In an effort to excite young people about space and NASA's missions, the agency has launched the online Space Communication and Navigation (SCaN) simulation, designed to entertain and educate. The interactive simulation offers a virtual 3-D experience to visualize how data travels along various space communications paths.

"The elaborate space communications networks that connect scientists and engineers with NASA's spacecraft is essential to all of NASA's missions and can be a challenging concept to comprehend," said Barbara Adde, a policy and strategic communications manager for the Office of Space Communications and Navigation at NASA Headquarters in Washington. "This simulation helps explain this complex infrastructure in an engaging way by using an interactive 3-D game."

The interactive Space Communication and Navigation simulation allows visitors to select spacecraft and experience a "flythrough," or a tutorial with images and descriptions of NASA's three space communication networks. For example, the Near Earth Network flythrough shows how data originates at an antenna at McMurdo Station, McMurdo Sound, Antarctica. The data is then sent to NASA's Ice, Cloud, and land Elevation Satellite, or ICESat, as it passes overhead.

The Space Network flythrough also shows how data is relayed from NASA's White Sands Test Facility, N.M., to the space station via the Tracking and Data Relay Satellite System, a network of communication satellites and ground stations NASA uses for space communications.

Finally, in the Deep Space Network demonstration, visitors learn how NASA communicates with the Mars Exploration Rovers, Sprit and Opportunity, by using the Madrid Deep Space Network antenna to send data to the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, which then relays the data to the rover.

"Making this interactive simulation available to young people is important and may lead them to consider a career in engineering, science or information technology as it relates to space," said Chris C. Kemp, chief information officer at NASA's Ames Research Center at Moffett Field, Calif. "NASA is embracing the fact that programs like this help convey NASA's message to people who respond well to virtual and online learning environments."

The space communication network simulation features nine spacecraft to choose from, including the Hubble Space Telescope, the space station, the space shuttle orbiter, the Spirit and Opportunity rovers, Cassini, the Lunar CRater Observation and Sensing Satellite (LCROSS), ICESat and Aura. Once a spacecraft is contacted, visitors can request actions such as "choose an imaging target" and "take pictures" of the Crab Nebula as seen from Hubble, or view videos of the space shuttle docking at the station.

In addition to the Space Communication and Navigation simulation, NASA provides interactive applications and other online educational tools on its Web site.

To explore the Space Communication and Navigation network simulation, visit:

The Safety and Mission Assurance Support Services contract helps ensure safety, reliability, maintainability and quality in the International Space Station, space shuttle and Constellation programs.

The cost-plus-award-fee contract option that has been exercised continues services from May 1, 2010, through April 30, 2011. Work under the contract will be performed at Johnson, NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida, and NASA's White Sands Test Facility in New Mexico.

Significant subcontractors in the work include Futron Corp. of Bethesda, Md.; GHG of Houston; M.H. Chew of Livermore, Calif.; URS - Washington Division of Princeton, N.J.; Management Technology Associates of Huntsville, Ala.; J&P Technologies and JES Tech, both of Houston; SoHaR Incorporated of Culver City, Calif.; and Texas Southern University of Houston.

For more information about NASA's Johnson Space Center, visit:

Until her recent retirement, Simpson was Chief Scientist Emeritus for Meteorology, Earth Sun Exploration Division, at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md. She worked with a science group on Cloud and Mesoscale modeling and studied hurricanes. She has authored or co-authored over 190 scientific articles.

Dorothy Zukor, Deputy Director of Earth Sciences at Goddard, said "Joanne was a joy to work with. In addition to being excited and enthusiastic about her own research, she was always helping students to become scientists. Many are practicing in the field today because of her guidance and encouragement. She has left a true legacy, not only from her own work but for the future of the field."

Joanne was born in 1923, and was a pioneer by the time she was in her twenties. As a student pilot during World War II, she took a course in meteorology and was fascinated. She earned a B.S. in Meteorology from the University of Chicago, and spent the rest of the war teaching meteorology to Aviation Cadets. In 1949, Simpson became the first woman to earn a Ph.D. in meteorology, focused her research on clouds, and went on to serve on the faculty of the University of Chicago until joining NASA permanently.

Simpson really made her mark in meteorology in the late 1950s, when she and her former professor, Herbert Riehl came up with an explanation of how the atmosphere moved heat and moisture away from the tropics to higher latitudes. That explanation included the "hot tower" hypothesis that later shed light on hurricane behavior.

A "hot tower" is a tropical cumulonimbus cloud that penetrates the tropopause. Basically, the cloud top breaches the top of the troposphere, the lowest layer of the atmosphere and reaches into the stratosphere. These clouds are called "hot" because they rise high due to the large amount of latent heat released as water vapor condenses into liquid.

Simpson developed the first mathematical cloud model using a slide rule to do the calculations because computers weren't available. Her work sparked a brand new field of study in meteorology. In the early 1960s, she developed the first computer cloud model.

Joanne came to NASA Goddard in 1979 as the Chief of NASA’s Laboratory for Atmosphere's Severe Storms Branch. Her arrival at NASA followed an academic career as professor at the University of California at Los Angeles and the University of Virginia, Charlottesville, Va. sandwiched around a long period as the head of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's (NOAA) Experimental Meteorology Laboratory in Miami, Fla.

