The contract is a cost plus award fee with award term arrangements. The current potential value of the contract, including this $36 million contract option, is $136 million. Subsequent unexercised options and award terms extend the total period of performance to 2017, with a total potential value of more than $376 million.

Bastion Technologies Inc. continues to provide services, equipment and supplies associated with industrial safety and system safety, reliability and maintainability engineering associated with the design and development engineering and testing performed by Marshall. The contract also provides safety and mission assurance management information, quality assurance and quality engineering, independent assessment services and documentation, project assurance and risk management.

For information about NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center, visit:

The appointment comes as NASA launches a bold new initiative that targets technologies that could be transformational in their ability to improve the capability, reduce the cost, and expand the reach of future human and robotic missions.

"Bobby brings expert knowledge of spacecraft, robotic and planetary exploration technology development to this new position," Bolden said. "His experience working at NASA Langley and in the academic community brings an excellent skill mix to this exciting and challenging new job."

Braun will help develop a broadly focused advanced concepts and technology development program leading to new approaches to future NASA missions and solutions to significant national needs.

During the coming decade, NASA will increase its support for research in advanced concepts and critical enabling technologies, including test programs for multiple technology flight demonstrations. New technologies include advanced lightweight structures and materials, advanced propulsion, power generation, energy storage and high bandwidth communications. This program also will generate spin-off technologies and potentially entire new industries.

Braun has more than 20 years experience performing design and analysis of planetary exploration systems as a member of the technical staff at NASA's Langley Research Center in Hampton, Va., and the Georgia Institute of Technology. His research has focused on systems aspects of planetary exploration, where he has contributed to the design, development, test, and operation of several robotic space flight systems.

Braun was a member of the Mars Pathfinder design and landing operations team from 1992 to 1997 and has been part of development teams for the Mars Microprobe, Mars Sample Return and Mars Surveyor 2001 projects.

Braun also provided independent assessment and served on NASA review boards for the Mars Polar Lander, Mars Odyssey, Mars Exploration Rover, Phoenix Mars Scout, Genesis, and Mars Science Laboratory flight projects.

Braun received a B.S. in Aerospace Engineering from Penn State in 1987, M.S. in Astronautics from the George Washington University in 1989, and Ph.D. in Aeronautics and Astronautics from Stanford University in 1996. He has received the 1999 AIAA Lawrence Sperry Award, two NASA Exceptional Achievement Medals, two NASA Inventions and Contributions Team Awards, and seven NASA Group Achievement Awards. He is an AIAA Fellow and the principle author or co-author of over 175 technical publications.

For more information about NASA, please visit:

In this new position, Whitlow will be responsible for most NASA management operations, including human capital, budget and systems support as well as a variety of other vital cross agency business, institutional and contract support functions.

"Woodrow is a dedicated and valued member of my senior leadership team, and I am pleased he agreed to accept this new challenge," Bolden said. "As the agency moves forward, we need to streamline the way we do business with a fresh approach and an eye for strategic management and investments. I know the people of Glenn will miss Woodrow, but the entire agency will again have the opportunity to benefit from his insight and experience."

As the Glenn director since Dec. 25, 2005, Whitlow has led a workforce of more than 3,400 civil service and support service contractors. The center is distinguished by its unique blend of aeronautics and spaceflight research and development experience.

Before being named director of Glenn, Whitlow served as the deputy director of NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida. He assisted the director in determining and implementing center policy and managing and implementing the center's missions and agency program responsibilities. Areas of responsibility included processing, launch, and recovery of launch vehicles, processing of spacecraft and acquisition of launch services.

Prior to his appointment as deputy director at Kennedy, Whitlow was the director of Research and Technology at Glenn.

Whitlow began his NASA career in 1979 as a research scientist at the agency's Langley Research Center in Hampton, Va. He assumed various positions of increasing responsibility before moving to Glenn in 1998. In 1994, he served as director of the Critical Technologies Division in the Office of Aeronautics at NASA Headquarters.

Whitlow earned his bachelor's degree, master's degree, and doctorate in aeronautics and astronautics from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

For more information about NASA and agency programs, visit:

The Solar Dynamics Observatory, or SDO, is set to launch from Florida no earlier than 10:30 a.m. EST on Feb. 9, on an unprecedented mission to study the sun and its dynamic behavior.

Onboard telescopes will scrutinize sunspots and solar flares using more pixels and colors than any other observatory in the history of solar physics. And SDO will reveal the sun’s hidden secrets in a prodigious rush of pictures.

