The video series, "Where Words Touch the Earth," documents environmental changes observed by Native Americans. Each 12-15-minute episode is fully developed and produced by Native American students representing different ecosystems across the United States. NASA selected the schools and provided the funding, but it was the students who retained complete creative control of the production and its content.

"I wanted them to tell their stories -- that's the only way you're going to get a jewel," said David Adamec, a scientist at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md., who had the vision for the project.

Adamec conceived of the project while visiting the Crazy Horse monument in South Dakota for a summer vacation in 2007. "Why not take advantage of the information contained in oral history and combine it with the climate resources we have at NASA?"

Now, students and elders from Haskell Indian Nations University in Lawrence, Kan., have produced a segment that explores the dramatic changes observed in the plains ecosystem. Producers from Northwest Indian College in Bellingham, Wash., portray how climate change has impacted salmon populations in the coastal ecosystem.

Tribal colleges in New Mexico, North Dakota and Wisconsin representing a desert, prairie and woodland environment, are now beginning to film. The final product aims to weave together all the perspectives and achieve a cohesive story of the Native American perspective on climate change.

Already, the student films are reaching and educating students across the United States. In fall 2008, public television production house WGBH Boston started working closely with the Bureau of Indian Education providing digital content and working with students and their teachers. "We started learning more about the intersection between traditional tribal communities and science education, and specifically around climate change," said Howard Lurie, Associate Director of Educational Productions for WGBH Boston.

On March 31, WGBH's Teachers' Domain launched the "Where Words Touch the Earth" collection, an online collection that disseminates repurposed versions of the documentaries so that they can be integrated into sixth- to 12th-grade classrooms. Teachers can download short clips, essays and discussion questions -- all linked to state standards.

"We think that it’s a unique way for elementary, middle and high school students to get deeper into the science," Lurie said.

The exchange goes both ways. "We might have assumed a disconnect between the traditional tribal community and hard science, but there's not," Lurie said. "Being connected to tradition doesn't mean you can't be a scientist."

Today, the educational dialogue continues, as students and instructors from Navaho Technical College in Crownpoint, N.M., visit Goddard to meet with Adamec and video specialists at Goddard, tour the center, and lay the groundwork for a new oral history.

Related Links:

> The complete Where Words Touch the Earth collection

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"Just in time for the 2010 hurricane season, NOAA will have one of its newest, technologically advanced satellites closely tracking these storms – from when they develop to when they dissipate," said Mary Kicza, assistant administrator of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's (NOAA) Satellite and Information Service in Silver Spring, Md.

NASA's GOES Project, located at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md., procures and manages the development and launch of the GOES series of satellites for NOAA on a cost-reimbursable basis. NASA's GOES Project also creates some of the GOES satellite images and GOES satellite imagery animations. NOAA manages the operational environmental satellite program and establishes requirements, provides all funding and distributes environmental satellite data for the United States.

"It is exciting to think that we are now putting into service the best satellites this country has to offer," said Andre' Dress, GOES N-P NASA Deputy Project Manager, at Goddard. "We are really looking forward to see the increase in performance over the older satellites and the improvements in weather prediction."

There are two GOES satellites that cover weather conditions in the U.S. and they are positioned over the eastern and western U.S. The satellite in the GOES EAST position covers weather on the eastern side of the continental U.S., including the Atlantic Ocean and Gulf of Mexico. The GOES WEST position covers the western half of the U.S. and the Eastern Pacific Ocean.

GOES-13 has now replaced GOES-12, which NOAA is shifting in orbit to provide coverage for South America, as part of the Global Earth Observing System of Systems, or GEOSS. GOES-11 continues to occupy the GOES-WEST position.

Initially known as the GOES-N satellite, it was renamed GOES-13 when it achieved geosynchronous orbit. It was launched from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station, Fla. at 6:11 p.m. EDT on May 24, 2006 aboard a Boeing Delta IV rocket.

GOES-13 is the first of three new NOAA geostationary environmental satellites. The other two in the new series are GOES-14, launched in June 2009 and now in orbital storage, and GOES-15, launched on March 4, 2010, and undergoing tests before completing its "check-out" phase, scheduled to be complete in August 2010.

