Spacewalkers tackle coolant leak on space station

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CAPE CANAVERAL, Florida (Reuters) - A pair of spacewalking astronauts floated outside the International Space Station on Thursday to bypass a leak in one of the outpost's cooling systems.

Engineers suspect a micrometeoroid or tiny piece of space debris may have punched a hole no bigger than the width of a hair into one of the station's radiators.

The devices dissipate heat from batteries and other equipment aboard the solar-powered station, a $100 billion laboratory for biological, fluid physics and other science experiments now flying about 255 miles above Earth.

Station commander Sunita Williams and flight engineer Akihiko Hoshide left the station's Quest airlock around 8:30 a.m. EDT (1230 GMT) and returned 6.5 hours later after reconfiguring some ammonia coolant lines and hooking up a spare radiator.

"Suni and Aki, our heartfelt congratulations to you and the entire team," astronaut Mike Fincke radioed to the spacewalkers from Mission Control in Houston. "We've accomplished just about everything we set out to do today."

The leak is small so it will take several weeks to determine if the radiator was the source, said space station program manager Mike Suffredini.

If routing ammonia through the spare radiator does not stem the leak, another spacewalk to replace a pump or other equipment in the system may be needed.

Unless it is fixed, the leak would eventually trigger the cooling system to shut down, leaving the station without a backup system for a section of the station's solar arrays.

The cooling system holds about 50 pounds (22.7 kg) of ammonia. It would automatically shut down if the ammonia level drops to 40 pounds (18 kg), said flight director Mike Lammers.

As ground control teams prepared for the spacewalk on Wednesday, the station had to maneuver to avoid another piece of debris, part of the wreckage from the 2009 collision of an Iridium communications satellite and a Russian satellite.

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Spacewalkers tackle coolant leak on space station

LASCO C2 Combo 10/27-10/31/2012 00:36 UT – Video

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LASCO C2 Combo 10/27-10/31/2012 00:36 UT
Solar Flares 6-hr max: C1 0507 UT Oct31 24-hr: C1 0507 UT Oct31 GOES X-ray Flux plot (updates every 5 minutes) http://www.swpc.noaa.gov Sunspot number: 56 6 active regions today. Region 11598 continued to decay while regions 11592,11602 remained stable. View from Sunspot region 11602: http://www.solarmonitor.org A small coronal hole (CH543) mostly in the northern hemisphere will likely rotate into an Earth facing position today. the southern part of CH543 is trans equatorial and became better defined on Oct.30. A recurrent coronal hole (CH544) in the southern hemisphere will likely be in an Earth facing position on November 1. Currently there are no sunspot regions actively flaring and X-ray output has flatlined for now.NOAA predicts solar activity for the 3 day forecast to be very low with only a chance for minor flares. Sky watchers around the Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama, witnessed something amazing: A complex network of luminous arcs and rings surrounded the afternoon sun. "I #39;ve never seen anything quite like it," says eyewitness Bill Cooke, head of NASA #39;s Meteoroid Environment Office. Solar physicist David Hathaway snapped this picture of the display: spaceweather.com The apparition might be connected to hurricane Sandy. The core of the storm swept well north of Alabama, but Sandy #39;s outer bands did pass over the area, apparently leaving behind a thin haze of ice crystals in cirrus clouds. Sunlight shining through the crystals produced an unusually rich ...From:MichelleHill711Views:306 10ratingsTime:00:09More inScience Technology

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LASCO C2 Combo 10/27-10/31/2012 00:36 UT - Video

Sandy’s Hurricane Track Spied by Satellite – Video

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Sandy #39;s Hurricane Track Spied by Satellite
An animation of satellite observations from Oct. 26-29, 2012, shows Hurricane Sandy move along the US East coast and into the Mid-Atlantic and northeastern US Sandy had still not made landfall by the end of this animation. This visualization was created by the NASA GOES Project at NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Md., using observations from NOAA #39;s GOES-13 satellite.From:Rutger-Jan SchroederViews:1 0ratingsTime:00:36More inScience Technology

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Sandy's Hurricane Track Spied by Satellite - Video

Sandy’s Storm Track Spied by Satellite – Video

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Sandy #39;s Storm Track Spied by Satellite
An animation of satellite observations from Oct. 26-29, 2012, shows Hurricane Sandy move along the US East coast and into the Mid-Atlantic and northeastern US Sandy had still not made landfall by the end of this animation. This visualization was created by the NASA GOES Project at NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Md., using observations from NOAA #39;s GOES-13 satellite.From:Erivelto AraujoViews:2 0ratingsTime:00:36More inScience Technology

