International Space Station Crew to Connect Live with Idaho Students

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NASA astronauts and Expedition 39 Flight Engineers Rick Mastracchio and Steve Swanson, currently orbiting Earth aboard the International Space Station, will speak with students and educators at Boise State University in Boise, Idaho, Tuesday, May 6, at 11:55 a.m. EDT. The event will be broadcast live on NASA Television and the agency's website.

Media interested in covering the event should contact Ellie Rodgers at 208-426-5738 orellierodgers@boisestate.edu. Boise State University is located at 1910 University Drive in Boise.

Former NASA astronaut Barbara Morgan, who flew on space shuttle Endeavour's STS-118 mission in 2007 and currently is an educator-in-residence at the university, also will participate in Tuesday's event, which focuses on living and working in space.

Educators have been preparing their students for the conversation with the crew by incorporating NASA activities in their classrooms. A group of Boise State students working on this event have dubbed themselves the "Space Broncos" and are working on maintaining a social media site and developing educational demonstrations for Swanson, who has been named a "Professor of Practice" by Boise State, to perform in orbit.

This in-flight education downlink is one in a series designed to improve teaching and learning science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM). It is an integral component of NASA's Teaching From Space education program, which promotes learning opportunities and builds partnerships with the education community using the unique environment of space and NASA's human spaceflight program.

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

NASA TV Live

For information about NASA's education programs, visit:

http://www.nasa.gov/education

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International Space Station Crew to Connect Live with Idaho Students

Red Raiders close regular season at No. 12 Oklahoma

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Provided by Texas Tech Athletics

LUBBOCK, Texas Texas Tech will look to add to its postseason resume this weekend when the Red Raiders close the regular season with a three-game series at No. 12 Oklahoma.

The Red Raiders are coming off wins in each of their last three Big 12 series and will be looking to solidify a top-four finish in the conference standings.

The series gets underway at 6:30 p.m. Friday evening at Marita Hynes Field in Norman and continues with 2 p.m. and 12 p.m. first pitches on Saturday and Sunday.

The series can be seen in its entirety as Friday and Saturday's games will air on FOX Sports Southwest Plus with the finale on FOX Sports Southwest.

ON THE HORIZON

Texas Tech will learn its postseason fate on Sun., May 11, during the NCAA Selection Show on ESPN2. The Red Raiders will be looking to advance to an NCAA Regional for the fourth time in the past five years and the sixth time in school history.

OKLAHOMA ALL-TIME SERIES

Texas Tech will look for its first series victory all-time over Oklahoma this weekend as the Red Raiders are 7-33 all-time against the Sooners, including a 4-16 mark in games played in Norman. Tech enters this weekend's series having dropped each of its last four contests against the Sooners after OU swept the series a year ago in Lubbock. The Red Raiders nearly came away with the series victory in their last trip to Norman in 2012 after picking up a 5-4 victory in the middle game. Oklahoma bounced back to take a 4-1 win in the finale, however. The 2013 series marks the only time the Red Raiders have been swept by OU under Shanon Hays as the fifth-year head coach is 3-8 all-time against the Sooners.

HAYS COLLECTS WIN NO. 300 AGAINST IOWA STATE

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Red Raiders close regular season at No. 12 Oklahoma

Zero gravity: NASA scientists find astronauts’ heart become more spherical in outer space – Video

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Zero gravity: NASA scientists find astronauts #39; heart become more spherical in outer space
Originally published on March 31, 2014 Check out our official website: http://us.tomonews.net/ Check out our Android app: http://goo.gl/PtT6VD Check out our ...

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Zero gravity: NASA scientists find astronauts' heart become more spherical in outer space - Video

Designer Uses NASA Hubble Telescope Images For Line Of Fantastically Ethereal Silk – Video

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Designer Uses NASA Hubble Telescope Images For Line Of Fantastically Ethereal Silk
Celine Semaan Vernon of Slow Factory has designed line of fantastically ethereal scarves and other silk wares around open-sourced images from the NASA Hubble Telescope using only organic materials...

