The council provides advice and recommendations to the NASA administrator about agency programs, policies, plans, financial controls and other matters related to the agency's responsibilities.

"I'm very excited about the council's new structure," said NASA Advisory Council Chairman Kenneth M. Ford. "I have the greatest confidence that the committees will provide the full council with the best possible recommendations for Administrator Bolden's consideration."

The council and its nine committees meet on a quarterly basis throughout the year in public and fact-finding sessions. The committees are:

Atop of a giant crawler-transporter, Discovery's first motion on its rollout to the pad is scheduled for Tuesday at 12:01 a.m. EST. The 3.4-mile journey is expected to take approximately six hours. Activities include a 6:30 a.m. photo opportunity, followed by an 8:30 a.m. interview availability with Discovery Flow Director Stephanie Stilson. Reporters must arrive at Kennedy's news center by 6 a.m. for transportation to the viewing area.

Live coverage of the move will be shown on NASA Television beginning at 6:30 a.m. Video highlights will air on the NASA TV Video File.

Beginning March 2, Discovery's astronauts and ground crews will participate in a launch dress rehearsal, known as the Terminal Countdown Demonstration Test, or TCDT. The test provides each shuttle crew with an opportunity to participate in various simulated countdown activities, including equipment familiarization and emergency training.

The following media events are associated with the TCDT. All times are Eastern.

Dates and times of events are subject to change. Schedule updates are available by calling 321-867-2525.

Discovery's STS-131 crew members are Commander Alan Poindexter, Pilot James P. Dutton, Jr., Mission Specialists Rick Mastracchio, Dorothy Metcalf-Lindenburger, Stephanie Wilson, Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency astronaut Naoko Yamazaki and Clayton Anderson. The seven astronauts will deliver science racks to be transferred to laboratories on the International Space Station. Launch is targeted for 6:27 a.m. EDT on April 5.

For NASA TV downlink information, schedules and links to streaming video, visit:

The cost plus incentive fee contract is valued at $54.5 million. It includes a base two-year contract plus three one-year option periods.

Work performed by ARTS and its subcontractor includes a broad range of information, technical, technology and applied science services. It also covers future requirements and additions, such as telecommunication services for Stennis.

For information about NASA and agency programs, visit:

NASA Administrator Charles Bolden attended Univision's announcement Tuesday at the National Press Club in Washington of a three-year national Hispanic education initiative titled Es El Momento (The Moment is Now).

"Education is a vital component of NASA's mission," Bolden said. "We look forward to developing a partnership with Univision that would allow us to combine NASA's unique STEM education content with Univision's communications platforms -- television, radio, and online and interactive media."

Also present at the event were Univision President and CEO Joe Uva, Univision Networks President Cesar Conde, U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan, U.S. Secretary of Labor Hilda L. Solis and philanthropist Melinda Gates. Organizations partnering on this initiative include the U.S. Department of Education and the Gates Foundation.

Collaboration with Univision will complement NASA's current education efforts to engage underrepresented and underserved students in the critical STEM fields.

For more information about NASA's education programs, visit:

During the STS-130 mission, the crew installed the Tranquility node, a module that provides additional room for crew members and many of the station's life support and environmental control systems. Attached to Tranquility is a cupola that provides a panoramic view of Earth, celestial objects and visiting spacecraft. The module was built in Turin, Italy, by Thales Alenia Space for the European Space Agency. With these improvements, the orbiting laboratory is approximately 90 percent complete.

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GOES-P is the third and final spacecraft to be launched in the GOES N Series of geostationary environmental weather satellites. The GOES satellites continuously provide observations of more than 50 percent of the Earth, including the continental United States, providing weather monitoring and forecast operations and a continuous and reliable stream of environmental information and severe weather warnings.

In addition to weather forecasting on Earth, a key instrument onboard GOES-P, the Solar X-Ray Imager (SXI), will help NOAA continue monitoring solar conditions.

"The SXI is improving our forecasts and warnings for solar disturbances, protecting billions of dollars worth of commercial and government assets in space and on the ground, and lessening the brunt of power surges for the satellite-based electronics and communications industry," said Tom Bodgan, director of NOAA's Space Weather Prediction Center (SWPC) in Boulder, Colo.

GOES-P joins a system of weather satellites that provide timely environmental information to meteorologists and the public. The GOES system provides data used to graphically display the intensity, path and size of storms. Early warning of impending severe weather enhances the public's ability to take shelter and protect property.

GOES-P will be launched on board a United Launch Alliance Delta IV (4, 2) launch vehicle under a FAA commercial license. The satellite will be turned over to NASA after the successful checkout is completed by Boeing Space and Intelligence Systems, El Segundo Calif.

Currently, NOAA operates GOES-12, (GOES East) and GOES-11 (GOES-West.) In late April, NOAA will activate GOES-13 to replace GOES-12 and will drift eastward from 105 degrees West longitude to 75 degrees West longitude. NOAA plans to move GOES-12 to 60 degrees West longitude to provide coverage for South America as part of the Global Earth Observing System of Systems (GEOSS). NASA handed over GOES-14, launched last June, to NOAA on December 14, 2009. It will remain in normal mode at the 105W storage longitude to provide operational X-ray Sensor coverage to NOAA's SWPC.