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Sandy's Storm Track Spied by Satellite - Video

Magical Bullets… NASA / DNA change / Mayan prophecies / 2012. HQ,HD. – Video

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Magical Bullets... NASA / DNA change / Mayan prophecies / 2012. HQ,HD.
Using NASA #39;s latest data and animations, i give my view on what is really going on in 2012...and what we can expect in the immediate future.....Feel free to discuss the content! Original music from my Bro #39;s, ARDDRIVE Album Title: The External EP Artists: ARDDRIVE (Jam Prd, The Wevaman Markzman) (UK) Release Date: July 3rd, 2012 (Beatport Exclusive) July 17th (Everywhere) Out now, exclusively on Beatport: http://www.beatport.com Credit: NASA #39;s Goddard Space Flight Center for all animations http://www.nasa.gov The ripples in space-time created when two black holes merge have been modelled to unprecedented accuracy, according to Einstein #39;s equations, by a powerful new computer simulation. The "waveform" signatures produced in the simulation should help researchers identify the ripples in the data from gravitational wave detectors. Read more at http://www.nasa.govFrom:SuperUrbanWizardViews:854 9ratingsTime:07:57More inScience Technology

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Magical Bullets... NASA / DNA change / Mayan prophecies / 2012. HQ,HD. - Video

NASA – Saturn’s Record-Setting Storm – Video

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NASA - Saturn #39;s Record-Setting Storm
Saturn #39;s 2010 Great White Spot storm has set a new record for largest temperature change ever recorded for a storm on Saturn. By studying the monstrous disturbance using NASA #39;s Cassini spacecraft, researchers spotted a massive belch of energy that sent temperatures soaring to an unprecedented 150 degrees Fahrenheit above normal in Saturn #39;s stratosphere, accompanied by an enormous release of ethylene gas. This video is public domain and can be downloaded at: svs.gsfc.nasa.gov Like our videos? Subscribe to NASA #39;s Goddard Shorts HD podcast: svs.gsfc.nasa.gov Or find NASA Goddard Space Flight Center on Facebook: http://www.facebook.com Or find us on Twitter: twitter.com Credit: NASA explorerFrom:MysteriesHunterViews:6 0ratingsTime:02:21More inScience Technology

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NASA - Saturn's Record-Setting Storm - Video

Hurricane Sandy’s Storm Track Spied by Satellite – Video

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Hurricane Sandy #39;s Storm Track Spied by Satellite
Sandy #39;s Storm Track Spied by Satellite October 29, 2012 An animation of satellite observations from Oct. 26-29, 2012, shows Hurricane Sandy move along the US East coast and into the Mid-Atlantic and northeastern US Sandy had still not made landfall by the end of this animation. This visualization was created by the NASA GOES Project at NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Md., using observations from NOAA #39;s GOES-13 satellite. credit: NASA Topics: Environment , Weather satellites , Spacecraft , Spaceflight , Atlantic hurricane season , Geostationary Operational Environmental Satellite , Greenbelt, Maryland , Goddard Space Flight Center , Earth redOrbit (s.tt Sandy #39;s Storm Track Spied by Satellite October 29, 2012 An animation of satellite observations from Oct. 26-29, 2012, shows Hurricane Sandy move along the US East coast and into the Mid-Atlantic and northeastern US Sandy had still not made landfall by the end of this animation. This visualization was created by the NASA GOES Project at NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Md., using observations from NOAA #39;s GOES-13 satellite. credit: NASA Topics: Environment , Weather satellites , Spacecraft , Spaceflight , Atlantic hurricane season , Geostationary Operational Environmental Satellite , Greenbelt, Maryland , Goddard Space Flight Center , EarthFrom:MysteriesHunterViews:4 0ratingsTime:00:36More inScience Technology

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Hurricane Sandy's Storm Track Spied by Satellite - Video

Saturn’s Record-Setting Storm – Video

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Saturn #39;s Record-Setting Storm
Saturn #39;s 2010 Great White Spot storm has set a new record for the largest atmospheric temperature change ever detected during a storm on the ringed planet. By studying the monstrous disturbance using NASA #39;s Cassini spacecraft, researchers spotted a massive belch of energy that sent temperatures soaring to an unprecedented 150 degrees Fahrenheit above normal in Saturn #39;s stratosphere, accompanied by an enormous release of ethylene gas. Credit: NASA #39;s Goddard Space Flight CenterFrom:DailyOnTechViews:325 20ratingsTime:02:21More inScience Technology

