NASA unveils innovative new tech

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NASA Ames unveiled a little computer-operated machine that can manufacture spare spacecraft parts in space, including the parts astronauts needed as they faced death from asphyxiation aboard Apollo 13.

The three-dimensional printer would have been appreciated by Apollo 13 astronauts James Lovell, John Swigert and Fred Haise, who scrambled to jury-rig an apparatus that would allow them to continue to breathe after an oxygen tank explosion during the April 1970 mission. The 3-D printer, manufactured by NASA Ames partner Made-In Space and tested in zero-gravity, could have manufactured the needed parts on the spot. In fact, its young designers have done just that, as a way to prove its usefulness.

It turns out that 30 percent of the International Space Station's parts can be made with a 3-D printer, which saves precious weight by not having spares, while another machine recycles plastic materials into the feedstock material the 3-D printer uses, saving even more weight.

The 3-D printer was presented during a visit by Congressman Mike Honda and NASA Administrator Charles Bolden, who also spoke to journalists about the importance of funding NASA and highlight the sort of programs hurt by sequestration.

Also presented was "the cheapest satellite ever flown by humanity" -- a project of NASA Ames called Phonesat, which uses a reprogrammed Android smartphone as its main component. It recently returned from its first flight into space, its data card surviving an accidental crash landing to earth.

The Phonesat project was the brainchild of the head of NASA Ames engineering department, who "kept taking this phone out of his pocket and saying, 'This is almost everything you need to for a satellite,'" said Oriol Tintore, a young aerospace engineer with NASA Ames. The tiny satellite is not much bigger than a Rubik's cube.

Phonesat I costs $3,800 and can take pictures from space and send limited data through a radio beacon. It sent images of Earth to amateur radio operators around the globe after it was launched on April 21 on the Antares Rocket.

Then there is Phonesat II, which includes a two-way radio to allow it to be controlled from the ground as "a completely functional satellite bus" -- and costs $7,800. Getting them into space costs a bit more, however over $70,000, though there are several private companies are promising to make it more affordable.

"If we could just get the cost of launch per pound down, then we'd be OK," Bolden said.

Sarah Hovsepian, a graduate from the Massachsetts Institute of Technology, stole the show with a tour of the NASA Spaceshop, where computer-operated 3-D printers, laser cutters and milling machines allow computer-aided designs to be rapidly turned into objects.

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NASA unveils innovative new tech

NASA Hosts June 4 Media Briefing on Next Solar Mission Launch

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NASA will host a news briefing at 1 p.m. EDT, Tuesday, June 4, about the upcoming launch of the Interface Region Imaging Spectrograph (IRIS) mission. The briefing will be held at NASA Headquarters at 300 E St. SW in Washington and air live on NASA Television and the agency's website.

IRIS is scheduled to launch June 26 from Vandenberg Air Force Base in California.

IRIS is a NASA Small Explorer Mission to observe how solar material moves, gathers energy, and heats up as it travels through a little-understood region in the sun's lower atmosphere. This interface region between the sun's photosphere and corona powers its dynamic million-degree atmosphere and drives the solar wind. The region is the origin of most of the ultraviolet solar emission that impacts the near-Earth space environment and Earth's climate.

The panelists for the briefing are: -- Jeffrey Newmark, IRIS program scientist, NASA Headquarters, Washington -- Alan Title, IRIS principal investigator, Lockheed Martin's Advanced Technology Center, Palo Alto, Calif. -- Gary Kushner, IRIS program manager, Lockheed Martin's Advanced Technology Center, Palo Alto, Calif. -- John Marmie, IRIS assistant project manager, NASA's Ames Research Center, Moffett Field, Calif.

Journalists unable to attend in person may ask questions from participating NASA locations, join by phone, or send questions to Twitter using the hashtag #askNASA. To participate by phone, reporters must contact Steve Cole at 202-358-0918 or stephen.e.cole@nasa.gov with their media affiliation by 10 a.m., June 4.

For NASA TV streaming video, downlink and scheduling information, visit: http://www.nasa.gov/ntv

For more information about the IRIS mission, visit: http://www.nasa.gov/iris

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NASA Hosts June 4 Media Briefing on Next Solar Mission Launch

NASA Hosts News and Social Media Events Around This Week's Asteroid Pass

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NASA is inviting members of the media and public to participate in online and television events May 30-31 with NASA officials and experts discussing the agency's asteroid initiative and the Earth flyby of the 1.7-mile-long asteroid 1998 QE2.