During her career at NASA, Joanne's research focused on convective cloud systems and tropical cyclones using numerical cloud models and observations. She made integral contributions to several historic NASA field missions, including the Convection And Moisture EXperiment (CAMEX) missions, the Tropical Ocean Global Atmospheres/Coupled Ocean Atmosphere Response Experiment (TOGA COARE), the GARP Atlantic Tropical Experiment (GATE), and the Winter Monsoon Experiment (Winter MONEX).

In 1986, NASA asked Joanne to lead the science study for the proposed Tropical Rainfall Measuring Mission (TRMM), a satellite to carry both active and passive microwave instruments to accurately measure rainfall across the tropics and subtropics. TRMM is a joint mission between NASA and JAXA, Japan’s Aerospace Exploration Agency.

Between 1986 and the launch in November 1997, Joanne served first as Study Scientist and then Project Scientist for TRMM, bringing it from concept to reality. TRMM continues to fly today and provide unique surface rainfall and hydrometeor profile data for climate and atmospheric process studies and for real-time operational applications related to convective systems and hurricanes. Joanne often stated that TRMM was the most important accomplishment of her career.

Joanne recently inquired about TRMM and was very enthusiastic about TRMM's potential overlap with Goddard's Global Precipitation Measurement (GPM) mission, to be launched in 2013. Dr. Robert Adler, now a Senior Research Scientist at the University of Maryland, College Park, was formerly Joanne’s Deputy on TRMM and also TRMM Project Scientist later in the mission, says "Joanne was the heart and soul of TRMM during the pre-launch phase, sharpening the scientific focus of the mission, resolving critical choices related to instruments, orbit, etc. and fighting (and winning) the budget and political battles to get us to launch and beyond. TRMM would not exist if it hadn’t been for Joanne."

Joanne had a career filled with awards and recognition of her research. She was elected to the National Academy of Engineering, awarded the Carl-Gustaf Rossby Award (the highest honor bestowed by the American Meteorological Society), presented with a Guggenheim Fellowship, served as President of the American Meteorological Society and received numerous NASA and Goddard awards. In 2002, she was awarded the prestigious International Meteorological Organization Prize. She was the first woman to receive the award.

Joanne's contributions will forever live on in NASA hurricane research and are a tremendous part of meteorological history.

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The experiment, National Lab Pathfinder-Cells 3, is aimed at learning whether microgravity can help jatropha curcas plant cells grow faster to produce biofuel, or renewable fuel derived from biological matter. Jatropha is known to produce high quality oil that can be converted into an alternative energy fuel, or biofuel.

By studying the effects of microgravity on jatropha cells, researchers hope to accelerate the cultivation of the plant for commercial use by improving characteristics such as cell structure, growth and development. This is the first study to assess the effects of microgravity on cells of a biofuel plant.

"As the search for alternate energy sources has become a top priority, the results from this study could add value for commercialization of a new product,” said Wagner Vendrame, principal investigator for the experiment at the University of Florida in Homestead. "Our goal is to verify if microgravity will induce any significant changes in the cells that could affect plant growth and development back on Earth."

Launched on space shuttle Endeavour’s STS-130 mission in February, cell cultures of jatropha were sent to the space station in special flasks containing nutrients and vitamins. The cells will be exposed to microgravity until they return to Earth aboard space shuttle Discovery's STS-131 mission targeted for April.

For comparison studies of how fast the cultures grow, a replicated set of samples are being maintained at the University of Florida's Tropical Research and Education Center in Homestead.

"Watching the space shuttle go up carrying a little piece of my work is an indescribable experience," said Vendrame. "Knowing that my experiment could contribute to creating a sustainable means for biofuel production on Earth, and therefore making this a better world adds special value to the work."

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X-ray data from the Chandra X-ray Observatory are shown in red, optical data from the Hubble Space Telescope in green and radio data from the Very Large Array in blue. The spiral structure of NGC 1068 is shown by the X-ray and optical data, and a jet powered by the central supermassive black hole is shown by the radio data.

This Chandra study is much deeper than previous X-ray observations. Using this data, researchers believe that each year several times the mass of our sun is being deposited out to large distances, about 3,000 light years from the black hole. The wind likely carries enough energy to heat the surrounding gas and suppress extra star formation.

These results help explain how a supermassive black hole can alter the evolution of its host galaxy. It has long been suspected that material blown away from a black hole can affect its environment, but a key question has been whether such "black hole blowback" typically delivers enough power to have a significant impact.

NGC 1068 is located about 50 million light years from Earth and contains a supermassive black hole about twice as massive as the one in the middle of the Milky Way Galaxy.

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The iceberg formed from the Mertz Glacier Tongue is 48 miles long and 24 miles wide (1,152 square miles) and has a mass of 700 to 800 billion tons, reported BBC News. The images below, all from the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) sensor on NASA’s Aqua satellite, show the iceberg and glacier tongue before and after the collision.