Since the first GOES launch in 1974, these satellites have supplied the data critical for fast, accurate weather forecasts and warnings. The newer GOES series of satellites help relay distress signals from emergency beacons, and are equipped to monitor solar activity, which can impact billions of dollars worth of government and commercial assets in space and on the ground.

NOAA understands and predicts changes in the Earth’s environment, from the depths of the ocean to the surface of the sun, and conserves and manages our coastal and marine resources.

For more information about NASA's GOES Program visit:
› goespoes.gsfc.nasa.gov

For more information about NOAA, visit:
› http://www.noaa.gov

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Polar lunar craters are of interest because of resources, including water ice, which exist there. The moon’s orientation to the sun keeps the bottoms of polar craters in permanent shadow, allowing temperatures there to plunge below minus 400 degrees Fahrenheit, cold enough to store volatile material like water for billions of years. "However, our research suggests that, in addition to the wicked cold, explorers and robots at the bottoms of polar lunar craters may have to contend with a complex electrical environment as well, which can affect surface chemistry, static discharge, and dust cling," said William Farrell of NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Md. Farrell is lead author of a paper on this research published March 24 in the Journal of Geophysical Research. The research is part of the Lunar Science Institute’s Dynamic Response of the Environment at the moon (DREAM) project.

"This important work by Dr. Farrell and his team is further evidence that our view on the moon has changed dramatically in recent years," said Gregory Schmidt, deputy director of the NASA Lunar Science Institute at NASA's Ames Research Center, Moffett Field, Calif. "It has a dynamic and fascinating environment that we are only beginning to understand."

Solar wind inflow into craters can erode the surface, which affects recently discovered water molecules. Static discharge could short out sensitive equipment, while the sticky and extremely abrasive lunar dust could wear out spacesuits and may be hazardous if tracked inside spacecraft and inhaled over long periods.

The solar wind is a thin gas of electrically charged components of atoms -- negatively charged electrons and positively charged ions -- that is constantly blowing from the surface of the sun into space. Since the moon is only slightly tilted compared to the sun, the solar wind flows almost horizontally over the lunar surface at the poles and along the region where day transitions to night, called the terminator.

The researchers created computer simulations to discover what happens when the solar wind flows over the rims of polar craters. They discovered that in some ways, the solar wind behaves like wind on Earth -- flowing into deep polar valleys and crater floors. Unlike wind on Earth, the dual electron-ion composition of the solar wind may create an unusual electric charge on the side of the mountain or crater wall; that is, on the inside of the rim directly below the solar wind flow.

Since electrons are over 1,000 times lighter than ions, the lighter electrons in the solar wind rush into a lunar crater or valley ahead of the heavy ions, creating a negatively charged region inside the crater. The ions eventually catch up, but rain into the crater at consistently lower concentrations than that of the electrons. This imbalance in the crater makes the inside walls and floor acquire a negative electric charge. The calculations reveal that the electron/ion separation effect is most extreme on a crater's leeward edge – along the inside crater wall and at the crater floor nearest the solar wind flow. Along this inner edge, the heavy ions have the greatest difficulty getting to the surface. Compared to the electrons, they act like a tractor-trailer struggling to follow a motorcycle; they just can’t make as sharp a turn over the mountain top as the electrons. "The electrons build up an electron cloud on this leeward edge of the crater wall and floor, which can create an unusually large negative charge of a few hundred Volts relative to the dense solar wind flowing over the top," says Farrell.

The negative charge along this leeward edge won’t build up indefinitely. Eventually, the attraction between the negatively charged region and positive ions in the solar wind will cause some other unusual electric current to flow. The team believes one possible source for this current could be negatively charged dust that is repelled by the negatively charged surface, gets levitated and flows away from this highly charged region. "The Apollo astronauts in the orbiting Command Module saw faint rays on the lunar horizon during sunrise that might have been scattered light from electrically lofted dust," said Farrell. "Additionally, the Apollo 17 mission landed at a site similar to a crater environment – the Taurus-Littrow valley. The Lunar Ejecta and Meteorite Experiment left by the Apollo 17 astronauts detected impacts from dust at terminator crossings where the solar wind is nearly-horizontal flowing, similar to the situation over polar craters."