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Designer Uses NASA Hubble Telescope Images For Line Of Fantastically Ethereal Silk - Video

NASA-CNES Move Forward with Global Water and Ocean Surface Mission

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May 2, 2014

NASA Administrator Charles Bolden, left, and Centre National d'tudes Spatiales (CNES) President Jean-Yves Le Gall sign an agreement to move from feasibility studies to implementation of the Surface Water and Ocean Topography (SWOT) mission, Friday, May 2, 2014 at NASA Headquarters in Washington. Credit: NASA/Bill Ingalls

WASHINGTON, May 2, 2014 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ NASA and the French space agency Centre National dtudes Spatiales (CNES) have agreed to jointly build, launch, and operate a spacecraft to conduct the first-ever global survey of Earths surface water and to map ocean surface height with unprecedented detail.

http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnvar/20081007/38461LOGO

NASA Administrator Charles Bolden and CNES President Jean-Yves Le Gall signed an agreement Friday at NASA Headquarters in Washington to move from feasibility studies to implementation of the Surface Water and Ocean Topography (SWOT) mission. The two agencies began initial joint studies on the mission in 2009 and plan to complete preliminary design activities in 2016, with launch planned in 2020.

With this mission, NASA builds on a legacy of Earth science research and our strong relationship with CNES to develop new ways to observe and understand our changing climate and water resources, said NASA Administrator Charles Bolden. The knowledge well gain from SWOT will help decision makers better analyze, anticipate, and act to influence events that will affect us and future generations.

SWOT is one of the NASA missions recommended in the National Research Councils 2007 decadal survey of Earth science priorities. The satellite will survey 90 percent of the globe, studying Earths lakes, rivers, reservoirs and ocean to aid in freshwater management around the world and improve ocean circulation models and weather and climate predictions.

This new agreement covers the entire life cycle of the mission, from spacecraft design and construction through launch, science operations, and eventual decommissioning. NASA will provide the SWOT payload module, the Ka-band Radar Interferometer (KaRIn) instrument, the Microwave Radiometer (MR) with its antenna, a laser retroreflector array, a GPS receiver payload, ground support, and launch services.

CNES will provide the SWOT spacecraft bus, the KaRIn instruments Radio Frequency Unit (RFU), the dual frequency Ku/C-band Nadir Altimeter, the Doppler Orbitography and Radiopositioning Integrated by Satellite (DORIS) receiver package, satellite command and control, and data processing infrastructure.

NASA and CNES began collaborating on missions to monitor ocean surface changes in the 1980s. From the TOPEX/Poseidon mission launched in 1992 to the Jason-1 mission launched in 2001 to the Jason-2/Ocean Surface Topography Mission launched in 2008, the collaboration has produced critical information on sea-level rise as well as El Nio causing world-wide impact.

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NASA Astronaut Reid Wiseman Available for Interviews before Space Station Mission

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NASA astronaut Reid Wiseman of Baltimore, Md., who is making final preparations for a May launch to the International Space Station, will be available for live satellite interviews from 6 to 7 a.m. EDT Friday, May 9.

Wiseman will participate live from the Gagarin Cosmonaut Training Center in Star City, Russia. The interviews will be preceded at 5:30 a.m. by a video b-roll feed of his mission training highlights. To participate, reporters should contact Karen Svetaka at 281-483-8684 orkaren.a.svetaka@nasa.govno later than 3 p.m., Thursday, May 8.

Wiseman is a graduate of Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in Troy, N.Y., Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore and the U.S. Naval Test Pilot School in Patuxent River, Md. As a naval aviator, Wiseman flew the FA-18F Super Hornet and served in numerous assignments around the world before his selection to NASA's astronaut corps in 2009

Wiseman, Alexander Gerst of the European Space Agency and Maxim Suraev of the Russian Federal Space Agency (Roscosmos) will launch to the space station aboard a Soyuz spacecraft May 28 from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan. They are scheduled to return to Earth in November.

Wiseman, Gerst and Suraev will join NASA astronaut Steve Swanson and Roscosmos cosmonauts Alexander Skvortsov and Oleg Artemyev, who launched to the station in March. The six-person crew will participate in several hundred experiments in biology and biotechnology, physical science and Earth science during its nearly six-month-long space mission.

The International Space Station is NASA's springboard to the exploration of deep space and Mars. NASA uses the space station as a test bed to demonstrate new technologies and make research breakthroughs not possible on Earth. The orbiting laboratory also advances our understanding of how the body changes in space over time and how to protect astronaut health for longer duration missions.

For information about the International Space Station, visit:

http://www.nasa.gov/station

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NASA Astronaut Reid Wiseman Available for Interviews before Space Station Mission

NASA's Morpheus Lander Prototype Touches Down on Mock Moonscape (Video)

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A prototype of NASA's Morpheus lander kicked up a cloud of fake moon dust as it touched down softly on a mock lunar landscape in Florida in this week.