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Saturn's Record-Setting Storm - Video

Seawifs – Wiki Article – Video

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Seawifs - Wiki Article
SeaWiFS stands for Sea-viewing Wide Field-of-view Sensor. It was the only scientific instrument on GeoEye #39;s OrbView-2 (AKA SeaStar) satellite, and was a follow-on experiment to the Coastal Zone Color... Seawifs - Wiki Article - wikiplays.org Original @ http All Information Derived from Wikipedia using Creative Commons License: en.wikipedia.org Author: Provided by the SeaWiFS Project, NASA/Goddard Space Flight Center, and ORBIMAGE Image URL: en.wikipedia.org Licensed under:This image is ineligible for copyright and therefore is in the public domain, because it consists entirely of information that is common property and contains no original authorship., This work is in the Public Domain., This work is in the public domain in the United States.From:WikiPlaysViews:0 0ratingsTime:02:03More inEducation

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Cosmic ‘Fog’ Produced by Ancient Starlight Measured By Fermi – Video

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Cosmic #39;Fog #39; Produced by Ancient Starlight Measured By Fermi
This animation tracks several gamma rays through space and time, from their emission in the jet of a distant blazar to their arrival in Fermi #39;s Large Area Telescope (LAT). During their journey, the number of randomly moving ultraviolet and optical photons (blue) increases as more and more stars are born in the universe. Eventually, one of the gamma rays encounters a photon of starlight and the gamma ray transforms into an electron and a positron. The remaining gamma-ray photons arrive at Fermi, interact with tungsten plates in the LAT, and produce the electrons and positrons whose paths through the detector allows astronomers to backtrack the gamma rays to their source. (Credit: NASA #39;s Goddard Space Flight Center/Cruz deWilde) Complete story here: tiny.ccFrom:Alton ParrishViews:2 1ratingsTime:01:21More inScience Technology

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Cosmic 'Fog' Produced by Ancient Starlight Measured By Fermi - Video

Marshall Space Flight Center – Wiki Article – Video

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Marshall Space Flight Center - Wiki Article
The George C. Marshall Space Flight Center (MSFC) is the US government #39;s civilian rocketry and spacecraft propulsion research center. The largest center of NASA, MSFC #39;s first mission was developing... Marshall Space Flight Center - Wiki Article - wikiplays.org Original @ http All Information Derived from Wikipedia using Creative Commons License: en.wikipedia.org Author: US Army Image URL: en.wikipedia.org Licensed under:This image is ineligible for copyright and therefore is in the public domain, because it consists entirely of information that is common property and contains no original authorship., This work is in the Public Domain., This work is in the public domain in the United States.From:WikiPlaysViews:0 0ratingsTime:01:26:47More inEducation

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NASA Building Deep-Space Habitat From Spare ISS Parts

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By Duncan Geere, Wired UK

Deep-space engineers at the Marshall Space Flight Center in Texas are putting together a prototype of a deep space station from scrap parts of the ISS.

The Deep Space Habitat project is an attempt to work out optimum size of capsule, equipment and resources to send outside of the Earth-Moon system and into deep space. That could be to Mars, to an asteroid, or even to one of the solar systems many Lagrangian points.

Initial concept missions for the structure to cope with cover a sixty-day jaunt into the inky blackness, and a much-longer 500 -day variant. Craft to service the station are also being investigated.

One of the most important considerations in the whole process is understanding how human factors will affect the mission. Making astronauts as comfortable as possible will significantly increase the chances of the mission being a success.

Source: Wired.co.uk

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NASA Building Deep-Space Habitat From Spare ISS Parts

NASA’s Fermi Explores the Early Universe – Video

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NASA #39;s Fermi Explores the Early Universe
NASA #39;s Fermi Explores the Early Universe This animation tracks several gamma rays through space and time, from their emission in the jet of a distant blazar to their arrival in Fermi #39;s Large Area Telescope (LAT). During their journey, the number of randomly moving ultraviolet and optical photons (blue) increases as more and more stars are born in the universe. Eventually, one of the gamma rays encounters a photon of starlight and the gamma ray transforms into an electron and a positron. The remaining gamma-ray photons arrive at Fermi, interact with tungsten plates in the LAT, and produce the electrons and positrons whose paths through the detector allows astronomers to backtrack the gamma rays to their source. Credit: NASA #39;s Goddard Space Flight Center/Cruz deWildeFrom:okrajoeViews:0 0ratingsTime:01:21More inScience Technology