"To understand if life, as we know it, ever existed on Mars, we need to understand where water is or was," says Bleacher. Geologists think that the water currently on the surface of Mars is either held in the soil or takes the form of ice at the planet's north and south poles. But some researchers contend that water flowed or pooled on the surface sometime in the past; water in this form is thought to increase the chance of some form of past or present life.

One of the lines of support for the idea that water once flowed on Mars comes from images that reveal details resembling the erosion of soil by water: terracing of channel walls, formation of small islands in a channel, hanging channels that dead-end and braided channels that branch off and then reconnect to the main branch. "These are thought to be clear evidence of fluvial [water-based] erosion on Mars," Bleacher says.

Lava is generally not thought to be able to create such finely crafted features. Instead, "the common image is of the big, open channels in Hawaii," he explains.

Bleacher and his colleagues carried out a careful study of a single channel on the southwest flank of Mars' Ascraeus Mons volcano, one of the three clustered volcanoes collectively called the Tharsis Montes. To piece together images covering more than 270 kilometers (~168 miles) of this channel, the team relied on high-resolution pictures from three cameras—the Thermal Emission Imaging System (THEMIS), the Context Imager (CTX) and the High/Super Resolution Stereo Color (HRSC) imager—as well as earlier data from the Mars Orbiter Laser Altimeter (MOLA). These data gave a much more detailed view of the surface than previously available.

Because the fluid that formed this and other Ascraeus Mons channels is long-gone, its identity has been hard to deduce, but the visual clues at the source of the channel seem to point to water. These clues include small islands, secondary channels that branch off and rejoin the main one and eroded bars on the insides of the curves of the channels.

But at the channel's other end, an area not clearly seen before, Bleacher and colleagues found a ridge that appears to have lava flows coming out of it. In some areas, "the channel is actually roofed over, as if it were a lava tube, and lined up along this, we see several rootless vents," or openings where lava is forced out of the tube and creates small structures, he explains. These types of features don't form in water-carved channels, he notes. Bleacher argues that having one end of the channel formed by water and the other end by lava is an "exotic" combination. More likely, he thinks, the entire channel was formed by lava.

To find out what kinds of features lava can produce, Bleacher, along with W. Brent Garry and Jim Zimbelman at the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, examined the 51-kilometer (~32 mile) lava flow from the 1859 eruption of Mauna Loa on the Big Island of Hawaii. Their main focus was an island nearly a kilometer long in the middle of the channel; Bleacher says this is much larger than islands typically identified within lava flows. To survey the island, the team used differential GPS, which provides location information to within about 3 to 5 centimeters (1.1 to 1.9 inches), rather than the roughly 3 to 5 meters (9.8 to 16.4 feet) that a car's GPS can offer.

"We found terraced walls on the insides of these channels, channels that go out and just disappear, channels that cut back into the main one, and vertical walls 9 meters (~29 feet) high," Bleacher says. "So, right here, in something that we know was formed only by flowing lava, we found most of the features that were considered to be diagnostic of water-carved channels on Mars."

The new results make "a strong case that fluid lava can produce channels that look very much like water-generated features," says Zimbelman. "So, we should not jump to a water-related conclusion when we see such channels on other planets, particularly in volcanic terrain such as that around the Tharsis Montes volcanoes."

Further evidence that such features could be created by lava flows came from the examination of a detailed image of channels from the Mare Imbrium, a dark patch on the moon that is actually a large crater filled with ancient lava rock. In this image, too, the researchers found channels with terraced walls and branching secondary channels.

The conclusion that lava probably made the channel on Mars "not only has implications for the geological evolution of the Ascraeus Mons but also the whole Tharsis Bulge [volcanic region]," says Andy de Wet, a co-author at Franklin & Marshall College, Lancaster, Penn. "It may also have some implications for the supposed widespread involvement of water in the geological evolution of Mars."

Bleacher notes that the team's conclusions do not rule out the possibility of flowing water on Mars, nor of the existence of other channels carved by water. "But one thing I've learned is not to underestimate the way that liquid rock will flow," he says. "It really can produce a lot of things that we might not think it would."

Philip Christensen of Arizona State University is the principal investigator for the THEMIS instrument on the Mars Odyssey orbiter, and Mike Malin of Malin Space Science Systems is the principal investigator for the CTX instrument aboard the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter. Both missions are managed by NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), Pasadena, Calif. MOLA was aboard the Mars Global Surveyor, built by JPL. HRSC is aboard the European Space Agency's Mars Express spacecraft.

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NASA adopted many of these research techniques and many of the places in which to do it, like wind tunnels and entire research centers, from the NACA. Engine cowlings to cover propellers and a series of proven air foil shapes for aircraft wings--both of which reduced drag and improved speed and efficiency--were chief NACA contributions subsequently adopted by every aircraft of the day and improved upon over the decades.

This image shows NACA chief test pilot Melvin Cough outside a hangar at the Langley Memorial Aeronautical Laboratory. The test vehicle on the right is a Curtiss BF2C-1 Goshawk, which was used by the U.S. Navy in the early 1930s and featured retractable landing gear.

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