On Wednesday (April 30), the Morpheus vehicle dubbed Bravo lifted off for its twelfth free-flight test at NASA's Kennedy Space Center. The robotic vehicle flew a pre-programmed path that launched it vertically, and then rose to an altitude of more than 800 feet (243 meters), NASA officials said in a description of a video of the mock moonscape flight.

After liftoff, Morpheus then flew sideways 1,300 feet (396 m), hovering over a 65-yard(59 m) square sandbox full of obstacles like rocks and craters. [Photos: NASA's Project Morpheus Robot Lander]

NASA recently started testing its automated landing and hazard avoidance technology(ALHAT)installed on the vehicle. This 400-pound suite of computers and three instruments is designed to scan the surface of apotential landing site for hazards, such as a dangerous boulder or crater, so that the spacecraft doesn't crash or tip over as it touches down.

The ALHAT technology mapped the square and identified a safe landing site 4.5 feet (1.4 m) east of the center of the landing pad and targeted that location to gently touch down on the mock lunar surface, NASA officials said.

"We've been working a long time, eight years, to prove we can do autonomous, precision landing and hazard avoidance and guidance," Chirold Epp, project manager for ALHAT, said in a NASA statement a week before the latest flight. "We really need to show the world that everything we've been advertising for eight years works."

The Morpheus project suffered a spectacular setback in August 2012, when thelander prototype crashed and explodedjust moments after liftoff in its first free flight. But the latest round of Morpheus' free-flight tests, whichbegan on Dec. 10, 2013, has been successful so far.

Morpheus is an autonomous vertical takeoff/vertical landing vehicle intended to fly to the moon with up to a 1,100-lb. (500 kilograms) payload, perhaps consisting of a humanoid robot, a rover or a fuel lab, NASA officials say. With modifications to its landing system, the spacecraft possibly could be used to deliver cargo to other planetary bodies, such as an asteroid in deep space.

TheMorpheus lander uses liquid oxygen and methane, or so-called green propellants, which NASA officials say are safer and cheaper to use than traditional rocket fuels because they can be stored in space for longer periods.

Follow Megan Gannon onTwitterandGoogle+. Follow us @SPACEdotcom, FacebookorGoogle+. Originally published onSpace.com.

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NASA's Morpheus Lander Prototype Touches Down on Mock Moonscape (Video)

5 apps to easily move photos from your phone to your PC

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As the saying goes, the best camera is the one you have with youand that'swhy so many of us have smartphones absolutely stocked with memories from nights out on the town to a child's first days in the world. But while taking photos on your smartphone is no problem, getting them offyour phone and onto your PC can sometimes be a pain.

You could just hook your smartphone up to your PC every now and again and just transfer them over a USB cable, but ugh, wires.

A better alternative is to put the mobile apps you already have on your phone to work. Several can send pictures to your PC automatically, and one can even do it without leaning on the cloud whatsoever.

One of the most seamless ways to get photos on your PC is to use Dropbox. The original device sync app can be set to automatically upload photos from your device to Dropbox, and you'll get up to an extra 3GB of free storage space for using the feature, more than doubling the 2GB of free space provided to users.

If you use Dropbox's default settings on your PC then photos will automatically be synced down to your PC.You can also set Dropbox to only upload photos over Wi-Fi so that you don't get hit with an unexpected Internet charge from your carrierbut be sure to prune your photo collection occasionally, as photos can make you hit your Dropbox storage limit all too fast.

To get started open Dropbox on your mobile device and go to Settings > Camera Upload.

The company also has a new photo viewing app called Carousel that automatically uploads photos to Dropbox. With Carousel, Dropbox is also offering an extra 3GB of free storage space for your photos, but only if you haven't previously used up your free photo allotment using camera upload on the regular Dropbox app.

Microsoft's cloud storage solution offers a similar back-up method to Dropbox. Just like Dropbox, you can set OneDrive to only upload photos over Wi-Fi. Also like Dropbox, Microsoft will give you 3GB of free additional storage if you configure the OneDrive mobile app to automatically save photos to the cloud, bolstering the service's 7GB of free storage.

Windows 8 has SkyDrive/OneDrive baked in by default, making the mobile OneDrive app's automatic uploads a dead-simple way to ensure your phone photos wind up on your PC.

Set up OneDrive's camera uploads by going to Settings > Camera backup.

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5 apps to easily move photos from your phone to your PC