Asteroid collisions are energetic, with an average impact speed of more than 11,000 miles per hour, or five times faster than a rifle bullet. The comet-like object imaged by Hubble, called P/2010 A2, was first discovered by the Lincoln Near-Earth Asteroid Research, or LINEAR, program sky survey on Jan. 6. New Hubble images taken on Jan. 25 and 29 show a complex X-pattern of filamentary structures near the nucleus.

"This is quite different from the smooth dust envelopes of normal comets," said principal investigator David Jewitt of the University of California at Los Angeles. "The filaments are made of dust and gravel, presumably recently thrown out of the nucleus. Some are swept back by radiation pressure from sunlight to create straight dust streaks. Embedded in the filaments are co-moving blobs of dust that likely originated from tiny unseen parent bodies."

Hubble shows the main nucleus of P/2010 A2 lies outside its own halo of dust. This has never been seen before in a comet-like object. The nucleus is estimated to be 460 feet in diameter.

Normal comets fall into the inner regions of the solar system from icy reservoirs in the Kuiper belt and Oort cloud. As comets near the sun and warm up, ice near the surface vaporizes and ejects material from the solid comet nucleus via jets. But P/2010 A2 may have a different origin. It orbits in the warm, inner regions of the asteroid belt where its nearest neighbors are dry rocky bodies lacking volatile materials.

This leaves open the possibility that the complex debris tail is the result of an impact between two bodies, rather than ice simply melting from a parent body.

"If this interpretation is correct, two small and previously unknown asteroids recently collided, creating a shower of debris that is being swept back into a tail from the collision site by the pressure of sunlight," Jewitt said.

The main nucleus of P/2010 A2 would be the surviving remnant of this so-called hypervelocity collision.

"The filamentary appearance of P/2010 A2 is different from anything seen in Hubble images of normal comets, consistent with the action of a different process," Jewitt said. An impact origin also would be consistent with the absence of gas in spectra recorded using ground-based telescopes.

The asteroid belt contains abundant evidence of ancient collisions that have shattered precursor bodies into fragments. The orbit of P/2010 A2 is consistent with membership in the Flora asteroid family, produced by collisional shattering more than 100 million years ago. One fragment of that ancient smashup may have struck Earth 65 million years ago, triggering a mass extinction that wiped out the dinosaurs. But, until now, no such asteroid-asteroid collision has been caught "in the act."

At the time of the Hubble observations, the object was approximately 180 million miles from the sun and 90 million miles from Earth. The Hubble images were recorded with the new Wide Field Camera 3 (WFC3), which is capable of detecting house-sized fragments at the distance of the asteroid belt.

For Hubble images and more information, visit:

On Monday, NASA Administrator Charles Bolden and Chief Financial Officer Beth Robinson will brief reporters about the agency's fiscal year 2011 budget during a teleconference at 12:30 p.m. EST. This is a change from the previously announced 3 p.m. Monday news conference in the James E. Webb Memorial Auditorium at NASA Headquarters in Washington.

Following remarks, reporters will have an opportunity to ask questions. To dial into the news conference, news media representatives should call:

The announcement will take place at 10 a.m. in the National Press Club's ballroom, located at 529 14th Street NW in Washington. Reporters attending the event will have the opportunity to ask questions after remarks by Dr. Holdren and Administrator Bolden. NASA Television and the agency's Web site will carry the briefing live.

In addition to the two NASA events, Deputy Administrator Lori Garver will participate with Dr. Holdren in a briefing by the Office of Science and Technology Policy about the federal government's 2011 research and development budget. The briefing will take place at 1 p.m. EST, Monday, Feb. 1 in the auditorium of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. The association is located at 1200 New York Avenue, NW, with an entrance at 12th St. and H St. NW.

Reporters who plan to attend must register in advance at:

Summary of Events
What: Fiscal Year 2011 budget briefing
When: 12:30 p.m. EST on Monday, Feb. 1
Who: NASA Administrator Charles Bolden and Chief Financial Officer Beth Robinson
Where: Teleconference - call 800-857-5728 or 1-630-395-0025 and use the pass code
"NASA"

What: Briefing by the Office of Science and Technology Policy on the federal government's
2011 research and development budget
When: 1 p.m. EST on Monday, Feb. 1
Who: NASA Deputy Administrator Lori Garver and Dr. John Holdren, assistant to the
President for science and technology and director of the White House Office of
Science and Technology Policy
Where: The American Association for the Advancement of Science's auditorium, located at
1200 New York Ave., NW, with an entrance at 12th St. and H St. NW.

