NASA Ames Vertical Gun Range analyzing missiles nose cones at hypersonic speeds (Mach-10) – Video

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NASA Ames Vertical Gun Range analyzing missiles nose cones at hypersonic speeds (Mach-10)
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NASA Ames Vertical Gun Range analyzing missiles nose cones at hypersonic speeds (Mach-10) - Video

NASA Ames focusing on advanced manufacturing

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MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif. (KGO) -- NASA's Ames Research Center near Mountain View is reinventing itself as a result of tight federal funding, but it's turning a potential negative into positives as it focuses on advancing its manufacturing skills.

Developing advanced manufacturing skills has become a key way NASA is stretching a budget that has stayed at $16.8 billion two years in a row. Last month, it pioneered the use of consumer-grade mobile phones as small satellites in space. And in workshops at NASA Ames, it's learning how to etch circuit boards in-house instead of sending them to outside contractors.

It's also faster. "You can come in here in an afternoon and have an idea for a circuit board, sketch it out, prototype it, and then put it on this machine over here, and have a finished board in your hand in a couple of hours," explained researcher Zac Manchester.

"As you're melting the plastic, you can either choose to melt a lot of plastic at one time or you can choose to melt a little at a time. So, if you're melting less at a time, you're potentially achieving more accuracy," explained NASA technology fellow Sarah Hovsepian .

They made the battery holders, for example, to power the three cell phone satellites. But as they experiment with other materials, they'll be able to print circuit boards by using conductive plastic. For now, they're using a lot of abs plastic in 3D printing. But in the future, they're going to be using a lot of alloys, including ones made of aluminum and titanium.

The next step is putting 3D printers in space. "Whether redirecting an asteroid or sending humans to mars, we'll need transformative technology to reduce cargo weight and volume. In the future, perhaps astronauts will be able to print the tools or components they need while in space," NASA administrator Charles Bolden said.

Because of the work it's doing, Bolden says Ames Research Center and its team of 2,300 have a long-term and mission-critical future. However, the sequester and tight budgets remain a threat.

(Copyright 2013 KGO-TV/DT. All Rights Reserved.)

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NASA wants to lasso asteroid closer to Earth by 2021

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LA CANADA FLINTRIDGE, Calif. (KABC) -- NASA has a new mission to lasso an asteroid. It's all in an effort to protect the Earth if an asteroid ever comes too close.

They are scenes popular in Hollywood blockbusters: huge asteroids slamming into Earth. Cameras have caught real-life strikes, though on a much smaller scale. Most notably was the meteor that struck in Russia earlier this year. It caught the world by surprise.

'If we're going to keep something from impacting Earth or keep something from being a threat to Earth, we got to know that it's there," said NASA Chief Charles Bolden.

Bolden stopped by La Canada Flintridge's JPL campus to talk about the agency's latest mission to put astronauts on an asteroid by the year 2021.

But as for protecting the Earth from a civilization-killing space boulder, Bolden said, "I'm not going to see that in my lifetime as the NASA administrator, for certain."

Fortunately, Bolden says a massive asteroid probably won't hit us within the next 100 years. But if he's wrong, the outlook isn't pretty.

"If we had an asteroid that we determined was on its way and it was going to hit New York, what would we do? Nothing. We have no capability to prevent that asteroid from striking wherever it's going to strike on Earth," said Bolden.

Before NASA can save humanity from a killer asteroid, it first has to study the asteroids up close. That's what this mission is all about. NASA scientists are working on a spacecraft that will fly millions of miles into deep space, capture an asteroid with a huge net and then guide it back toward Earth, leaving it in orbit around the moon, where astronauts can examine it in person.

"Any time that you can get up close to an asteroid and understand its composition and its characteristics, that's getting to know the enemy," said Don Yeomans with the NASA Near Earth Objects Program.

To power this mission, JPL has developed a cutting-edge ion propulsion system that's powered by beams of electrically charged atoms instead of conventional fuel.

