NASA will hold a media briefing at 1 p.m. EST Wednesday, Feb. 25, to discuss an upcoming mission to study magnetic reconnection around Earth, a fundamental process throughout the universe where magnetic fields connect and disconnect explosively releasing energy.

The briefing, held at NASA Headquarters, 300 E St. SW in Washington, will be broadcast live on NASA Television and streamed on the agency's website.

Called the Magnetospheric Multiscale (MMS) mission, the project will help scientists understand the process of magnetic reconnection, which can accelerate particles up to nearly the speed of light. By studying reconnection near Earth, MMS will help scientists understand reconnection in the atmosphere of the sun and other stars, in the vicinity of black holes and neutron stars, and at the boundary between our solar systems heliosphere and interstellar space.

The mission consists of four identical spacecraft that will provide the first three-dimensional view of magnetic reconnection. Launch is scheduled for 10:44 p.m. March 12, from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida.

The briefing participants are:

Jeff Newmark, interim director, Heliophysics Division, NASA Headquarters in Washington

Jim Burch, principal investigator, MMS Instrument Suite, Southwest Research Institute, San Antonio

Craig Tooley, MMS Project Manager, NASAs Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland

Paul Cassak,associate professor, West Virginia University, Morgantown

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NASA Hosts Media Briefing on Mission to Study Dynamic Magnetic System Around Earth

NASA Administrator Charles Bolden has named Steve Jurczyk as the agency's Associate Administrator for the Space Technology Mission Directorate, effective Monday, March 2. The directorate is responsible for innovating, developing, testing and flying hardware for use on future NASA missions.

Jurczyk has served as Center Director at NASA's Langley Research Center in Hampton, Virginia, since April of 2014. An accomplished engineer, he previously served as the deputy center director and in other leadership positions at the center prior to his appointment as center director.

"It's great to have Steve coming aboard to lead the technology and innovation engine of the agency," said Bolden. "Technology drives exploration and under Steve's leadership we'll continue the President's innovation strategy, positioning NASA and the aerospace community on the cutting-edge, pushing the boundaries of the aerospace with the technical rigor our nation expects of its space program"

Langleys current deputy director, Dave Bowles, will serve as acting director.

In May 2003, Jurczyk was named director of Systems Engineering. Before becoming Langley's Deputy Director,he previously served as director of Langley's Research and Technology Directorate.

Jurczyk began his NASA career at Langley in 1988 as an electronics engineer in the Electronic Systems Branch. While on detail to NASA Headquarters, he managed the Tropical Rainfall Measuring Mission and formulated the technology development strategy for the Earth Science Enterprise.

From 1994 to 1997, he was the Instrument Systems Engineer and later the Spacecraft Systems Manager for the Landsat 7 Project at Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland. He returned to Langley as head of the Electronic Systems Branch in the Aerospace Electronics Systems Division. In 2002,Jurczykwas selected as Deputy Director for Flight Systems in Langley's Systems Engineering organization.

Jurczykearned bachelor and master of science degrees in electrical engineering from the University of Virginia in 1984 and 1986, respectively.

Jurczyk succeeds Michael Gazarik, who left this agency this month to become director of Technology at Ball and Technologies Corp. in Boulder, Colorado

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Steve Jurczyk Named Head of NASA Space Technology Mission Directorate

NASA African American History Month Profile-Ryan Warner (Armstrong Flight Research Center)
Ryan Warner Williams works as an aerospace engineer at Armstrong Flight Research Center. He currently works on the Assurance of Flight Critical Systems proje...

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Provided by Vox.com The MOLAB could travel at 21 miles per hour. (USGS)

NASA is full of ambitious dreamers. But those dreams cost money. And Congress has to approve them first.

Ever since the end of the Apollo program, this tension has meant that many of NASA's ideas are killed before they ever progress much beyond concept drawings.

These ideas have ranged from far-fetched fantasies to financially prudent missions. Some were just sketches and equations on paper, while others materialized into models and test materials. But they all share one characteristic: they never happened.

Here are some of the most fascinating ideas concocted over the years.

As the Apollo program made progress toward a crewed moon landing, some NASA scientists made plans for longer human missions to explore and study the moon's surface.

Toward that end, in 1963, NASA contracted with GM to produce an inhabitable lab on wheels that astronauts could live in for weeks at a time as they drove around the moon. It was essentially a lunar RV, powered by an engine from a Chevrolet Corvair (the car that eventually became infamous as the subject of Ralph Nader's book Unsafe at Any Speed).