At 4:59 p.m. EDT, Friday, May 31, 1998 QE2 will pass by Earth at a safe distance of about 3.6 million miles -- its closest approach for at least the next two centuries. The asteroid was discovered Aug. 19, 1998, by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology's Lincoln Near Earth Asteroid Research Program near Socorro, N.M.

The schedule of events is:

Thursday, May 30

-- 1:30-2:30 p.m.: NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Pasadena, Calif., will show on NASA Television live telescope images of the asteroid and host a discussion with NASA Administrator Charles Bolden and experts from JPL and the Goldstone Deep Space Communications Complex. Scientists at Goldstone will be using radar to track and image the asteroid.

The event also will be streamed live on the agency's website at: http://www.nasa.gov/ntv

The event also will be available on Ustream.tv with live chat capability at: http://www.ustream.tv/nasajpl2

Viewers may submit questions in advance to @AsteroidWatch on Twitter with the hashtag #asteroidQE2.

-- 8-10 p.m.: Bill Cooke of the Meteoroid Environment Office at NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Ala., will host an online chat at: http://www.nasa.gov/chat

Friday, May 31

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NASA Hosts News and Social Media Events Around This Week's Asteroid Pass

NASA’s HS3 mission aircraft to double team 2013 hurricane season

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May 29, 2013 During this year's hurricane season NASA will "double-team" on research with two unmanned Global Hawk aircraft winging their way over storms that develop during the peak of the season. NASA's Hurricane and Severe Storm Sentinel, or HS3 airborne mission, will revisit the Atlantic Ocean to investigate storms using additional instruments and for the first time two Global Hawks.

"The advantage this year over 2012 is that the second aircraft will measure eyewall and rainband winds and precipitation, something we didn't get to do last year," said Scott Braun, HS3 mission principal investigator and research meteorologist at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md. "In addition, just as we did in 2012, the first aircraft will examine the large-scale environment that tropical storms form in and move through and how that environment affects the inner workings of the storms."

HS3 is a mission that brings together several NASA centers with federal and university partners to investigate the processes that underlie hurricane formation and intensity change in the Atlantic Ocean basin. Among those factors, HS3 will address the controversial role of the hot, dry and dusty Saharan Air Layer in tropical storm formation and intensification, and the extent to which deep convection in the inner-core region of storms is a key driver of intensity change.

The HS3 mission will operate between Aug. 20 and Sept. 23. The Atlantic hurricane season runs from June 1 to November 30 and usually peaks in early to mid-September.

The NASA Global Hawks are unmanned aircraft that will be piloted remotely from the HS3 mission base at NASA's Wallops Flight Facility in Wallops Island, Va. Global Hawk aircraft are well-suited for hurricane investigations because they can fly for as long as 28 hours and over-fly hurricanes at altitudes greater than 60,000 feet.

The second Global Hawk will carry a payload of a Doppler radar for wind and precipitation measurements, a microwave radiometer for surface wind measurements, and a microwave sounder for the measurement of atmospheric temperature and humidity profiles. In addition, an instrument called ADELE (Airborne Detector for Energetic Lightning Emissions) is being added to examine gamma ray emissions caused by lightning. The ADELE instrument first flew on a Gulfstream V aircraft in 2009.

The radar and microwave instruments will fly aboard Global Hawk Two for the first time in HS3 and will focus on the inner region of the storms. The High-Altitude Imaging Wind and Rain Airborne Profiler conically scanning Doppler radar, the Hurricane Imaging Radiometer, and the High-Altitude Monolithic Microwave Integrated Circuit Sounding Radiometer microwave sounder will be new to the mission this year. These instruments have previously participated in NASA's GRIP (Genesis and Rapid Intensification Processes) experiment that studied hurricanes during the 2010 season and represent advanced technologies developed by NASA that are precursors to potential future satellite sensors

This year, one HS3 mission Global Hawk will provide the opportunity to test out a non-hurricane related instrument: the ADELE gamma ray detector.

