NASA on High Alert, YB35 Asteroid might hit Earth on 27-March-2015
LIKE | SHARE | COMMENT | SUBSCRIBE NASA on alert as HUGE Asteroid 2014-YB35 set to #39;skim past Earth #39; at 23000 mph on FRIDAY. According to Scientists, this 1000 meter wide mammoth ...
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NASA #39;s CERES Dawn mission is Shady.
The Ceres Adventure continues.
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Eruption Watch, Tornado Warning | S0 News March 25, 2015
Observing the Frontier Conference: https://www.eventjoy.com/e/suspicious0bservers http://www.Suspicious0bservers.org http://www.ObservatoryProject.com TODAY #39;s LINKS: Magnets, Heat and Sound: ...
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NASA #39;s Opportunity Rover Completes First-ever Mars Marathon
It took 11 years and two months, but NASA #39;s Opportunity Mars Exploration Rover did it: It traversed 26.22 miles (42.19 km) on Mars, effectively finishing the first marathon on the Red Planet....
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N.A.S.A. - "Hands Up, Don #39;t Shoot! feat. Sean Paul and Lizzo" (Official Music Video)
Directed by Chip Yamada and Sam Spiegel. http://nasamusicofficial.com https://twitter.com/nasaofficial SUBSCRIBE to Pitchfork.tv: http://bit.ly/yK2Fbp ------ Follow Pitchfork.tv on Twitter:...
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Georgia Stamper 200 Breast at 2015 NASA Jr. Nationals
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Georgia Stamper 200 Breast at 2015 NASA Jr. Nationals - Video
NASA African American History Month Profile - Kevin Poe (NSSC)
Kevin Poe serves as an Information Technology Specialist for the NASA Shared Services Center.
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In this computer graphic, NASA's proposed ARM -- Asteroid Redirect Mission -- spacecraft settles to the surface of an asteroid and locks onto a boulder targeted for return to the vicinity of the moon for hands-on analysis by spacewalking astronauts. NASA
After an extended review, NASA has opted to forego capturing a small asteroid as an interim step on the road to sending astronauts to Mars. Instead, the agency will focus on robotically plucking a sizable boulder from the surface of an asteroid and returning it to the vicinity of the moon for analysis by spacewalking astronauts in the mid 2020s, officials said Wednesday.
Agency managers said the mission will serve as a testbed for technologies needed for eventual deep space missions, give NASA astronauts experience interacting with another body, provide new insights into the birth and evolution of the solar system and shed light on what might be needed to someday divert an asteroid on a collision course with Earth.
"When you think about what we're trying to do with this Asteroid Redirect Mission, it's bringing together the best of NASA's human exploration, its science portfolio, technology portfolio and really gives us an opportunity to demonstrate capabilities we're going to need for future human missions beyond low-Earth orbit and then ultimately, to Mars," said Robert Lightfoot, the NASA manager overseeing the project.
The Asteroid Redirect Mission, or ARM, is the centerpiece of the Obama administration's post-shuttle, post-space station plan to send astronauts beyond low-Earth orbit, bypassing the moon in favor of one or more piloted flights to get hands-on experience with a nearby asteroid in the mid 2020s. NASA's long-range goal is a flight to orbit or land on Mars in the 2030s.
The ARM project has drawn fire from many space advocates and scientists who argue it is not necessary and that NASA's time and money would be better spent on a return to the moon to perfect the technologies needed for eventual Mars missions.
In any case, NASA managers and engineers have been studying two basic ARM options. In one, an entire asteroid would be captured and hauled back to the vicinity of the moon for detailed study by astronauts using NASA's new Orion crew capsule. The other option calls for collecting a large boulder as a more manageable, representative sample.
NASA managers met Tuesday and selected Option B, deciding it offered the best chance for success and a better fit with the agency's long-range plans.
"At the end of the day, we selected the option (where) we're going to go to an asteroid and take a boulder off of it," Lightfoot told reporters during an afternoon teleconference. "Let's get on with it, so we can get this next key step in our journey to Mars moving on."
