Illini grad talks to students from space station

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University of Illinois graduate Mike Hopkins earned cheers from an audience at his alma mater when he spoke via NASA video hookup from the International Space Station.

"University of Illinois, Fighting Illini, I hear you loud and clear, and I'm ready to answer some questions," Hopkins said, standing in front of an Illini flag in the space station on Tuesday.

Hopkins had 10 minutes to answer questions from Illini aerospace engineering students at the University of Illinois National Center for Supercomputing Applications. He is a 1991 engineering graduate and was co-captain of the Illini football team.

The News-Gazette reports that Hopkins has spent six months aboard the space station.

Students had to send in their questions ahead of time so Hopkins would be prepared to answer. They asked him about what he does at the space station, living in space and the future of space travel.

"The station is even more amazing than I ever thought it was going to be," Hopkins said.

Hopkins said his favorite thing to do in space is float.

"It doesn't get old, even just in the middle of the work day as you go floating around from one module to another. It's just fun," Hopkins said.

Then he did a flip.

Sophomore Nick Fulton said he would like to be an astronaut and found Hopkins' talk insightful.

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Illini grad talks to students from space station

Student Spaceflight Experiments Program — Mission 6 to the International Space Station

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The National Center for Earth and Space Science Education and the Arthur C. Clarke Institute for Space Education, in partnership with NanoRacks LLC, announce an authentic science, technology, engineering and mathematics, or STEM, opportunity for school districts across the U.S. and space station partner nations. The newest flight opportunity, Mission 6 to the International Space Station, or ISS, gives students across a community the ability to design and propose real experiments to fly in low Earth orbit on the International Space Station. This opportunity is part of the Student Spaceflight Experiments Program, or SSEP.

Each participating community will receive a real microgravity research mini-laboratory capable of supporting a single microgravity experiment, and all launch services to fly the mini-lab to the space station in fall 2014 and return it to Earth. An experiment design competition in each community -- engaging typically 300+ students -- allows student teams to design and propose real experiments vying for their community's reserved mini-lab. Content resources for teachers and students support foundational instruction on science in microgravity and experimental design. Additional SSEP programming leverages the experiment design competition to engage the community, embracing a learning community model for science, technology, engineering and mathematics, or STEM, education.

This competition is open to students in grades 5-12 and college. Informal education groups and organizations are also encouraged to participate. Interested communities must inquire about the program no later than Nov. 20, 2013. The National Center for Earth and Space Science Education is available to help interested communities in the U.S. secure the needed funding.

To learn more about this opportunity, visit the SSEP Mission 6 to International Space Station National Announcement of Opportunity at http://ssep.ncesse.org/2013/10/new-flight-opportunity-for-school-districts-announcing-student-spaceflight-experiments-program-ssep-mission-6-to-the-international-space-station-for-2014/.

SSEP is enabled through a strategic partnership with NanoRacks LLC working with NASA under a Space Act Agreement as part of the utilization of the International Space Station as a national laboratory. The Center for the Advancement of Science in Space (http://www.iss-casis.org/) is a national partner on SSEP. To view a list of all SSEP national partners, visit http://ssep.ncesse.org/national-partners/.

If you have any questions about this opportunity, please email SSEP National Program Director Jeff Goldstein at jeffgoldstein@ncesse.org.

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Student Spaceflight Experiments Program -- Mission 6 to the International Space Station

Astronaut Talks With Home State Students About Space | NASA Science HD Video – Video

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Astronaut Talks With Home State Students About Space | NASA Science HD Video
Visit my website at http://www.junglejoel.com - Expedition 37 Flight Engineer Karen Nyberg talks with students from the Henning, Minnesota, school district a...

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Earth Science Social Media Event Hosted By NASA

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October 30, 2013

Image Caption: This view of Earth comes from NASA's Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer aboard the Terra satellite. Credit: NASA

NASAs Jet Propulsion Laboratory

One-hundred people from 22 U.S. states and some foreign countries will attend a two-day NASA Social on Nov. 4 and 5 at the agencys Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif.

The attendees, who follow NASA and JPL on Twitter, Facebook, Google+ and other social networks, will tour JPL, participate in interactive events and hear from scientists and engineers about current and upcoming space- and Earth-observing missions. Attendees will share their experiences with their followers through the various social media platforms.