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NASA's Fermi Explores the Early Universe - Video

Valleywx.com: Possible Meteorites Have Been Found In Alabama

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Posted on: 6:45 pm, October 31, 2012, by Jennifer Watson, updated on: 08:33pm, October 31, 2012

8:30PM UPDATE: Dr. Bill Cooke of NASAs Marshall Space Flight Center:

Update on our visitor from the asteroid belt:

1) Eyewitness reports put the meteor in the same area as the doppler echo good confirmation. Check out the clump of lines in the map NW of Cullman (along with the eyewitness accounts) at this link: http://www.amsmeteors.org/fireball_event/2012/1681

The American Meteor Society did a great job analyzing these reports!

2) The fireball (meteor) traveled from South to North (more SSE to NNW).

3) I sent a search team down to the area indicated by the doppler signature. They spent several hours searching along the roads and other spots where meteorites would be relatively easy to spot. Nothing they saw screamed meteorite, but they did bring a few specimens back for a closer look. We are meeting around 8:30 AM tomorrow, and I will probably send another group down on Friday after we have had a few hours to think about how to improve the search.

4) There have been six recorded meteorite falls in Alabama they are:

Danville November 27, 1868 Frankfort December 5, 1868 Felix May 15, 1900 Leighton January 12, 1907 Athens July 11, 1933 Sylacauga November 30, 1954

If a piece of this meteor is found, we will have a seventh fall. BTW, meteorites are named after the closest town/city to their fall location. So the Athens meteorite fell in or near Athens, and so forth.

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Valleywx.com: Possible Meteorites Have Been Found In Alabama

Coalition of NASA, Army, Academic Researchers Wins Contract to Develop Innovative Flight Navigation Technology

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HUNTSVILLE, Ala. -- NASA has tapped a team of aerospace, military and academic researchers for a three-year project that could dramatically improve in-flight navigation capabilities for space vehicles, military air and sea assets and commercial vehicles.

The project, "Fast Light Optical Gyroscopes for Precision Inertial Navigation," includes researchers from NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Ala.; the U.S. Army Aviation and Missile Research, Development and Engineering Center (AMRDEC) at Redstone Arsenal in Huntsville; and Northwestern University in Evanston, Ill.

Their work is intended to enhance the performance of a vehicle's inertial guidance system by refining the optical gyroscopes that drive it. These highly sensitive gyroscopes, paired with accelerometers, measure a vehicle's attitude, or orientation based on its angular or rotational momentum in flight, and track its velocity and acceleration to precisely determine its position, flight path and attitude.

Gyroscope-based inertial guidance systems are nothing new; American rocketry pioneer Robert Goddard developed elementary gyroscopes for his launch tests in the early 1900s. The technology later was adapted to serve a range of high-tech spacecraft, guided missiles and commercial aviation.

But researchers supporting the new project say their sophisticated new optical gyroscopes could be at least 1,000 times more sensitive than current gyroscopes -- even in this initial prototype demonstration.

That's a critical leap forward as the nation plans new robotic and crewed missions into the solar system. Even the best modern spaceflight navigation systems can suffer from accumulated "dead reckoning" errors -- positioning miscalculations that result when an absolute point of reference, or a fixed "landmark" in space, is not readily available. To correct for such errors, flight operations personnel must rely on backup technologies, including Earth-based systems such as a global positioning system, or GPS. But such measures often lack the precision or uninterrupted flow of data needed to make critical course adjustments or maneuvers. And once explorers' vehicles venture away from Earth, GPS becomes useless.

Enter the Fast Light Optical Gyroscope project team: co-principal investigators Dr. David Smith, an optical physicist in the Marshall Center's Engineering Directorate, and Dr. Selim Shahriar, a professor of physics and astronomy and director of the Laboratory of Atomic and Photonic Technology at Northwestern University; and AMRDEC research physicist Krishna Myneni. They're investigating the use of optical dispersion, or the manner in which different wavelengths, or "colors," of light travel at different speeds through a material, to manipulate the sensitivity of the gyroscopes' optical cavities. In certain materials, such as the atomic gases the team is studying, this dispersion can cause pulses of light to travel faster than the speed of light in vacuum. This phenomenon, known as "fast-light," can increase the sensitivity of a gyro's optical cavity, allowing it to more precisely measure how fast a spacecraft is rotating -- the crux of accurate and reliable inertial navigation data.