Next steps for the team include more complex computer models. "We want to develop a fully three-dimensional model to examine the effects of solar wind expansion around the edges of a mountain. We now examine the vertical expansion, but we want to also know what happens horizontally," said Farrell. As early as 2012, NASA will launch the Lunar Atmosphere and Dust Environment Explorer (LADEE) mission that will orbit the moon and could look for the dust flows predicted by the team’s research.

This work was enabled by support from NASA Goddard’s Internal Research and Development program and NASA’s Lunar Science Institute. The team includes researchers from NASA Goddard, the University of California, Berkeley, and the University of Maryland, Baltimore County.

Related Link:

› NASA's LADEE mission

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Today, their legacy continues as they develop the science infrastructure using NASA’s newest tool in its airborne research fleet, the Global Hawk Unmanned Aircraft System (UAS). "It is NASA's first fully autonomous, high altitude, long endurance UAS. It will give scientists the ability to carry payloads to remote regions of the atmosphere and remain there for long durations collecting key measurements," said Michael Craig, research manager at NASA's Ames and project manager for the first Earth science Global Hawk experiment, known as the Global Hawk Pacific (GloPac) mission.

The Global Hawk has a flight duration of more than 30 hours, a maximum altitude of 65,000 feet, a range of 11,000 nautical miles, and a payload capability of more than 1,500 lbs. of scientific instruments. No other manned or unmanned aircraft can meet these performance capabilities. NASA Dryden Flight Research Center, Edwards, Calif., has acquired three of the first seven Global Hawk aircraft produced for the U.S. Air Force and, through an agreement with the manufacturer, Northrop Grumman Corp., Los Angeles, is modifying them for Earth science operations.

The GloPac mission, now underway at Dryden, has completed its first flights with tremendous success and NASA Ames has played a vital role in providing the management, flight planning, meteorological constraints and science instrument infrastructure and communications required with this new platform. GloPac and the Airborne Science Program are funded by the Earth Science Division of NASA's Science Mission Directorate in Washington.

"It's really amazing to see all these state-of-the-art technologies and hard work come together to create such an outstanding capability," said Craig.

GloPac is being conducted in support of NASA’s Aura and A-Train satellite Earth Observation System constellation. The mission will consist of four to five science flights that will take the aircraft over the Pacific south to the equator, north to the Arctic and to the west past Hawaii. The payload includes 11 science instruments that will collect a wide range of atmospheric data, including trace gases and aerosol composition, as well as meteorological parameters.

"These observations are important for understanding processes that control ozone-depleting substances, greenhouse gases that contribute to climate change and pollution that impacts air quality," explained Craig.

There are over 100 people working on the GloPac mission. This includes managers, pilots, scientists, engineers, aircraft ground crew, and other support staff from NASA, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), several universities and others. The NASA team includes members from Ames Research Center, Dryden Flight Research Center, Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Md., Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif., and NASA Headquarters, Washington.

"This team is transforming the way Earth Science airborne missions will be performed in the future," said Craig.

Several other teams are developing new research missions and applications for the Global Hawk, and NASA is now working on a mobile control center that will give the aircraft truly global coverage. Later this summer, NASA will use the Global Hawk to monitor hurricane development and intensification. Scientists predict that in future years, the aircraft could be used to monitor a number of natural and human-made changes to our planet, including climate change, ice thicknesses, and ecosystems.

Global Hawk program is a collaborative effort between NASA’s Earth Science, the Northrop Grumman Corp., and NOAA.

The planets had been imaged previously by two of the world's biggest ground-based telescopes -- one of the two 10-meter (33-foot) telescopes of W.M. Keck Observatory and the 8.0-meter (26-foot) Gemini North Observatory, both on Mauna Kea in Hawaii. The planets, which orbit the star HR 8799, were among the very first to be directly imaged, a discovery announced in Nov. of 2008.