What: Newsmaker event at the National Press Club
When: 10 a.m. EST on Tuesday, Feb. 2
Who: NASA Administrator Charles Bolden and Dr. John Holdren, assistant to the President
for science and technology and director of the White House Office of Science and
Technology Policy
Where: The National Press Club's ballroom, located at 529 14th Street NW in Washington

To listen to the news conferences online, visit:

Satellite interferometric synthetic aperture radar measurements show that the Jan. 12 earthquake ruptured a segment of the fault extending from the epicenter westward over a length of about 40 kilometers (25 miles), leaving the section of the fault in this image unruptured. The earthquake has increased the stress on this eastern section of the fault south of Port-au-Prince and the section west of the rupture. This has significantly increased the risk of a future earthquake, according to a recent report by the U.S. Geological Survey.

The colors in the image reflect the three different UAVSAR radar polarizations: HH (horizontal transmit, horizontal receive) is colored red; VV (vertical transmit, vertical receive) is colored blue; and HV (horizontal transmit, vertical receive) is colored green. Like a pair of Polaroid sunglasses, these images are sensitive to different parts of the radar signal that is reflected back from Earth's surface. The HV polarization is sensitive to volume scattering that typically occurs over vegetation-this gives hills a greenish color. VV polarization is sensitive to surface scattering such as that returned from bare surfaces or water-this gives water a bluish tint. Finally, HH polarization is sensitive to corner-like objects-this gives some urban areas and vegetated regions a reddish tint. The image is roughly 20 kilometers (12.5 miles) wide in the northwest-southeast direction. North is up and radar illumination is from the southeast.

This image will be combined with other images of the same area to be acquired later this month and in the future in order to measure the motion of Earth's surface during the time between images using a technique called interferometry.The interferometric measurements will allow scientists to study the pressures building up and being released on the fault at depth.

UAVSAR is a reconfigurable polarimetric L-band synthetic aperture radar (SAR) specifically designed to acquire airborne repeat track SAR data for differential interferometric measurements. For more information about radar polarimetry, see http://www.ccrs.nrcan.gc.ca/resource/tutor/polarim/index_e.php . The radar will eventually be flown aboard an uninhabited, remotely-piloted aircraft such as the Northrop Grumman Global Hawk. The radar was built at JPL with funding by NASA's Earth Science Technology Office. UAVSAR is managed and operated by JPL under contract with NASA's Science Mission Directorate, Washington, D.C.

For more information on UAVSAR, visit: http://uavsar.jpl.nasa.gov/.

View my blog's last three great articles....

Argentine President Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner (center in blue) was briefed Jan. 20.
Photo: Argentine government
› Larger image

The visit took place during the kickoff of the satellite's system contractor new satellite integration facility in Bariloche, Argentina. The president met with Aquarius/SAC-D team members from NASA, Argentina's space agency, Comisión Nacional de Actividades Espaciales, and the contractor.

The primary instrument on the mission, Aquarius is designed to provide monthly global maps of how salt concentration varies on the ocean surface -- a key indicator of ocean circulation and its role in climate change. Seven Argentine space agency-sponsored instruments will provide environmental data for a wide range of applications, including natural hazards, land processes, epidemiological studies and air quality issues.

The minimum three-year mission is scheduled to launch this year from Vandenberg Air Force Base, Calif.

View my blog's last three great articles....

• The Fiscal Year 2011 Budget
• NASA Selects Commercial Firms to Begin Development...
• M51 Hubble Remix

Teams at Launch Pad 39A will be packing the astronauts' spacesuits into Endeavour today.

Meanwhile, the six STS-130 crew members who will fly to the International Space Station entered quarantine yesterday and now are on a sleep schedule to match their evening and overnight work hours during the mission. They will conduct final integrated ascent training in the motion base simulator today at NASA's Johnson Space Center in Houston and will be flying to Kennedy tomorrow night.

Last week, a water suppression system pipe leaked at Kennedy's Launch Control Center and workers have made progress during the weekend drying walls and carpets. This leak is not expected to hamper the liftoff of Endeavour at 4:39 a.m. EST Feb. 7.

Endeavour's STS-130 Mission
Commander George Zamka will lead the STS-130 mission to the International Space Station aboard space shuttle Endeavour. Terry Virts will serve as the pilot. Mission Specialists are Nicholas Patrick, Robert Behnken, Stephen Robinson and Kathryn Hire. Virts will be making his first trip to space.

Shuttle Endeavour and its crew will deliver to the space station a third connecting module, the Italian-built Tranquility node and the seven-windowed cupola, which will be used as a control room for robotics. The mission will feature three spacewalks.

Liftoff from NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida is scheduled for February 7, 2010, at 4:39 a.m. EST