The Nov. 4 events will highlight NASAs role in studying Earth and its climate and will preview three Earth-observing missions JPL is preparing for launch in 2014: the Soil Moisture Active Passive (SMAP) spacecraft, which will measure soil moisture from space; ISS-RapidScat, which will measure ocean winds from the International Space Station; and the Orbiting Carbon Observatory-2 (OCO-2), which will study atmospheric carbon dioxide from space.

These presentations will air on NASA Television on Nov. 4 starting at 10 a.m. PST (1 p.m. EST) at http://www.nasa.gov/ntv and http://www.ustream.tv/nasajpl2 .

To join and track the conversation online during the NASA Social, follow the hashtag #NASASocial .

NASA Social attendees were selected from more than 475 people who registered online. Participants represent Canada, Croatia, Indonesia, Norway, Peru, the United States and the United Kingdom. Attendees from the U.S. come from 22 states: Alabama, Alaska, Arizona, Arkansas, California, Colorado, Georgia, Illinois, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Nebraska, Nevada, New Jersey, New York, North Carolina, Oregon, Texas, Utah, Virginia, Washington and Wisconsin.

More information about connecting and collaborating with NASA is at: http://www.nasa.gov/connect .

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Earth Science Social Media Event Hosted By NASA

NASA powers up Orion for the first time

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NASA took another step back into the astronaut-launching business when it announced on Monday that last week it had powered up the crew capsule of the Orion spacecraft for the first time. According to the space agency, the test of the spacecrafts avionics systems, conducted at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida, is a major milestone in preparing the craft for its first unmanned test flight in the autumn of next year.

The power-up of the Orion is the culmination of a year of assembly and testing of NASA's first-ever manned deep-space craft,which has seen over 66,000 parts installed so far. However, last weeks test was more than just seeing if the lights would go on without blowing a fuse. It was also a test of the capsules new power and data distribution system that NASA claims to use state-of-the-art networking capabilities. The space agency says that the power and avionics performed as expected.

The real test for the avionics will come next year, when the completed Orion will be fitted atop a Delta IV heavy rocket for an unmanned mission designated Exploration Flight Test-1(EFT-1). During EFT-1, the Orion will be launched into an orbit that will take it over 3,600 mi (5,800 km) away from Earth. The reason for this is that when Orion circles back home, it will be moving at the same speed as a returning deep space mission. It will hit the atmosphere at 20,000 mph (72,000 km/h) and the heat shield will be subjected to a temperature of 4,000 F (2,200 C) conditions not experienced by a manned spacecraft since the Apollo missions.

"Orion will take humans farther than we've ever been before, and in just about a year we're going to send the Orion test vehicle into space," says Dan Dumbacher, NASA's deputy associate administrator for exploration systems development in Washington. "The work we're doing now, the momentum we're building, is going to carry us on our first trip to an asteroid and eventually to Mars. No other vehicle currently being built can do that, but Orion will, and EFT-1 is the first step."

Source: NASA

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NASA powers up Orion for the first time

NASA releases 'ghostly' stellar images in time for Halloween

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PASADENA, Calif., Oct. 29 (UPI) -- In the spirit of Halloween, NASA has released images of three "ghostly" stellar objects -- planetary nebulas -- captured by the Spitzer Space Telescope.

Planetary nebulas are in fact material ejected from stars, as their wispy bits and pieces are blown outward into space in the stars' death throes, Spitzer scientists said.

"Some might call the images haunting," Joseph Hora of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, the principal investigator of the Spitzer observing program, said. "We look to the pictures for a sense of the history of the stars' mass loss, and to learn how they evolved over time."

Planetary nebulas, erroneously named such by William Herschel in 1785 for their resemblance to planets, come in an array of shapes.

The three images from Spitzer include a brain-like orb called PMR 1 nicknamed the "Exposed Cranium" nebula by Spitzer scientists; NGC 3242, also known as the Ghost of Jupiter, 1,400 light-years away in the constellation Hydra; and the Little Dumbbell Nebula, so named for its butterfly shape.

The Spitzer Space Telescope mission is managed for NASA's Science Mission Directorate by the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif.

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NASA releases 'ghostly' stellar images in time for Halloween

NASA Seeking Student Science Experiments for Balloon Flight

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NASA is accepting applications from graduate and undergraduate university students to fly experiments to the edge of space aboard a high-altitude scientific balloon. This balloon flight competition is a joint project between NASA and the Louisiana Space Consortium (LaSPACE) in Baton Rouge.