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It sounds almost like a late 90s sci-fi flick: NASA sends a spacecraft to an asteroid, plucks a boulder off its surface with a robotic claw, and brings it back in orbit around the moon. Then, brave astronaut heroes go and study the space rock up closeand bring samples back to Earth.
Except its not a movie: Thats the real-life idea for the Asteroid Redirect Mission, which NASA announced today. Other than simply being an awesome space version of the claw arcade game (you know you really wanted that stuffed Pikachu), the mission will let NASA test technology and practice techniques needed for going to Mars.
The mission, which will cost up to$1.25 billion, is slated to launch in December 2020. It will take about two years to reach the asteroid(the most likely candidate is aquarter-mile-wide rock called 2008 EV5). The spacecraft will spend up to 400 days there, looking for a good boulder. After picking onemaybe around 13 feet in diameterit will bring the rockover to the moon.In 2025, astronauts will fly NASAs still-to-be-built Orion to dock with the asteroid-carrying spacecraft and study the rock up close.
Although the mission would certainly give scientists an up-close opportunity to look at an asteroid, itsmain purpose is as a testing ground for a Mars mission. The spacecraft will test a solar electronic propulsion system, which uses the power from solar panels to pump out charged particles to provide thrust. Its slower than conventional rockets, but a lot more efficient. You cant lug a lot of rocket fuel to Mars.
Overall, the mission gives NASA a chance at practicing precise navigation and maneuvering techniques that theyll need to master for a Mars mission. Such a trip will also require a lot more cargo, so grabbing and maneuvering a big space rock is good practice. Entering lunar orbit and docking with another spacecraft would also be helpful, as the orbit might be a place for a deep-space habitat, a rendezvous point for astronauts to pick up cargo or stop on their way to Mars.
Andyou knew this part was coming, Armageddonfansthe mission might teach NASA something about preventing an asteroid from striking Earth. After grabbing the boulder, the spacecraft will orbit the asteroid. With the added heft from the rock, the spacecraftsextra gravity would nudge the asteroid, creating a slight change in trajectory that NASA could measure from Earth. Were not talking about a large deflection here, says Robert Lightfoot, an associate administrator at NASA. But the idea is that a similar technique could push a threatening asteroid off a collision course with Earth.
NASA chose this mission concept over one that wouldve bagged an entire asteroid. In that plan, the spacecraft wouldve captured the space rockby enclosing it in a giant, flexible container. The claw concept won out because its rendezvous and soft-landing on the asteroid will allow NASA to test and practice more capabilities in preparation for a Mars mission, Lightfoot says. The claw wouldve also given more chances at grabbing a space rock, whereas it was all or nothing with the bag idea. Its a one-shot deal, he says. It is what it is when we get there. But the claw concept offers some choices. Ive got three to five opportunities to pull one of the boulders off, he says. Not bad odds. Better than winning that Pikachu.
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What capabilities are needed to push space technology forward? See what NASA has planned...
What capabilities are needed to push space technology forward? See what NASA has planned... Facebook.com/zeitgeistinarabic Help us caption translate this video! http://amara.org/v/GUCV/
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What capabilities are needed to push space technology forward? See what NASA has planned... - Video
NASA Astronaut Twins Set for Space Study
NASA is set to launch a mission to understand the effects of long-haul space travel on humans by comparing a set of twin brothers, Mark and Scott Kelly. Photo: NASA.
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Jim Adams, NASA, USA Technology: How investing in space is changing your life on Earth
Scifest Africa 2015 Lecture.
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Jim Adams, NASA, USA Technology: How investing in space is changing your life on Earth - Video
NASA #39;s New Breed of Technology (Official Video HD)
NASA #39;s New Breed of Technology (Official Video HD)
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Identical twins to help NASA understand effects of space travel on human body
A pair of identical twins is aiming to help the US space agency gain a better understanding of the effects of long-term space travel on human body, with a special experiment. The twins are...