The new image of the planets, taken in infrared light as before, was captured using just a 1.5-meter-diameter (4.9-foot) portion of the Hale telescope's mirror. The astronomy team took painstaking efforts to push current technology to the point where such a small mirror could be used. They combined two techniques -- adaptive optics and a coronagraph -- to minimize the glare from the star and reveal the dim glow of the much fainter planets.

The picture is online at http://www.nasa.gov/topics/universe/features/exoplanet20100414-a.html.

"Our technique could be used on larger ground-based telescopes to image planets that are much closer to their stars, or it could be used on small space telescopes to find possible Earth-like worlds near bright stars," said Gene Serabyn, an astrophysicist at JPL and visiting associate in physics at the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena. Serabyn is lead author of a report on the findings in the April 15 issue of the journal Nature.

The three planets, called HR8799b, c and d, are thought to be gas giants similar to Jupiter, but more massive. They orbit their host star at roughly 24, 38 and 68 times the distance between our Earth and sun, respectively (our Jupiter resides at about five times the Earth-sun distance). It's possible that rocky worlds like Earth circle closer to the planets' star, but with current technology, they would be impossible to see under the star's glare.

The star HR 8799 is a bit more massive than our sun, and much younger, at about 60 million years, compared to our sun's approximately 4.6 billion years. It is 120 light-years away in the constellation Pegasus. This star's planetary system is still active, with bodies crashing together and kicking up dust, as recently detected by NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope (http://spitzer.caltech.edu/news/1000-feature09-16-Unsettled-Youth-Spitzer-Observes-a-Chaotic-Planetary-System). Like fresh-baked bread out of the oven, the planets are still warm from their formation and emit enough infrared radiation for telescopes to see.

To take a picture of HR 8799's planets, Serabyn and his colleagues first used a method called adaptive optics to reduce the amount of atmospheric blurring, or to take away the "twinkle" of the star. This technique was optimized by using only a small piece of the telescope. Once the twinkle was removed, the light from the star itself was blocked using the team's coronograph, an instrument that selectively masks out the star. A novel "vortex coronagraph," invented by team member Dimitri Mawet of JPL, was used for this step. The final result was an image showing the light of three planets.

"The trick is to suppress the starlight without suppressing the planet light," said Serabyn.

The technique can be used to image the space lying just fractions of a degree from a star (about one degree divided by roughly 10,000). This is as close to the star as that achieved by Gemini and Keck -- telescopes that are about five and seven times larger, respectively.

Keeping telescopes small is critical for space missions. "This is the kind of technology that could let us image other Earths," said Wesley Traub, the chief scientist for NASA's Exoplanet Exploration Program at JPL. "We are on our way toward getting a picture of another pale blue dot in space."

JPL is a partner with the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena in the Palomar Observatory. Caltech manages JPL for NASA. More information about exoplanets and NASA's planet-finding program is at http://planetquest.jpl.nasa.gov . More information about the Palomar Observatory is at http://www.astro.caltech.edu/palomar/ .

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Each team of scientists took advantage of extensive Chandra observations of galaxy clusters, the largest objects in the Universe bound together by gravity. One result undercuts a rival gravity model to General Relativity, while the other shows that Einstein's theory works over a vast range of times and distances across the cosmos.

The first finding significantly weakens a competitor to General Relativity known as "f(R) gravity".

"If General Relativity were the heavyweight boxing champion, this other theory was hoping to be the upstart contender," said Fabian Schmidt of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, who led the study. "Our work shows that the chances of its upsetting the champ are very slim."

In recent years, physicists have turned their attention to competing theories to General Relativity as a possible explanation for the accelerated expansion of the universe. Currently, the most popular explanation for the acceleration is the so-called cosmological constant, which can be understood as energy that exists in empty space. This energy is referred to as dark energy to emphasize that it cannot be directly detected.