Once in orbit GOES-P will be designated GOES-15, checked out and then stored on-orbit and ready for activation should one of the operational GOES satellites degrade or exhaust their fuel.

NOAA manages the GOES program, establishes requirements, provides all funding and distributes environmental satellite data for the United States. NASA Goddard procures and manages the design, development and launch of the satellites for NOAA on a cost reimbursable basis. Boeing Space and Intelligence Systems built GOES-P.

For more information about the GOES-P mission and program on the Web, visit:

http://www.nasa.gov

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The finding is the surprising by-product of lab experiments designed by Joseph Nuth at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Md. and his colleagues to address the astronomical question of how carbon gets recycled in the regions of space that spawn stars and planets. The work also could help researchers understand puzzling observations about some supernovas.

In a recent paper in Astrophysical Journal Letters, Nuth’s team describes the modest chemical reaction. Unlike current methods for producing carbon nanotubes—tiny yet strong structures with a range of applications in electronics and, ultimately, perhaps even medicine—the new approach does not need the aid of a metal catalyst. "Instead, nanotubes were produced when graphite dust particles were exposed to a mixture of carbon monoxide and hydrogen gases," explains Nuth.

"I am amazed at the implications of this paper, not only for astrophysics but also for materials science," says Dick Zare, the chair of the chemistry department at Stanford University, Stanford, Calif. "Could Nature know a new chemistry for making carbon nanotubes that we have yet to discover?"

One indication of that possibility came in 2008, when the long, thin carbon structures known as graphite whiskers—essentially, bigger cousins of carbon nanotubes—were identified in three meteorites. That finding offered the tantalizing prospect that a haze of graphite whiskers in space could explain why some supernovas appear dimmer, and therefore farther away, than they should be, according to current models. Yet, "very little is known about graphite whisker formation, and so it is difficult to adequately interpret their discovery," says Marc Fries of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif.

Fries and Andrew Steele at the Carnegie Institution for Science, Washington, reported the meteorite findings.

Now, the experiments by Nuth’s team suggest a possible route for forming such structures. This "is exactly the sort of fundamental approach needed for a meaningful understanding of what graphite whiskers are and what their presence means in the larger context of solar system formation and astronomical observations," Fries explains.

Nuth’s approach is a variation of a well-established way to produce gasoline or other liquid fuels from coal. It’s known as Fischer-Tropsch synthesis, and researchers suspect that it could have produced at least some of the simple carbon-based compounds in the early solar system. Nuth proposes that the nanotubes yielded by such reactions could be the key to the recycling of the carbon that gets released when carbon-rich grains are destroyed by supernova explosions.

The structure of the carbon nanotubes produced in these experiments was determined by Yuki Kimura, a materials scientist at Tohoku University, Japan, who examined the samples under a powerful transmission electron microscope. He saw particles on which the original smooth graphite gradually morphed into an unstructured region and finally to an area rich in tangled hair-like masses. A closer look with an even more powerful microscope showed that these tendrils were in fact cup-stacked carbon nanotubes, which resemble a stack of Styrofoam cups with the bottoms cut out.

These observations surprised Kimura because carbon nanotubes are typically grown with platinum or another metal as a catalyst, yet Nuth’s reaction had used no metals. Kimura checked for contamination but "did not find the presence of metallic particles accompanying the nanotube in the sample," he says.

If further testing indicates that the new method is suitable for materials-science applications, it could supplement, or even replace, the familiar way of making nanotubes, explains Kimura. That possibility "is most exciting and invites yet more study," says Zare.

The findings also might open a new realm of investigation in astronomy, because "we can take the whiskers produced by Joe and interrogate their properties," says Steele.

In particular, researchers can evaluate whether graphite whiskers absorb light, he notes. A positive result would lend credence to the proposition that the presence of these molecules in space affects the observations of some supernovas. The ability to test this hypothesis could start a reaction of its own.

The indefinite delivery, indefinite-quantity, with fixed price and cost reimbursable task orders contract addition has a potential value of approximately $43 million through May 3, 2014.

Current and long-term capabilities of Wallops are being enhanced to provide launch services and capabilities to safely and successfully launch small and medium class orbital missions for NASA, other federal organizations and commercial launch providers.

Wallops will be the launch site for the NASA Lunar Atmosphere and Dust Experiment Explorer (LADEE) mission aboard an Air Force Minotaur V rocket in late 2012. Wallops also will support processing and launches through the spaceport for commercial cargo re-supply services to the International Space Station with Orbital Sciences Corporation's Taurus II launch vehicle beginning in 2011.

For more information about the Mid-Atlantic Regional Spaceport, visit:

GOES-P will provide expanded capability for space and solar environment-monitoring instruments. The satellite will enhance forecasts and warnings for solar disturbances. GOES-P data will help protect billions of dollars in investments by the government and private sector for assets on the ground and in space.