NASA is targeting fall 2014 for the next flight opportunity for the LaSPACE-maintained High Altitude Student Platform (HASP). HASP is a balloon-borne instrument stack that provides an annual near-space flight opportunity for 12 undergraduate and graduate student-built instruments.

A panel of engineers from NASA's Wallops Flight Facility on Wallops Island, Va., and LaSPACE will review the applications and select the finalists for the next flight opportunity. Launched from the Columbia Scientific Balloon Facility's remote site in Fort Sumner, N.M., HASP flights typically fly for 15 to 20 hours at an altitude of approximately 23 miles.

HASP houses and provides power, mechanical support, interfacing and communications for the instruments. It can be used to flight-test compact satellites, prototypes and other small payloads designed and built by students.

HASP can support approximately 200 pounds of payloads and test articles. Since 2006, the HASP program has selected for flights more than 70 payloads involving more than 600 students from across the United States.

The application deadline for the flight is Dec. 20. A question-and-answer teleconference for interested parties will be held at 11 a.m. EST Nov. 15. For application materials, teleconference schedule and additional HASP details, visit:

http://laspace.lsu.edu/hasp

For information about NASA's scientific balloon program, visit:

http://sites.wff.nasa.gov/code820/

For information about NASA's education programs, visit:

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NASA Seeking Student Science Experiments for Balloon Flight

NASA to launch mission to study Martian atmosphere

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In three weeks, NASA is set to launch its Maven orbiter to Mars, where it will study the Red Planet's upper atmosphere.

NASA is putting the finishing touches on its next Mars mission, which is slated to launch toward the Red Planet just three weeks from today (Oct. 28).

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The Mars Atmosphere and Volatile Evolution spacecraft, or Maven for short, is due to lift off from Florida's Cape Canaveral Air Force Station on Nov. 18. Maven is designed to study the Red Planet's upper atmosphere in great detail, and mission scientists hope the probe's observations yield insights into howMarsshifted from a relatively warm, wet world in the ancient past to the cold and dry place we know today.

"The Maven mission is a significant step toward unraveling the planetary puzzle about Mars' past and present environments," NASA science chief John Grunsfeld said in a statement. "The knowledge we gain will build on past and current missions examining Mars and will help inform future missions to send humans to Mars." [NASA's Maven Mission to Mars (Photos)]

Maven's journey will begin atop a United Launch Alliance Atlas 5 rocket. The probe will then endure a 10-month cruise to Mars, arriving in orbit around the Red Planet in September 2014.

The $671 millionMaven missionwill spend at least one Earth year studying Mars' air with three different instrument suites. Scientists hope Maven's observations reveal details about how the Red Planet lost much of its atmosphere, which was once relatively thick but is now just 1 percent as dense as that of Earth.

Maven will not be able to probe the Red Planet's air for methane, a gas whose presence could be a sign of potential Martian lifeforms. (About 90 percent of the methane in Earth's atmosphere is biologically derived, scientists say.)

"We just had to leave that one off to stay focused and to stay within the available resources," Maven principal investigator Bruce Jakosky, of the University of Colorado, Boulder's Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics, told reporters today.

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NASA to launch mission to study Martian atmosphere

NASA's IceBridge Readies 1st Antarctic Mission

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In a few weeks, NASA's Operation IceBridge will take to the skies for another busy season of monitoring ice sheets, glaciers and sea ice from above. This year, the mission will be stationed in Antarctica for the first time, enabling scientists to conduct longer flights, and explore areas of the icy continent that were previously out of reach.

NASA's modified P-3B aircraft is scheduled to depart NASA's Wallops Flight Facility in Wallops Island, Va., on Nov. 11, and touch down at McMurdo Station in Antarctica later that week, Christy Hansen, IceBridge project manager at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md., told reporters in a news briefing today (Oct. 29).

Previously, Operation IceBridge research flights took off from Punta Arenas in southern Chile, but this season, the mission will operate directly out of Antarctica. (Images: NASA's IceBridge in Action Over Antarctica)

"Once we start getting into science data collection, we'll be able to collect more science data than when we were based in Chile," Hansen said.