"The goal is to increase spacecraft autonomy," Smith said. "The farther out we go into the solar system, the more we need to be able to safely eliminate Earth from the navigation loop, relying instead on the accuracy of systems onboard the vehicle."

But improved navigation is not the only application of the team's work. "The same technology also may be used to realize a tabletop-sized gravitational wave detector, thus opening the door for astrophysical observations beyond what can be seen via electromagnetic waves," Shahriar said. "Other applications of this technology include ultra-precise measurement of acceleration, vibration, strain and magnetic field."

The team anticipates initial laboratory demonstration of the new gyroscopes by early 2014, with field tests in 2015.

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Coalition of NASA, Army, Academic Researchers Wins Contract to Develop Innovative Flight Navigation Technology

Apollo Flight Controller 101: Every console explained

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Ars recently had the opportunity to spend some quality time touring the restored Apollo "Mission Control" room at the Johnson Space Center in Houston, Texas. We talked with Sy Liebergot, a retired NASA flight controller who took part in some of the most famous manned space flight missions of all time, including Apollo 11 and Apollo 13. The feature article "Going boldly: Behind the scenes at NASA's hallowed Mission Control Center" goes in depth on what "Mission Control" did during Apollo and how it all worked, but there just wasn't room to fit in detailed descriptions and diagrams of all of the different flight controller consolesI'm no John Siracusa, after all!

But Ars readers love space, and there was so much extra information that I couldn't sit on it. So this is a station-by-station tour of Historical Mission Operations Control Room 2, or "MOCR 2." As mentioned in the feature, MOCR 2 was used for almost every Gemini and Apollo flight, and in the late 1990s was restored to its Apollo-era appearance. You can visit it if you're in Houston, but you won't get any closer than the glassed-in visitor gallery in the back, and that's just not close enough. Strap yourselves in and prepare for an up-close look at the MOCR consoles, Ars style.

For most of Project Apollo, MOCR 2 had a fixed layout. Each station handled a specific, related group of functions; some watched over the spacecraft's hardware, or its software, or its position in space, or over the crew itself. Here's how things were laid out for most of Project Apollo:

NASA/Aurich Lawson

An Eidophor projector.

MOCR 2 is dominated by five large rear-projection displays at the front, which are topped by nine smaller displays showing chronographic information. The large center display, called the "ten by twenty" by Sy Liebergot (it measures 10 feet tall and 20 feet wide) was primarily used to display the vehicle's position and status during the current phase of the mission, using a complex system of physical slides overlaid on plots or columns of numbers. Housed at several positions within the projection space behind the screens were powerful quartz-lamp Eidophor video projectors, which bounced images off of mirrors and up onto the screen surfaces.

The side screens could be used to display the same channels as the individual console screens; Sy noted that during Apollo, the left-most screens might be set to display the vehicle command history and the current page of the flight plan; the right-most Eidophor was used to display television images, either from cameras used during the mission or from network TV channels when needed. The mainframe-generated, slide-overlaid images the Eidophors projected up onto the screens were quite crisp and clear.

Lee Hutchinson / Lee is the Senior Reviews Editor at Ars and handles all of the non-Apple product reviews. He also knows a lot about enterprise storage and security. Lee is based in Houston, TX.

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Apollo Flight Controller 101: Every console explained

UNIQUE CLASSROOM: ISU Lounge Transformed

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A former NASA director is bringing a new perspective on the history of space flight to Iowa State University.

Its a new experimental classroom with no doors and it is proving popular in its first month in use.

More students enrolled in the History of Space Flight class, so instructors needed more class space. ISU Aerospace Chair Rich Wlezien came up with the idea to convert a student lounge into a classroom in Howe Hall.

The room has 12 monitors, moveable chairs and white boards. Wlezien says that combination makes the room good for lectures or group projects

I think the challenge is to find the right mix of classical teaching and new technology, Ive gone to classrooms where they put every bit of technology they can find, and then the poor teacher doesnt know how to use it. Here I bring in my laptop, connect up and Im ready to go, says Wlezien.

The project cost $250,000 and was designed by the Smith Metzger architect firm of Des Moines.

The classroom can hold 120 students.

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UNIQUE CLASSROOM: ISU Lounge Transformed