GOES-P will feature a highly stable pointing platform that will improve the performance of its Imager and Sounder, instruments used for creating daily weather-prediction models and hurricane forecasting. Data from GOES-P will be valuable for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's National Ocean Service, which provides oceanographic circulation models and forecasts for U.S. coastal communities.

As with all of NOAA's geostationary and polar-orbiting weather satellites, GOES-P will be able to relay distress signals detected from emergency locator beacons on the ground and at sea in support of the international search and rescue system. NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md., was responsible for designing and developing the spacecraft and its instruments for NOAA.

GOES-P is the last of three in the series of geostationary weather and environmental satellites built for NASA by Boeing Space and Intelligence Systems. The spacecraft will be checked out by Goddard and Boeing before being turned over to NOAA for operational use.

NASA will provide television, Internet and photo coverage of the launch starting with a prelaunch news conference at 4 p.m. on Monday, March 1, at NASA's Kennedy Space Centers Press Site.

Participating in the March 1 prelaunch news conference will be:
- Steve Kirkner, NOAA GOES Program manager, NOAA Satellite and Information Service
- Kris Walsh, Commercial Programs manager, United Launch Alliance
- Hieu Lam, Delta Commercial Program manager, Boeing Launch Services
- Andre Dress, GOES Deputy Project manager, NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center
- Charlie Maloney, GOES N-P Program manager, Boeing Space and Intelligence Systems
- Bart Hagemeyer, meteorologist in charge, NOAA National Weather Service forecast office, Melbourne, Fla.
- Joel Tumbiolo, Delta IV launch weather officer, 45th Weather Squadron, Cape Canaveral Air Force Station

NASA Television will carry the prelaunch news conference and launch day coverage live. On March 2 NASA TV countdown coverage will begin at 4 p.m., and will conclude 30 minutes after liftoff. For NASA TV downlink information, schedules and links to streaming video, visit:

Live countdown coverage on NASA's launch blog begins at 4 p.m. on March 2. Coverage features real-time updates of countdown milestones, as well as streaming video and a podcast of launch. To access these features, visit NASA's GOES-P mission Web site at:

For more information about the GOES-P launch, contact the NASA News Center at Kennedy at 321-867-2468 or visit:

The camera, installed by the U.S. Geological Survey, looks over the Arroyo Seco, a usually dry riverbed on the east side of JPL property. The Lab, in addition to the National Weather Service, the U.S. Geological Survey and first responders will be monitoring the images for large pulses of water and debris, which could damage surrounding areas.

The public can also watch the current state of the stream in real-time at http://ca.water.usgs.gov/webcams/jpl/ . New images appear every five minutes, and users can control the camera for up to three minutes at a time.

The Station fire, as it's known, charred more than 160,000 acres in and around the San Gabriel Mountains and crept to within an eighth of a mile of JPL in late August 2009. Rains this month caused mudslides on slopes burned bare by the fire and damaged homes in areas not far from JPL. Mudslides and debris flows could potentially threaten foothill communities for years to come.

The U.S. Geological Survey approached Eric Fuller, JPL's emergency preparedness administrator, after he attended a meeting with geologists, fire officials, land managers and other stakeholders. The Survey installed the camera in early February, and JPL has provided electrical power and a network line.

"Though we haven't had any damage at JPL, we want to be prepared and we want everyone else to be, as well," Fuller said.

The webcam is part of JPL's ongoing interest in studying the effects of the Station fire. Shortly after the most intense part of the wildfire, Tom Farr, a geologist at JPL, began working with researchers from the California Institute of Technology, the Survey and Arizona State University, Tempe, to study how sediment is moving on scorched hillsides around the Arroyo.

Farr, who has jogged regularly through the area for more than 20 years, now uses the daily runs for field work. His photos show log jams, erosion around guard rails and displaced boulders. He has also noted that in some places streams have flowed into old channels and others have broken off pavement from the roads. He also checks rain rates recorded by the JPL weather station, available at http://weatherstation.jpl.nasa.gov/ .

"The Arroyo Seco is almost unrecognizable from before the fires," Farr said. "A huge amount of sediment has been deposited and in some places eroded during the last few storms. We'll want to keep watching."

The image exposes the irregular shape and circular surface scars on Prometheus, pointing to a violent history. These craters are probably the remnants from impacts long ago.

Prometheus is one of Saturn's innermost moons. It orbits the gas-giant at a distance of about 140,000 kilometers (86,000 miles) and is 86 kilometers (53 miles) across at its widest point. The porous, icy world was originally discovered in images taken by NASA's Voyager 1 spacecraft back in 1980.

Cassini's narrow-angle camera captured two black-and-white images of the moon on Dec. 26, 2009, and the imaging team combined the images to make this new stereo view. It looks different from the "egg-cellent" raw image of Prometheus obtained on Jan. 27 because that view shows one of the short ends of the oddly shaped moon. In this 3-D image, the sun illuminates Prometheus at a different angle, making the moon's elongated body visible.

The Cassini Equinox Mission is a joint United States and European endeavor. The Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, manages the mission for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, Washington, D.C. The Cassini orbiter was designed, developed and assembled at JPL. For more information about the Cassini Equinox Mission visit: http://www.nasa.gov/cassini and http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov.

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