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NASA wants to lasso asteroid closer to Earth by 2021

NASA puts Cape Canaveral space shuttle launch pad up for lease

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Image: KSCs Launch Complex 39 is strategically located next to a barge site and a variety of structures, including a Vehicle Assembly Building (VAB), Orbiter Processing Facilities (OPF), Press Site, Launch Control Center (LCC), and a crawlerway to the pads.NASA

NASA on Thursday posted a For Lease sign on one of its space shuttle launch pads, as it continues to downsize and revamp the Kennedy Space Center following the programs retirement.

The space agency is looking for a commercial company or companies to take over operations and maintenance of Launch Complex 39A beginning no later than Oct. 1. The lease would last at least five years.

VIDEO: Space Shuttle Simulation

Such commercial use would not only preserve the pad against the deterioration that would result from nonuse, it would further support NASA in fulfilling its mandate to, seek and encourage, to the maximum extent possible, the fullest commercial use of space, the agency wrote in its solicitation.

NASA intends to develop the shuttles second launch pad, 39B, for its heavy-lift Space Launch System rocket and Orion capsule, a follow-on to the space shuttle that is needed to send astronauts to destinations beyond the space stations 250-mile (400-km) high orbit.

PHOTOS: Inside Atlantis Final Space Station Mission

With SLS launches only expected every year or two years, NASA also is looking for commercial partners to use pad 39B as well.

Proposals for Pad 39A are due by July 5.

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NASA puts Cape Canaveral space shuttle launch pad up for lease

NASA JSC, Univ Of Texas At Arlington Team To Enhance Environmental, Health, & Safety Training

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NASA Johnson Space Center and The University of Texas Arlington's Division for Enterprise Development are partnering to develop best practices for enhancing environmental, health and safety training in support of current and future missions and initiatives.

UT Arlington will gain insight into training offered at a Voluntary Protection Programs certified site, while JSC hopes to better understand industry-focused training as the agency prepares for increased partnerships with commercial companies in the future.

William "Bill" McArthur, Jr., director of Safety and Mission Assurance at JSC, and John Hall, UT Arlington vice president for Administration and Campus Operations, signed a Space Act Agreement in a ceremony at Space Center Houston May 23. Afterward, a technical interchange meeting was held to begin development of a framework to audit environmental, health and safety classes and to determine leading practices.

Ultimately, the benchmarking activities will enhance training quality and knowledge sharing of environmental, health and safety provided to JSC's various constituencies. Elmer "Bubba" Johnson, JSC's Program Assessment Team lead, and Teresea Madden-Thompson, UT Arlington associate vice president, will coordinate technical activities.

"With more than 20 years of experience training NASA personnel, the NASA Safety Training Center provides training using standards unique and unobtainable from any other sources," McArthur said. "The agency's current focus on partnering with commercial companies to achieve its mission requires evaluating new approaches to our training methods," McArthur added. "This agreement creates an opportunity for NASA to benchmark with UT Arlington to identify best practices and obtain feedback to ensure that we offer the best training to our personnel."

Hall said the agreement creates an opportunity for the University to help shape training opportunities in the aerospace industry and its reach in the professional development sector. "We are proud of this new partnership with NASA Johnson Space Center, and we look forward to sharing our expertise in professional education and training with an agency that sets the standard for innovation," Hall said.

Madden said the agreement will position UT Arlington's Division for Enterprise Development for new opportunities with governmental agencies.

"We look forward to learning from NASA's expertise as well," Madden-Thompson said. "We will build on this expertise to create educational and training programs that will benefit the Division of Enterprise Development's other clients and support NASA's commitment to environmental, health and safety."

The NASA Safety Training Center (NSTC) at JSC was established in May 1991 by the NASA Headquarters Office of Safety and Mission Assurance to provide up-to-date, high-quality, NASA-specific safety training on location to NASA centers, or simultaneously to multiple centers through video teleconferencing in the pursuit of the ultimate goal of safe operations for NASA. The NSTC provides safety, as well as, mission success and mission unique training that enable agency personnel to meet uniform engineering and technical requirements for processes, procedures, practices and methods that have been endorsed as a standard for NASA programs and projects.

