update Microsoft Surface 3, Amazons Dash Button, NASAs flying saucer
Microsoft goes after laptop diehards with the new Surface 3 tablet, Amazon wants you to restock household items with a push of its Dash Button and NASA #39;s flying saucer lander takes a spin.

By: IDG.tv

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World Tech Update Microsoft Surface 3, Amazons Dash Button, NASAs flying saucer - Video

NASA wants to deflect an asteroid in 2022: 4 reasons why

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ESAScience Office An illustration of the plume and crater left by NASA's dart probe after crashing into an asteroid a test of technologies intended to help us deflect asteroids in the future.

In 2022, NASA plans to send a probe crashing into an asteroid at more than 13,000 miles per hour to deflect it off its course.

This particular asteroid isn't a threat to us. But NASA is trying to figure out how it might defend Earth from asteroids more generally in case a big one really does head our way in the future.

This is all part of a joint mission NASA's planning with the European Space Agency called Asteroid Impact & Deflection Assessment (AIDA). It will start with the launch of a European craft in 2020 to study and map the asteroid first. ESA entered the preliminary design phase of that initial reconnaissance mission earlier this week.

The goal is to develop the technology and expertise that might be necessary to nudge an asteroid out of its orbit if we ever discovered one heading for Earth. It might sound far-fetched, but the truth is that asteroids are a potentially serious threat and foresighted missions like this could theoretically be the difference between a closely averted disaster and catastrophe.

1. The plan to crash into an asteroid

In 2020, the European Space Agency plans to launch its Asteroid Impact Mission, or AIM probe. It'll travel to an asteroid named Didymos, which is orbited by a relatively small (about 550 feet wide) asteroid called Didymoon.

Over the course of a year or so, AIM will orbit Didymoon, mapping its surface and collecting data on its mass and overall structure. Current plans also call for it to send out a pair of smaller satellites to collect more data, as well as a lander that would touch down on Didymoon itself becoming just the fourth craft (if Japan's current Hayabusa-2 mission is a success) to make a controlled landing on an asteroid.

Then, in 2021, NASA would launch another probe, called the Double Asteroid Redirection Test, or DART. When it arrives in late 2022, the 660-pound probe would crash into Didymoon at a speed of more than 13,000 miles per hour, likely creating a crater and slightly changing the path of the asteroid's orbit. AIM would continue to collect data on Didymoon, providing valuable information on the physics of redirecting asteroids in space.

2. NASA is trying to avoid a chain reaction of asteroids

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NASA wants to deflect an asteroid in 2022: 4 reasons why

NASA World Map Shows Where Lightning Strikes Most

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By now, we hope, youve abandoned that old folk myth that lightning never strikes twice. (In fact, a 1997 study found that lighting flashesstrike multiple spots simultaneously about a third of the time, and that your chances of being struck are about 45 percent higher than the number of flashes would seem to indicate).

So now that weve gotten that out of the way, heres another burning question: Where does lightning strike most frequently on the planet? As it turns out, those brainy folks at NASA have the answer.

NEWS: Man Struck By Lightning Twice

Between 1998 and 2013, NASAsTropical Rainfall Measuring MissionandOrbView-1/Microlabsatellites gathered data on the number and location of lightning flashes worldwide, and what they found is shown on the map above. As it turns out, lightning tends to happen most often in areas closest to the equator, and more often over land than over the oceans.

That makes sense, because asNASAs Earth Observatory websiteexplains,solid earth absorbs sunlight and heats up faster than water. That results in stronger convection and greater atmospheric instability, which leads to the production of the sort of storms that produce lightning.

The spots on the planet with the highest amount of lightning turn out to be Lake Maracaibo in northwestern Venezuela, where the combination of heat, humidity and wind from the surrounding Andes mountain range causes spectacular storms, and the far eastern part of the Democratic Republic of Congo.

NEWS: Mushroom Clouds Form Over Idaho Lightning Fires

According toReuters, the Lake Maraciabo area has lightning storms 300 nights each year, and each kilometer of the area is hit by 250 lightning strikes annually.

NASA scientist Daniel Cecil noted on the Earth Observatory website that the new map is far more detailed thanprevious effortsto chart global lightning.The longer record allows us to more confidently identify some of these finer details, he said. We can examine seasonality, and variability through the day and year-to-year.

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NASA World Map Shows Where Lightning Strikes Most

Nasa prepares to test its 'flying saucer' heat shield

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Nasa will fly its new heat shield from Hawaii in a couple of months Tomorrow it will perform a spin-test of the new technology It is known as the low density supersonic decelerator (LDSD) Nasa says it could one day be used to take humans onto Mars

By Jonathan O'Callaghan for MailOnline

Published: 08:08 EST, 30 March 2015 | Updated: 17:18 EST, 3 April 2015

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When the first astronauts land on Mars, they will not use a conventional parachute or heat shield that has been used before.

Instead, upon impacting the upper Martian atmosphere, a large inflatable saucer-shaped structure will slow their progress.

This is the low density supersonic decelerator (LDSD) and, in June, Nasa will perform the latest test of this groundbreaking technology - a vital next step in the journey to Mars.

Scroll down for a video from last year's test

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Nasa prepares to test its 'flying saucer' heat shield


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