In the f(R) theory, the cosmic acceleration comes not from an exotic form of energy but from a modification of the gravitational force. The modified force also affects the rate at which small enhancements of matter can grow over the eons to become massive clusters of galaxies, opening up the possibility of a sensitive test of the theory.

Schmidt and colleagues used mass estimates of 49 galaxy clusters in the local universe from Chandra observations, compared them with theoretical model predictions and studies of supernovas, the cosmic microwave background, and the large-scale distribution of galaxies.

They found no evidence that gravity is different from General Relativity on scales larger than 130 million light years. This limit corresponds to a hundred-fold improvement on the bounds of the modified gravitational force's range that can be set without using the cluster data.

"This is the strongest ever constraint set on an alternative to General Relativity on such large distance scales," said Schmidt. "Our results show that we can probe gravity stringently on cosmological scales by using observations of galaxy clusters."

The reason for this dramatic improvement in constraints can be traced to the greatly enhanced gravitational forces acting in clusters as opposed to the universal background expansion of the universe. The cluster-growth technique also promises to be a good probe of other modified gravity scenarios, such as models motivated by higher- dimensional theories and string theory.

A second, independent study also bolsters General Relativity by directly testing it across cosmological distances and times. Up until now, General Relativity had been verified only using experiments from laboratory to Solar System scales, leaving the door open to the possibility that General Relativity breaks down on much larger scales.

To probe this question, a group at Stanford University compared Chandra observations of how rapidly galaxy clusters have grown over time to the predictions of General Relativity. The result is nearly complete agreement between observation and theory.

“Einstein's theory succeeds again, this time in calculating how many massive clusters have formed under gravity's pull over the last five billion years,” said David Rapetti of the Kavli Institute for Particle Astrophysics and Cosmology (KIPAC) at Stanford University and SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory, who led the new study. “Excitingly and reassuringly, our results are the most robust consistency test of General Relativity yet carried out on cosmological scales."

Rapetti and his colleagues based their results on a sample of 238 clusters detected across the whole sky by the now-defunct ROSAT X-ray telescope. These data were enhanced by detailed mass measurements for 71 distant clusters using Chandra, and 23 relatively nearby clusters using ROSAT, and combined with studies of supernovas, the cosmic microwave background, the distribution of galaxies and distance estimates to galaxy clusters.

Galaxy clusters are important objects in the quest to understand the Universe as a whole. Because the observations of the masses of galaxy clusters are directly sensitive to the properties of gravity, they provide crucial information. Other techniques such as observations of supernovas or the distribution of galaxies measure cosmic distances, which depend only on the expansion rate of the universe. In contrast, the cluster technique used by Rapetti and his colleagues measure in addition the growth rate of the cosmic structure, as driven by gravity.

"Cosmic acceleration represents a great challenge to our modern understanding of physics," said Rapetti's co-author Adam Mantz of NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Maryland. "Measurements of acceleration have highlighted how little we know about gravity at cosmic scales, but we're now starting to push back our ignorance."

The paper by Fabian Schmidt was published in Physics Review D, Volume 80 in October 2009 and is co-authored by Alexey Vikhlinin of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and Wayne Hu of the University of Chicago, Illinois. The paper by David Rapetti was recently accepted for publication in the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society and is co- authored by Mantz, Steve Allen of KIPAC at Stanford and Harald Ebeling of the Institute for Astronomy in Hawaii.

NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Ala., manages the Chandra program for NASA's Science Mission Directorate in Washington. The Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory controls Chandra's science and flight operations from Cambridge, Mass.

More information, including images and other multimedia, can be found at:

The design load limit test will provide engineers with a better understanding of the full structural capabilities of the drogue parachute, currently under development to return next-generation space vehicles safely to Earth.

This was the second in a series of three planned load limit tests designed to place the loads expected in flight on the parachute canopy. The next test series, called overload tests, will subject the parachute canopy to loads greater than what would typically be experienced in flight, to prove the parachute is strong enough to survive some degree of unexpected events.