Being stationed in Antarctica will also allow researchers to plan science flights that last up to eight hours, which means the aircraft will be able to cover more ground in some cases, enabling scientists to survey parts of Antarctica not visited on previous IceBridge missions.

Operation IceBridge was one of several Antarctic missions threatened by the recent shutdown of the U.S. federal government, which lasted from Oct. 1 through Oct. 16. During that time, about 800,000 federal employees were furloughed, including Michael Studinger, IceBridge's lead scientist at the Goddard Space Flight Center.

As a result, the status of the IceBridge mission was in limbo for some time, and despite weathering the political storm, Studinger said the government shutdown is expected to limit the amount of research that will be conducted this season.

"It put our preparations on hold for more than two weeks, and added some other headaches that we had to resolve," Studinger said. "We'll collect considerably less science data than we had planned for."

Chad Naughton, project manager for the National Science Foundation's (NSF) U.S. Antarctic Program in Centennial, Colo., said overcoming the effects of the shutdown was challenging, but he expects federally funded research in Antarctica to bounce back.

"We're all systems go for a lot of the good science that's coming down," Naughton said. "It seems annually there's always something that pops up that's a challenge that affects a lot of science and a lot of the logistics. This was a big one, but I think we got through it, and I think a lot of the science that NSF funds on an annual basis is going to continue."

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NASA's IceBridge Readies 1st Antarctic Mission

(3) Nanotechnologie Nanotechnology Led Nouvelles technologies New Technologys – Video

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(3) Nanotechnologie Nanotechnology Led Nouvelles technologies New Technologys
Nanotechnologies. Technologie du futur. Un regard sur le futur Nouvelles technologies. New Technologys. Technologie d #39;avenir Les produits de luxe. LED . Tech...

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Five commonly performed tests, treatments in pulmonary medicine may not be necessary

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Oct. 28, 2013 A list released today identified five commonly performed tests and procedures in pulmonary medicine that may not always be necessary. The list, part of the ABIM Foundation's Choosing Wisely campaign, was produced by a collaborative task force assembled by the American Thoracic Society (ATS) and the American College of Chest Physicians (ACCP).

The Choosing Wisely campaign brings together national physician groups to identify specific tests, procedures and medications that are commonly used but may be duplicative or unnecessary. The pulmonary medicine list developed by ATS and ACCP is designed to help promote conversations between physicians and patients about which tests and treatments are most appropriate and about avoiding care whose potential harm may outweigh its benefits.

"The Choosing Wisely campaign can help physicians take the moral high ground in reining in the costs of their practices, rather than leaving such decisions to external policymakers. There are a lot of diagnostic tests and therapies for which available evidence suggests a lack of effectiveness, and physicians are in the best position to determine exactly which practices in their own specialties fit that bill," said Scott Halpern, MD, PhD, MBE, an assistant professor of medicine, epidemiology, and medical ethics and health policy at the University of Pennsylvania and co-chair of the task force that produced the list.

Dr. Halpern, who is vice chair of the ATS Ethics and Conflict of Interest Committee, noted that the pulmonary medicine guidelines and the critical care guidelines which will be released in January are being produced collaboratively by more than one medical organization. Dr. Halpern also chairs the task force developing the critical care guidelines, which are being developed by the American Association of Critical-Care Nurses, the Society of Critical Care Medicine, as well as by the ATS and the ACCP.

"The collaboration between ATS and ACCP has been very important," he said. "It should lend considerable strength to the agreed-upon recommendations of these diverse stakeholders."

The five recommendations in pulmonary medicine are:

1. Do not perform CT surveillance for evaluation of indeterminate pulmonary nodules at more frequent intervals or for a longer period of time than recommended by established guidelines.

2. Do not routinely offer pharmacologic treatment with advanced vasoactive agents approved only for the management of pulmonary arterial hypertension to patients with pulmonary hypertension resulting from left-sided heart disease or hypoxemic lung diseases (groups II or III pulmonary hypertension).

3. For patients recently discharged on supplemental home oxygen following hospitalization for an acute illness, do not renew the prescription without assessing the patient for ongoing hypoxemia.

4. Do not perform chest computed tomography (CT angiography) to evaluate for possible pulmonary embolism in patients with a low clinical probability and negative results of a highly sensitive D-dimer assay.

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Five commonly performed tests, treatments in pulmonary medicine may not be necessary