Making a return appearance to NASA Wallops for the 2013 season and flying on Global Hawk One are three instruments to examine the environment of the storms. The scanning High-resolution Interferometer Sounder, the Advanced Vertical Atmospheric Profiling System also known as dropsondes, and the Cloud Physics Lidar will be mounted in the Global Hawk that will be studying the environment around storms.

Wallops Flight Facility is one of several NASA centers involved with the HS3 mission. The Earth Science Projects Office at NASA Ames Research Center manages the project. Other participants include NASA Goddard, NASA Dryden Flight Research Center, Edwards, Calif., NASA Marshall Space Flight Center, Huntsville, Ala. and NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif.

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NASA’s HS3 mission aircraft to double team 2013 hurricane season

NASA to Use Second Drone to Monitor Hurricanes

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A National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration infrared satellite image shows Hurricane Katrina in the Gulf of Mexico on Aug. 28, 2005. (NOAA/AP)

NASA is adding a second drone to monitor hurricanes in the Atlantic Ocean this summer in what is expected to be a strong storm season.

The agency will use two unmanned Global Hawk aircraft to monitor hurricanes and tropical storms between Aug. 20 and Sept. 23, it announced Wednesday.

Global Hawks have traditionally been used as surveillance aircraft by the military and are always unarmed. NASA's Global Hawks are retired aircraft from the Department of Defense.

"With NASA, we've learned to fly [drones] as a research platform that can be directed in real time," says Robbie Hood, the unmanned aerial systems program officer at National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, which works with NASA on the project.

[PHOTOS: Navy Launches First Drone From Aircraft Carrier]

"We're taking Global Hawks, ripping out the top secret stuff and putting scientific payloads on it. We're having it move around with the weather."

Hood says that drones will "revolutionize NOAA's observing strategies" on a level "comparable to the introduction of satellite and radar assets."

Unlike satellites, some of which orbit the planet only a couple times a day, a Global Hawk can follow a storm for up to 28 hours at a time, allowing scientists to get more data than they can with a satellite. The drones will be piloted from NASA's Wallops Flight Facility in Virginia.

According to Scott Braun, who runs the program, called the Hurricane and Severe Storm Sentinel, the second drone will be able to gather additional information the first one wasn't able to get in 2012.

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NASA to Use Second Drone to Monitor Hurricanes

2013 Hurricanes Double-Teamed By NASA Research Aircraft

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May 30, 2013

Image Caption: The fifth science flight of NASA's Global Hawk (green line) concluded when the aircraft landed at NASA's Wallops Flight Facility, Wallops Island, Va. on Sunday, Sept. 23, 2013 after flying over Tropical Storm Nadine in the Eastern Atlantic Ocean. The HS3 scientists changed the flight path (the original plan is in blue) during the GH flight to be able to overfly Nadine's center. Measurements from dropsondes found wind speeds greater than 60 knots at lower levels above the surface during that adjusted flight leg. Despite the large distance of Nadine from the U. S. East Coast, the Global Hawk was able to spend about 11 hours over the storm. The image shows the Global Hawk (red dot) returning to Wallops. Credit: NASA Wallops Technicians securing NASA's Global Hawk unmanned aircraft in the aircraft hangar of NASA's Wallops Flight Facility in Wallops Island, Va on Sept. 7, 2012. Credit: NASA Wallops

NASAs Jet Propulsion Laboratory

With the start of the 2013 Atlantic hurricane season less than a week away, NASA is preparing to send a pair of specially instrumented Global Hawk unmanned aircraft out over the Atlantic later this summer to investigate the processes that underlie hurricane formation and intensity.

Now in its second year, the NASA Hurricane and Severe Storm Sentinel, or HS3, airborne mission brings together several NASA centers, including NASAs Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif., with federal and university partners to study hurricane processes. Last year, just one Global Hawk flew during the campaign, focusing on the environment around tropical storms. This year, scientists will double their fun with a second aircraft and additional instruments focusing on the inner region of storms.

Global Hawk Two will include the JPL-developed High-Altitude Monolithic Microwave Integrated Circuit Sounding Radiometer, or HAMSR instrument, which uses microwave wavelengths to measure temperature, water vapor and precipitation from the top of storms to the surface. HAMSR has previously participated in NASAs Genesis and Rapid Intensification Processes (GRIP) experiment to study hurricanes in 2010. The instrument is demonstrating advanced technologies that are precursors to potential future satellite sensors.