Future full resolution images of the drogue parachute test will be made publicly available when they are fully processed:

Laying out his plans, President Obama committed NASA to a series of development milestones he said would lead to new spacecraft for astronauts to ride to the International Space Station, a modified Orion capsule developed as an emergency return spacecraft, and a powerful new rocket. He also promised a host of new technologies that would protect space travelers from radiation and other unique hazards.

"Early in the next decade, a set of crewed flights will test and prove the systems required for exploration beyond low Earth orbit," the president said. "And by 2025, we expect new spacecraft designed for long journeys to allow us to begin the first-ever crewed missions beyond the moon into deep space. We’ll start by sending astronauts to an asteroid for the first time in history. By the mid-2030s, I believe we can send humans to orbit Mars and return them safely to Earth. And a landing on Mars will follow. And I expect to be around to see it."

Standing in front of one of the space shuttle main engines that launched former U.S. Senator and astronaut John Glenn into orbit, President Obama said, "It was from here that men and women, propelled by sheer nerve and talent, set about pushing the boundaries of humanity's reach.

"The question for us now is whether that was the beginning of something, or the end of something. I prefer to believe it was the beginning of something."

The president's fiscal year 2011 budget proposal increases NASA's budget by $6 billion throughout the next five years to fund the plans.

Noting "the sense that folks in Washington -- driven less by vision than by politics -- have for years neglected NASA’s mission and undermined the work of the professionals who fulfill it," the president said the budget increase changes that.

The president's address comes at a critical juncture for NASA because the space shuttle fleet is scheduled to be retired after three more missions. The president said it will be quicker and less costly to let private companies develop new spacecraft for astronauts rather than continue with NASA's Constellation Program, which was deemed too expensive and behind schedule.

"Pursuing this new strategy will require that we revise the old strategy. In part, this is because the old strategy -- including the Constellation Program -- was not fulfilling its promise in many ways," the president said. "That’s not just my assessment; that’s also the assessment of a panel of respected non-partisan experts charged with looking at these issues closely."

President Obama's plan largely mirrors the "flexible path" option offered by a blue-ribbon panel established by the president last year to help decide the best map for future space exploration.

The outline does not do away with all the research and development from Constellation . Noting the success of the agency's development of the Orion crew capsule, Obama called on NASA to develop a version of that spacecraft so it can be launched without a crew to the International Space Station. It will be based there as an emergency craft for astronauts living on the orbiting laboratory.

The speech kicked off the Conference on the American Space Program for the 21st Century.

Norm Augustine, chairman of the blue-ribbon panel called the Review of U.S. Human Space Flight Plans Committee, that evaluated Constellation and came up with the "flexible path" option, endorsed the presidential strategy as the conference got under way.

Saying NASA is largely "trapped" in low Earth orbit, Augustine said industry, with NASA's guidance, can do its part for the plan.

The president acknowledged the need to get the decision right.

"Now, the challenges facing our space program are different, and our imperatives for this program are different than in decades past," the president said. "But while the measure of our achievements has changed a great deal over the past fifty years, what we do -- or fail to do -- in seeking new frontiers is no less consequential for our future in space and here on Earth."

The plan, the president said, would free NASA's designers and engineers to develop spacecraft, large rockets and new technologies that can extend the frontier of human space exploration to asteroids and even Mars.

About $3.1 billion of the additional funding would go into research and development for a heavy-lift rocket. A design for a large booster would be chosen in 2015 with the goal of launching the spacecraft a few years later. The bigger rocket could be used to loft payloads too large for most boosters, including giant fuel depots that would be parked in distant orbits so spacecraft could refuel on their way to asteroids, the moons of Mars and eventually Mars itself.

In addition to more funding, President Obama said his initiative brings more jobs than previous schedules.

"My plan will add more than 2,500 jobs along the Space Coast in the next two years compared to the plan under the previous administration," he said. "I’m proposing a $40 million initiative led by a high-level team from the White House, NASA, and other agencies to develop a plan for regional economic growth and job creation. And I expect this plan to reach my desk by Aug. 15. It’s an effort that will help prepare this already skilled work force for new opportunities in the space industry and beyond."