But after a few successful Apollo landings, plans for longer-term exploration of the moon were cancelled. GM had built a single prototype, and it was eventually loaned to the US Geological Survey (which used it for several projects in the deserts of the southwest).

Following the success of the Apollo program, some scientists began drawing up ideas for enormous space colonies that would be established on stations in Earth's orbit. A 1975 NASA study, for instance, envisioned "a space habitat where 10,000 people work, raise families, and live out normal human lives."

Plans were devised for several different space stations, each of which would have rotated to use centrifugal force to simulate the feeling of gravity. Residents would use soil brought from the moon to grown their own food, purify their own water, and have their own parks, shops, schools, and hospitals. One of the colony's purposes would be industry: "Using solar energy to generate electricity and to power solar furnaces the colonists refine aluminum, titanium, and silicon from lunar ores shipped inexpensively into space," the report noted.

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The 5 coolest NASA missions that never happened

NASA Releases Epic, High-Def Footage Of The Sun Doing Its Thang
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Ljubav je kad se neko voli - DU Nasa radost
65 Zupska Hronika Februar 2015.

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David Bowie once speculated about life on Mars, and now NASA scientists are wondering the same thing about Jupiters moon Europa.

A potential mission may soon be sending NASA scientists to the small, icy moon to search for signs of alien life, Space.com reports. NASA officials held a workshop Wednesday at the Ames Research Center in Silicon Valley to discuss the matter.

This is our chance, said NASA science chief John Grunsfeld. I just hope we dont miss this opportunity for lack of ideas.

Specifically, scientists plan to search the plumes of water vapor, first spotted by NASAs Hubble Space Telescope in 2012, that blast from the moons south polar region. This will allow researchers to sample the liquid hidden beneath Europas icy surface.

Plans for a Europa mission have been in the works for years, but NASA got closer to making it a reality when the White House allocated $30 million for a Europa mission in its 2016 budget request.

[Space.com]

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NASA Thinks There May Be Life on Jupiters Moon

February 21, 2015

This artist's impression shows Jupiter and its moon Europa using actual Jupiter and Europa images in visible light. The Hubble ultraviolet images showing the faint emission from the water vapor plumes have been superimposed, respecting the size but not the brightness of the plumes. (Credit: NASA/M. Kommesser)

Chuck Bednar for redOrbit.com @BednarChuck

NASA officials have reportedly asked scientists to determine if the US space agencys upcoming mission to Jupiters moon Europa could be used to search for signs of extraterrestrial life.

[STORY: NASA discusses future robotic lander mission to Europa]

The voyage to Europa, which could be ready to launch within the next decade, was initially not designed to seek out signs of alien life. Instead, Kevin Hand, Deputy Chief Scientist for Solar System Exploration at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in California, said earlier this month that the goal of the mission was to understand habitability; the ingredients for life.

However, as reported Friday by Space.com, NASA may be doing an about-face on that, as they are exploring the possibility of searching for evidence of organic life in water vapor plumes that blast into space from the moons southern polar region during the mission. Those plumes could give scientists a way to sample Europas buried ocean of liquid water, the website said.

Last call for aliens

During a workshop at NASAs Ames Research Center in Silicon Valley on Wednesday, science chief John Grunsfeld told reporters that this is our chance to find out whether or not life exists on the Europa, and he hoped that they dont miss this opportunity for lack of ideas.

As revealed in the agencys 2016 budget, NASA plans to send an unmanned mission to Europa in order to study those vast oceans, which are buried beneath layers of ice. The spacecraft used on the mission will be known as the Europa Clipper, which will be comprised of an orbiter that will conduct roughly 45 flybys of the moons surface over the next three years.

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Could NASAs Europa mission search for alien life?

A THORnews previews of NASA #39;s Martian Apocalypse Now
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MOFFETT FIELD, Calif. A potential NASA mission to Jupiter's moon Europa may end up hunting for signs of life on the icy, ocean-harboring world.

NASA officials have asked scientists to consider ways that a Europa mission could search for evidence of alien life in the plumes of water vapor that apparently blast into space from Europa's south polar region.