The UT Arlington Division for Enterprise Development provides professional development, technical assistance and training to public and private organizations in Texas and the nation. The division consists of several units that serve environmental, health and safety training and education needs across the public and private sectors. They include the U.S. Department of Labor federally approved Region VI OSHA Education Center, the Center for Environmental Excellence, Environmental Training Institute and the Public Works Training Institute. UTA is a research institution of more than 33,800 students and 2,200 faculty members in the heart of North Texas.

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NASA JSC, Univ Of Texas At Arlington Team To Enhance Environmental, Health, & Safety Training

Nanotechnology pioneer Heinrich Rohrer won the Nobel Prize

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Heinrich Rohrer, who shared the 1986 Nobel Prize in Physics for inventing a microscope that made it possible to see individual atoms and move them around, an achievement that led to vastly faster computing and greatly advanced molecular biology, died May 16 in Wollerau, Switzerland. He was 79.

His family said he had died of natural causes.

Mr. Rohrer and his colleague Gerd Binnig introduced the scanning tunnelling microscope, or STM, at an IBM laboratory in Zurich in 1981, after decades of explosive growth in microscopy. The STM enabled scientists to make accurate images of details as tiny as one-25th the diameter of a typical atom.

The advance helped give rise to the science of nanotechnology: the manipulation of matter at the atomic or molecular scale. Nanotechnology has revealed the structure of things such as viruses, improved industrial processes such as metal fabrication and the manufacture of computer components, clothing, cosmetics and paint.

Rohrer and Binnig shared the Nobel Prize with Ernst Ruska, who invented the electron microscope in 1931.

The invention of the scanning tunnelling microscope was a seminal moment in the history of science and information technology, John E. Kelly III, an IBM executive and director of research, said in a statement. This invention gave scientists the ability to image, measure and manipulate atoms for the first time, and opened new avenues for information technology that we are still pursuing today.

The Nobel committee said Mr. Rohrer and Mr. Binnig had opened up entirely new fields for the study of the structure of matter.

The pair, who had both done work in superconductivity and magnetic fields, were initially interested in studying the little-understood and complex atomic structures that make up the surfaces of minerals. It is at their surfaces that materials interact with the physical world.

But they found that electron microscopes, which investigate the internal arrangements of materials, did not help. The scientists decided they needed to develop a new type of microscope.

Their idea for the microscopes lens was an exceedingly thin wire tip the width of a single atom. Through a quantum mechanical effect called tunneling, a tiny current of electricity would flow from the tip to a surface to be scanned. The closer the probe got to a surface, the more electricity would flow. A computer would interpret the subtle changes in current to make a contour map of the hills and valleys of the atomic terrain.

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Nanotechnology pioneer Heinrich Rohrer won the Nobel Prize

Swiss nanotechnology pioneer Heinrich Rohrer dies

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WOLLERAU, Switzerland, May 24 (UPI) -- Heinrich Rohrer, a Swiss nanotechnology pioneer who helped invent the scanning tunneling microscope to observe and manipulate individual atoms, has died.

An announcement Thursday from the IBM Research Laboratory in Zurich, where he had worked, said Rohrer died May 16 at his home in Wollerau, Switzerland, the Los Angeles Times reported.

Heinrich Rohrer and colleague Gerd Binnig invented their improved version of the original 1930s electron microscope, calling it a scanning tunneling microscope, while working at the Zurich lab and together received the 1986 Nobel Prize in physics, an award they shared with physicist Ernst Ruska, who designed the first electron microscope.

Rohrer and Binning were considered the fathers of nanotechnology -- the construction and manipulation of extremely small objects -- because their device could be used to move atoms around one at a time on a surface.

"The invention of the scanning tunneling microscope was a seminal moment in the history of science and information technology," John E. Kelly III, director of research at IBM, said in a statement. "This invention gave scientists the ability to image, measure and manipulate atoms for the first time, and opened new avenues for information technology that we are still pursuing today."

Heinrich Rohrer was born June 6, 1933, in the farming community of Buchs in Switzerland. His family moved to Zurich where Rohrer studied physics at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology, receiving his doctorate in 1960.

After a brief fellowship at Rutgers University, he joined the newly formed IBM Research Laboratory where he worked until 1997.

Rohrer is survived by his wife, two daughters and two grandchildren.

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Swiss nanotechnology pioneer Heinrich Rohrer dies