The advantage this year over 2012 is that the second aircraft will measure eyewall and rainband winds and precipitation, something we didnt get to do last year, said Scott Braun, HS3 mission principal investigator and research meteorologist at NASAs Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md. In addition, just as we did in 2012, the first aircraft will examine the large-scale environment that tropical storms form in and move through and how that environment affects the inner workings of the storms.

The NASA Global Hawks will be piloted remotely from the HS3 mission base at NASAs Wallops Flight Facility in Wallops Island, Va. Global Hawk aircraft are well-suited for hurricane investigations because they can fly for as long as 28 hours and fly over hurricanes at altitudes greater than 60,000 feet (18,288 meters).

The mission will operate between Aug. 20 and Sept. 23. The Atlantic hurricane season runs from June 1 to November 30 and typically peaks in early to mid-September.

For more information, see: http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/hurricanes/missions/hs3/news/double-team.html . For more on HS3, visit: http://science.nasa.gov/missions/hs3/ . For more on NASAs hurricane research, visit: http://www.nasa.gov/hurricane . For more on HAMSR, visit: http://microwavescience.jpl.nasa.gov/instruments/hamsr/ . For more on NASAs Airborne Science Program, visit: http://airbornescience.nasa.gov . The California Institute of Technology in Pasadena manages JPL for NASA.

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2013 Hurricanes Double-Teamed By NASA Research Aircraft

Northrop Grumman, NASA Renew Earth Science Partnership

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SAN DIEGO, May 30, 2013 /PRNewswire/ -- Northrop Grumman Corporation (NOC) and NASA's Dryden Flight Research Center extended the NASA Space Act Agreement and will continue sharing Northrop Grumman-produced Global Hawk unmanned aircraft for science missions and flight demonstrations, including hurricane surveillance, atmospheric research and exploration of new mission capabilities.

(Logo: http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20121024/LA98563LOGO)

"In the last five years, the Global Hawk has flown over the eye of hurricanes, examined the effects of greenhouse gasses and conducted cutting-edge autonomous aerial refueling trials," said George Guerra, vice president of the Global Hawk program for Northrop Grumman's Aerospace Systems sector. "We are thrilled to continue our partnership with NASA and look forward to more scientific and technological breakthroughs in the next five years."

The agreement will continue until April 30, 2018, and allows for joint use and shared cost of the NASA Global Hawks. The initial Space Act Agreement, signed April 30, 2008, returned two preproduction Global Hawk aircraft to flight status. Under the partnership, a permanent ground control station was built at Dryden Flight Research Center, which is based at Edwards Air Force Base, Calif.

The high-altitude, long-endurance capabilities of the Global Hawk are uniquely suited to scientific research. Scientists from NASA, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and universities have capitalized on the range and dwell time of the Global Hawk.

"The Global Hawk is an invaluable asset and has changed the way we collect data and conduct Earth-science missions," said Chris Naftel, NASA Dryden Global Hawk project manager.

Access to wide areas and remote locations of the world has allowed Global Hawk to collect data for a variety of science research missions, including:

The Global Hawk is a fully autonomous, high-altitude, long-endurance unmanned aircraft system that can fly up to 65,000 feet for 30 hours at a time. Its endurance and range allow for nonstop flights from NASA Dryden in Southern California to the North Pole and remaining for up to seven hours over the polar region before returning to Dryden.

Northrop Grumman is a leading global security company providing innovative systems, products and solutions in unmanned systems, cyber, C4ISR, and logistics and modernization to government and commercial customers worldwide. Please visit http://www.northropgrumman.com for more information.

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Northrop Grumman, NASA Renew Earth Science Partnership

How to Find a Doctor You Can Trust, Functional vs. Mainstream Medicine, Nutrition | The Truth Talks – Video

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How to Find a Doctor You Can Trust, Functional vs. Mainstream Medicine, Nutrition | The Truth Talks
Friend us!! http://www.Facebook.com/psychetruth How to Find a Doctor You Can Trust, Functional vs. Mainstream Medicine, Nutrition | The Truth Talks Psychetru...

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How to Find a Doctor You Can Trust, Functional vs. Mainstream Medicine, Nutrition | The Truth Talks - Video