Taken together, the space strategy proves America is poised for a future as bright as its remarkable past, the president said.

"Fifty years after the creation of NASA, our goal is no longer just a destination to reach," Obama said. "Our goal is the capacity for people to work and learn, and operate and live safely beyond the Earth for extended periods of time, ultimately in ways that are more sustainable and even indefinite. And in fulfilling this task, we will not only extend humanity’s reach in space -- we will strengthen America’s leadership here on Earth."

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During a speech at the center, President Obama said, "As president, I believe space exploration is not a luxury, not an afterthought, an essential part of the quest."

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The 300-pound R2 consists of a head and a torso with two arms and two hands. R2 will launch on space shuttle Discovery as part of the STS-133 mission planned for September. Once aboard the station, engineers will monitor how the robot operates in weightlessness.

R2 will be confined to operations in the station's Destiny laboratory. However, future enhancements and modifications may allow it to move more freely around the station's interior or outside the complex.

"This project exemplifies the promise that a future generation of robots can have both in space and on Earth, not as replacements for humans but as companions that can carry out key supporting roles," said John Olson, director of NASA's Exploration Systems Integration Office at NASA Headquarters in Washington. "The combined potential of humans and robots is a perfect example of the sum equaling more than the parts. It will allow us to go farther and achieve more than we can probably even imagine today."

The dexterous robot not only looks like a human but also is designed to work like one. With human-like hands and arms, R2 is able to use the same tools station crew members use. In the future, the greatest benefits of humanoid robots in space may be as assistants or stand-in for astronauts during spacewalks or for tasks too difficult or dangerous for humans. For now, R2 is still a prototype and does not have adequate protection needed to exist outside the space station in the extreme temperatures of space.

Testing the robot inside the station will provide an important intermediate environment. R2 will be tested in microgravity and subjected to the station's radiation and electromagnetic interference environments. The interior operations will provide performance data about how a robot may work side-by-side with astronauts. As development activities progress on the ground, station crews may be provided hardware and software to update R2 to enable it to do new tasks.

R2 is undergoing extensive testing in preparation for its flight. Vibration, vacuum and radiation testing along with other procedures being conducted on R2 also benefit the team at GM. The automaker plans to use technologies from R2 in future advanced vehicle safety systems and manufacturing plant applications.

"The extreme levels of testing R2 has undergone as it prepares to venture to the International Space Station are on par with the validation our vehicles and components go through on the path to production," said Alan Taub, vice president of GM's global research and development. "The work done by GM and NASA engineers also will help us validate manufacturing technologies that will improve the health and safety of our GM team members at our manufacturing plants throughout the world. Partnerships between organizations such as GM and NASA help ensure space exploration, road travel and manufacturing can become even safer in the future."

› Read more about Robonaut

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The teams bested more than 70 teams from 18 states, Puerto Rico, Canada, Germany, India and Romania. More than 600 drivers, engineers and mechanics -- all students -- gathered with their team advisors and cheering sections to take part in the matchup of wits and wheels at the U.S. Space & Rocket Center April 9-10 in Huntsville, Ala.

The race is organized by NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville. It challenges students to design, build and race lightweight, human-powered buggies that tackle many of the same engineering challenges dealt with by Apollo-era lunar rover developers at the Marshall Center in the late 1960s.

The International Space Education Institute, known among moonbuggy racers as "Team Germany," has been a prominent contender in the competition since they debuted in 2007 as the German Space Education Institute. Their team this year included two Russian students, reflecting the school's expanded international scope.

The University of Puerto Rico in Humacao -- the only school in the world to enter a moonbuggy in every race since the event was founded in 1994 -- won the second-place prize in 2009, and finally took home first place in this, their 17th appearance.

The winning teams posted the fastest vehicle assembly and race times in their divisions and received the fewest on-course penalties. The International Space Education Institute finished the roughly half-mile course -- twisting curves, treacherous gravel pits and other obstacles simulating lunar surface conditions -- in just 3 minutes 37 seconds. The University of Puerto Rico at Humacao posted a time of 4 minutes 18 seconds.