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Identical twins to help NASA understand effects of space travel on human body - Video
IMAGE:The NASA-funded MinXSS CubeSat will launch in late 2015 to study soft X-rays from the sun. There have not yet been long term studies of these soft X-rays, but observations... view more
At any given moment, our sun emits a range of light waves far more expansive than what our eyes alone can see: from visible light to extreme ultraviolet to soft and hard X-rays. Different wavelengths can have different effects at Earth and, what's more, when observed and analyzed correctly, those wavelengths can provide scientists with information about events on the sun. In 2012 and 2013, a detector was launched on a sounding rocket for a 15 minute trip to look at a range of sunlight previously not well-observed: soft X-rays.
Each wavelength of light from the sun inherently carries information about the kind of process that emitted the light, so looking at soft X-rays provides a new way to figure out what is happening on our closest star. For example, the sun's atmosphere, the corona, is 1,000 times hotter than its surface, and scientists do not yet understand the details of why. The soft X-ray detector brought home data showing that a significant amount of soft X-rays - more than expected - were seen when there are even a small amount of magnetically complex sunspots. Identifying what process within these magnetically active regions contributes to the great increase in soft X-rays could hold clues for what's helping to heat the corona. A paper on these results appeared in the Astrophysical Journal Letters on March 18, 2015.
"Not only did we gather measurements that haven't been made routinely," said Amir Caspi, first author on the paper and a solar scientist at Southwest Research Institute in Boulder, Colorado, who worked at the University of Colorado in Boulder during the course of this study. "The detector we used also allowed us to gather the best measurements so far made in this energy range."
This soft X-ray detector hitched a ride into space on a NASA sounding rocket. During a 15 minute total flight, sounding rockets have about six minutes of time to gather data from space. The soft X-ray detector and its related components are only about the size of a pack of cards, so it could easily fly on board a rocket carrying another experiment - in this case, one that helps calibrate the Extreme Ultraviolet Variability Experiment, or EVE, on NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory. Sounding rockets and combining missions on a single launch vehicle provide an opportunity to conduct world-class science with a lower price tag.
The soft X-ray detector flew first on June 23, 2012, and again on October 21, 2013.
During both flights, there were only a few complex active regions on the sun's surface - indeed, very few during the 2012 flight. Yet, in both flights the detector saw 1000 times more soft X-rays than had been seen by another experiment in 2009. Even a slight extra amount of solar activity in the form of these active regions, led to substantially more output in the soft X-ray wavelengths.
Wavelengths of light correlate to particular temperatures of material on the sun, and this abundance of soft X-rays points to clouds of hot - 5 to 10 million degrees - gases above the active regions that wasn't present during the 2009 measurements when there were no active regions on the sun. That kind of information makes it clear that different heating mechanisms occur on the quiet sun and active regions, opening the door to determining the differences. One theory for the source of this mysterious heating is that numerous tiny explosions called nanoflares are constantly erupting on the sun. Nanoflares are too small to be seen by our telescopes, but powerfully energetic nonetheless. The soft X-rays might well be a result of nanoflares, thus giving us a way of investigating them.
The new soft X-ray data differed from previous data studies in another respect as well. By parsing out the amounts of each individual wavelength of light gathered, the team could identify what elements were present in the corona. Typically, the abundance of some of these atoms in the corona is greater than at the sun's surface. But not so in these recent observations. The mix of material in the corona was more similar to the mix seen at the solar surface, suggesting that some material from the surface was somehow rising up higher into the atmosphere.
"The difference we see in the abundances of the elements compared to previous studies suggest there may be a link between the heating mechanism and the coronal composition," said Caspi.
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IMAGE:Infrared images from instruments at Kitt Peak National Observatory (KPNO, left) and NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope document the outburst of HOPS 383, a young protostar in the Orion star-formation complex.... view more
Credit: E. Safron et al.; Background: NASA/JPL/T. Megeath (U-Toledo)
Using data from orbiting observatories, including NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope, and ground-based facilities, an international team of astronomers has discovered an outburst from a star thought to be in the earliest phase of its development. The eruption, scientists say, reveals a sudden accumulation of gas and dust by an exceptionally young protostar known as HOPS 383.