These plumes, which NASA's Hubble Space Telescope spotted in December 2012, provide a possible way to sample Europa's ocean of liquid water, which is buried beneath the moon's icy shell, researchers say. [Photos: Europa, Mysterious Icy Moon of Jupiter]

"This is our chance" to investigate whether or not life exists on Europa, NASA science chief John Grunsfeld said here Wednesday (Feb. 18) during a Europa plume workshop at the agency's Ames Research Center in Silicon Valley. "I just hope we don't miss this opportunity for lack of ideas."

NASA has been working on Europa mission concepts for years. Indeed, last July, agency officials asked scientists around the world to propose instruments that could fly aboard a Europa-studying spacecraft.

The quest to explore the 1,900-mile-wide (3,100 kilometers) moon got on firmer ground earlier this month when the White House allocated $30 million in its fiscal year 2016 budget requestto formulate a Europa mission. (NASA was allocated a total of $18.5 billion in the request, which must still be approved by Congress.)

NASA is zeroing in on a flyby mission design, something along the lines of a long-studied concept called the Europa Clipper. As currently envisioned, Clipper would travel to Jupiter orbit, then make 45 flybys of Europa over 3.5 years, at altitudes ranging from 16 miles to 1,700 miles (25 km to 2,700 km).

The $2.1 billion mission would study Europa's subsurface ocean, giving researchers a better understanding of the water's depth, salinity and other characteristics. The probe would also measure and map the moon's ice shell, returning data that would be useful for a future mission to the Europan surface. [Europa and Its Ocean (Video)]

And now, it appears, NASA would like to add plume sampling to the Europa mission's task list, if possible. Grunsfeld urged workshop attendees to "think outside the box" and come up with feasible ways to study the moon's plumes.

If one such idea could be incorporated into the upcoming mission, so much the better. After all, the earliest that Clipper (or whatever variant ultimately emerges) could blast off for Europa is 2022 and, using currently operational rockets, the craft wouldn't arrive in the Jupiter system until 2030, Grunsfeld pointed out. (Use of NASA's Space Launch System megarocket, which is still in development, would cut the travel time significantly.)

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NASA Europa Mission May Search for Signs of Alien Life

NASA postponed a spacewalk on the International Space Station that had been slated for today.

NASA postponed a spacewalk on the International Space Station that had been slated for today because astronauts needed time to conduct further checks on the suits that will be used.

The space agency announced that two American astronauts will perform a six-and-a-half-hour spacewalk on Saturday instead of today to begin assembly of two new docking stations on the orbiter. The spacewalk is scheduled to begin at 7:10 a.m. ET.

The delay is so "added analysis" can be done on the spacesuits that NASA astronauts Commander Barry "Butch" Wilmore and Flight Engineer Terry Virts will wear during their spacewalk.

This isn't the first time that spacesuits have delayed the beginning of work on the space docks.

Dan Huot, a NASA spokesman, said the spacewalk initially had been set for early last month but was pushed back so ground teams could analyze two fan pump separators, which control the temperature in the suits, that exhibited start-up issues.

The spacewalk, which had been scheduled for today, was pushed back 24 hours for final testing.

"The suits currently on board and their fan pumps have been thoroughly tested and teams are confident in their performance," Huot said. "The 24-hour delay this week was just to give teams the time to close out final paper work and make sure everything was ready to go."

The space agency, working with other international partners, is trying to add two new space docks to the orbiting station to handle what is expected to be an increasing number of commercial space taxis bringing supplies and astronauts to the station.

NASA is expected to stop paying Russia to ferry its astronauts to the space station in 2017. The agency contracted with SpaceX, which already conducts resupply missions, and Boeing to launch astronauts from U.S. soil for the first time since NASA retired its fleet of space shuttles in 2011.

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NASA delays spacewalk for added suit check

Facebook offers users control on ads

Facebook says it will begin allowing users to see more information about the ads delivered to them.

The New York Times reports online giant Amazon is preparing to launch a streaming music service.

Google has helped opened a new workspace for Internet entrepreneurs for innovation and collaboration.

A tweet holding a snippet of computer code has spread itself through Twitter by taking advantage of a flaw.

Environment Minister Greg Hunt today unveiled plans for a new supercomputer at the Bureau of Meteorology.

The Coorong has become the first district in regional SA to connect to NBN's fixed wireless network.

Monash University graduate Ken Chen has designed an exoskeleton to help firemen battle high-rise infernos.

Researchers looking for remains of the author of Don Quixote have identified a Madrid church as a lead.

People watching a video of a woman playing an online game called authorities to report a home invasion.

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NASA delays spacewalk