Stars form within collapsing fragments of cold gas clouds. As the cloud contracts under its own gravity, its central region becomes denser and hotter. By the end of this process, the collapsing fragment has transformed into a hot central protostar surrounded by a dusty disk roughly equal in mass, embedded in a dense envelope of gas and dust. Astronomers call this a "Class 0" protostar.
"HOPS 383 is the first outburst we've ever seen from a Class 0 object, and it appears to be the youngest protostellar eruption ever recorded," said William Fischer, a NASA Postdoctoral Program Fellow at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland.
The Class 0 phase is short-lived, lasting roughly 150,000 years, and is considered the earliest developmental stage for stars like the sun.
A protostar has not yet developed the energy-generating capabilities of a sun-like star, which fuses hydrogen into helium in its core. Instead, a protostar shines from the heat energy released by its contraction and by the accumulation of material from the disk of gas and dust surrounding it. The disk may one day develop asteroids, comets and planets.
Because these infant suns are thickly swaddled in gas and dust, their visible light cannot escape. But the light warms dust around the protostar, which reradiates the energy in the form of heat detectable by infrared-sensitive instruments on ground-based telescopes and orbiting satellites.
HOPS 383 is located near NGC 1977, a nebula in the constellation Orion and a part of its sprawling star-formation complex. Located about 1,400 light-years away, the region constitutes the most active nearby "star factory" and hosts a treasure trove of young stellar objects still embedded in their natal clouds.
A team led by Thomas Megeath at the University of Toledo in Ohio used Spitzer to identify more than 300 protostars in the Orion complex. A follow-on project using the European Space Agency's Herschel Space Observatory, called the Herschel Orion Protostar Survey (HOPS), studied many of these objects in greater detail.
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There was no tape draped across a finish line, but NASA is celebrating a win. The agencys Mars Exploration Rover Opportunity completed its first Red Planet marathon Tuesday -- 26.219 miles (42.195 kilometers) with a finish time of roughly 11 years and two months.
"This is the first time any human enterprise has exceeded the distance of a marathon on the surface of another world," said John Callas, Opportunity project manager at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California. "A first time happens only once."
The rover team at JPL plans a marathon-length relay run at the laboratory next week to celebrate.
The long-lived rover surpassed the marathon mark during a drive of 153 feet (46.5 meters). Last year, Opportunity became the long-distance champion of all off-Earth vehicles when it topped the previous record set by the former Soviet Union's Lunokhod 2 moon rover.
"This mission isn't about setting distance records, of course; it's about making scientific discoveries on Mars and inspiring future explorers to achieve even more," said Steve Squyres, Opportunity principal investigator at Cornell University in Ithaca, New York. "Still, running a marathon on Mars feels pretty cool."
Opportunity's original three-month prime mission in 2004 yielded evidence of environments with liquid water soaking the ground and flowing on planets surface. As the rover continued to operate far beyond expectations for its lifespan, scientists chose the rim of Endeavour Crater as a long-term destination. Since 2011, examinations of Endeavour's rim have provided information about ancient wet conditions less acidic, and more favorable for microbial life, than the environment that left clues found earlier in the mission.
JPL manages the Mars rover projects for NASA's Science Mission Directorate in Washington. The Mars Exploration Rover Project, NASA's newer Curiosity Mars rover, and three active NASA Mars orbiters are part of NASA's Mars Exploration Program, which seeks to characterize and understand Mars as a dynamic system, including its present and past environment, climate cycles, geology and biological potential. In parallel, NASA is developing the human spaceflight capabilities needed for its journey to Mars.
For more information about Opportunity, visithttp://www.nasa.gov/rovershttp://marsrovers.jpl.nasa.gov
Follow the project on social media at:http://twitter.com/MarsRovershttp://www.facebook.com/mars.rovers
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NASA's Opportunity Mars Rover Finishes Marathon, Clocks in at Just Over 11 Years
Rover Searches California Desert for Water to Simulate Future Lunar Missions
Water is critical for human existence, whether on our planet or distant destinations. In support of future space exploration, researchers from NASA #39;s Ames Research Center are searching for...
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Rover Searches California Desert for Water to Simulate Future Lunar Missions - Video